Outside The Lines:: Third Person Narration (29 page)

They climbed on the elevator, in the middle of a herd of damp people with towels wrapped around their shoulders.

She and Johnny smiled at each other in their endless mirrored reflections, hers big and goofy, his small and almost secretive. There was something in that smile that both drew her and unnerved her.
 
Maybe because right now, the smile had a note of…mischievousness.
 

Yes, that was it. It was mischievous.

Uh-oh.

She looked at him in the mirror. “I will never work for you,” she announced flatly.

The eyes of all the towel-clad people moved to her in the mirror.

“We’ll see,” Johnny murmured.

“We’ll see what?” she asked suspiciously. “That sounded like a threat. Are you threatening me?”

The eyes slid to Johnny.
 
He grinned, the unreserved, wholehearted, boyish grin, the one that made her heart flutter.

“No. It means okay,” he said, in a calm, placating tone.
 

Juliette’s look got more stern. “I mean it: never.”

“Whatever you say, babe.”

Which meant, whatever
he
said.
 
That she’d come around.

She slowly shook her head at him.
 
He slowly nodded his back, while the reflection of an elevator full of towel-clad people stared at them.
 

And against her better judgment, Juliette smiled too.
 
She kept shaking her head, but she smiled. Because there was something about Johnny that lit a fire inside her, and it felt really good.

This whole thing was a crazy dream. A big mistake. It was going to get messy. And she didn’t care. Because it was also going to be good. Really, really good.
 

Neatness was not at the top of her list anymore.
 
Having a life was, and that meant messy things, maybe even some broken things. Maybe even her heart. But she was pretty sure Johnny was worth the risk.
 

She
knew
she was worth it.

Which is why she would never work for him.

They stepped off into the lobby and the bright, sunny world, following the towel-clad folk who’d leapt off the moment the elevator doors had slid open, probably fleeing what they thought was inevitable, probably knowing as well as I did, as well as any Bond fan did, that you never say never.
 

Especially when you’d just invited Johnny Danger into your life.
 

The End

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Author’s Note

Kids For Cash

True Story:

A juvenile court judge wanted a new juvenile detention center because the old one was falling apart. He put out the word. Through his and another judge's connections, they hooked up a developer looking to build with a businessman/lawyer looking to make some cash.
 

The businessman/lawyer, along with his partner, took out a $12 million loan. The build began and in the end, cost almost $8 million.
 

Soon after, the judges' wives bought a condo and started a LLC to run it. Immediately, rental income began coming in.
 

Since it all went so swimmingly the first time, they decided to do it again.
 
Another loan, another detention center, more money poring into the rental property.

In the end, rent payments paid by the lawyer/businessman and a few times, from the builder himself, totaled over two million dollars.
 

During this time, the incarceration of juveniles adjudicated by these two judges outpaced the rates set by other judges at startling rates.
 
Juveniles were sentenced swiftly, sometimes within minutes, often without counsel.
 

The kids were sent to the detention centers built by the guys renting the judges' wives condo.
 

Years later, federal agents got interested when they were chatting with the convicted mafia-boss-turned-informant, who mentioned a little something about a little something.
 
The mafia guy would know, because one of the judges had regular breakfast meetings with him.
 

You can't make this stuff up.

The co-owner of the detention centers, an investment banker, bought out the lawyer/businessman when things started hitting the fan.
 
Apparently, this investment banker partner knew nothing.
 
Not even when all those kids kept poring into his jail, keeping it afloat, thank goodness, because a prison without inmates is a terrible business plan.
 

Interesting side note: the investment banker's brother was a District Attorney. And his father a former Supreme Court Justice. Who knew nothing about anything.
 
Even though the investment banker thought it would be a good idea to use his dad’s home address as the official address for the company. Because, you know....
 

You can't make this stuff up.

And then, years later, out of jail, the lawyer/businessman who paid the kickbacks sued the investment banker partner who bought him out, claiming they took advantage of his legal troubles by offering a contract they never intended to follow.
 

You cannot.
 
Make this stuff.
 
Up.

If you’d like to know more,
I suggest starting with research on the ‘Kids For Cash’ scandal.

Fill Quotas

“Fill quotas” or “occupancy clauses” are clauses in the contracts that state and county governments sign with for-profit, private prisons and detention centers, guaranteeing the facilities will remain full.

Minimum occupancy requirements are typically between 80-100%, guaranteeing prison companies a consistent, reliable stream of revenue.
 
A spokesman for CCA, the nation’s largest private prison company, reported to a newspaper in Shreveport that such occupancy requirements “are necessary for a feasible business model.”
 

If the quotas aren’t met, correctional departments can end up paying thousands or even millions of dollars for unused beds.
 
As one stop-gap measure, inmates and youth offenders are sometimes transferred out of state- or county-run institutions to the for-profit, private ones.

In one report, done by
In the Public Interest
, 2/3rds of the state contacts surveyed had occupancy clauses.
 

Check out excerpts from other books below!

SPIN

by Bella Love

THREE TIMES.  In twenty-nine years of living, I'd only let myself get spun up three times.
 

I almost always regretted it.
 

Generally, it took a lot to rattle me.  Bright smile, white-knuckled control: I was like an iron ball of yarn.  That was my way.   
 

It was a pretty good way.   Simple, too.  Just hang on tight, smile like a crazy person and never let go.  It got me places, and I probably shouldn’t have got more than ten miles past my county’s swampy line.

I stayed away from things like alcohol or emotions; neither ever went well for me.  And anyhow, it’s not what was expected from a daughter of the cream of Dodge Run society. 
 

Not that that cream rose awfully high.  But still.

Cheerleading, charitable organizations, smiling when hurricanes blew through town, anything to Uplift The Spirits of Dodge Run, that’s all it took.  Every moment of your waking life.  A few dreaming ones as well.
 

It was tough, maintaining a position atop a social pile in a swamp, but we MacInnee’s were strong that way.

Some might say being at the top of the social pile in Dodge Run wasn’t saying a whole lot.  I’d have to agree.  But I didn’t have anything else to go on, so I went on that.  It was sort of like driving on fumes; what else are you going to do? 
 

Today, though, I was reminded, forcefully, of the few times I 
had
 got spun up, when I’d felt the tight weave of my self-control loosening.  The list began and ended with Finn Dante.  He was like dangerous bookends to my errors of judgment.  

As a kid, I’d stayed away because I had a brain in my head and a reputation to uphold.  There were warnings about the Dante boys, big bad warnings.  

“Nothing but trouble, those Dante boys,” Mother told me when I was twelve.  “You stay away.”  
 

“I will,” I'd promised, my skin prickling.

“They do things to women, the Dante men,” my friend Emily had said.  Calling the teenage offspring of local pawn shop owner Earl Dante ‘men’ was a bit of a stretch, but at thirteen, Emily had been more wise in the ways of men than I am to this day, so I went with it. 
 

“Things?” I'd whispered back, even though Emily hadn’t been whispering.  “What kind of things?”