Malcolm Ivey / Author

Part One: Eight Weeks | Chapter 9

Welcome to Year of the Firefly: The Free Serialization. Here’s Chapter 9. 📖 New chapters are released every Monday and Thursday. Whether you’re a long-time reader or discovering my work for the first time, you can read the entire novel on Substack for free. Visit there anytime to catch up on chapters you may have missed. 📚 Prefer holding a real book in your hands? Skip the weekly wait and grab the complete paperback edition right now on Amazon or other online retailers. Ebook is available on Amazon and Kindle+. 📝 New to my writing? Explore all eight of my published books on my website, malcolmivey.com. 🙂 Thank you for reading, and as always, reviews are highly appreciated! Wishing you momentum. —IV

👉Looking for Chapter 1? Begin here: Part One: Eight Weeks | Chapter 1

👉Read about the genesis of Miranda McGuire here: To My Incarcerated Sisters

👉Get an introduction to Year of the Firefly here: Introduction to Book One of the Miranda Rights series

CHAPTER 9

She sleepwalked her way through first appearance, vaguely aware of the austere, robe-clad figure on the video screen who upheld her bond, appointed a public defender, and kept the line moving.

A few of the male inmates catcalled as the deputy escorted her back down the aisle with a group of women, but she looked through them with dead eyes, too embarrassed to be offended, too numb to care. She staggered forward in a daze, swallowed by the green and white striped county jumpsuit, occasionally jolted awake by shooting pain and cramping in her legs. Even in her addled state, she recognized this for what it was: a distant early warning. The first flashes of lightning in an approaching storm. Though she had no idea what time it was, her body was telling her that it had been too long since she snorted her last pill. The dreaded misery of withdrawals was looming.

Hopefully Nick was working on getting her out.

Her stomach lurched as the elevator rattled and whined its way up to the sixth floor. The white-bearded, rosy-cheeked deputy was humming a tune that sounded strangely similar to Blind Pilot’s “Just One.” She won­dered, not for the first time, if she was trapped in some vivid opioid nightmare. How did this grandfather guard know Blind Pilot? He must have read her mind because he winked at her as the doors hissed open. “Good luck, ladies. Hopefully your stay is a short one.”

There were three other women in the elevator, all black. A tall corn-rowed butch with her sleeves rolled up to accentuate her massive biceps, a bespectacled old woman with wiry gray chin hair, and a petite honey-skinned girl with wide-set green eyes and a jumpsuit that was three sizes too small. She followed them out into the hallway, a wedge-shaped corridor that dead-ended into a painted blue door with a scratched plexiglass window. They waited there a moment, each lost in her trauma, each no doubt processing the recent events that led to her standing in the sixth-floor lobby of the Escambia County jail. Miranda certainly was.

Until the musclebound woman stepped forward and slapped the plexiglass hard enough to make the building tremble.

The older lady screamed, “Jesus!” Miranda flinched. The door buzzed. They walked inside.

A stump of a woman with straw-colored hair and jagged brown teeth pulled her belt almost to her breasts and led with her crotch as she exited the officers’ station. “My word. Are y’all that impatient to go sit in a cell? Just chomping at the bit ain’t you?” She paused to scratch her nose and mumbled something into her hand that sounded a lot like damn lezbos before pointing a dirty fingernail at a cart in the corner. “Bed rolls are over there.”

Miranda followed the other women to the cart and grabbed a cylinder of wool. Wrapped inside the blanket were a towel and washcloth, two sheets, a pillowcase, a roll of toilet paper, a thin bar of soap, a tiny toothbrush, and a small clear tube of Maximum Security toothpaste.

“All right,” the guard clapped her hands, “any of y’all been on Blue Six before?”

No one spoke.

“Nobody?” She looked from face to face. “Well, well, well, a bunch of virgins.”

Cornrows crossed her powerful arms. “I ain’t no virgin. Facts.”

“Figure of speech,” she scratched her nose again. “Dang, y’all are about the least social bunch I’ve had this year. Where’s your sense of humor?”

Sense of humor? thought Miranda, tired eyes surveying the lay of the land. Was this woman serious?

LED lights blinked from the control panel in the dark officers’ station. Computer monitors divided into frames flashed black and white images of inmates playing cards, watching television, exercising. The booth itself was a capsule of concrete and glass in the center of the unit with a panoramic view of the four surrounding color-coded pods: Blue, Green, Orange and Red.

“Well, seeing that nobody’s feeling social, I guess I’ll give y’all the short version. My name is Officer Woodley and Blue Six is my floor . . .”

You can have it. Miranda stared through the thick glass of the nearest pod. Everything was painted Halloween orange. Women were gathered in groups on the second tier, leaning against the mesh railing. Others were standing inside their cell doors. A diminutive girl with big eyes and wild black curly hair shooting in every direction waved shyly. She waved back without thinking.

“Excuse me, Orphan Annie. Whenever you get done flirting, I’ll continue.”

Miranda dropped her hand.

“Good girl. Now, a couple of ground rules.” She patted the canary rubber weapon holstered on her side. “This here taser is capable of sending thousands of volts of electricity into your body. It won’t kill you, but it’ll make you wish you was dead. I try my best not to shoot nobody in the face but,” she shrugged and smiled, “my aim ain’t all that great.”

Another scratch of the nose. Miranda looked into her eyes. Pinpoint pupils. Definitely an opiate user. She wondered what she was on, wished she would share.

“I know some of y’all are pissed off because you got caught doing whatever you were doing out there. A lot of women come in with a chip on their shoulder. But I’m letting you know right now, I don’t tolerate any fighting on my floor. If I catch you fighting, I ain’t going in there trying to break it up. Damn near got my finger bit off doing that once.” She glanced down at her hand as if to make sure the digit in question was still attached. “Won’t happen again. If you fight, you’re getting tased. Bank on it.”

Miranda stifled a yawn. She had never been in a fight in her life and she had no inclination to turn over a new leaf on the sixth floor of the Escambia County jail. She just wanted to sleep.

“Second thing,” shrunken narrowed eyes swept back and forth over the bedraggled group of women, “if I catch you in someone else’s bunk, you’re getting tased. No questions asked.”

“Just for sitting on someone’s bunk?” The green-eyed woman in the extra tight jumpsuit sucked her teeth; a petite, more voluptuous Rihanna whose only blemish was a scar across her cheekbone.

“Sitting is fine,” Officer Woodley explained, “sitting is not an abomination in the sight of the Lord or a violation of the rules of this here facility. Sitting I have no problem with.”

Sitting is the new smoking. Her inner narrator chimed in, apropos of nothing. The sleep deprivation was clearly taking its toll.

“But if I catch you doing unnatural things, fornicating for instance . . .” She drew her taser like a gunfighter, fired an imaginary dart, and blew on the barrel. “I’ll zap you like a bug.”

Though she said nothing, Miranda was incredulous. Appalled. This was the exact type of Draconian institu­tional abuse that her chapter of the Students Against Mass Incarceration had marched against.

“Last—and this is a pet peeve of mine—do not bang on my glass. Unless you’re dying.” She turned and glared up at the towering woman standing next to Miranda. “If I wanted to work around a bunch of zoo animals, I’d ask my shift commander to reassign me to the fourth floor.”

Cornrows scowled but said nothing.

“Do we understand each other, ladies?” Instead of waiting for an answer, she leaned back into the officers’ station and grabbed a printout. “Jones?”

“Yes ma’am,” said the elderly woman.

“You’re going to Red Three Low.” She pointed to her left. “Right over there. The rest of y’all are going to the Orange side. Who’s Bradshaw?”

Green Eyes stepped forward.

“You’re moving to Five Upper.” She frowned at her printout and looked up at the hulking figure standing next to Miranda. “Jackson?”

“Good guess,” said the dyke.

She scratched her nose again. “Nebraska? Is that an alias?”

Her jaw worked. “Nah, it ain’t no alias. It’s what my momma named me. Why? You got a rule against that too? You gonna tase me cuz my name’s Nebraska?”

“I might,” she said, “especially if you keep on with that attitude.”

The woman named Nebraska smirked. “Well, if you do, you make sure you give me all the electricity you’ve got in that little toy gun you so proud of. Zoo animals like me are a little harder to bring down than these domesti­cated bitches you’ve got up here. Facts.”

Tension crackled in the ensuing standoff. Bad vibes washed over Miranda like a January wave in the Gulf. She had to say something. “Maybe we’re all just tired and cranky—”

“Stay out of this!” snapped the guard. Her eyes locked on Nebraska. “What are you in here for? Robbery? Aggravated assault? Attempted murder?”

Nebraska’s nostrils flared. “I don’t do attempts.”

Officer Woodley opened her mouth then closed it, then finally said, “Well, I’ll just look your charges up on the computer.”

“I’m sure you will.”

“Orange Three Low,” she icily read the bunk number from her printout. “But don’t get too comfortable, I doubt you’ll be there long.”

Powerful shoulders shrugged.

The guard aimed her opiated pupils in Miranda’s direction. “McGuire?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Hmmph . . . ‘least somebody’s got some manners.” She slapped the paper against her palm. “Orange Nine Low.”

Miranda looked over her shoulder through the thick wall of glass into what would be her home for the foreseeable future. At least until Nick figured out a way to get her out. The women of Blue Six Orange were con­gregating on the landing, smiling, scowling, watching, waiting. Maybe it will be similar to a college dorm room, she thought.

