He never thought he'd miss the annoying sounds of his family's morning bustling quite so much. His dad's loud spitting noises resonating from the bathroom as he brushed his teeth and trimmed his beard, preparing for the day to come ; his brother's high-pitched squeaks as he played Fortnite with his online friends before being woken for school, trying and failing at discretion, sometimes making a lamp or super-hero figure tip over as he ran around while the game loaded. Lyla's phone flashing loudly as she took cringy pictures of Sean asleep and drooling to taunt him with when she slept over at his', the sheets smelling like weed and strong perfume sprayed on as an attempt to overcome the smell. Finn's contemplative habit of wood carving as coffee brewed, Cassidy's funky guitar riffs and ballads which made for unique alarm clocks out in the wild. His mother, as he found her again in the desert after his whole life went to shit, quietly leaving her trailer to drink a coffee with her first cigarette of the day, and desperately trying to make sense of not-quite parenting two estranged children on the run. Car engines revving up and soothingly filtering through his Seattle home’s double-glazed windows, the autumn wind ruffling through the hemlock branches, the more-or-less distinct shape of a plan for the future perpetually encircling his mind.
The only sounds he now heard as he opened his remaining eye were his cellmates' irregular snoring, metal bunk beds whining with each movement their beat up bodies made, countless stepping sounds coming from above, the mechanical whirrings of the cell doors simultaneously unlocking at 8:00 AM, the faded clinking of the dreadful plastic cutlery at meal time, the whirring of electrical saws cutting through treated wood at work time, the monthly buzzing of a razor to his head to avoid lice, the voices of the jailers resonating through the empty hallways, the occasional visit or phone call from Daniel, always under Claire or Stephen's sharp supervision. Most of all, he was taken with the weird absence of traffic outside his window, which sometimes made him forget how fast the world kept spinning as he remained stuck in place, cuffed to lead bars as atonement for a crime he did not commit. Insensitive to his own messed up reflection, which he barely deigned to look at anymore even as he splashed water onto his face morning and night, he found his biggest markers of time in people that remained ‘outside’. In Daniel growing taller than him and starting to get voice breaks as he swerved through puberty, in his grandparents’ postures worsening and their inability to drive due to worsening eyesight problems, in the strands of white hair slowly merging with the blonde of Karen’s hair in her approaching fifties, in artsy Jean’s sudden absence as she quietly lost her long lasting fight to cancer, in the gradual changing of his train-hopping friends’ writing style on the postcards they sometimes sent from wherever they ended up living at for a few weeks at a time.
As for him, it felt as though time had stopped moving properly. It did not exactly freeze, as he could still see the news on TV as proof of an unstopped general movement of the world, but it took on a peculiar shape. He could see the small amount of facial hair he’d started to grow while on the run get thicker and ruggier, his arms and legs fill up in ways it never did when he ran track because of the physical work he did on the daily, he could also see his face taking on a grey-ish tinge and change shape with the very odd appearance of a white glass eye in his empty eye-socket. Parts of his body were transforming at an alarming rate, following the overall curve of the world and catching up to it, but he felt that ever since he’d decided to give himself up to the American justice system, his self had failed to follow that curve and remained in the exact same spot. As he replayed the same day over and over again behind grey walls, he felt that weird quality of time accentuate. What made it unbearably worse was the realisation that juvie, and, after that, actual prison, were full of other Seans. Full of other colored guys plucked out of white-fence America in a never-ending weeding operation to clean up the laneyard. He was nothing special, not a martyr either, just a clownfish in an overcrowded tank with a dark cloth thrown on top. All the attention he’d gotten while on the run had died out right after the trial, as the average American Joe was now able to sleep on both ears knowing yet another criminal from across the border was taken care of and that they could offer their blind faith to the police state, now and always. All of that happened for nothing other than it was American law and who would believe a latino kid that ran from the cops when said white and “gentle” cop turned up dead in his wake ?
He could see the perverse relief in Claire and Stephen’s eyes when they visited, that small glint in their eyes at the world having recovered what they identify as its normalcy. Where else could he, Sean Diaz, mixed child of disowned daughter Karen and illegal son-in-law Esteban Diaz, raised in a mono-parental family setting with no catholic faith, have ended up other than in prison ? He could see the way Sean Diaz was set as a foil for Daniel Diaz in their two old bigoted minds, and he did not even find it in himself to resent them for it. He was so over it, and they took care of Daniel in his absence, gave him a sense of normalcy all kids should have, one that was stripped off him as soon as Esteban took that bullet back in Seattle. If anything, they treated him like the sole exception in their racist view of the world, and as much as he felt his skin prickle at the thought, if that kept his baby brother fed, clean and with a roof over his head in his and Esteban’s absence, he could make himself believe he was happy for it. Not to mention that, if anything, he knew Daniel would always find a friend in Chris, and life in Beaver Creek would never be lonely in the singular way prison was.
He was fine with it, truly, he thought, while cutting through the shape of a Target aisle’s cardboard sign, knowing half of his salary would only serve to pay for the fees of his own undue incarceration. He was fine with it, he thought, at all times of the day and in each of his sleepless nights. He was fine with celebrating his 21st birthday in prison, not even allowed his first legal drink because the institution did not make room for personal agency ; he was fine with never getting to know his now grown body, prevented from his privacy and intimacy by a life in a room constantly shared by four and only ever interacting with other deeply dysfunctional people in a deeply dysfunctional setting ; he was fine with never again getting to smoke weed with Lyla between classes, gossiping about people they hated and people they found cute ; he was fine with never getting to graduate and with never going to art school the way he’d secretly wished he could, even if it was way too costly for him anyways, and with his good grades he’d have wanted to find a good job that would’ve allowed him to meet his family’s needs, he’s sure. He was fine with having to rot in a putrid cage if it meant his brother would get to breathe better air for his whole life.
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