A mistake

On Aug. 1, Brooklyn Fresch is released from jail. She falls of the grid. She doesn't call the people in her support system. She doesn't show up at We've Been There, Done That meetings.

Herring and Lindsey seem disappointed but not surprised.

Fresch only lasts 22 days before being charged with prostitution again.

A little over a week after her arrest, in the jail's interview room, she sits down on a hard stool and grabs the phone in front of her. No glued-on eyelashes. No bright smile. None of that bubbly je ne sais quoi that she exuded before.

She's not in restraints, but jail officials say it's best to keep a barrier around her, just in case. She's not the same as she was in 6M1B, they say. And they're right: She feels abandoned – cast aside.

Through the clear divider, she explains her version of what happened when she was released: She says she waited three hours in the hot sun for a caseworker to meet her with hotel vouchers, but no one came. (The mental health organization she claims was supposed to coordinate her housing declined to confirm whether they worked with her, citing HIPAA.)

So she sat, melting as the temperature hit 99 degrees. She thought about the release plan she'd worked so hard to write, and about the progress she'd made. She thought about how hot it was. She thought about what she would give for a ride in an air-conditioned car.

"Where am I going to stay?" she asked herself.

"It was like, everything was out the door," Fresch says into the jail phone. "Out the window. Everything went to s---. Because I was pissed, and I was hurt, like 'Damn. Here I am trying to do the right f---ing thing.' You know, what's next?"

"And then this guy picked me up," she continues. "It was hot. I was sweating like hell. I just wanted to ride around in the AC, and then he was like, 'Well, do you want to get high?'"

By the end of that first day, she'd smoked crack and turned a trick to make money for a hotel that night.

From there, it was the next car, and the next, she says, her story a haunting echo of Lange's. For the next three weeks, hopping in and out of cars became a routine. It felt familiar. She could keep a roof over her head.

Raunda Lindsey talks about the re-entry program at the Harris County Jail

She also hated it. "I was trying to be safe out there. No one attacked me, thank God," she says. "But it's like you're walking on eggshells every day, because you don't know what kind of car you're going to get in or what kind of person you're going to deal with. You don't know what their motive is. You could be thinking they're trying to spend money with you, and they could be out there to hurt you."

On Aug. 23, a Tuesday night, around 9 p.m., she walked to a Church's Chicken near her usual spot on Airline Drive. She had just finished her dinner when a car pulled up. She hopped in: A quick job in a parked car could pay for a place to stay that night.

But something felt off, she says.

"I had an opportunity to get out of the car, because I was like, 'Can you let me out right here?' And I was gonna get out and everything. And I got right back in and was like, 'Let me go make this money. I need it.'"

He was a cop. Undercover vice.

In jail, Fresch could have returned to Tank 6M1B. Instead, she waived her rights to a keep-separate space, choosing a general-population male cell – a dangerous place for a transgender woman. In the gen-pop, she presents herself as a man.

When Herring, the social worker, got wind of Fresch's arrest, she went to Tank 3C1, where Fresch is being housed. She tried to persuade Fresch to return to 6M1B. But Fresch refused: She adamantly didn't want to go back. She says she's fine where she is.

In that refusal, Herring saw embarrassment. Fresch, she believes, fears being ridiculed as the star student who crashed and burned.

A month later, Fresch pleaded guilty to her charge. She was sentenced to six months in the jail, with one month already ticked off.

Herring and Lindsey say they'll keep trying to reach her. Setbacks come with their territory.

"I don't judge a person by their history or my history with them," Lindsey says. She knows how easily the best of plans can melt away.

"Sometimes," says Lindsey, "you have to bump your head one more time."

Maggie Gordon is a Houston Chronicle features reporter. She can be reached by e-mail at Maggie.Gordon@chron.com or by Twitter: @MagEGordon