Officer Woodley walked back into the officers’ station and leaned over the control panel. An orange painted steel door rumbled open. Miranda followed Nebraska and Rihanna into the holding cage. The door rumbled shut. As they waited for the bars to roll and release them into the pod, she felt the big woman glowering down at her. She ventured a glance. Oh my gosh. Such pain in those eyes. They held a lifetime of struggle, abuse, oppression, poverty, strife . . .

Instinctively, she reached up and touched her arm. “I don’t think it was Ms. Woodley’s intention to call you a zoo animal.”

She frowned at Miranda’s hand like it was a splat of bird shit on the sleeve of her jumpsuit. “Get your motherfuckin’ hand off me, bitch.”

Part One: Eight Weeks | Chapter 8

Welcome to Year of the Firefly: The Free Serialization. Here’s Chapter 8. 📖 New chapters are released every Monday and Thursday. Whether you’re a long-time reader or discovering my work for the first time, you can read the entire novel on Substack for free. Visit there anytime to catch up on chapters you may have missed. 📚 Prefer holding a real book in your hands? Skip the weekly wait and grab the complete paperback edition right now on Amazon or other online retailers. Ebook is available on Amazon and Kindle+. 📝 New to my writing? Explore all eight of my published books on my website, malcolmivey.com. 🙂 Thank you for reading, and as always, reviews are highly appreciated! Wishing you momentum. —IV

👉Looking for Chapter 1? Begin here: Part One: Eight Weeks | Chapter 1

👉Read about the genesis of Miranda McGuire here: To My Incarcerated Sisters

👉Get an introduction to Year of the Firefly here: Introduction to Book One of the Miranda Rights series

CHAPTER 8

The interrogation room was nothing like the ones she remembered from Law & Order or LA Law or any of the other police procedural reruns that her dad liked to watch. There was no two-way mirror, no dangling light bulb, no craggy-faced detective attempting to soften her up with a cigarette. Just a small office with a table and chairs and a plexiglass view of the main hallway of the jail.

Detective Sandifer was an attractive man in his thirties with Adam Levine hair and a blue pastel tie that matched his eyes. He laced his fingers together and rested his stubbled chin on the apex as he stared at her from across the table.

“Nice t-shirt. Are you a student at the university?”

She nodded.

“My little sister just transferred there. From Pensacola State. It feels weird calling it that, doesn’t it? It’s been PJC my entire life. You probably don’t remember that. You can’t be older than twenty. Sophomore?”

“Freshman,” she said. “I’ll be nineteen next month.”

“Jamie’s a junior. Communications. I’ve never quite understood what that means, a degree in communica­tions. I’m not entirely convinced that she does either.” He removed a box of gum from his pocket and shook a piece into his palm. “Want one?”

She eyed the box with suspicion. She absolutely wanted one. Needed one. It had been close to 24 hours since she’d brushed her teeth and her breath tasted like Nick’s Girl Scout weed and gingivital jail phones. But in the end, she declined. She may have been naïve, but she knew what he was up to. And she refused to sell her soul for a piece of gum.

The door opened and a tall, blond, hatchet-faced woman strode in. She wore faded jeans, boots, and an unbuttoned oxford shirt over a white tank top. A detective shield hung on a beaded chain inside her collar. “Sorry about that,” she said to Sandifer. “This our armed trafficker?”

He leaned back in his chair and nodded. “This is her.”

“Not exactly from central casting, is she?” The woman sat down. “What are you, an aspiring junkie? Some dealer’s side piece?”

“She’s a college student,” said Detective Sandifer.

“Nice.” The woman crossed her arms and smiled coldly. “You introducing all your little sorority sisters to the wonderful world of the needle?”

“No!” Miranda blurted.

“Go easy on her, Beth.” Sandifer’s eyes softened with sympathy. “She’s just a kid.”

“Yeah?” The woman smirked. “How old are you?”

Miranda stared down at her chipped fingernail polish. How old was she? She felt as if she had aged exponentially over the past 24 hours.

“She’s eighteen,” said Sandifer.

“That’s old enough to die in a war, old enough to work in a Las Vegas brothel, old enough to vote.” She leaned forward and glared at Miranda. “And it’s old enough to know better than to be driving around with an ounce of heroin and a loaded nine-millimeter. You’re in deep shit sister.”

“Beth . . .” He touched her shoulder.

“No.” She shook it off. “I’m so sick of these scumbags contaminating our communities, enslaving our citizens. How many overdosed nonresponsives did we see last month? How many neglected children? How many funerals? Nonviolent victimless crime, my ass. These drug-dealing ass-wipes are the worst kind of criminal.”

“I don’t think it was hers.” He cocked his head at Miranda, his eyes now imploring. Help me out here. I’m on your team. “You said it yourself Beth, she doesn’t fit the mold. Look at her. I could see if it was trespassing, retail theft, maybe simple possession, but armed trafficking? No way.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” Detective Beth smirked. “Have you listened to the radio lately? Everybody’s a drug dealer nowadays. It’s the new fad.”

Her look was pure disgust. Miranda wanted to slide under the table. A tear dove down her cheek, cliffhung from her chin and freefell onto her folded hands, where it exploded on a trembling knuckle. She wiped her face with the back of her wrist. It came away smeared with mascara. “I’m not a drug dealer.”

“See there,” said Sandifer.

“Oh yeah, that settles it,” she sneered. “Interesting that we’re giving her the benefit of the doubt. Where was your let’s not rush to judgment attitude last night when we were interrogating the kid from Truman Arms?”

“All’s I’m saying is that maybe it wasn’t hers.”

“Of course, it wasn’t hers!” She slapped the table.

Miranda flinched.

“And you know what?” She smiled sweetly. “I don’t give a damn. These little bimbos who ride around in their wannabe-Scarface boyfriends’ Corvettes and Escalades, with their fake boobs and their dyed red hair and their designer handbags bought with blood money . . . They’re just as guilty as the pushers they spread their legs for.”

Miranda was mortified. This woman was the single most horrible person she had ever met in her life. It was like being interrogated by Ann Coulter and Cruella Deville all in one.

Detective Sandifer’s face reddened. “You’re out of line, Beth.”

“Yeah? So file a report with Internal Affairs.” Her words were acid. “Probably won’t be the first time you’ve ever done it.”

“I resent that,” he said, staring at her for a moment before speaking again. “Look, I know you’re angry right now and I understand why, but I just don’t see it.”

“See what? A conviction? You’re insane. With the physical evidence we have, there’s not a jury in the Panhandle that wouldn’t find her guilty.”

He shook his head. “I don’t see the logic in settling for a minnow when Jaws is swimming around out there. Sure, we could nail her and have her put away for, what? Ten years? Fifteen?”

“Try 25 . . . and that’s without the firearm enhance­ment. Trafficking over 28 grams of heroin carries a minimum mandatory of 25 years in prison.” She paused, flashing that cruel smile once again. “The amount of heroin seized from her vehicle was 28.4 grams. It was in her purse, Sandy, and regardless of how cute and innocent you think she is, possession is still nine-tenths of the law.”

“Fine, 25 years. Whatever. All’s I’m saying is that I don’t see any reason to put her away for that long while whosever dope and pistol she was holding remains free to, as you say, contaminate the community and enslave our citizens.”

Miranda had to swallow to keep from vomiting in her lap. 25 years? She hadn’t even lived 25 years yet.

“Oh, we’ll get him too.” She flicked a mote of dust from her detective shield. “Eventually . . . We always do. And if not us, some desperate junkie or rival drug dealer will.”

“Yeah? And how many Scarlett McGhees will we run across between now and then?”

She froze. Then quietly, “That was a low blow.”

He shrugged. “And you think your Internal Affairs comment was above the belt?”

“Touché,” she ceded after an ice age. Her jaw worked beneath the thin pale skin of her face. “What are you proposing?”

He glanced at Miranda. “Let me talk to her.” His look was subtle. More blink than wink. But it spun out toward her and splashed amid the rising waves and circling sharks with all the promise of a life preserver.

Beth’s eyes narrowed as her head swiveled back and forth between them, vibrating on a frequency of suspicion and contempt. Miranda gnawed a thumbnail behind her bangs as the tension mounted.

“Okay,” she finally said, hands flat on the table as she rose from the chair. “I’m gonna get a Yoo-hoo from the machine and step outside for a smoke. If Molly Ringwald can’t remember her boyfriend’s name by the time I get back, I’ll make sure Donna houses her with the meanest, ugliest dyke on the sixth floor.”

She slammed the door behind her.

Miranda slouched in her chair. Gratitude washed over her with every fading footstep. Even a five-minute break from Kellyanne Conway was a relief.

“You’ll have to forgive my partner,” Sandifer smiled. “She’s a little jaded but she means well.”

“She’s horrible,” said Miranda.

“Nah, she just hates heroin is all. Can’t really fault her for that, can we?”

Miranda shook her head slowly. Nobody hated heroin more than she did at that moment.

“But I do think she’s wrong in wanting to lock you up and throw away the key. You don’t belong in prison. You belong in school.”

“I know,” she began to cry again. “Oh . . . God.”

He leaned in. “So real quick before she gets back, help me out here. Who did the dope and pistol belong to? Where did he get it? Do you know his suppliers? Any info you can come up with will look good. Especially in Beth’s eyes. Names, addresses, phone numbers. Help me help you.”

Her inner narrator, who had gone radio silent since the holding cell, finally stirred. Her tone was even more condescending than usual. Seriously? You turn down his gum on grounds of suspicion and then you fall hook, line and sinker for this Hollywood cliché?

