Brittany's Travels Ch. 01

"And, your partner swings you back in for one last spin!" Brittany demonstrated the move, having nearly forgotten by now how ridiculous it felt to teach the female half of the dance with no one to lead them. But it wasn't as though Marcia would ever allow any men in for the lesson. In any event, the other women all glided across the floor with something approaching real grace in their baggy prison uniforms. It was almost a beautiful sight – and from Brittany's vantage point, it was a beautiful sight. For this wonderful hour three afternoons a week, Brittany could lead the inmates in losing themselves in dance, and she could almost forget where she was.

And that she would be staying there for another decade at least. For something she hadn't done.

The dreaded round of applause came, signaling that Brittany's brief respite was over. She smiled through that frustration and said, "Thanks for participating, everyone. See you all Friday?"

"That's up to me, Brittany," Marcia said, as she always did when she arrived to round up the ladies and lead them back to their cells. "You know this is a privilege, remember that."

"Of course, ma'am," Brittany admitted, and she fell in line alongside her cellmate, Yvonne, who gave her hand a surreptitious squeeze. Both women knew there would be another lesson on Friday; in nearly a year since Brittany had taken over from the last instructor who'd been paroled, Marcia had never missed an opportunity to remind her that she could shut the whole operation down any time she liked. But for all her bluster, she never had.

As they marched past the window looking out into the bleak late fall woods, Yvonne felt her usual need to be insulting and overly encouraging at once. "Don't worry, Brit, of course she's going to let us do it again on Friday."

"I know."

"She knows you're a model inmate."

"Yeah."

"Guilty as sin, but a model inmate."

"Fuck you." After two years on the inside, Brittany no longer burst into tears at the reminder that absolutely no one believed she was innocent, but it never stung any less. Least of all coming from Yvonne.

"Yes, please!" Yvonne giggled under her breath. "Can we, Brit?"

Brittany set her jaw and swallowed hard – one day, she would tell Yvonne no more sex until she stopped calling her guilty. One day. But that day would not be today. Not when the dance lesson had her feeling energetic and hungry for something to keep up her spirits and she was fresh off her period and Yvonne's refusal to come anywhere near her for those four days and it was looking as miserable outside as inside and Brittany's only other option was to mope in her bunk.

She did, though, draw the line at letting Yvonne know she was sold. "C'mon, girl, please?" Yvonne whispered at her as they approached their cell. "It's been a long week."

"And whose fault is that?" Brittany reminded her.

"You wouldn't muck around in anyone else's pussy then either, would you?"

Then or any other time if I had my choice, Brittany thought. She'd messed around a bit with other girls back in high school, but that had only convinced her that she was straight or at least close to it. But with no men handy for twelve to fifteen years at least, it was just one of many ways she'd learned to settle.

The angle of the door to their lower bunk – where Brittany usually slept because Yvonne had seniority – gave something approaching privacy. Though readily visible to the guards, it at least gave the option of pretending not to notice, which they mostly did with otherwise well-behaved inmates like Brittany and Yvonne. So when Brittany lay back on her bunk with the grubby wool blanket pulled up to her neck, she could almost believe no one knew Yvonne was under the covers unzipping her jumpsuit and teasing Brittany's attention-starved pussy with her lithe fingers as she had learned so well to do in her years on the inside.

She was brilliant at it, Brittany couldn't deny. "You sure you were straight before you got here?" she whispered rubbing her head back and forth along her pillow in an attempt to keep from moaning without getting frustrated (as usual, that effort was unsuccessful, but as usual their neighbors either ignored her or were too wrapped up in their own illicit play to care).

"You were too, girl, weren't you?" Yvonne reminded her.

"Mostly, yeah." She'd only gone behind the Cumberland Farms with Heather Syriakis a few times that summer. "Ohhhh, Yvonne!" As usual, Yvonne had found her sweet spot with efficiency no man had ever managed, or Heather either. "Oh, god!" Brittany grabbed at the filthy mattress and did her best to swallow her urge to cry out. She closed her eyes and imagined them in a seaside cottage somewhere with a salty breeze and fruity drinks awaiting them on the bedside table, and nary a stitch of clothing on either of them. As usual she let herself try to imagine Yvonne's fingers inside her were a thick cock, fatter and longer than Tony's of accursed memory, and as usual that was more frustrating than anything else. So it was back to enjoying Yvonne's feminine caresses and licks as they really were.

