Anna sleepily smacked her lips and gently wiped drool off of her mouth, trying to think of a way of getting a conversation going with her new companion without asking her any personal questions.
"So...uh...why do they call you 'Goldie'?", she asked with a bit of a yawn. "Because unless I went color blind since I fell asleep, your hair looks pretty dark to me."
"Oh, I used to be blonde," the cellmate answered simply, stroking her hair a bit. "And my hair was once a lot, lot longer. But 'Goldie' is what my husband used to call me, so I think the name suits me just fine."
She tilted her head sideways and looked at Anna with an amused grin.
"And speaking of hair, it looks like an animal died in yours," she half-laughed. "Do you always have bad hair days like this?"
"Huh?" went Anna. Then she felt her head. Humiliated, she realized that her hair was an absolute mess.
"Damn," she said. "It usually takes half an hour in front of the mirror to fix this. I don't suppose you have a comb I can borrow?"
"Sorry, no combs here," said Rapunzel. "Although I do sometimes have a plastic fork that I smuggle from the prison's cafeteria that can do wonders if you're willing to put some effort into it, but it's best if you have someone watching for guards when you do that."
Anna raised an eyebrow.
"I'm confused," she said, honestly puzzled. "Why would they not want us to have plastic forks?"
Rapunzel shrugged.
"Who knows?" she said. "I guess they're worried we'll somehow make them into weapons or something, but the so-called 'silverware' they have around here breaks so easily that I find it hard to believe that anyone could hurt even a mouse with it, much less a human being."
"I see," said Anna, licking her fingers and trying to fix her hair using them, but without much success. "I take it, you don't have any of these forks on you right now?"
"No, 'fraid not," Rapunzel answered. "You should go see Dinglehopper. She always seems to have them. God knows why."
"Dinghlehopper?" said Anna, having no idea what would earn an inmate a nickname like that.
"Yeah, she's kinda...out there," explained Rapunzel, adjusting the striped hat on her head a little bit. "She doesn't really talk much either. But she's not violent or anything. You don't have to worry about her."
"What about you?" asked Anna. "Are you...violent?"
She decided right away that this might not have been a smart question for her to ask her cellmate on her first day in prison, but Rapunzel just gave her a sly grin.
"I can be from time to time," she said.
Anna wasn't sure if she was joking or not. But Rapunzel at least didn't seem dangerous. If anything, she seemed almost shockingly cheerful...especially for someone who was slowly getting up from her bed, pulling her pants down without warning, and sitting on the toilet right in front of her.
Sitting on the toilet?!
It took Anna a moment to realize what she was witnessing, and she did a double take.
"Oh, my God!" went Anna, alarmed, sitting up so fast that she bumped her head against the wall. "I'm...I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to..."
"What's wrong?" asked Rapunzel.
Anna paused to rub the back of her now sore head before responding.
"I...um...didn't realize you were having a private moment," she said sheepishly, and she lifted up her blanket and placed it over her eyes. "I can stay 'in here' until you're done if you want."
She was somewhat surprised when she heard a laugh come from Rapunzel, but was more taken aback by how genuine it was. There was nothing at all mean-spirited about the giggle.
"Honey, we're in prison," she heard her say. "You and I won't be getting any 'private moments' around here. Well, unless you end up in the hole, in which case you'll get plenty of alone time."
"Well, that wouldn't be the worst thing, right?" asked Anna, still hiding under the blanket and refusing to look at her new acquaintance relieving herself. "I mean, who doesn't want personal space when using the toilet?"
"Sheesh, didn't nature ever call when you were in county?" she heard her roommate ask.
"It did, but I had my own cell while in jail," said Anna. "So it wasn't much of an issue."
She didn't dare come out of her "hiding place" until she heard the sound of a toilet flushing, and even then she slowly peeked out from under her blanket like a child watching a horror movie past bedtime in order to make sure the coast was clear.
She was happy to see Rapunzel washing her hands in a sink (but not happy at all to notice that said sink was attached to the toilet), and watched as she returned to the bed, the chain around her ankle rattling a bit as she did so.
"So," said Rapunzel as she sat down. "How long are you in for?"
Anna had been dreading this question.
"Oh, um, I got life," said Anna with a very forced chuckle.
"Really?" said Rapunzel, sounding almost impressed. "You must've been a very bad girl. What did you do?"
Anna had been dreading this question even more than the last one.
"Does it really matter?" she said, hoping that would somehow come across as a suitable answer. "I mean, I did what I did, and now I'm here. What more is there to say?"
Rapunzel gave her a look, her front teeth pressed in front of the bottom of her lips.