She chewed on her bottom lip and contemplated the detective with new eyes. This was the part in every Law & Order where the suspect breaks down and sings like Selena Gomez. Those pivotal few hours between the time her rights were read and the moment an attorney was appointed. This was the sweet spot where confessions were secured, codefendants were named, and Oscar caliber good cop/bad cop routines were performed.

Nick’s words from the parking lot came back to her. “I just can’t get caught slippin’. With my record, I’d probably never see daylight again . . .”

Detective Sandifer glanced at the plexiglass window. “I don’t mean to rush you, but time really is of the essence here. Gimme something. Anything.”

Fear. Nausea. Exhaustion. Turmoil. All these things churned within her as she stared down at the socks that the nice woman in the holding cell gave her. Socks that were now filthy from the jail floor. In a small voice she uttered the words she was pretty sure would put an end to this meeting. “I want to speak to my attorney.”

A hush fell over the interrogation room. Even the roaring AC vent went silent. “That’s unfortunate,” said Sandifer.

She didn’t bother looking up.

“Well here,” he pushed a business card across the table. “In case you change your mind.”

Part One: Eight Weeks | Chapter 7

Welcome to Year of the Firefly: The Free Serialization. Here’s Chapter 7. 📖 New chapters are released every Monday and Thursday. Whether you’re a long-time reader or discovering my work for the first time, you can read the entire novel on Substack for free. Visit there anytime to catch up on chapters you may have missed. 📚 Prefer holding a real book in your hands? Skip the weekly wait and grab the complete paperback edition right now on Amazon or other online retailers. Ebook is available on Amazon and Kindle+. 📝 New to my writing? Explore all eight of my published books on my website, malcolmivey.com. 🙂 Thank you for reading, and as always, reviews are highly appreciated! Wishing you momentum. —IV

👉Looking for Chapter 1? Begin here: Part One: Eight Weeks | Chapter 1

👉Read about the genesis of Miranda McGuire here: To My Incarcerated Sisters

👉Get an introduction to Year of the Firefly here: Introduction to Book One of the Miranda Rights series

CHAPTER 7

In the summer of the fifth grade, right after her mother ran off to the other side of the continent to start her new family with Chase Echelhardt of Echelhardt Honda and Acura, her dad went a little crazy. He had always been quirky—concocting wild schemes to “beat the house” in the Gulf Coast casinos, scribbling down probabilities and equations while shuffling eight decks of cards, arguing vehemently with the commentators on Monday Night Football as if they could hear him—but when her mother left, he added paranoia and insomnia to his growing list of symptoms. Sleep deprivation only accelerated his unraveling. By the time school started she could hear his teeth grinding from her upstairs bedroom. Most mornings she would awaken to find him tapping away on his calculator, still wearing his rumpled clothing from the night before, bloodshot, unshaven, pausing every few seconds to peep through the blinds, an overflowing ashtray on the windowsill next to him.

He began running errands at odd hours, claiming to prefer the blinking caution lights and deserted streets of late-night Pensacola to the bustle of daytime traffic. Some­times he would take her with him on 2 a.m. grocery runs to the Walmart on the west side of town. It was like the walking dead in that place after midnight. Nothing but crackheads, cops, shoplifters and streetwalkers. But in her young mind she saw zombies and vampires lurking on every aisle. This is what she thought about as she was escorted into the booking area of the Escambia County Jail: Westside Walmart with Dad.

“Have a seat on one of those benches,” said the matron, probably a westsider herself. “I’ll pull you for prints in a few minutes.”

Miranda scanned the room. A long incurvated coun­ter of blond ash with ornate molding served as a de­­marcation line between captor and captive. Behind it, uniformed deputies and county employees in khaki and green sipped coffee, tapped keyboards, and engaged in friendly office banter, apathetic to the subhuman dreck that shivered and sobbed on the opposite benches.

A pale man with shifty tweaker eyes and ears like the tuning pegs on her ukulele motioned her over with a jerk of his head. He scooted to the left to make room between himself and a plus-sized woman who kept sneezing into her meaty palms and inspecting the post-nasal damage.

Miranda turned and found the matron fiddling with a large machine with a plastic encased monitor that flashed fingerprints on its screen. “Don’t I get a phone call?”

“Over there on the wall.” The woman glanced over her shoulder. “Hang on and I’ll tell you your bond amount . . . McGuire, McGuire . . .” She flipped through a stack of papers. “Here we are. Miranda McGuire. Armed trafficking of a controlled substance.” She looked up. “My goodness. $150,000 dollars.”

The room began to tilt. “How much?”

“Your family will need to pay ten percent so it’s really $15,000. If they have the collateral.”

“Collateral,” she repeated numbly.

“You know. Insurance in case you decide to skip out. Hey, it happens. You’d be amazed at how many felons leave their poor mothers homeless and saddled with debt these days. Sign of the times, I guess. Damned opiodd crisis.”

Opioid, she silently corrected as she turned and headed for the phone. How is Dad going to come up with— Her toe caught on the curled lip of a loose piece of linoleum and she stumbled forward, ripping the leather thong from the sole. The rhinestone vee of her sandal flopped back against her ankle. Conversation behind the counter went silent, shifty tweaker eyes bulged in alarm, another sneeze. She went down on a knee. She almost gave up, almost just curled up in the fetal position on the booking floor and remained there until they scooped her up with some industrial-sized dustpan and dumped her wherever they discarded women with fractured minds. But instead she gathered herself, took a deep breath, and slinked over to the phone, dragging her broken sandal with her.

The receiver reeked of halitosis and homelessness. Her fingers dialed on autopilot. Muscle memory. The first phone number she had ever learned. Each ring felt like a countdown, a countdown to her own execution. He picked up on number nine. “Hello?”

The sound of his voice brought a fresh wave of tears to the window ledges of her eyes. “Dad?”

“Jeez, Andy. I thought you were a bill collector. You’re having second thoughts about Biloxi, aren’t you? I knew it! Tell you what, we’ll split whatever we—”

“Dad. I’m in jail.”

“In jail? For what? Underage drinking, I bet. You college kids . . .”

The tears spilled over, streaming down her cheeks and pooling against the lip of the receiver. “Listen to me, okay? I’m in jail for drugs and a gun—”

“A gun!?!”

“They weren’t mine, Dad. But I’m in trouble and I need your help. I need fifteen thousand—”

“Fifteen thousand what? Dollars?”

She closed her eyes. “—so that I can bond out of here and find an attorney who will represent me and hopefully continue going to school while I fight this.”

The sound of his ragged breathing on the other end of the line came through in waves.

“Hello.”

“I wish I could help you, Andy. But the credit cards are maxed out and the bank is talking about foreclosing on the house again. If I was still working at the dealership, I’m sure Vinnie would float me a few grand . . . Wait a minute!”

She gripped the phone tighter.

“There’s a poker tournament at Treasure Bay this weekend. Thousand dollar buy in. Winner gets a hun­dred thou. I could pawn my tools and—”

“Oh my God. Are you off your medication again?” Her reflection was distorted in the steel casing of the phone. Still, the blurred image staring back at her looked closer to fifty than twenty. “You are, aren’t you?”

His silence said it all.

“I should have had you Baker-Acted when I was twelve.”

“Don’t say that Miranda.”

“I used to think Victoria was such a selfish bitch for leaving you. Now I understand why she did what she did. She was just escaping a sinking ship.”

“Maybe you can call her,” he said. “I know they’ve got the money. I have the number around here somewhere.”

“I know the fucking number!” She slammed the phone down.

“Hey! Strawberry Shortcake!” A swarthy deputy leveled a hairy finger in her direction. “You break that thing and you’re gonna have way bigger problems than bond money. We understood?”

She nodded without making eye contact and turned back to the phone. “See? That’s the problem with this generation,” he was saying as she punched the numbers into the keypad. “No respect whatsoever.”

She glanced up at the clock as the phone rang. It was a little after 4:00 a.m. That meant it was 2:00 in Escondido.

Click. “Hello.”

“Victoria?”

There was a brief pause. Then, “Miranda? What in the world are you doing calling this number this late?” Her voice was as icy and terse as ever. “And why on earth does it say you’re calling from the Escambia County jail?”

Miranda stared up at the water-stained ceiling tiles. “Because that’s where I’m calling you from. I’m in trouble.”

“Are you asking for money? Is that why you’re calling?”

Tweaker Eyes was watching her. She curled her top lip in her best snobby mean girl sneer and turned her back to the zombies on the benches. It was humiliating to be unloved. Even in front of the westside undead. “I’ve never asked you for anything in my life.”

“Very thoughtful of you,” her mother spat. “No reason to start now.”

She shook her head incredulously. “What kind of a mother are you?”

“Oh, I’m a very good mother,” she hissed. “A den mother, a PTA mother, a soccer mother. I’m just not your mother. You’re your father’s daughter. And evidently his freeloader DNA is already rearing its ugly head.”

Miranda did not cry. Just the opposite. Whatever moisture lingered in her tear ducts quickly evaporated in the cold wind of her words.

“You call Dad a freeloader? Dad’s not the one who abandoned his family and ran off to California with some rich car salesman.”

“Chase owns a car dealership, Miranda. You’re a smart girl. I’m sure you can appreciate the difference. But even so, if you’re calling to ask for a handout, the answer is no. I’m sorry you’re in trouble. But honestly, I’m not at all surprised. Please do not call this number again.”

