The Free

by Lauren McLaughlin

  “Worthrop Middle School.”

  “I know some people there. I can put some eyes on her. You’re a good brother. Girl’s lucky to have you. I hope she realizes that. No father around. Mother maybe not so reliable.”

  That’s a generous way of putting it.

  “You’re all she’s got,” he goes on. “I know how it is. You want to get out of here as soon as possible so you can keep an eye on her. Makes perfect sense. I’ll tell you what, if you do get busted for perjury—and believe me, there is no way that’s happening—but if you do, I will personally look out for your sister. What’s her name again? Jeanette?”

  “Janelle.”

  He nods, glancing toward the door. The color has come back to his cheeks. He’s his old carefree self again. “Janelle,” he says. “Right. Pretty name. I’ll look out for her myself. Heck I’ll drive her to and from school if you want. Make sure she gets home safe and sound. How’s that?”

  “Yeah. Thanks, Mr. Flannery.”

  I don’t tell him that getting home safe and sound isn’t the problem. Janelle can do that on her own. It’s being home that’s the problem.

  Chapter 12

  On Monday, my lawyer, Mr. Slater, returns to that conference room with two detectives. They’re the same ones who questioned me after the thing with Sal Christaldi.

  “We were hoping you could have a look at these,” one of them says. He’s Hispanic, with a friendly face. He slides an open laptop toward me.

  “I told Jill Levy you didn’t catch the giant’s name,” Slater says. “But maybe you’ll recognize his face.”

  “Just use the down arrow to scroll through them,” the Hispanic detective says. The other detective, white, older, says nothing. He’s expecting me to screw this up somehow.

  After a while, the faces start to blend together, one white delinquent after another. Healy’s picture is on the f ifth page. He looks lost, like he meant to show up for a school photo and wound up getting a mug shot instead.

  Healy’s a mixed bag. I met him two years ago at this rancid shelter in Revere, one of the worst hellholes I’ve ever called home, and there is some stiff competition for that title. He was running with a gang of losers who called themselves “the Revered.” Nobody else called them that. They were small time, mostly hung around the stairwells drinking, smoking pot, sold a dime bag here and there. I f igured the best way to keep them off my back was to throw them a pack of cigarettes every now and then, which actually worked. That’s how lame they were. Banger wannabes.

  When my mom moved us from Revere to Worthrop, I forgot all about Patrick Healy. He didn’t make much of an impression on me and I would have thought it was vice versa. But then I got expelled from Worthrop High over an incident between my f ist and some white kid’s nose. I wound up at Donverse Voke and Healy went out of his way to take me under his wing there. It was like he had a completely different memory of our time at that shelter, like we were good friends or something. I f igured it was all the pot he smoked. Or maybe he had me confused with another kid in that gang. There was this young kid who looked a little bit like me.

  Whatever the reason, Healy was all about showing me the lay of the land at Donverse. It was basically reject central unless you were in the auto program. And the auto program was reject central unless you were on Mr. Flannery’s crew. Healy was a serious student of the automotive arts by then. He was out of that shelter and out of the Revered. The dope and the booze were behind him too. They had to be or else Mr. Flannery wouldn’t take him on. He had to pee in a cup just like everyone else, even though he was Flannery’s nephew or third cousin or whatever. It was real big of Healy to make that introduction, to vouch for me like that. I wouldn’t have done the same thing for him. I’m sure of it.

  “Any luck?” the white cop asks me. He has that look, like no matter what I say it’s going to be wrong.

  “Nope,” I tell him. “Not in there.”

  He looks at my lawyer.

  The Hispanic cop takes his laptop back. “Thanks for trying,” he says.

  When they’re gone I ask Slater what Sal Christaldi has said.

  “He’s still a bit groggy on the details,” he tells me. “Maybe needs some time to recover from those injuries.”

  “What about the perjury charge?”

  “The ADA’s got other priorities right now,” Slater says. “But that could change. All it takes is one detail to fall into place and the whole case gets reopened. My advice to you is the same advice I gave you before: if you know the kid’s name, tell me. It’s never too late.”

