Danny would’ve marked off the days on the wall, if he could. But pencils or pens were contraband – they could too easily be turned into weapons – and chalk was not readily available. Besides, the warden and the guards did not take defacement of prison property lightly.

Movies gave you ideas about how prison would be. Most of them weren’t true.

But. If Danny could, he would. The days seemed to blur together, after a while. Plus, it was classic. How could Danny resist doing something like that?

Instead, Danny went to the daily writing seminar. In there, under supervision, they let you handle pencils or pens or whatever – you just couldn’t take the instruments with you when you left. Most guys used the class to write letters home or to their lawyers.

There, Danny kept a journal of sorts – a mess of papers stapled together haphazardly. Today, this is what Danny wrote on the next page, in neat capital letters:

“Thursday, January 4th, 2001.”

That was it. Danny put his pen down. There was nothing else to write.

If you were to flip backwards through the stapled pages, that’d be basically all you’d see. The dates – a blur of numbers and weekdays. Sometimes Danny would write something. The day that he got a package from Rusty, Danny drew a cookie on the page, under the date. But most days, it was just the date.

Danny didn’t need the journal to write down his thoughts. He just needed to keep track.

The number of pages Danny had stapled together was equal to the length of his sentence. He was nearing the end of his journal.

But Danny didn’t feel particularly excited. He knew what lay ahead, what he had to do. He had to remain… calm.

Danny flipped through the remaining pages. He smiled.

Days passed slowly here, but they passed.