4:30 a.m. in a Federal Prison

An excerpt from Ride or Fly, the forthcoming second book in Nicole Daedone’s series, written from inside the Metropolitan Detention Center.

Claire and I have a running joke: I’m the grandma who goes to bed early; she’s the night owl. In MDC Brooklyn, that means we pass each other around 4:30 a.m.—she’s winding down, and I’m just starting to feel human.

This morning we meet at the sink, brushing our teeth in the pale dorm light. “You want to hear my raps?” she asks. She wrote and performed two last week for rap battles with other women in the dorm.

“Of course,” I say, and follow her back to her bunk.

A rarity in here: the dorm is totally silent. No TVs. No cross-bunk arguments. No clatter of plastic sandals on concrete. Just a hush that feels almost borrowed—like the building itself has stepped out for a cigarette. I sit on the edge of her bed and she performs the first rap, then the second. When she’s done, she looks up at me, eyes steady.

“Music is therapy,” she says. Then, like she needs to say it twice for it to be true: “Music is therapy for me.”

She tells me she started writing raps at eighteen, when she was splitting with her ex. “I made a rap to get through it,” she says. Now, at night when she’s the only one awake, she puts on the Revolt channel and listens to rap. She loves it. She says she can repeat lyrics after hearing them once. “Music is amazing. When I’m sad, I listen to sad songs and I can release,” she explains. “It makes everything better.”

Then she brightens. “I made Marcy laugh today,” she says, already smiling at the memory. There’d been a woman here with a deep Southern accent and Claire loved to make up songs and mimic her long, drawn-out drawl, making the whole dorm laugh.

So today, when Marcy was crying, Claire pulled out the Southern voice and started riffing. “Do you liiiiikke spa-see food?” she kept asking. “Do you liiiiikke arrr-pples?” Marcy laughed and laughed, and Claire—still laughing now—told her, “See! You’re laughing, you’re not crying.”

There’s a tenderness in that moment. A girl in jail using whatever she has—her ear, her timing, her ridiculous drawn-out vowels—to lift another woman’s head above water for a few seconds. I can tell Claire likes that feeling, the energy of it, the proof that a room can change.

Then her face changes. She looks forward, not at me, as if she’s turning toward a different room inside herself. “It’s crazy how one mistake can ruin your life,” she says quietly. “I don’t know if it’s the butterfly effect or what. I wasn’t expecting to be here.” She gestures around the dorm. Here meaning MDC, meaning prison, meaning this fluorescent holding pattern of other people’s worst days.

“I became addicted to making money,” she says. “I was addicted to the lifestyle. I have an addictive personality.” She gives a quick laugh, like she’s trying to keep the confession from becoming a plea. “I got addicted to drugs too. I’m open about my drug addiction. It’s stigmatized, but I feel like people are coming to accept it.”

“Drugs were my downfall,” she says. “If it wasn’t for drugs I wouldn’t have gotten caught.” She swallows. “And I lost someone close to me because of drugs. I lost him and I went off the deep end. I was broken—so broken. I didn’t care about anything. I was like, whatever, I’m gonna make more money now.”

She doesn’t say Kip right away, but he lingers in the air between us, the way perfume stays after the person’s gone.

“When it comes to Kip, I have so many feelings,” she says. “With other things I can cut off. But not with him.” She rubs her fingers together as if she’s trying to find the seam where she could separate herself from the pain and can’t. “I’m sensitive. Being in here makes you vulnerable. Marcy is sensitive too. And Alma. I think that’s why they cry so much.” Then she gives me the half-smile she uses as armor. “I like that people don’t think I have feelings,” she says, like it’s a trick she’s proud of pulling off. “But with Kip… I cry over everything.”

She’s been in jail a few years now. Long enough to learn the particular math of abandonment.

“From my experience, people drop you,” she says. “Even people on the outside. When I was first in jail, everyone I was close to dropped me. They forgot about me.” Her voice tightens on the last word. “That’s why I have trust issues with people in here. I wonder what makes these people different.” She tells me about a bunkie from another jail—how close they were, how she trusted her, how the girl promised to keep in touch.