"What were you, a serial killer or something?" she asked.
"Oh, no!" went Anna, not wanting to give off that impression at all. "I wasn't nearly that ambitious."
Rapunzel looked like she was about to ask Anna another question, but instead she just placed her hands behind her head and leaned back on her bed.
"Well, I got 20 long ones," she said. "Armed robbery. Me and my husband."
"Oh," said Anna, because she wasn't sure what else to say.
There was a moment of silence after that between the girls. In a way, Anna felt bad for not opening up to "Goldie" more. But at the same time, she didn't want to reveal what had sent her here to someone who was really a total stranger to her at this point. Sure, Rapunzel had told her about what had earned her a free ticket to Frozen Heart. But if Anna had "only" done an armed robbery, she wouldn't have gotten the punishment that she did.
She took a moment, for the first time since arriving, to really get a good look around her cell. As Anna had feared, it wasn't very big at all. The "beds" weren't beds so much as they were just thin mattresses placed on concrete slabs, with orange blankets and stained white sheets and pillows that she could've sworn looked like they were purchased from a third-rate warehouse store that was going out of business. Between the "beds" was the toilet, which Anna was shocked to see was made of stainless steel. Her rear end felt cold just looking at it.
Beyond that, the cell had no other furnishings to speak of. The poor inmate frowned.
There was one thing about the cell, however, that caught Anna's attention, and that was the walls. On Anna's side of the cell, there was just old, green paint that appeared to be close to peeling off of it. But on Rapunzel's side, there was almost an explosion of color, as the walls on her end were filled with cheerful drawings of flowers and fuzzy animals.
"You like them?" Rapunzel asked, somewhat modestly.
"I'm amazed they let you do this," said Anna, her mouth hanging open just a bit more than it should. "I mean, did Warden Elsa...I mean, Warden Andersen...I mean, um...did she really say it was okay?"
Rapunzel just stared at her, her face hard to read, but Anna knew she had said the wrong thing. How could she be so stupid, referring to the warden by name like that on her first day inside? Had she already given her cellie an unintentional hint that Elsa was her sister?
Before she could dwell on this too much, she heard a loud buzzing noise coming from the end of the cellblock.
Rapunzel immediately got up from her bed and stood to her feet, like a well-trained soldier in the military.
"What's going on?" asked Anna.
"Roll call," Rapunzel replied. "But just do what I do and you'll be fine."
Anna nodded nervously, but she had a feeling that "roll call" meant reporting your prison number to a guard...and she couldn't remember even one digit from her's right now!
She forced herself out of bed, picked her hat up from her pillow (she had to assume that Rapunzel had removed it from her head last night), and placed it on. Would she be punished for not knowing her number? Was Elsa into torturing inmates for dumb reasons like that?
She was distracted momentarily by a loud chattering sound, only to quickly realize that the noise was coming from her own teeth.
"Calm down," Rapunzel mouthed at her. And then, out of nowhere, the guard arrived.
"Okay, ladies," said a tough-looking blonde with a haircut that looked just like Rapunzel's, only neater. "I don't enjoy this any more than you do, so just give me your numbers, and I can be on my merry way."
"Prisoner #4229-190091," Rapunzel said in a voice that sounded robotic. She was clearly used to doing this by now.
The guard wrote something down on a pad of paper in a bored manner, then turned to Anna.
"Okay, newbie," she said sternly. "Give me your number."
Anna just stood there frozen, unable to answer.
"Your prison number," said the guard. "T the one you were given this morning. Sound familiar?"
"Ummmm," went Anna, dumbstruck. "I'm...pretty sure there's a five in it?"
The guard slapped her face.
"Perfect," she said. "We have a stupid one. Fine, newbie, I'll cut you a break. Just tell me your last name."
"My...my l-last n-name?" went Anna, stuttering a bit.
"Yes, honey," said the guard, clearly annoyed. "Your last name. Surely you remember that, right?"
Anna looked to Rapunzel and then back to the guard before responding.
"Andersen," she said softly.
The guard looked surprised.
"Andersen?" she went, flipping through her notepad and reading through it. "Anna Andersen?"
Anna gulped.
"Yes, ma'am," she managed to gasp out.
The guard looked at Anna, apparently unable to believe what she had just heard. But then she composed herself.
"Good luck, kid," she said as she began to march off. "You're going to need it."
Anna put her head down, slowly turning around to look at her cellmate, whose eyes were as wide as those of a teenage girl who had just figured out the plot twist in a book she was reading. She could tell that Rapunzel now knew exactly who she was.