Indigo: The Saving Bailey Trilogy #2 by Nikki Roman Page A

astray.
    My stomach has that feeling you get when you’re on an airplane and it drops during turbulence. My hands are clammy, and even the rain can’t hide the nervous sweat that is pouring out of me.
    I go through a pair of gates and am pointed in the direction of the visitors’ center by a guard. There is a waiting room with plastic molded chairs of various colors and styles, a mismatch of whatever the community donated, or what could be picked up at thrift stores. I’m about to sit down on one of the sturdier looking ones when a large lady at the front desk calls me up. She asks me where my parents are and who I’m here to see. I shyly slide my fake I.D. under the glass window that separates us.
    “You don’t look twenty one,” the woman says, cocking an eyebrow.
    My heart pounds. Look twenty one, look twenty one! I scream from within. “I have a baby face,” my words squeak out of me like an invisible hand has a stronghold on my throat.
    “Mhmmm,” she says, winking. She pushes a clipboard at me with a pen and an official-looking document attached to it. “Sign this, sweetie, and then you can go back and see your boyfriend.”
    “Oh, no, you misunderstood—we’re just friends,” I say.
    “Sure thing, sweetie, just sign here.”
    I scribble the fake name Clad made up for my driver’s license: Sherry Williams.
    Is that his idea of a romantic name for me? Does he dream of making love to Sherry, only with my body? Shivers run through me.
    “What’s wrong?” the woman asks.
    My eyes automatically snap to her nametag, “Nothing, Sherry .”
    Now, I really might vomit, never mind that my stomach was already churning because I’m about to see Clad for the first time in six months. Can vomit cancel out vomit?
    “Do you have anything on you? Jewelry? Cellphone?” Sherry asks.
    My hand goes to my neck, reaching for the locket that’s not there. “No,” I say.
    “You can go on through the metal detector then, but take your shoes off, first.”
    I turn to my left and there is a single metal detector set up and a couple of bins laid out, a smaller version of the security measures at airports before boarding a plane.
    I pull my boots off and put them in a bin, and trying to hide the holes in my socks, I scuffle along to the metal detector. The guard waves me through and a light above turns green as I make it clear to the other side. I shove my feet into my boots, and then another officer escorts me through a hallway that smells like someone peed the length of it.
    The officer takes me into a room full of people. There are the inmates in their orange ensembles, and then the normal people, the family and friends who are visiting them.
    “I get to touch him?” I gulp.
    The officer chuckles.
    “I thought he’d be behind glass.”
    “We can put him behind glass, if you want,” he says. “Who are you here for?”
    “I… uh—I,” I choke up. “Clad, I’m here for Clad.”
    “Yeah? Gun Boy, huh? He’s real popular around here,” the officer says. “I’ll go get him.”
    I take a seat at one of the empty tables; my legs have started to shake and I doubt they will hold me much longer. The officer returns shortly, with his meaty hand tight around Clad’s bicep. Or at least I think it’s Clad; it must be, because he shares the same vibrant green eyes. But his most easily recognizable trait, his hair, is gone. All that remains of his once unruly mop of curls are dark brown bristles.
    What have they done to him? I think in a panic . What have I done to him?
    He pulls out a chair, and leans back in it like he used to in high school. “Look at me,” he says. “I can’t see your eyes.”
    “You got a haircut,” I say, raising my head.
    “Yeah, do you like it? It’s easier to maintain this way.”
    “It’s different.”
    Different—there’s that theme again. I’m beginning to grow sick of things being different . I slide my ponytail holder out of my hair.
    “You look beautiful, as always,”