Hilary Swank Bad.

Levittown Minimum Security Correctional Center, visitor’s area. Afternoon.

YOU: Hey.

YOUR LAWYER: Great news!

YOU: Really?

YOUR LAWYER: We just struck a multi-million dollar deal with Universal Studios for a major motion picture based on the story of your life!

YOU: Wow! Seriously?

YOUR LAWYER: Yes! Destroyed; The Jaqueline Rose Story.

YOU: My last name is Rosen.

YOU LAWYER: Starring Hilary Swank!

YOU (taken aback): Hilary Swank?

YOUR LAWYER: Yes!

YOU (troubled): Well, I mean… Obviously, things aren’t great, but they aren’t that bad. I mean, they’re not Hilary Swank bad.

YOUR LAWYER: Sure they are. You and your retarded brother…

YOU: My brother is dyslexic.

YOUR LAWYER: …Abandoned by your parents at a young age

YOU: My Dad got transferred to Phoenix and we stayed with my grandmother, so we wouldn’t have to switch high schools.

YOUR LAWYER: Your only care taker a cruelly demented, senile old woman sliding into madness and poverty.

YOU: My grandmother is the senior HR director for Pfizer, she isn’t senile.

YOUR LAWYER: The studio has agreed to pay your grandmother three million dollars a year to be senile for the rest of her life.

YOU: Wait a minute! You can’t just “be senile.” You either are senile or you’re not.

YOUR LAWYER: Have you ever read The Secret?

YOU: What?

YOUR LAWYER: Never mind… Then you get railroaded by a corrupt system and sent to prison for a crime you didn’t commit.

YOU: Ok, hold on. It is true that I didn’t know, when I drove off, that I had hit that parked car. But I think we can all agree that had something to do with the bottle of wine I drank all by myself at my ex-boyfriend’s dinner party, after he introduced the “new lady in his life.” I mean, Jesus, so much for “staying friends.”

YOU LAWYER: But does all of that keep you down? No it doesn’t. You go right to the prison library and study until you can become a doctor!

YOU: I do?

YOUR LAWYER: And you go on to use your new found medical skills to save a fellow inmate’s life!

YOU: They gave a mandatory first aid course in the common room and two weeks later I gave Sally Hendricks the Heimlich when she choked on a Vienna sausage.

YOUR LAWYER: That’s right! And not just any inmate, but your arch nemesis, who has wanted to shank you from your first day on the cell block.

YOU: She called me a bitch because I changed the channel when she was watching America’s Next Top Model. She apologized at dinner.

YOU LAWYER: This is going to be huge. Guaranteed Oscars all the way around. Oprah might keep her show on the air just to interview you with the cast!

YOU (getting overwhelmed): Ok! Wait a minute! Just give me a moment to think about this. (you stand up and begin to pace) Wow… Hilary Swank? Hilary… (you stop pacing)  Are my teeth really that big?

YOUR LAWYER: Don’t worry about that.

YOU: Really?

YOUR LAWYER: We’ll get you caps.

YOU: Now, Just wait right…

YOUR LAWYER (opening his briefcase and pulling out contracts): So, the offer is twenty-five million up front, with five percent of ticket sales and three percent of DVD.

YOU: …

YOUR LAWYER (extends pen)

YOU (taking pen): Tell Ms. Swank that it is an honor to have an actress of her caliber telling my story.

YOUR LAWYER: Oh that’s another thing, Hilary’s people have asked that you not attempt to communicate with her in any way or contact her in any form. And we need you to fall in love with, and marry, a guard.

YOU: Which guard?

YOUR LAWYER (gesturing towards an overweight, extremely nearsighted gentleman in a poorly fitting uniform, closely examining something he has just picked off his face.) That one.

YOU: … Ok.