The line went dead.

“Are you almost finished over there?” The deputy called. “I need to get your prints.”

“One second,” she said, staring at the keypad as the reality of her mother’s words sank in.

Tentatively, she dialed Nick’s number. She knew it was a longshot. Nick didn’t even own a car, much less $150,000 of collateral. But he did have a shoebox full of cash in her apartment closet. Twenties, fifties and hundreds rolled into thousand-dollar cylinders and tied off with rubber bands. There was at least $15,000 there, or 15 bands, as he would say. Maybe he knew a bail bondsman. The more she thought about it, the more she became convinced that he would help her.

Of course he’ll get me out. Not only because it’s the right thing to do since I’m stuck in this nightmare for his stuff, but also because he truly cares for me.

His phone went to voicemail. “We’re sorry. The subscriber’s mailbox is full at this time.”

Her inner narrator snorted.

With a sinking feeling, she replaced the foul-smelling receiver. Across the room, the deputy was waiting. It was difficult to tell whether her smile was sympathetic or sarcastic. “Any luck, Sugar?”

Miranda stared down at her broken sandal.

“Okay,” she smacked her gum. “Well let’s get you fingerprinted, photographed and dressed out. There’s someone who wants to speak with you before you go upstairs.”

Hope flared. “Who?”

“Detective Sandifer,” she said. “Narcotics.”

Part One: Eight Weeks | Chapter 6

Welcome to Year of the Firefly: The Free Serialization. Here’s Chapter 6. 📖 New chapters are released every Monday and Thursday. Whether you’re a long-time reader or discovering my work for the first time, you can read the entire novel on Substack for free. Visit there anytime to catch up on chapters you may have missed. 📚 Prefer holding a real book in your hands? Skip the weekly wait and grab the complete paperback edition right now on Amazon or other online retailers. Ebook is available on Amazon and Kindle+. 📝 New to my writing? Explore all eight of my published books on my website, malcolmivey.com. 🙂 Thank you for reading, and as always, reviews are highly appreciated! Wishing you momentum. —IV

👉Looking for Chapter 1? Begin here: Part One: Eight Weeks | Chapter 1

👉Read about the genesis of Miranda McGuire here: To My Incarcerated Sisters

👉Get an introduction to Year of the Firefly here: Introduction to Book One of the Miranda Rights series

CHAPTER 6

The holding tank of the Escambia County jail is a medieval dungeon of leaky ceilings, poor lighting, and appalling smells. Located on the ground floor of a crumbling monument to the war on drugs, it groaned beneath the weight of six stories of concrete and rein­forced steel. Its damp walls and iron bars seemed to bear the blood and fear and prayers of the thousands upon thousands of others before her that were dumped in its unforgiving cages.

She finally stopped crying, but she could not stop shivering. She pulled her knees to her chest and stretched her t-shirt over them, slipping her arms inside and hugging herself. She noticed mascara on her collar. Though there was no mirror to confirm it, she could guess how she looked: like the cover of one of her dad’s old KISS albums.

“Hey Red!” One of the men in the tank next door called. “Come to the bars. Fuck with me!”

A couple of the women looked over at her. A black woman with copper-colored hair smiled and shook her head. More tears threatened; she shook them off.

Her feet were freezing. She saw herself getting dressed that morning, an eternity ago, with Nick shirtless in her bed, arms crossed over his chest, leaning back against the headboard, watching, smiling. She almost went with boots. She had a closet full of them. But it was Fall in the Florida Panhandle and her rhinestone sandals were comfy. She was regretting that decision now. She was regretting a lot of things.

“Hey yo! Next door! Y’all bitches deaf?”

“We wish we was deaf,” the woman who smiled at her snapped. “That way we wouldn’t have to listen to your beggin’ ass!”

“Send that snowbunny to the bars,” he persisted. “Hey Red! Check me out!”

She rolled her eyes and moved closer to Miranda. “You cold baby?” She had the high cheekbones and long elegant neck of a runway model. Silver polished nails tapped the hard iron bench as she awaited an answer.

Thoughts, fears, and questions raced through Miranda’s head. Why is this woman talking to me? Potential ally? Angel of mercy? Lesbian predator? Don’t I get a phone call? What’s a snowbunny?

“Of course you’re cold,” the woman smiled again. “This your first time in jail?”

“Yes ma’am,” said Miranda through chattering teeth.

A door slammed. Radio static. Keys. Voices. Two police officers in tight uniforms and gelled hair half-escorted, half-dragged a ranting leather-faced prostitute to the front of the holding cell. “. . . murderers, carjackers, kidnappers, armed robbers, rapists! And you two cocksuckers wanna haul in a damn lady of the night!?! What else am I gonna do? Where else am I gonna work? Y’all gonna give Rhonda a job? You should. Much time as I spend in this god­forsaken Castle Grayskull shithole of a third world jail! I wanna be a fuckin’ receptionist! Hello? HELLO!!!”

The men in the next cell cheered as the officers threw open the tank door and pushed her roughly inside. “Give ’em hell baby!” one called out.

“I shoulda kicked their asses is what I shoulda did.” She smiled through her hair. Jaundiced eyes glowed yellow with madness and hepatitis. “Shoulda kicked ’em right in the stimulus package.”

“Hey yo Red!” Mr. Indefatigable doubled down on the volume. “Come holla at me Red! Red!”

The prostitute stumbled to the filthy stainless-steel toilet in the back of the cell and without preamble snatched her sagging spandex to her bony knees and took a seat, mumbling to herself. “Red Rover, Red Rover, send Rhonda right over.”

Miranda knew it was rude to gawk at someone who was obviously mentally ill and beaten down by life, but she couldn’t look away. Especially when the woman pulled a syringe from her vagina.

“Hey Snowbunny! I know you hear me. Get your fine ass to the door!”

“Hang on a goddamned minute,” Rhonda the prosti­tute rasped. “I’m doing something.”

“Not you, you AIDS infested gut bucket!”

The men next door erupted in laughter. Rhonda shrugged and hunted a vein. A tendril of need awakened in Miranda and began to whisper in its secret language of craving. The woman beside her on the bench was unmoved, expressionless, as if all of it were some movie she had seen a hundred times. “What did they get you for?”

“Drugs,” said Miranda. “An ounce of heroin and a gun.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed. Her head cocked back on her regal neck as she searched Miranda’s face for evidence of duplicity. “Armed trafficking? You? Lemme guess. You’re taking a charge for your man?”

Miranda didn’t answer.

“Don’t do it baby. He ain’t gonna ride. They never do.”

Like she had a choice in the matter. The contraband wasn’t just in her car, it was in her purse. She stared across the holding cell at Rhonda, jabbing her skinny thigh on the toilet. She wondered if she had anything else on her.

“Here,” the woman said, pulling off her tennis shoes and removing her socks. They were thick and soft, the kind with gray on the heels and toes. “You gonna need these.”

“No thank you,” said Miranda.

“Girl, you better quit being polite and put these damn socks on! Look at your toes. They blue! It’s gonna be even colder when you get upstairs.” She laid them on the bench between them. “Go ahead. Take ’em.”

Miranda couldn’t remember ever wearing even a friend’s socks. Wearing a stranger’s in the county jail felt almost promiscuous. “What about you? Won’t your feet be cold?”

She was already slipping back on her red bottom Nikes. “I’m about to be outta here. My sister’s probably out front with the bail bondsman right now.”

“Hey yo Snowbunny Red! Why you running from me?”

Miranda pulled the luxurious cotton socks over the manicured blocks of ice that were once her feet. “What’s a snowbunny?”

The woman chuckled. “You serious?” A few of the other ladies were laughing too. Even Rhonda, still struggling to find a vein on the toilet, began to cackle.

Miranda looked around. “What’s so funny?”

“We ain’t laughing at you baby.” She hooked a loose strand of copper-colored hair with her fingernail and dragged it across the slope of her forehead. “It’s just . . . you asking what a snowbunny is would be like me asking you what a black bitch is.”

Miranda flinched, unaccustomed to such harsh polit­ical incorrectness. Then, slowly, it dawned on her. “Me?”

The woman smiled. Perfect ivory teeth lit the gloom. “You got it . . . Snowbunny Red.”

A matron appeared at the door. Her slate gray hair was pulled back into a ponytail and tied off with a purple ribbon that matched the loose bags under her eyes. “Applewhite, what are you doing back there?”

“I’m taking a shit,” Rhonda snapped, cuffing her rig. “Wassit look like I’m doing?”

The deputy wrinkled her nose and scanned her clip­board. “McGuire?”

Miranda pushed her arms back through her shirt sleeves and raised her hand as if it was roll call in English Comp. “Present.”

Rhonda scoffed from over the toilet. “Present? You gotta be kidding me.”

“Front and center,” ordered the deputy, pulling a flat brass key from her belt and opening the door.

Miranda stepped out into the hallway. The bars clanged shut. An unladylike eruption of flatulence detonated behind her, accompanied by what sounded like a watermelon being tossed in a pool.

“There’s your damn present.” Rhonda’s scratchy voice followed them down the hallway. “Merry Fucking Christmas.”

Arms sprang like vines from the crowded men’s holding tanks, spilling out into the corridor. Hairy arms, skinny arms, muscled arms, tattooed arms. The deputy steered her closer to the safety of the wall as they passed.

“Oh shit! There she go y’all! Snowbunny Red.”

“Hey baby, why you ain’t answer me when I was calling you?”

