There were times that Deidre appreciated being here, like when she woke up in the morning the first few days with a rumbling in her stomach. She was grateful that she was dry, sheltered, and could rely on the next meal coming. At night, though, when they turned down the lights in the cell block and the metal doors had all been locked tight, she wasn’t so fond of this place. There wasn’t much down-time in the evenings, and they weren’t permitted to have things like books with them during this time.
 
And that was part of the consequence of being in prison, really, a lack of control. Rhonda lay on her bed, arms folded across her stomach, probably trying to decide what she was going to say tomorrow to make her stories even more outlandish. Deedee lay on the floor, doing reps of thirty-second exercises.
 
Crunches, superman, bicycle, push ups, V-ups, reverse crunches, plank, repeat.
 
Every 7 minutes, two cycles, she took a thirty second rest, her goal being to keep it up for a little more than 20 minutes. At night she had to be careful because they weren’t supposed to be out of their beds. During the day, she could do pull ups on the bar for the bunked bed, or most physically strenuous activities, but at night they were supposed to be quiet, so she had to focus on keeping her breathing steady and her movements controlled.
 
There was some time in the day built in for exercising, but it was difficult to get to some of the equipment, which tended to be reserved for people she didn’t want to mess with. Besides that, it made her a bit uncomfortable to work out around other people. Deedee had always been told that she paid too much time worrying about what other people thought of her, but she knew that her concerns were justified. She needed to be able to take care of herself, and she needed to stay relatively unnoticed.  Perhaps that would mean ‘plaining’ up her appearance after the trial was finished. She could work on gaining weight gradually, but she didn’t think it would make a lot of sense for her to be gaining a lot of weight in prison, with the heavily regulated nutritional meals.
 
She could lose weight, but that only seemed to get more attention from people, and since she was working out, it wouldn’t look terribly natural either. Deidre finished her routine when her mind drifted from counting the seconds of each exercise, and then stretched for a few moments before crawling into bed. She had good timing because the clang of metal told her that a guard was walking along the path outside of their cell, and passed by her cell only a few moments after she had gotten into the bed. She must have seriously lost track of time then, since the guards came every thirty minutes. Either that, or they had a reason to change their routine.
 
She fell asleep eventually, but her dreams were strange. They were about different people, ones that she was sure she had never seen before. They were mundane, mostly. One had a man and a woman meeting, going out to dinner and a movie. The man spent most of the time looking at the woman, and the woman was beaming with the attention. Afterwards, they held hands, and walked along a beach together. The dream grew strange after that, as all dreams do. The beach shifted to a lake, and the water began to freeze. The woman complained of the cold, and began to turn blue. The man panicked, and tried to wrap her in warm things, but her body grew stiff, tears freezing on her cheeks. The man seemed unaffected by the cold, but his heart was obviously afflicted.
 
Deidre woke with a start, sitting up so quickly she almost hit her head. Looking around, she saw that her blanket had fallen on the floor. That must have been the source of the strange dream, she reasoned. Hopping off of the bed, Deedee grabbed the blanket and tossed it onto the bed before climbing up once more. Rhonda was unmoved by the whole affair, it seemed, and hadn’t so much as stirred in her sleep.
 
When the lights turned on in the morning, Deidre found herself once again pleased to know that a meal would be coming. At breakfast she also learned that she was selected for one of the work details. Laundry. Because she was in prison, she wouldn’t get a traditional yellow garment to represent the field, but there was a yellow band that they affixed to her wrist. They also updated her file to give her permission to report for her duties at select times. Of course, her blood would be checked there to ensure that it was she who arrived in the laundry rooms, rather than someone else. With the bracelet and the blood check, it was difficult to fool the system, and Deedee didn’t know of anyone who had. She didn’t particularly care about any of that, though. She applied for work because it was heavily recommended to her that she make an effort here, that she take some time to give back to the community, and it would get her out of her cell a few extra hours a day.
 
Her laundry shift would be between breakfast and lunch this week, though next week it would likely shift to the morning before breakfast. In either case, her meal allotment shifted accordingly. Now that she was expected to be on her feet more, she had a slightly higher calorie diet, along with a new shake-like liquid along with the main course. She wasn’t entirely sure what it was, but it didn’t taste awful, which was good. Penny joined them again at breakfast, and was already sitting with Rhonda and Lola by the time Deedee joined them, her new yellow wristband making a bold statement on her plain white clothing.