And they were pleasant. Brittany couldn't deny that, as her cellmate's soft lips and agile fingers brought her off with her usual wiggling and grunting under her breath. "Thank youuuuu," Brittany purred, propping herself up on her elbows as she peered under the blanket to see Yvonne re-zipping her uniform and undoing her own. As soon as that was completed, she slid under the covers while Yvonne stretched out and pretended to look inconspicuous.

Brittany had let her reddish brown hair grow long and unruly since she'd been sent inside. It made her look almost like a hippie, in sharp contrast to the tomboyish professional athlete she had been before her life had been destroyed, but Brittany preferred to pretend she was a different person while her nightmare played out anyway. Her long and wild hair served a purpose with Yvonne anyway: it was perfect for teasing her thighs and hips whenever she went down on her. Brittany wasn't a natural at eating pussy and she didn't like it well enough to ever get as good at it as Yvonne was, but her hair did help work Yvonne into a tizzy as she went to town with her tongue and fingers.

As usual, she did at least a passable job judging by Yvonne's eager response. Her affectionate squawks and rubbing Brittany's head and back made it worth the less than pleasant taste of her pussy. But Brittany licked hard and fast all the same, eager as always to get it over with. Fortunately, Yvonne liked it that way and had never complained. This time was no exception, for Brittany soon felt her clutching her head and pushing her in with gusto as usual. "More tongue, more tongue - yesss!" Once again Brittany knew exactly the moment Yvonne came, from the way she squeezed her head between her thighs and then released her just as suddenly.

"Hope I can get as good at that as you one of these days," Brittany said a moment later as they snuggled together and Yvonne kissed away her own pussy juices from her face.

"Hope you never have the time to get all that experience," Yvonne said, reclining with a plop on the pillow beside Brittany. "Especially if you really are innocent."

"I am!" Brittany's sense of well-being disappeared as quickly as Yvonne had brought it on. "Yvonne, why don't you believe me, with all we share?"

"I've been in this place six years, girl. You know how many others like you say they're innocent?"

"No," Brittany admitted. "But I do know some of them probably really were, now that I know how easy it is to get thrown in here when you didn't do anything wrong."

"Well, just who did put all that cocaine in your suitcase?" Yvonne asked. "Someone must have."

"It was that scumbag Tony! It must've been!"

"Your boyfriend sent you up the river? Why, you wouldn't swallow fast enough for him?"

Having accepted her wretched fate up to a point, Brittany could laugh at comments like that now, and she did. "I don't see how I could swallow any faster!" Yvonne rewarded her good-natured reply with a tight squeeze across her breasts and a kiss on the cheek, and Brittany continued. "No, you know I've told you this story before, Yvonne. It was because of Vicky. Vicky the fuckin' Fowler. She'd had her eye on Tony since eighth grade at least, but I was his girl. Going on three years he was mine, ever since we got out of high school, and practically as soon as I get sent here that bastard jumps in bed with her? He wanted me out of the way!"

"I don't know how you didn't beat the shit out of Amanda when she told you about that last year, you know," Yvonne said. Amanda was a high school friend of Brittany's who'd been sent in on her third shoplifting conviction, and had arrived with the news about what Tony had been up to in Brittany's absence.

"Can't shoot the messenger," Brittany said. "Besides, she was telling the truth. Tony admitted everything on my next call to him."

"Good for you," Yvonne said. "But, I mean – and look, if you're innocent then you're innocent, Brittany, but this Vicky bitch, didn't you say she was a loser working at McDonalds and already had a kid or something?"

"Burger King, but yeah," Brittany said. "She dropped out junior year when she got pregnant."

"Right, so why would Tony want her when you were burning up the soccer field and halfway to the majors?"

"I don't know!" Brittany had long since learned to never cry in any other prisoner's presence, not even Yvonne's, but that question always brought her close. "I mean, 'halfway to the majors' is a little much, Yvonne. I had three years on the Winchester Flames and we were doing pretty well, but it was still a long way to the NWSL." She swallowed hard. "But I did have a chance. Maybe if my appeal wins..."

