Free After by Amy Efaw

was directed at herself.
    She had crept away from his bed, leaving him asleep across the jumbled sheets. She’d closed the bathroom door softly behind her. Standing naked before the mirror, she’d stared at the girl she saw there. At the disheveled hair and smeared mascara and lips that he’d kissed. Slowly shaking her head at the image in the mirror, the thought played over and over in her mind like a scratched track on a CD: Why? Why did you do it? Why did you let it happen? Then she’d turned away, covered her face with her hands, and cried. She would never again be the same person. She’d been irreversibly changed.
    Devon backs away from the tiny scratched mirror now, rubs at her eyes to clear away the memory. When she drops her hands, she notices the toilet paper roll, stuck into the round cubby on the side of the stainless steel toilet. Her tight bladder reminds her of why she’s standing there. She steels herself for the job, then pulls a length of the paper, folding it over, and then pulls another, meticulously covering every inch of the rimless seat. The toilet isn’t as filthy as she’d feared; it’s pretty clean, actually. But still, Devon won’t take the chance of catching something gross, like lice. Or something worse, like an STD. Devon’s seen the girls who use these toilets. They’d laughed at her. Yeah, they’d be the kind to have lice and STDs.
    She unsnaps her jumpsuit, letting it fall to her ankles, then tugs down her underwear. Her thick maxi pad, badly needing replacement, sticks to her pubic hair, and she winces at the discomfort and the mess. She lowers herself to the seat and waits for the relief to come.
    When she’s finished, she sinks her forehead into the palms of her hands. That wasn’t so bad. With her forearms pressed into her sore and heavy breasts, she remembers that she’s still braless beneath her undershirt.
    The door to her room scrapes open, and Devon jerks upright.
    A short, slight woman, the staff from behind the control desk, steps through the doorway, holding a food tray in one hand.
    The woman looks at Devon, and Devon yanks her jumpsuit up over her knees. Sweat breaks out everywhere.
    “Caught you in the act, huh?” the woman says. “Don’t think this is a first for me, okay? You girls need to get over yourselves.”
    Devon watches as the woman continues inside, shoving the crumpled sheet out of the way and placing the tray at the foot of Devon’s bed. “This is your breakfast, but don’t expect room service every day, okay? After today, you’ll be coming out of your room like everybody else. We always keep the new residents in their rooms for twenty-four hours after Intake, okay? To get used to things. It’s called Orientation Status. That’s a rule, okay?”
    From her mortifying spot on the toilet, Devon, in a funk of disbelief, observes the woman. She can’t understand the woman’s absolute disregard for her privacy, moving methodically as she does in her shapeless Seattle Mariners T-shirt and black Adidas sweatpants and speaking in that crusty lilting tone of hers with a hint of an accent that Devon can’t place. She could be Mexican or Native American or even Indian, judging from her skin color and short black hair, straight and flat and shapeless on her head, and her chiseled facial features. She could be forty, or she could be sixty; Devon can’t guess.
    The woman glances around the room, nodding to herself, like she’s doing a mental inspection. Then she turns her dark eyes on Devon. “My name is Henrietta, okay? You’re going to be seeing a lot of me. Most of the time I work nights, okay? But today, I have the day shift, too. Back-to-back shifts. So you better not mess with me, okay? I am not in a mood to be messed with.”
    Devon nods.
    “Good.” Henrietta also nods, satisfied that she’d gotten across whatever she’d intended to communicate. She drops a thin booklet on top of the food tray. “You need to read this, okay? If you have