Anna Goes to Prison: Chapter 10

Chapter 10: Goldie's Deal

Rapunzel may have been a young woman in prison with a 20 year sentence, but you wouldn't know that at the moment from looking at her face. She was beaming like someone who had just purchased a winning lottery ticket.

This gave Anna a very, very bad feeling.

"Um...why do you look so happy?" asked Anna, deciding that playing dumb was the best way to go with this right now. "Do you have a crush on that guard that just went by or something? Because if you do, I don't really see that working out..."

"I can't believe this," said Rapunzel breathlessly, ignoring what Anna had just said. "You're...you're the warden's sister?!"

"I...I have no idea what you're talking about!" went Anna, placing her hands in front of herself as though doing that would somehow defend herself against what her cellie had just found out.

"The warden's own sister...is in prison," said Rapunzel, apparently needing to convince even herself that this was in fact true. "The warden's own sister...is in prison! And she's MY cell mate!"

She was shaking her arms around victoriously as she said this, which Anna did not take as a good sign.

"I'm...um...not that Anna Andersen," said Anna, trying to keep her eyes from shifting in the way that they always did whenever she told a lie. "I'm...um...I'm not related to the warden! Not related in any way! You have to believe me!"

Rapunzel responded by making a farting noise with her mouth.

"You're a terrible fibber, you know that?"

"I know," said Anna, admitting defeat to herself and knowing that Rapunzel wasn't going to buy into any bluffs she tried to throw at her.

"It all makes sense now!" exclaimed Rapunzel, in the same giddy way that a child reacts to her presents on Christmas morning. "Almost all prisoners here spend some time in holding before they're assigned to an actual cell! But you...you were placed in one on your first day! Guess the warden's been planning out her sister's arrival for quite some time..."

"I kinda doubt that," said Anna. "I mean, she acted like she wasn't expecting me. Heck, she even asked me what my sentence was."

"Anna, Warden Elsa makes an effort to personally greet all of the prisoners here when they arrive," said Rapunzel, acting as though she somehow should've known this by now. "When I first met her, she already knew who I was and what I had done, and even had the 'manners' to ask me how my husband was doing. Now if she did that kind of research about a nobody like me in advance, do you honestly think that she didn't know that her own sister was on the way?"

"Could you please quiet down?" said Anna in a hushed voice, not in the mood for contemplating whether Rapunzel was right about this or not. "This isn't exactly something I want everyone to know about!"

"Oh, I'm very aware of that, Anna," said Rapunzel, getting up from her bed and practically skipping over to her, in spite of the ball and chain attached to her leg. "And you know what that means, right?"

"Um..." went Anna, not liking where this question was going. "No, not really."

"It means I own you, Anna," Rapunzel said.

Anna blinked.

"You...own me?" she asked, looking at her with a bit of disbelief. "And how exactly is that true?"

"Think about it," said Rapunzel, leaning over and getting her face even closer to Anna's now. "I know your secret. If you don't want others here to find out that you're the beloved Warden Elsa's own flesh and blood, well..."

Anna sighed.

"And there I was thinking we were on our way to becoming friends..."

"Oh, we will still be friends," said Rapunzel reassuringly. "We'll just be friends in a way in which I am able to take total advantage of you."

She said this horrible thing so innocently that Anna was almost tempted to smile. But she was too annoyed with what Rapunzel was proposing to actually do so.

"What do you want?" she asked, knowing that there was no way for her to win here.

Rapunzel finally backed away from Anna's face (which she was thankful for, since her breath really didn't smell that great), folding her arms and grinning at her. It was a grin that might've looked evil or even threatening on any other women, but on Rapunzel, it only made her look less menacing. But she didn't seem to be at all aware of that.

"I will make you a deal," she explained. "I won't let anyone here know about your secret, and you'll do everything that I ask of you. Pretty simple, right?"

"What sort of 'things' would I have to do for you?" asked Anna, not exactly warming up to this idea.

"Just...things," answered Rapunzel with a casual wave of her arm. "Don't snitch on me, for one. Smuggle things into the cell when I need them. And...anything else that may come into my head."

Anna shrugged. The first request made sense. She figured that not tattling on your cellie was the first lesson taught in Prisoner Survival 101 anyway. But smuggling things into the cell? Anna wasn't very good when it came to discretion, and could already imagine a horrible scene in which a guard caught her while she was trying to hide some of those plastic forks that Rapunzel had spoken of in between her butt cheeks.