"Girl, don't get your hopes up on that," Yvonne said. "They found your fingerprints all over that suitcase, and you couldn't prove anyone but you touched it."

"Of course it had my fingerprints on it. It was my suitcase!"

"I've seen a lot of cases like yours, girl. No pun intended. Your only chance is to prove who really did put the stuff there. You're not going to cut it with a boyfriend who was hundreds of miles away from where you put that suitcase on the bus, or make them believe he wanted to toss you aside for a gal who had nothing over you."

"But with that much cocaine, someone must know who it really was! They must have some reason to speak up."

"I hope so," Yvonne said.

Brittany couldn't hear much hope in her voice. But hope, and Yvonne's companionship, were all she had.

She'd been just twenty-one when it had happened. Twenty-one and in love with her high school sweetheart and living her childhood dream, even if she hadn't quite made her escape from Winchester just yet. Winchester was the cruddiest sort of crumbling New England milltown, full of families like Brittany's that only had one parent in the picture and barely scraped by. But it did have the Winchester Flames, a farm team for the National Women's Soccer League and a beacon of hope for Brittany for as long as she could remember.

A star soccer player since the fifth grade at least, she'd gone from junior league champ to captain of her high school team to a tryout with the Winchester Flames – which she had passed. She hadn't just made the team, she'd gotten out of her mother's house in the slums of Summer Street and out of the shadow of her sister Penny, who'd been off seeing the world in the Navy. Her mother had remained unimpressed as always ("I've got one daughter out saving our country from the jihadists, and one who can kick a ball, and look who gets paid better?!"), but Brittany had long since learned to ignore all that.

And it was easy to ignore when so much of the Flames' season was spent on the road. For three years, there were a lot of long bus rides, but also a lot of stays in comfortable hotels all over the place – a memory that had since become especially dear to Brittany. Three years of getting paid to do the one thing she'd ever felt herself to be any good at, three years of seeing the country and a chance to dream of living someplace far away with Tony once she made the NWSL, three years of honing her game to get that grab at the brass ring once it arrived.

Three years that had come to a very abrupt end on her arrival home from one of the away games. Brittany would always remember the sunny autumn afternoon when she'd stepped off the bus at the Flames clubhouse downtown, and the somber look on the club president's face where she waited on the curb with the two policemen Brittany didn't know, and the shock when they made a beeline for her as soon as she'd stepped off the bus.

The rest had been a blur even then. Something about a routine sweep at the bus depot and drugs in her suitcase, and her resolute denials that had fallen on deaf ears. The hours and then days and then weeks that went by as she waited for it all to blow over, and the growing realization that it wouldn't, the deafening silence from her teammates and the tears when even Mom refused to believe she was innocent, Tony and her lawyer encouraging her to plead guilty and take one year and her stubborn refusal to admit to anything she hadn't done, and of course the guilty verdict and the shock and disbelief that had followed...two imprisoned years later, it was still all a blur, and yet all very vivid in the swiftness with which her life had fallen apart.

Only with the news about Tony months later was Brittany able to make any sense at all of what might have really happened. Only that had given her any outlet for her anger. She'd coped well enough with that anger by first taking dance lessons and then giving them, and by falling in love with the books in the prison library (she'd come to think of it as making up for lost time after skating through high school), and by learning to love Yvonne as best she could. But even now, it all seemed unreal, even as she waited and hoped for some sort of miracle with her appeal.

As Yvonne had pointed out, that hope was rather thin. But after lockdown that night, as Brittany stared up at her mattress as she had done every night for two years, she cherished her friend's admission, however begrudging, that she might be innocent. No one on the inside had made such an allowance in all those long and miserable months.

Least of all Marcia, as Brittany was reminded late the next morning when visiting hours began. "Yo, soccer lady!" Marcia called to her while Brittany was engrossed in a history book from the prison library. "You forget it's visiting hours?"

"No one ever comes to see me, Marcia," she reminded her without looking up from her book. "Even my mother thinks I'm guilty."