“Damn, she got a fat pussy!”

“Don’t talk about my old lady like that.”

Miranda hugged herself as she hurried down the hall, burning with humiliation. Animals! And to think she marched outside this very jail with the local chapter of the ACLU for their humane treatment.

“This way.” The woman led her down a wider corridor with waxed linoleum floors. An elderly black man in a county jumpsuit was mopping and singing church hymns while a white kid around her age was on his hands and knees wiping down the baseboards. He paused to wring his dirty rag in the bucket. She read the tattoos on his knuckles as they passed. METH on one hand, COOK on the other.

There was a mirror-tinted window the size of a chalkboard at the end of the hall. She studied her own approach. If it wasn’t for the red hair, she would not have recognized the girl in the reflection. Blinding white socks and rhinestone sandals, shoulders hunched forward in defeat, face smeared black like some culturally insensitive Halloween yearbook photo from the eighties.

The matron waved at an unseen person behind the glass. A door unlocked and she held it open. Tremu­lously, Miranda stepped into the harsh fluorescent light of central booking.

Part One: Eight Weeks | Chapter 5

Welcome to Year of the Firefly: The Free Serialization. Here’s Chapter 5. 📖 New chapters are released every Monday and Thursday. Whether you’re a long-time reader or discovering my work for the first time, you can read the entire novel on Substack for free. Visit there anytime to catch up on chapters you may have missed. 📚 Prefer holding a real book in your hands? Skip the weekly wait and grab the complete paperback edition right now on Amazon or other online retailers. Ebook is available on Amazon and Kindle+. 📝 New to my writing? Explore all eight of my published books on my website, malcolmivey.com. 🙂 Thank you for reading, and as always, reviews are highly appreciated! Wishing you momentum. —IV

👉Looking for Chapter 1? Begin here: Part One: Eight Weeks | Chapter 1

👉Read about the genesis of Miranda McGuire here: To My Incarcerated Sisters

👉Get an introduction to Year of the Firefly here: Introduction to Book One of the Miranda Rights series

CHAPTER 5

Writer brain. Hers switched on at the strangest times: while Leah Oglethorpe from English Lit was sobbing to her about her girlfriend ditching her for a grad assistant on the swim team, when faking an orgasm with Nick because she was high on K-4s and couldn’t get off, when Brady Vaughn overdosed in the admissions parking lot on the first day of school. It was during those tense situa­tions—no matter how humiliating, how crushing, how nerve wracking­—that the aspiring novelist in her would switch on a lamp in some dusty office in the right hemi­sphere of her brain and begin mining for literary gold.

Imagine if there was this girl maybe she had a minor opiate problem definitely not a criminal though but her boyfriend sells drugs and one day they go to buy pills and he leaves a pistol and dope in her car and this really mean police officer shows up . . .

She leaned against the back bumper of her car, fore­arms flat on the trunk, staring through the rear window as he dug beneath the seats, lifted the floor mats, checked the door panels, the console, the glove compart­ment, the visors, all while whistling some arrogant little tune. Whis­tling. As her life was circling the drain.

“Found your key,” he called from the floorboard.

She considered running. But to where? And how far would she get? Even her writerly imagination could not concoct a scenario where she fled on foot and disappeared into the Pensacola underworld. She didn’t even know where the Pensacola underworld was located. And anyway, her money and credit cards were in her purse.

He stood and clapped the dust from his hands. “Every­thing appears to be in order . . . less you got a body in the trunk.”

A glimmer of hope. “I can open it for you!” Anything to get him out of her car.

“Hang on darlin’.” He raised his palm. “I think I know how to pop a trunk.” He glanced back inside the car and shook his head. “I hate going through a woman’s purse. Anything in there I should know about? Knives, needles, pipes?”

She swallowed and forced a smile. “Just tampons and makeup and, um, my hairbrush.”

He stared at it for a moment, chewing his lip, as if on the fence about such an invasion of her privacy. Then he ducked back inside the door, grabbed it from the console and dumped its contents onto the driver seat. Although she couldn’t see, she could hear it. A waterfall of fri­vol­ities and trinkets culminating in a distinct successive th‑thunk.

Then silence followed by a low whistle.

She closed her eyes and clung to the stable steel of the Avalon as if her trembling legs were dangling from the side of a cliff.

While she had yet to begin her first novel, she did take copious notes in Professor Duncan’s creative writing class. Enough to grasp the mechanics of storytelling at a fundamental level. And enough to recognize that in the three-act structure of her life, she had just arrived at what the professor referred to as the first doorway of no return. The moment where everything changes.

Her hands were pulled behind her back with humili­ating gentleness. Steel teeth nibbled at her wrists. When he spoke, his voice was solemn. His words floated over her shoulder in a gust of breath mints and aftershave.

“You have the right to remain silent . . .”

Part One: Eight Weeks | Chapter 4

Welcome to Year of the Firefly: The Free Serialization. Here’s Chapter 4. 📖 New chapters are released every Monday and Thursday. Whether you’re a long-time reader or discovering my work for the first time, you can read the entire novel on Substack for free. Visit there anytime to catch up on chapters you may have missed. 📚 Prefer holding a real book in your hands? Skip the weekly wait and grab the complete paperback edition right now on Amazon or other online retailers. Ebook is available on Amazon and Kindle+. 📝 New to my writing? Explore all eight of my published books on my website, malcolmivey.com. 🙂 Thank you for reading, and as always, reviews are highly appreciated! Wishing you momentum. —IV

👉Looking for Chapter 1? Begin here: Part One: Eight Weeks | Chapter 1

👉Read about the genesis of Miranda McGuire here: To My Incarcerated Sisters

👉Get an introduction to Year of the Firefly here: Introduction to Book One of the Miranda Rights series

CHAPTER 4

She dropped the key. It clattered against the emergency brake and slid down the side of her seat. A flurry of dope drizzled over the console.

“Shit!” She forced the Ziploc and the pistol to the bot­tom of her purse, burying them beneath the moistur­izers, sunglasses, lip gloss, writing journal, trail mix bars, packs of gum and miscellaneous receipts. Then she grabbed her eyeliner and returned to the rearview.

The trunk and back bumper of the cruiser disap­peared behind the Yukon in the neighboring parking space. She exhaled. Relief washed over her.

You see? What if he would’ve seen what you were doing? What if he would’ve walked over to your window and saw that gun? What could you have said? “It’s not mine officer. It belongs to my drug dealer boyfriend. I’m just holding it while he goes to score me some Roxys . . .” You know what your problem is? You never— Oh shit. Here he comes again!

The cruiser slowly reversed back into view and stopped behind her, its passenger door directly between her tail­lights, hemming her in.

A lanky deputy with thinning hair stepped out and casually unlatched the protective strap on his sidearm. Gravel crunched as he approached her window. Big sunny Panhandle smile. The skin around his eyes rippled outward. Like someone dropped a pebble in the center of his face.

She held up the eyeliner pencil for a beat longer, be­laboring her message. Subliminal subterfuge. No sir, that was absolutely not a key you saw me holding to my nose but rather a harmless eyeliner pencil. See? Common mistake.

His smile dimmed a few volts as he motioned for her to roll down the window.

Problem was she needed her car key for that, and her car key was somewhere beneath her seat, possibly still covered in suspicious white powder.

It’s not white, said her inner narrator, it’s taupe.

This was a perfect example of why she hated smoking weed, this paralysis by analysis. Should she reach under her seat for the key? And if so, via what route? Down the side or between her legs? She knew there was an accepta­ble thing to do, a way to act so as not to draw suspicion, but she was damned if she could figure it out. In the end she just opened the door.

He took a step back. His hand brushed the butt of his service weapon. “Easy darlin’. The window would have been sufficient. This your car?”

She nodded. “Do you wanna see my registration? I think it’s in the glove—”

“In due time.” He was staring at her breasts, smiling at them. “You don’t live here, do you?”

“Um, no. I’m just waiting on a friend.”

“Thought as much.” He continued to ogle her. “What’s your shirt say? Astronauts?”

“Close.” She attempted a coquettish smile. “Argo­nauts. It’s like adventurers.” She wished she was adept at the subtle art of flirty manipulation, like some busty, sharp-tongued getaway driver in an Elmore Leonard novel. But she was far too awkward for that. Sober, maybe; stoned, no chance.

“And who is this friend?”

“I’m sorry?”

“This resident you’re waiting on. What’s her name?”

“Oh, um, Nick . . . Nikki. Nicole.” Floundering. Not good.

His smile diminished further. He towered over her, stepping inside the open car door, one hand on the roof. “Nicole what?”

“Um . . . Nicole, sir?” Gosh what a jerk.

He shook his head and spoke with exaggerated slow­ness, enunciating each word as if she were a lost foreign tourist. “What is this Nicole’s last name?”

“Ohhh.” It dawned on her. “It’s, um, Gucci . . . onni!” she added quickly. “Nicole Guccionni.”

“Italian, huh?” He tapped his fingers on the roof, surveying the interior of her car. “My wife’s family is from Naples. Well, her mother’s side. Her dad was just sta­tioned over there. Navy. Her grandmother still lives in the house she was born in. 106 years old, can you believe it? Her Nona she calls her. Lives right near that volcano, Mount Etna.”

“Vesuvius is the volcano closest to Naples,” she heard herself saying. Shut up Miranda! Just let him be right! “Etna is in eastern Sicily.”

He frowned and sucked something between his teeth. “Same difference. You a college student or something?”

