“No, there’s no one,” I told the clerk.

A guard arrived, a middle-aged woman, stout, with a warrior face at least as impressive as mine. She led me into Pod C in the Women’s Unit, past a long corridor of cells on either side. They had a gridwork of steel bars and doors that slid open and closed, and two bunks in each, top and bottom, all currently unoccupied. I followed the guard in a zombie walk with my arms stretched out in front of me, heaped high with sheets, a blanket, a pillow, the rest of my prison clothes.

The guard spoke over her shoulder as we walked, biting out the rules and the daily schedule. Roll call at six a.m., breakfast, then work—everyone was required to work, in the kitchen, the laundry, or one of the prison industries. Then lunch, yard time, another roll call, and back to work until dinner.

She stopped beside a cell, and when she stood aside and glared at me, I knew this must be where I got off. All day I’d been wondering where I would sleep tonight, and here was my answer. This cell was my new home.

Cell, I thought as I stepped inside. Why did they call them cells? They should call them what they were. Cages.

“Lights out in thirty,” she said. “You can stay here or go to the common room till then.”

I stayed where I was. I didn’t know where the common room was, and I wasn’t ready to make my prison debut just yet. I let my face relax as the guard left, and I turned a slow revolution to take in the tiny room. It had two metal bunks cantilevered on the wall like a pair of oversize steel bookshelves. Cantilevered on the opposite wall was a smaller metal slab, this one serving as a desk, with an attached metal chair. Mounted to the end wall were a stainless-steel toilet and sink.

Neither bunk was made up, and there were no papers on the desk, no photos or other signs of habitation. It gave me hope that I’d be spared a roommate. Or rather, a cellmate. No, a cellie. I needed to learn the lingo.

I made up the lower bunk with the rough-weave sheets and a pilled blanket. When I stretched out on the bed, I realized it was the first time I’d been horizontal since early Sunday morning. I tried not to think about the bedbugs and bodily fluids that might reside in the lumpy mattress. I tried to relax and let my muscles sink into the bed. But I could feel the metal slab under me. It was the proverbial pea, and I was the proverbial princess.

Hot tears pooled in my eyes. I’d felt like a princess once, in my sparkling tower apartment with my handsome husband-prince. And now here I was, in prison. Charged with murder.

I shivered with the cold and tugged the blanket up to my chin. The hard metal bunk wasn’t a pea. It was more like a mortuary slab. They’ve killed me, I thought, and tears of self-pity streaked down my face.