“I mean… I’m not asking for money or anything,” Claire says quickly, as if she’s already anticipating the accusation. “I even make sure to tell people, no, I don’t want it. But come on—don’t say you’re gonna be there for me and then not be there.”

I ask about her parents. I’ve seen them on visiting days, most Wednesdays—sitting together at the table laughing sometimes, Claire eating her candy, her parents sipping Diet Snapple like it’s a family ritual. “Our relationship is the strongest it’s ever been,” she says. “They support me. They show up. We’ve gotten closer since I’m here, and I appreciate it more than ever.” Then her voice drops. “But it’s lonely. It’s not like having a friend.” They had her when they were older, she explains, so she worries about them aging—worries about what happens when they get old, and what happens to her when they’re gone.

She circles back to Kip. “Kip has shown me genuine love and support,” she says, “and then he stopped talking to me. So I don’t know.” She stares down at her hands. “I got harder since then because I’m hurt. It’s the tip of the iceberg. Bad stuff after bad stuff. I find something good, then it goes away.” She shakes her head once, almost angry at herself for still wanting. “I show my support to him. I hope he appreciates it. I don’t know.”

Then she exhales, like she’s been holding her breath for days.

“If it wasn’t for Morgan though,” she says, “I’d be insane.”

Morgan is her night-owl buddy—the one you’ll see in the wee hours sitting near Claire’s bunk while the rest of the dorm sleeps, talking low, watching TV, laughing softly, reading. Claire tells me nights are her sanctuary. “It’s peaceful at this time,” she says. “I’m a night owl. I’ve always been a night owl.” Being in here, she sleeps all day and stays up all night—part preference, part coping. “During the day it’s chaos,” she says, and she lets that stand in for everything. “At night, I have the place to myself.” She laughs. “I like that Morgan stays up with me. We eat, talk, watch TV, read. I like having it all to myself and not being bothered.”

She shows me a small crocheted pig Morgan made her, holding it up like a trophy and wiggling it with both hands. “This is my piggy,” she says, laughing. “She made me the other day. I love the piggy, pig’s name is Bacon.” She sets it carefully back down on the bed.

“She cooks for me too,” Claire says. “Listens to all my BS.” She laughs again, but her voice softens underneath it. “She tolerates me and everything. I say she’s my big sister. She calls me her—sometimes annoying—little sister.”

Then, finally, she looks right at me.

“I trust her. We’re all in jail, you know.” She shrugs, like trust is both simpler and riskier in a place where nobody can pretend they’re not trapped. “I don’t know if I’ll see her on the outside. I say it like it is, Nicole-la.”

The “-la” is something I taught her—an honorific Tibetan Buddhists use with each other, a small syllable that carries respect and closeness at the same time. In here, we make family out of whatever we have. Sometimes it’s a suffix.

“People don’t like it,” Claire continues, “but it’s true. I’m not gonna say something to say something. People sell a lot of BS in here—I’m not gonna do that.” She pauses. “I value my friendship with her.” People pick on her because she’s small, because they view her as weak, because they think they could beat her in a fight. “But I won’t fight,” she says simply, like that decision is not up for debate.

She goes quiet again, and I can feel the conversation trying to tip back into Kip, the way a tongue keeps finding the sore spot.

“Everything was so good with Kip until now,” she says, “and then he stopped talking to me again. I don’t know why.” Tears gather at the corners of her eyes. She doesn’t wipe them right away, like she’s giving herself permission to be seen. “I don’t get it,” she says. “Why would someone do that?” She tells me Cardi and Morgan say it’s not personal—that he’s got a lot going on—but her face says that explanation isn’t enough. “That’s my biggest cause of stress,” she says, and looks at me—direct, clear. “Thanks for listening, Nicole-la.”

“Thank you for sharing with me, Claire-la,” I tell her.

And with that, I get up to meditate, and she heads off to bed, two women crossing at the same narrow hour, one day ending, another beginning, both of us doing our best to find something that works in a place that so often doesn’t.

From Ride or Fly, coming soon. Subscribe to read more from the series as it’s released.