The butt was how you got secret things around in prison, right?

"So, do you agree to my terms?" Rapunzel asked, interrupting Anna's train of thought.

"I...uh...guess so," said Anna uncomfortably, because there was really no way that she couldn't agree to them. "But, we're going to need to have some rules of my own."

"Fair enough," said Rapunzel, placing a hand in front of her mouth like she was faking a yawn. "I'll allow you three of them. What will they be?"

"Well," said Anna, twirling a finger through her hair a bit and trying to think of a good one. "I...don't want to have to answer any personal questions I don't want to. So, that's one."

"Seems like a wasted rule to me," said Rapunzel. "But fine. Two more."

"Oh, crap, you're right," said Anna, feeling incredibly stupid now. "Can I change it to..."

"No changing rules after you've requested them," said Rapunzel firmly. "Now, two more."

"Um," said Anna, taking a deep breath and doing her best to think of a better rule this time. "Well, I'm not going to ask the warden for any favors on your behalf. Trust me, if you knew her like I did, you would know that wouldn't..."

"Done," said Rapunzel, sounding uninterested as she turned the sink attached to the toilet on. She then shamelessly removed her shirt like it was no big deal and began washing her armpits.

"One more, Anna," she said as she used...whatever kind of soap it was that the prison supplied for its inmates.

Seeing Rapunzel topless was enough to make Anna know what she wanted her third rule to be.

"Um," she said, trying to look away without looking like she was trying to look away. "Well, there are...some...um...'things' that you might want me to do...that I may...really, really not want to do. Am...am I making sense?"

"No," said Rapunzel. "But I have a feeling I know what you're talking about. What's the matter, are my boobies really that unimpressive to you?"

"Oh, no," went Anna. "Your boobies are...fine. A lot better than mine, I'm sure. It's just that...well, I'm very much into men, that's all."

Rapunzel looked directly at her as she put her shirt back on.

"I said the same thing the day I got arrested, Anna," she said. "And I've been with five different women since then."

This answer was enough to confirm to Anna that Rapunzel was in fact into "those things." But then again, while she hated to resort to stereotypes when making an opinion about anyone, when she took another look at her fellow inmate, her short haircut did kind of make her look like a lesbian.

"But, whatever, I'll agree to that," said Rapunzel, although she sounded a bit disappointed. "It's not like you won't be asking me for it after some time in here anyway. In any case, I won't 'force you' to do anything...but I still insist on calling you my bitch."

"Your...bitch?" Anna went, trying to make sense of the use of the word in this context. "But doesn't that imply the opposite of what we just agreed on?"

"Anna, a girl's gotta have her reputation in a place like this," said Rapunzel, picking up what appeared to be a toothpaste tube, squirting some kind of...goo on her index finger, and gently rubbing it around her teeth. "Even if I'm not actually forcing that kind of thing on you, telling everyone that you're my 'bitch' would make me appear a lot tougher to some of the other women here."

"Fine," said Anna. "You can call me...your 'bitch.' But how do I know you're going to keep your end of the agreement?"

Rapunzel spat the goo into the sink, looking at herself in a "mirror" above the toilet that barely provided any sort of reflection.

"Look, newbie," she said. "If there's one thing you can count on with me, it's promises. I never break them...well, most of them."

"Most of them?"

"We all make exceptions to these things from time to time, Anna," said Rapunzel as she sat back down on her bed. "Even our own moral code. But, relax, I will keep this promise, okay?"

Since Anna had literally only just met Rapunzel (and, somehow, had already become her "bitch"), she had no idea if she could believe her or not. But there wasn't anything she could do but hope for the best.

"Oh, screw me," said Anna, slapping herself on the forehead. "This all could've been prevented if I had only remembered my damn prison number!"

"Why didn't you remember your prison number?" Rapunzel asked. "You did notice that it's written over your shirt's shoulder pocket, right?"

"WHAT?!" screamed Anna, much louder than she intended, and this time she punched herself on the forehead. "How on earth could I be so freaking dumb?!"

"Don't feel bad, Anna," said Rapunzel simply. "After all, no one ever ended up in Frozen Heart because they were smart."