His second cellmate was also a lifer, and friendly enough, but after a few days the man asked to be paired with another lifer, so John was moved again. John requested and received a new cell assignment. Something about him seemed a little off, and that night, John says he awoke and saw this man sitting at a desk, wide awake, and staring right at him. His first cellmate was an older man, black like John, who was serving a life sentence, and he didn’t say much. But he also noticed that he was one of the youngest prisoners on the block. Over the next few days, while bringing trays of food around the blocks for his new kitchen job, John would learn that he had been placed in one of the nicer units (another he saw “looked like a basement, with the lights busted out”). Once inside, he could try grimacing to look tough, as he had in his early mugshots, though he couldn’t hide his skinny frame or his high-pitched voice.

Standing in a line with several dozen other men, John stripped off his navy blue scrubs, squatted, and coughed to prove he wasn’t hiding anything. This story was produced in collaboration with The Atlantic.