Diary of an Ugly Duckling by Langhorne, Karyn (general ebook reader .txt) 📕

the day room of the prison buzzed

with the chatter of men: young ones clustered around

video games, older ones gathered around card ta-

bles or the pieces for chess or checkers. Indeed, the

only person close enough to have overheard any of

Audra’s little bit of drama was that new corrections

officer—that very tall, very handsome, very built

brother named Art Bradshaw—but Officer Brad-

shaw was staring determinedly at a table of inmates

in the opposite corner. There was such a blank ex-

pression on his GQ cover-boy handsome face, she

was pretty sure of one thing: Even working the same

shift, in the same room, he didn’t even know Cor-

rections Officer Audra Marks existed.

When she turned back to him, Carlton was in-

specting her in minute detail. Audra saw herself in

the kid’s eyes: He must have preferred the long,

flowing, hair-weave look, because he seemed to gri-

mace at her short ’fro. And Audra already knew her

face was too full and her nose too flat—it seemed like

she’d heard those criticisms every day since she

was a kid—curses of a heredity she could only

guess at. But the bulk of her arms, the shelf of her

breasts straining against the crisp white cotton of

DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING

7

her uniform and the thick roll of excess skin and fat

beneath them, her thighs straining the fabric of her

pants uncomfortably—those were her own doing.

And no, Carlton Carter wasn’t seeing Barbara Stan-

wyck . . . or any other starlet before 1944 or since,

Audra realized, with an unpleasant jolt back to real-

ity. Not for the first time this week, she wished she’d

really started that diet and exercise program she’d

been planning on starting since New Year’s . . .

Today, she vowed, starting at lunch. I’ll just have a

salad . . .

“Uh . . . Officer?” Carlton snatched at her atten-

tion, dragging it back to him and the present mo-

ment. “You done? Can I go?”

Audra sighed. “I’m trying to teach you something

here, Carter. I’m trying to teach you how to banter—”

“Banter?”

“Yeah, banter. It’s how you win a woman with

your words—”

“You mean my rap?” He shook his head, grin-

ning. “Yo, I don’t need no help with that—”

“Take that, you bitch!” someone behind her

screamed.

Audra’s fantasy faded like the trappings of Cin-

derella’s trip to the ball, leaving neither a glass

slipper—or even an ankle bracelet—to keep alive

the memory. Audra leaped to her feet, one hand on

her baton, the other on the service revolver snapped

tight into the holster on her right hip as she whirled

toward the sound. She touched a button on the

walkie-talkie at her hip, activating a speaker and mi-

crophone on her shoulder, following procedures on

reflex.

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Karyn Langhorne

“Control, this is 0847. Incident in the day room.

Backup requested, over,” she murmured quickly

into the device as the words, “Fight! Fight!” went up

like a grade-school chant, filling the room.

Art Bradshaw was already wading through the

sea of orange toward the brawlers and Audra dived

into the commotion. “Hey!” she hollered, dropping

her voice to its hardest, most authoritative edge as

she bumped through the knot of jumpsuited men

hyped on the sounds of fists flying. “Get back! Back,

I said!”

“You heard her! Get back!” Bradshaw rumbled,

echoing Audra in a commanding chorus. “Out of

the way!”

The cluster of orange onlookers fell away at the

power of the man’s voice. Of course, it wasn’t just

his voice that parted the men like Moses at the Red

Sea: Audra noticed, not for the first time, that the

new corrections officer was very tall—at least 6 feet

5 inches in his socks, with the kind of thick muscles

that usually meant a man sweated for a living. Au-

dra glanced quickly into his face: It was smooth and

rich, chiseled sharp at the cheekbones and chin. Im-

possibly handsome. Prince Charming handsome.

Once again, he gave Audra not the slightest look or

word, ignoring her as thoroughly as if she didn’t ex-

ist, even though the two of them needed to act as a

team to resolve the conflict unfolding before them.

Two men lay tangled in each other’s arms, each

trying to beat the living hell out of the other. The top

man’s number was stenciled across the side of his

jumpsuit like a tattoo: MI 761098. Audra transcribed

DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING

9

it in her mind to the face of a long, lean, don’t-give-

a-good-damn brother whose mama had named him

Princeton Haines, though he was neither princely in

manner nor smart enough for the college of the same

name. Even with only the back of his cornrowed

head visible as he wrestled with the man beneath

him, Audra knew his cocoa-colored face was con-

torted into the sneer it always wore. Unlike kids like

Carlton, there was no point talking to inmates like

Haines; odds were overwhelming that not only

would Haines likely return to Manhattan Men’s for

repeat visits when he’d finished this three-to-five,

but that he’d probably one day reside at Upstate, the

maximum security prison, for the rest of his life.

If the top man was Princeton Haines, the bottom

man had to be a new inmate he’d been exchanging

bad blood with for the past two weeks, a youngster

by the name of Garcia, who was working overtime

to create a bad-ass rep. An instant later, her suspi-

cions were confirmed as the two men shifted posi-

tions and the bottom man became the top.

“Break it up!” Bradshaw shouted, grabbing at

Garcia’s back and lifting him easily off the floor.

Audra slipped her baton back into its loop at her

belt and on the impulse of her training, grabbed

Haines firmly by the armpits and tugged him up-

ward with all her might, dragging him to his sur-

prised feet.

“Dag,” one of the orange-suited men muttered

from the cluster. “You see her lift him like he was

nothing—”

“That’s one strong-ass chick, man—”

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Karyn Langhorne

“You sure it’s a chick? Looks like a dude to me.”

“Yeah man, one fat, black ugly dude, y’know—”

“Fat, black, ugly dude with tits,” another voice

chuckled.

Fat . . . black . . . ugly. The words shook her insides

like they always had, and she was nine years old all

over again, listening where she shouldn’t have,

hearing things that cut her to heart’s core.

Fat . . . black . . . ugly . . .

She jerked toward the voice, half-expecting to see

the ghost of her father,