She nodded. Even though Italy’s volcanos were covered in her tenth-grade geography class. “I’m a freshman at West Florida.” She tried to redirect his attention back to her breasts. “Argonauts.”

“Interesting.” He looked behind her into the back seat. “I wonder if that’s a lie too.”

“Excuse me?”

He continued to tap on her roof. Apparently, her breasts had been weighed and found wanting because now he was staring straight at her face. Tapping and staring. Until finally he spoke. “I’ve been living in this apartment complex for going on ten years. I know every resident. By face and by name. There’s no Guccionnis here. There’s no Italians here. Except my wife. Trust me, if there were, she’d be on their balcony right now drinking wine and complaining about what a strunze she has for a husband . . .”

“Oh, she doesn’t live here,” Miranda scrambled to explain, willing the storytelling gears in her brain to crank out something believable. “I think she left her purse at a bible study last night. One of her friends from Scenic Baptist. I just drove her here to get it.”

“Scenic Baptist, huh? Who’s the friend?”

“Um, Monica something? She said her name, but I can’t remember.”

Movement in the alley caused her to doubletake. Her heart leapt. Nick! He paused in the middle of the trail, rising on the toes of his sneakers, craning his neck for a better look. Then, just as quickly, he vanished into the shadows. Gone.

“Monica something,” he repeated, following her eyes. “It’s possible, I guess.”

Nothing in his demeanor suggested relief. Think Miranda! There has to be a way out of this. It’s a puzzle. You love puzzles . . .

He slapped the roof. A metallic twang went through her, jolting her upright. About to say something, he paused and raised a sandy eyebrow. “You all right darlin’?”

She nodded. There was heroin on her kneecap.

“Well, here’s what we’re gonna do,” he said. “My instincts are telling me you’re up to something. I should just run you off. But I’m curious about this Italian Baptist friend of yours. Maybe we’ll wait for her together.”

The little girl and her grandfather returned from the bluffs. He waved at them. The child smiled and waved back then pointed at Miranda through the windshield and said, “Bad!”

A burst of static erupted from his radio. He adjusted it without looking. “Listen, I already know you’re getting high. This car smells like a Colorado dope dispensary. I’m just trying to figure out why you’re doing it in my apartment complex.”

She swallowed what little saliva remained in her mouth and tried not to look at the incriminating tumor that bulged from the side of her purse.

He held out his palm. “Let me see your identification.”

Now she had to look. Luckily her wallet had somehow risen to the top. She grabbed it and plucked her driver’s license from between her library and debit cards.

“Miranda McGuire,” he said. “Nice Irish name. And only 18 years old. Just a baby.” He shook his head. “So tell me, Miranda, what are you really doing here? Buying dope? Selling dope? Maybe you’re driving around the little thugs who’ve been breaking into apartments over the last few weeks?”

“No!” she sputtered.

He eyed her coolly. “Step out of the car, ma’am.”

“W-w-why?” Her hands were trembling.

“So I can search your vehicle.”

A cliché formed in her brain. The residue of every Cops rerun she had ever watched with her dad. Before she had time to weigh its wisdom, her mouth was pried open like a second-story window and the words leaped into the air between them. “Do you have a warrant?”

“I don’t need a warrant, darlin’,” he smirked, “I’ve got probable cause.”

Defeated, she reached for her purse and moved to exit the car.

“Leave it,” he commanded.

Part One: Eight Weeks | Chapter 3

Welcome to Year of the Firefly: The Free Serialization. Here’s Chapter 3. 📖 New chapters are released every Monday and Thursday. Whether you’re a long-time reader or discovering my work for the first time, you can read the entire novel on Substack for free. Visit the page anytime to catch up on chapters you may have missed. 📚 Prefer holding a real book in your hands? Skip the weekly wait and grab the complete paperback edition right now on Amazon or other online retailers. Ebook is available on Amazon and Kindle+. 📝 New to my writing? Explore all eight of my published books on my website, malcolmivey.com. 🙂 Thank you for reading, and as always, reviews are highly appreciated! Wishing you momentum. —IV

👉Looking for Chapter 1? Begin here: Part One: Eight Weeks | Chapter 1

👉Read about the genesis of Miranda McGuire here: To My Incarcerated Sisters

👉Get an introduction to Year of the Firefly here: Introduction to Book One of the Miranda Rights series

CHAPTER 3

She sank into her seat and stared over the steering wheel as Nick sauntered down a narrow walkway between two buildings. His gait was confidence personified; loose‑hipped, head high, shoulders alternating at 45-degree angles as he strode past the squat green air-conditioning units and bubble-faced electricity meters that were stag­gered along the beige vinyl-sided walls of the alley. She wished he would forego the coolness and step it up.

She watched him swagger past a rusty barbecue grill, sidestep a ten-speed and duck beneath a distant stairwell before disappearing altogether into the byzantine apart­ment complex. She exhaled and glanced up at the rearview. Her own eyes were there waiting . . . judging.

“What?” Her voice split the silence.

An elderly man labored past the front of her car, hand in hand with a ponytailed girl in a purple tutu, four years old at most. With breathless enthusiasm and energy to burn, the child hopped down the sidewalk, tugging her grandfather along, babbling happily about the spectacu­lar world she was discovering, a world of magic and music and colors and bugs and birds. He noticed Miranda and nodded hello.

She managed a tight smile despite her anxiety. It wasn’t so long ago when she was a little ponytailed girl in a tutu herself. Now she was almost 19 with an opioid habit and a loaded pistol in her purse.

And an ounce of heroin, her inner narrator pointed out. Let’s not forget that.

She glanced down at it. Talc-like powder glazed the inside of the bag. What color was that? Not quite white but lighter than beige. Biscuit, oatmeal, eggshell? Taupe. It came to her. Rhymes with dope.

The plastic brushed her hand seductively as she reached for her phone. She answered her father’s text first. “Sorry. Can’t go.” She typed with her thumbs. “Midterms.” His response was instantaneous. “Can I bor­row 100 bucks?” She rolled her eyes but didn’t respond. Next, she checked her Twitter feed. Some troll was making lude remarks about her Michelle Obama retweet from the 2016 DNC. “When they go low, we go high.” Probably a bot. Possibly a Russian. She lamented for a moment how a country that gave the world Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky could be synonymous with human rights abuse and election meddling . . . then she blocked his ass. Next up, Facebook, or, as her dad called it, Myface. The last post on her timeline was a Molly Ivins quote. “Freedom fighters don’t always win, but they’re always right.” Right on, she thought. Even though she didn’t remember putting it up. The days and nights had been running together since Nick started crashing in her apartment. Eighteen likes, eight loves, no shares, and a single comment. Lauren Talbot gushed her customary, “Love you bunches!” Again.

She glanced at the time. It was almost 4 o’clock. The little girl and her grandfather were all the way to the end of the sidewalk where the bluffs descended into the bay. Straight ahead, the alley yawned, unspooling into shad­ows. She squinted through the windshield, willing a swaggering shape to materialize.

She slid the phone back inside her purse, careful to avoid the black handle of the pistol that protruded from the open zipper like a rubber phallus. She wondered if it had ever killed anyone. Guns don’t kill people, her inner narrator piped up, people kill people. A half-moon auburn eyebrow rose in the rearview. A famous NRA slogan? Where on earth did that come from? But she already knew the answer. The voice in her head was not bound by loyalty to any specific set of principles. It hopscotched shamelessly across the ideological aisle, sometimes con­tradicting itself in sequential sentences. If it was loyal to anything, it was the sound of its own incessant chatter.

Fine, she clarified. I wonder if Nick has ever killed anyone.

The heavy question sank in her mind like a brick in the bay, falling through the murky depths before thudding to the floor in a soundless poof. Even her inner narrator went quiet. But the silence was soon filled with the relentless palpitations of her pounding heart.

Serenity whispered from the glassine baggie in her purse, beckoning like a forbidden lover. A quick sniff would slow the speedbag that was hammering against the cell bars of her ribcage, muffle the running soliloquy in her head and massage the anxiety from her nerve endings with warm opiated balm.

Almost in a trance, she pulled her keys from the ignition and reached for the dope. It wasn’t that big of a deal. Poppy derivatives were poppy derivatives—Roxys, Percs, Tabs, Dilaudid, Boi . . . Same family. A tiny bump meant nothing in the great scheme of things. She just needed a little tide-me-over. Something to take the edge off. Something to turn the sound down.

She looked long down the worn and narrow trail that snaked between the apartment buildings for a final time before pulling apart the Ziploc.

The pungent smell of vinegar wafted up from the bag and filled the car as she submerged the key and scooped a miniscule amount onto the tip, jiggling off the excess granules, fully aware that any one of which could be a lethal crystal of Fentanyl despite Gucci’s boasts of purity.

Fentanyl is the least of your worries, her inner narrator snipped. It’s Carfentanyl you should be concerned about. The equivalent of a single salt grain is enough to tranquilize an elephant. That’s what guys like Gucci are using to stretch their beloved product. And do you think he’ll lose a minute of sleep when you overdose? Do you think anyone will? Please. You’ll just be another dead face in the obituaries. I cannot believe how reckless you’ve become. What’s next? Meth? Crack?

The answer was something far more sinister. There was no next. Heroin was the final stop.

With a trembling hand she carefully raised the dope-powdered key, eyeballing it all the way. The distance between the bag and her itchy nose felt like Everest. Home stretch. She used the rearview to guide key to nostril. Blue eyes stared back at her from the mirror, consciousness aware of itself. Then, like a foreboding black storm cloud moving over the sun, a police cruiser crept slowly across her back window.

