Lauren had been in the prison for just ten days.
In that time she had hardly spoken to anyone. She never argued and did her best not to stand out. She got up in the morning with everyone else, worked in the kitchen during the day and mopped the corridor by the cells in the evening.
That was exactly why most of the inmates decided she was weak. Especially the two women nearly everyone in the block was afraid of.
Martha and Kelly had been there for years. They kept picking new targets, took other inmates’ food, made people wash their clothes and put every newcomer through humiliating “tests.” The guards knew what was going on, but proving it was hard, because no one was willing to testify.
They noticed Lauren almost at once. She was young and calm, and every time they tried to provoke her, she simply walked past. That annoyed them even more.
“She thinks she’s better than us,” Martha said one day.
The real reason came a few days later. At lunch, Lauren watched Kelly take food away from an elderly inmate. The old woman said nothing and just looked down at the table.
Lauren calmly picked up the tray, set it back in front of the elderly woman and said, “Eat your own.”
The whole cafeteria went silent. Nobody had spoken to Kelly like that in a very long time.
Kelly only smiled. “You’re going to regret that.”
Lauren did not answer.
The next evening, as usual, she was on her knees by one of the cells, mopping the floor. The corridor was nearly empty. That was when Martha and Kelly came up behind her, one of them carrying a bucket of the dirty water used to wash the floors.
Lauren did not even have time to turn around. They dumped the whole bucket over her head. Filthy water ran through her hair, down her face and over her white shirt.
The two women burst out laughing. “Well, hero?” Kelly said. “Still planning to stand up for everyone?”
Lauren slowly lifted her head. But instead of fear, a strange smile spread across her face. She wiped the water off her cheek and said quietly, “Thank you.”
The women exchanged a look. “For what?”
“You just did exactly what I needed.”
They laughed even harder, sure the girl was babbling out of fright. But Lauren stood up, picked up the bucket and set it against the wall. Then she looked straight up at the security camera above the door.
Kelly’s smile vanished.
The camera in that part of the block had been broken for several days. That was exactly why they had picked that spot. Or so they believed.
In fact, that very morning Lauren had told the shift supervisor that she had spotted a damaged wire. The camera had been fixed only an hour before the attack, and hardly anyone knew it yet.
But that was not even the most important part. Lauren pulled a small plastic container from her pocket. Inside lay an earring.
It was the earring Martha had lost a few days earlier near the cell of a woman who was later found badly beaten. The guards had never been able to work out who did it. Lauren had found the earring while cleaning, kept it and remembered exactly whose it was.
“What are you doing?” Martha asked, and her voice sounded completely different now.
Lauren pressed the button to call the guards. “I’m just tired of watching you act like everyone here is scared of you.”
A minute later several officers walked into the corridor. At first the two women denied everything, but the camera had recorded the attack, and the earring was sent off for testing. It later turned out that traces of the beaten inmate’s blood were still on it.
Once Martha and Kelly were taken to isolation, the other women finally started talking. One after another, they described the threats, the beatings and the extortion.
Within a few days, Martha and Kelly were facing new charges. They lost all their privileges and were moved to a separate high-security block.
Lauren simply went back to her usual work. That evening she was mopping the same corridor again. Only now, when she walked past the cells, nobody looked at her like a weak newcomer anymore.
The elderly inmate she had stood up for in the cafeteria spoke to her quietly. “You waited on purpose for them to slip up, didn’t you?”
Lauren gave a small smile. “No. I just knew that people like them always slip up sooner or later.”
