Hard Time by Cara McKenna Read Free Book Online

room or wherever.”
    “Collier,” said the guard. “Let’s go.”
    “Thanks,” he murmured to me. “I’ll see you later, for that help we talked about. And I got a question for you.”
    My stomach gurgled and my mouth couldn’t form a reply quick enough. He was gone, big frame slipping through the door, and all at once I could breathe again.
    A question for me? There were so many I yearned to ask in return.
    What do you want to do with your life, when you get out? Are you ever getting out? What are you like, out in the world? How do you dress? What would you order in a restaurant?
    How would you approach me, out there? With hollow promises? With roses? With a blade and a steady hand?
    And when I saw him two hours later during the Resources block, I posed not a one of those questions. He found an empty seat, sitting patiently. I lost my nerve and avoided him. Kept allowing my eye to be caught by another attendee, putting him off. But with only twenty minutes left before my day ended, I couldn’t ignore him any longer. I crossed the room, chair rolling before me.
    “Hello again,” I offered, stopping but not sitting. “Sorry for the wait. Ready to chat?”
    He tapped the butt of a golf pencil against the table. “If you got the time.”
    “I’ve got a little.” I took a seat across from him, wondering how close our shoes were to touching.
    “So about that machine you gave me—I appreciate it, but I don’t type right.” He air-pecked with two fingers.
    “Oh, don’t worry about that. I bet half of college grads don’t type with more than two or three fingers. Just get in the habit of practicing. Typing something every day.”
    “Typing what?”
    “Anything you like.”
    He shot me a smile, one that cut the tether from the tenuous hold I’d gotten on my role and sent my focus crashing to the floor. I watched his lips as he spoke.
    “I’ve been gettin’ told exactly what to do, and when and where and how quick, for almost five years. You tell me what to write or I won’t even know how to start.”
    “Oh, all right.”
Five years. For what?
“Well, if you need an assignment, you could spend say, twenty minutes each night, typing up what happened to you that day. Don’t worry about punctuation, and the word processor will fix most of the capitalization and spelling issues. Just get your fingers and eyes used to finding the letters. Work on that first, and maybe in time we’ll get a plan together to start tackling your longhand. It’s a tricky thing, dysgraphia. Didn’t sound like you got much help in school for it.”
    He shook his head. “No one ever said I have that—they said I had dyslexia.”
    “They differ a fair bit. Dyslexia is often an issue with perception—people will have trouble reading because the letters seem to move, or rearrange themselves.”
    “Not for me they don’t.”
    “Right. But when you try to write, your fingers can’t remember how to form each letter?”
    “Yeah. Exactly.”
    “But you have no trouble copying?”
    He smiled. “I wouldn’t have made it to tenth grade without plagiarism.”
    I smiled too, grimly. “Gotcha. Well, it’s never too late to start. Do what I said—try typing for twenty minutes each night. You might be surprised how much quicker you are with it by next week. Meet with me again and we’ll figure out what comes next.”
    I gave him some dysgraphia fact sheets and handouts I’d photocopied.
    “Thanks. Now can you, uh . . . Can you help me write a letter? To somebody?” He said it almost primly, humility in his voice. It struck me as odd, considering this man had asked me for help, and been offered it without judgment. Then he added in a near mumble, “A personal letter.”
    The request was legit, a common one during Resources. I checked the clock. “We can start, at least. But I’ve only got ten minutes.”
    He nodded. “You got paper?”
    I pulled a notebook from my bag—perfect bound, not spiral, thanks to the thrilling