Part One: Eight Weeks | Chapter 2

Welcome to Year of the Firefly: The Free Serialization. Here’s Chapter 2. 📖 New chapters are released every Monday and Thursday. Whether you’re a long-time reader or discovering my work for the first time, you can read the entire novel on Substack for free. Visit the page anytime to catch up on chapters you may have missed. 📚 Prefer holding a real book in your hands? Skip the weekly wait and grab the complete paperback edition right now on Amazon or other online retailers. Ebook is available on Amazon and Kindle+. 📝 New to my writing? Explore all eight of my published books on my website, malcolmivey.com. 🙂 Thank you for reading, and as always, reviews are highly appreciated! Wishing you momentum. —IV

👉Missed Chapter 1? Read it here: Part One: Eight Weeks | Chapter 1

👉Read about the genesis of Miranda McGuire here: To My Incarcerated Sisters

👉Get an introduction to Year of the Firefly here: Introduction to Book One of the Miranda Rights series

CHAPTER 2

For a car manufactured at the turn of the century and on the wrong side of 200,000 miles, the Avalon was in pris­tine condition. “Can’t beat these Japanese cars and their timing chains,” said her dad when he handed over the keys for her sixteenth birthday. “Damn things run forever.” And he was right. He usually was when it came to cars. Almost three years later the old Toyota was still gliding along.

She hit unlock on the key fob and settled behind the wheel, pouting as Nick swaggered around to the passen­ger side. “What’s up, bae?” He folded his long body into the leather bucket seat and slammed the door. “You feeling some type of way?”

For all of her gushing about his street slang, a few of the more nonsensical phrases grated on her; feeling some type of way, for example. Typical vague noncommittal male statement. What type of way?

She started the car and backed slowly down the steep driveway. “If by some type of way you mean livid, then, yes. I am. I’m feeling some type of way about your com­plete lack of chivalry.”

Impossibly long lashes blinked in her periphery. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about you not objecting when Captain Hook in there insulted me.”

“Gucci?” He frowned. “How did he insult you?”

“Um, he called me your bitch for starters.”

Perplexity. “Wait . . . you’re not?”

She shot him a withering look. “I’m nobody’s bitch. That’s an offensive, derogatory, misogynistic word.”

“I don’t think he meant it like that, bae.”

“No?” she smirked, “And what about when he called me a troll? Was that intended to be a compliment? I’ve never been so humiliated in my life.”

A stray dog loped across her rearview. She braked to let it pass before pulling out onto Sixth Avenue. When she shifted from reverse to drive, she noticed that Nick was grinning. “It’s not funny asshole.”

Laughter spilled through his smile. “You’re trippin’ bae. Not troll as in some ugly monster. Troll as in patrol . . . as in police. Feel me?”

The dog looked up from the sidewalk as they passed. Defeated bloodshot eyes touched hers. She stopped the car.

“Miranda? What the . . .? We’re ridin’ dirty. You can’t just stop in the middle of the street.”

She fumbled through her purse and found a trail mix bar, her go-to snack between classes. “This will just take a sec.”

The musclebound money counter stepped out on Gucci’s front porch and glared a question at them. What the fuck? Nick responded by raising his index finger. One moment please.

Miranda unwrapped the breakfast bar, broke it into pieces and opened the door. The dog bounded over to her outstretched hand and devoured the food, licking her palm clean as she scratched its dirty head. “That’s a good boy.”

“Bae? Can we flex already? This neighborhood is crawlin’ with troll and I’ve got a zip of Boi and my fire on me.”

“Okay, okay.” The dog clearly wanted to come home with her. She gently pushed it away and pulled the door shut. For a moment it trotted along next to the car, but by the time she reached the light at Cervantes it was barely a speck in her mirror.

She reached for the stereo. NPR’s Acoustic Interlude came jangling through the speakers. Gillian Welch was singing “The Way It Goes” over Appalachian strings. She adjusted the volume.

He grabbed her hand. “Look at me.” Deep, soulful, almond-shaped eyes narrowed with intensity. “I wouldn’t let nobody disrespect you. If anything, I’d go to war about you.”

His grip morphed into a caress. She melted beneath his touch. The light turned green. “Which way?”

He released her hand and flipped down the sun visor, removing a rolled blunt. “To your crib? You know the way. Bust a left.”

She hesitated before tapping the blinker. “I thought you said you were getting some pills.” Her voice was weak with need. She hated the sound of it.

After an anti-Trump rally turned violent outside the Civic Center, she tripped over a rain-slicked curb on Gregory Street while running to her car, skinning her knees and injuring her back. Dr. Metzer prescribed Percocet for the pain. By the time her prescription ran out, the pain had subsided, but a new ache bloomed within her. She had fallen in love with the muted warmth of opiates. After a second script was quickly gobbled up, she was on her own, forced to overpay and scrounge and trade her Adderall for Lortab. Until Cassy Myers, her lab partner in Anatomy and Physiology, introduced her to Nick at a frat party a month earlier.

He pushed in the cigarette lighter and shook his head. “It don’t make sense to pay a dollar a milligram for pills when I’ve got some of the most fire dope in the city right here in my pocket. You heard Gucci say how pure it is.”

“Actually, he said it was purr.”

“This shit’ll make you purr.” He reached across the console and squeezed her thigh. “Just like a little kitten. Want me to fix you up a bump?”

She shook her head. It wasn’t that she was snobby and only wanted pharmaceutical grade opiates. She just didn’t want to cross that line. It was bad enough that she had graduated from popping pills to snorting them. But heroin was a Pandora’s box with an escalator inside lead­ing straight down to the bathroom floor with a needle in her arm. No way. She had a GPA to maintain, novels to write, dreams to chase.

He puffed the blunt to life. The familiar aroma of Girl Scout cookies filled her car. Such a strange name for de­signer weed, she thought, Girl Scout cookies. She was a Brownie and a Scout all through elementary school, had probably moved more crates of cookies than Gucci had dope, but she had never run across any that smelled like Nick’s stash.

There was a certain sensuality in the way he smoked, a level of intimacy and attention to detail that reminded her of his lovemaking. He took a deep pull followed by small sips, frequently turning the blunt sideways to inspect it, licking his finger and dabbing out runs as se­duc­tive tendrils of smoke drifted from his mouth up into his nose, inhaling and exhaling almost simultaneously.

He extended it toward her with one hand while reaching for his phone with the other.

She was never a big fan of weed. It made her too self-conscious. Her inner narrator was chatty enough as it was. No need to pump up the volume. But lately she found herself doing all kinds of things she didn’t normally do.

She accepted the blunt and took a tentative drag. It was moist from his lips. She wasn’t sure about any Girl Scout cookies, but she could definitely taste him. On the radio, Gillian Welch faded into a digital hiss of dead air. For a moment, the only sounds were the road noise and Nick tapping away on his phone. Then a swarm of ban­joes burst forth through the speakers, jolting her upright. A yodeler began to yodel.

Nick stopped texting and looked up. “What the fuck are we listening to?” He jabbed an insistent finger at each radio preset until he found the rap station. An autotuned emcee was crooning about kidnapping someone’s bitch if they played with his money. He began to bob his head hypnotically and settled back into his seat. She passed him the blunt.

The familiar businesses and street signs that lined Cervantes flew by in a fluorescent blur. She was stoned by Twelfth Avenue. As they neared Seventeenth, she eased into the turning lane. Maybe she would try a little bump of heroin when they got home. Just a taste.

“Don’t turn on your street,” said Nick. “Keep straight.”

She glanced over at him. He was texting again.

“I’ma get you some pills, bae.”

Her heart rate accelerated with the Avalon. The thrill of hope alone was intoxicating. She cut off a pickup as she swerved back into the middle lane. Brakes shrieked. She winced and sucked air through her teeth. “Sorry,” she mouthed into the rearview, but the truck was already surging along the right side of her car.

Through the passenger door mirror, she could see a rebel flag license plate bolted to the chrome front bumper. Muddy axles and Super Swamper tires quickly pulled even. Snarling faces, purple with rage, shook fists and shot middle fingers. She could hear them through the glass despite the rap music pumping through her speakers. “Pull over you stupid bitch!”

Still bobbing his head, Nick looked up from his phone, took another hit from the blunt and passed it to her. “Hold this.” Then he reached down the front of his jeans and produced a pistol. He didn’t wave it or even aim it at them. He just set it in his lap and clicked off the safety. With a barely perceptible raise of his dimpled chin, he asked a question, simple yet deadly. What’s up?

The truck roared off, belching exhaust as its taillights vanished over the Bayou Texar bridge. Nick stared after it, his jaw tensing and relaxing. The gun lay heavy in his lap. Though her eyes were locked on the road ahead, she could still sense it, a dark and ominous shape, seething on the perimeter of her vision. She ventured a quick glance. There it was. She absently raised the blunt to her lips for another hit.

Nick lowered the volume on the radio. “Everything good, bae?”

“Better than good.” She exhaled a torrent of smoke, her voice an octave higher than normal. “Everything’s Gucci.”

He smiled and retrieved the blunt from her trembling fingers. “There’s some apartments coming up on the right. Village on the Bluffs. Take the second entrance.”

Cervantes bent into Scenic Highway. Glimpses of Escambia Bay flickered through the oaks and pines. The sun was still high enough to sprinkle diamonds over the water. It occurred to her that Florida was shaped like an inverted pistol.