"Thinks you're guilty, Brittany? I admit, I never will know why you did it when you had this soccer gig of yours, but save that for your lawyer. Anyway, you do have a visitor today."

"What?" Now Brittany did look up. "Who?!"

"Someone named Angie Shaw."

"Never heard of her," Brittany said.

"She said you'd say that."

"Then why does she want to see me?"

"That's between you and her," Marcia said. "But trust me, dearie, you want to talk to this lady."

"I doubt that." But Brittany did get up and head for the visiting room.

She was directed to a table where a middle-aged woman in a gray tailored suit sat with her hands folded. On Brittany's approach, the other woman stood up and extended her hand. "Brittany! Pleased to meet you."

"You too, but no touching allowed." Brittany managed a cordial smile and flopped down in the chair across from her. "Sorry, do I know you?"

"No," she said. "My name is Angie Shaw, and I do know you from the sports page clippings my team got together on you. You do look different with that long hair, but we can take care of that."

"Take care of that? What are you talking about?"

"Sorry!" Angie said. "I'm getting well ahead of myself, aren't I? Brittany, listen, I know all about you, including that you're innocent. Especially that, in fact."

"Well, thanks." Brittany couldn't hide her pleasure at being believed for once.

"No need to thank me yet. Brittany..." she lowered her voice and leaned in as far as she expected the guards would allow. "How would you like to track down the people who put you here, and make them pay?"

"What the fuck is this?" Brittany pulled back. "You think this is some kind of joke, lady? I had everything I ever wanted and my life was destroyed, and you think it's cool to show up and fuck with me about that?!"

"Brittany, please!" Angie exclaimed. "I don't blame you for being skeptical. I can only imagine what you've been going through since you've been here. But look, don't take my word for it. When we're done here, you're going to be called in to the warden's office and then you'll see this is real. I can get you out of here."

"And you can help me find the people who did this to me and do something about it?"

"I'd insist upon it, Brittany. Surely you'd agree that's only fair in return, and wouldn't you want to do it?"

"More than anything," Brittany admitted. "But, I mean, look...who the fuck are you, Angie?!"

"Better that you don't know that for the moment," Angie said. "But you'll find out all you need to know once the paperwork is done with. I just wanted to come introduce myself first, so you'll know who I am when we come to pick you up."

"And then you'll let me at the bastards who put me here."

"Yes. We'll also give you all the training and supplies you need to find them and defeat them."

"Who's 'we'?" Brittany demanded. "Don't tell me, you can't tell me that either."

"Not yet," Angie said. "But I think you'll like what you find when you get out of here."

"If it's out of here, I'll like it all right," Brittany allowed. "But tell me one thing, Angie. I'm just a fuckup who could never do anything but play soccer and now dance a little. What makes you think I'll be able to track these guys down and get them?"

"You're selling yourself short, Brittany," Angie said. "You're a street-smart girl who survived a rough-and-tumble childhood to become a star athlete, and you've also been tough enough to survive here when you shouldn't even be here. You're just what we need to play at their level. And after all, no one will be more committed to the cause after what they've put you through."

After a silent probing look at Angie, she said, "Okay, I'll do it."

"I'm delighted to hear that." Angie stood up. "I've already taken the liberty of talking to the warden and providing paperwork for your release. With any luck, we'll be able to collect you by the end of this week.

"That'd be wonderful!" Brittany allowed a sigh of relief two years in the making. "But tell me. I know the kind of paperwork you're talking about takes forever. How could you have it all put together before I'd ever even heard of you?"

"It's been in the works for some time," Angie said. "I couldn't bear to get your hopes up until I was sure I could get you released into my custody. Now I am."

"Into your custody?"

"It beats rotting here until menopause, doesn't it? Angie looked like she wanted to say something more, but she only turned away to take her leave. "See you in a couple of days, Brittany, I hope."

Brittany sat dumbfounded at the table until a guard ordered her back inside. In a fog of hope and confusion, she made her way back to her cell, where Yvonne was curled up on her bunk with a book. "Warden wants to see you, girl," she said. "What kind of trouble did you get into this time?"

Then it was real! "Yvonne," Brittany said, sitting gingerly on her bed. "Come down here. Before I go see the warden, I think I have something to tell you."