Her phone chirped. Dad was texting. She glanced at the message as she pulled into the apartment complex. Biloxi? She rolled her eyes. Her last trip to the casinos with her father cost her every dime in her purse and almost a thousand in student loans. No thanks. A speed bump rose from the asphalt unannounced. Tired shocks creaked and groaned in the immediate aftermath. The gun bounced from Nick’s lap and tumbled to the floorboard.

“What the heck?” She objected, increasingly more stoned as her adrenaline ebbed. “I thought they had to paint those yellow. It’s like a law or something.”

He reached between his Jordans for the pistol. “Pull up on that curb by the dumpster.”

She scrunched her nose and surveyed the parking lot. There was an open space between a Yukon and an Alero. “How about over there?”

He was tapping on his phone again. “Yeah. Good. Whatever.”

She pulled in, shut off the car and began checking her makeup in the mirror.

“You can’t go in with me this time, bae.”

“Oh,” she frowned. “Okay.”

He stuck the phone in his pocket. “Misty’s got a script for Roxy 30s. But she won’t even open the door if I’ve got somebody with me. Her son weighs 500 pounds. Rarely ever gets out of bed. Her apartment’s a mess . . .”

“Say no more,” said Miranda. You had me at Roxy 30s.

“There’s a cop that lives across from her. Fucks with me every time he sees me. Frisks me, threatens me with jail. Petty shit.” He thumbed the gun back on safety and held it out, handle first. “Hold this down for me. Just in case he’s snooping round.”

She hesitated. “But . . . what if he follows you back here? What if he searches my car?”

“He won’t. He’s probably on duty anyway. I just can’t get caught slippin’. With my record, I’d never see daylight again.”

The internal floodwaters of anxiety were already up to her throat. She regretted smoking the weed. Her inner narrator wasn’t helping. A gun!?! Don’t you dare Miranda. What kind of a hypocrite are you? I cannot believe you are even considering it. How many anti-gun rallies have you attended? Didn’t you just post a Gabby Giffords quote on Facebook last month? What would she think about this? What would Nancy Pelosi think about this? WHAT WOULD MICHELLE OBAMA THINK ABOUT THIS?

Why did her inner narrator sound so much like her mother? She wished she had a Xanax.

“I’m just doing this shit for you, bae. You know how I feel about pills. Want me to hit her up right now and let her know I ain’t coming? She won’t stress it. Hard as it is to get pills these days, they’ll be gone in an hour.”

“No!” She grabbed the gun and looked for a place to put it, finally settling on her purse. “Just . . . just please hurry up.”

“You sure?” he said. “I’m supposed to be getting some lean soon. Maybe tonight. If you can hold out.”

Lean. Sizurp. Codeine promethazine. Medicated cough syrup. Favored beverage of rap stars and drug dealers. Nick mixed his with Sprite. She had guzzled her share over the last month. It definitely took the edge off. But compared to snorting Roxys, it was baby aspirin.

She shook her head. “It’s fine. Really. I was just having a moment. You know I get weird when I smoke.”

“Just chill bae. You with me now. I got you.” He reached for the door handle, paused and pulled the Ziploc of heroin from his jeans. “Damn. Slippin’. Almost forgot this.”

He dropped it in her purse himself.

Part One: Eight Weeks | Chapter 1

Welcome to Year of the Firefly: The Free Serialization. As promised, here’s Chapter 1. 📖 New chapters are released every Monday and Thursday. Whether you’re a long-time reader or discovering my work for the first time, you can read the entire novel on Substack for free. Visit the dedicated Year of the Firefly page on Substack anytime to catch up on chapters you may have missed. 📚 Prefer holding a real book in your hands? Skip the weekly wait and grab the complete paperback edition right now on Amazon or other online retailers. Ebook is available on Amazon and Kindle+. 📝 New to my writing? Explore all eight of my published books on my website, malcolmivey.com. 🙂 Thank you for reading, and as always, reviews are highly appreciated! Wishing you momentum. —IV

👉Read about the genesis of Miranda McGuire here: To My Incarcerated Sisters

👉Get an introduction to Year of the Firefly here: Introduction to Book One of the Miranda Rights series

👉Watch a short announcement video from the author here: Read ‘Year of the Firefly’ Free on Substack

“All of God’s children are not beautiful. Most of God’s children are, in fact, barely presentable . . .” —FRAN LEIBOWITZ

CHAPTER 1

Miranda had never seen a Gucci eye patch before. Funny how that was the focal point of her attention. The patch. Not the ginormous pile of cash on the table. Not the musclebound tattooed man who was counting it. Not the naked woman snuggling with the pitbull on the leather sofa. Not the oblivious little boy tapping furiously on the Xbox controller. All these storylines were riveting, but it was the designer patch that the monocle of her con­sciousness was fixed upon. She wondered if it was a fashion accessory or a medical device or both. The aspiring author and English Lit major in her needed to know.

Still tingly and warm from the blunt on the ride across the bridge, she followed with hooded eyes as its wearer rummaged through kitchen cabinets in search of a scale. He caught her staring and paused. The sculptured mus­tache and goatee that framed his mouth pulled back into a diamond- and platinum-encrusted scowl. “Yo Nick, you sure this bitch ain’t troll?”

Uncertain which was more offensive, being called a bitch or a troll, she felt her face redden with indignation as she sputtered to assemble a lethal riposte . . . something Katherine from Taming of the Shrew might serve up in her icy Shakespearean tone. Nice eyepatch . . . are you wearing matching Gucci panties?

Two things stopped her: the small arsenal of urban warfare weapons stacked on the coffee table and Nick’s firm hand on the small of her back.

“I’m positive,” he said, in that deep, confident voice that made her forget her outrage, forget she was standing in a trap house, forget the world, forget herself.

“Well she looks like troll.” Eyepatch found his scale and set it on the counter. “Like one of them redheaded CSI bitches. I don’t trust no redheads . . .”

Nick removed his hand from her back and ran his fingers through his dark unruly hair. His palm left an impression, hot against her skin. A thermonuclear hand­print. “Come on, Gucci,” he said. “You know I don’t fuck with twelve.”

Miranda stifled a giggle. His name was Gucci? Was Gucci, the company, like, secretly sponsoring drug dealers or something? She thought of her sociology professor, Dr. Bonilla, and his fiery disquisitions on consumer culture and materialism. He would choke on his own mustache if he ever crossed paths with this walking designer brand billboard.

“She ain’t gotta be twelve,” said Gucci. “She could be an informant. How do you know she ain’t wearing a wire?”

Nick glanced down at her. His eyes were dark choco­late caged in black lashes. A secret smile played at the corners of his mouth. “Because I watched her get dressed.”

His words seemed to hang in the air. She blushed, suddenly as exposed as the naked woman snoring on the couch. Gucci appraised her from over his scale. Fitting, because she felt like she was being weighed. His one eye moved up and down her body. Apparently the MeToo movement had not yet reached the criminal underworld. She wished Nick would put his arm around her.

“Don’t bring nobody else over here,” Gucci muttered as he pulled apart the Ziploc and began heaping Boi onto the didgies with a silver spoon.

Boi and didgies.

The arrival of Nick Archiletta on the timeline of her life had brought a strange new lexicon of colloquialisms and street slang. Words that did not appear in the pages of her beloved Random House College Dictionary or even the online Urban Dictionary. Sometimes it was as if he was speaking an entirely different language.

Miranda loved words. She grew up doing New York Times crossword puzzles with her dad and was a self-proclaimed etymologist by the time she reached middle school. Her plan was to write a novel after the fall se­mester and midterms, maybe a gritty romance she could self-pub and market herself. The bad boy patois of Nick’s urban ecosystem would make for snappy, realistic dia­logue. This was perhaps the sexiest thing about him. True, he was lean and handsome with just the right num­ber of tattoos. True, the danger was thrilling, the passion was electric, the money was fast, and the drugs were conven­ient. But take all that away and his vernacular alone was worth the price of admission. Especially to a word-nerd like herself.

The dope was the color of Gulf of Mexico sand, a growing anthill atop the matte black digital scale. Gucci added a little, then more, then grunted, shook his head, and sliced off the tip of the mountain, transforming it into a mesa. Satisfied, he spun the scale.

Miranda read the display. 28.7.

“Can I put some cut on it?” said Nick.

“You better.” Gucci shook a Newport from his pack and fired it up. His teeth dazzled beyond the flame. “You know how we rock, bruh. This is that good Frank White shit. Pure as your bitch.”

She winced. He pronounced pure like purr. Calling her rude names was one thing. But lazy mispronunciations she could not tolerate. They circumvented her filter, triggering a response that was almost reflexive.

“I believe the word you’re looking for is pure. P-U-R‑E. All you do is take the possessive your and stick a P in front of it. Pyour . . . Pure.” She enunciated with the exagger­ated patience of a kindergarten teacher. “You try it.”

He stared at her for a solid ten seconds. He even pursed his lips. Then he looked at Nick. “What is this crazy-ass bitch jaw-jackin’ about?”

Nick shrugged. “She takes off like that sometimes. I think it’s a college thing . . . here.” He reached in his jeans pocket, grabbed a roll of bills and tossed them across the kitchen.

Gucci caught the money, removed the rubber band and began to count.

“Everything good?” said Nick, when he reached the last hundred.

“Better than good.” The one-eyed dope dealer looked up and smiled for the first time that day. “Everything’s Gucci.”