  When he’s gone and I have the room to myself, a wave of relief washes over me. Maybe it’s wrong to appreciate this stroke of luck, on account of it coming on the back of Sal Christaldi’s injuries. Maybe those injuries have wiped out his memory. That would be sad. Tragic even. But it wasn’t me who gave him those injuries. It was Pat Healy. I never touched the guy.

  Chapter 13

  Later in English class, while my teacher drones on, I start daydreaming about my performance in that conference room. I wish Mr. Flannery could have seen me scan right past Healy’s photo without f linching. Sure, I was f linching inside. I was pissing myself. But outside I was a tall cool glass of lemonade. Mr. Flannery was right. It’s one thing to threaten someone with a perjury rap. It’s another thing to make it stick. That ADA has nothing. She thought she could dangle six months and make me sing like a scared little punk, but she was wrong about that. Isaac West has nerves of steel.

  It’s stif ling hot in that classroom. The low ceiling feels like a vice, and there are too many desks for the twelve kids, which makes it seem like a loser’s birthday party. The teacher is this bald white buzzard named Mr. Perkins. He hates his job, and right now he’s taking it out on this girl named Nyla, forcing her to stand up in front of everyone to read her “essay” on cats, which is just about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.

  But even that can’t wreck my mood. I’m golden. Ten days into my sentence, and all I have to do is keep my head down and keep my mouth shut, just like I promised Mr. Flannery. Haverland isn’t so bad, now that I understand how it works. Most of the guys are pure scum, but as long as you stay out of their faces, they’ll leave you alone. Maybe a punch or two here and there, just so some loser can make a point. But I can weather that. And I have no problem staying out of people’s faces. It’s one of my talents.

  Twenty more days in here and I’ll be back in the free and back on the plan. It’s a good plan too. Maybe not the kind of plan any guidance counselor would recommend, but what do they know? They don’t live in my world. In my world, the only power you have is the money you make. Most guys use it to buy themselves junk—cars, drugs, girls, gold teeth, dumbass chains to wear around their necks. Not Isaac West. I’m buying something better. Freedom. Not for myself either, but for Janelle. My own freedom will come later, after Janelle’s squared away.

  “Cats are clean because they always cleaning they-selves.” Nyla’s weave has come loose, leaving a strip of fuzz at her hairline. She’s still pretty though, tall and strong-looking. “And dogs eat they own mess so they’re not clean at all.” That’s the gist of Nyla’s essay. Cats are better than dogs.

  My classes have been f illed with Nylas all my life. She comes off about as smart as that stained whiteboard behind her. But you get that girl talking about something she cares about—her friends, her favorite rapper, some wild party she escaped right before the cops showed up—and she’s as sharp as anyone. Mr. Perkins will never get at those smarts. He’s not even trying. All he cares about is turning Nyla’s four idiot sentences into a better essay, with a “thesis statement” and a “counterargument.”

  Personally, I agree with Nyla. Cats are better than dogs. They know how to keep to themselves. Dogs are always up in people’s faces, begging for approval or picking f ights with each other over territory, just like the losers in this place. I�
��ll take a cat any old day.

  The door opens and a guard pokes his head in. “Isaac West?”

  Mr. Perkins scans the room. He has no idea which delinquent staring back at him is Isaac West. My f irst instinct is to hide under my desk. But I know that’s pointless, so I raise my hand.

  “Come with me,” the guard says.

  Ms. Jomolca’s off ice is so cramped there’s barely enough room for me to pull out the green vinyl chair and sit. Her big metal desk is wedged in on a diagonal, and Ms. Jomolca, who barely reaches f ive feet, looks like she’s been dropped in by a crane. I can hardly see her over the mountain of books, papers, and folders between us.

  “You’ve had a busy couple of days,” she says. “Meeting with your lawyer, a couple of detectives. Looked at some mug shots, did we?”

  I nod. I’m not saying anything unless I have to.

  “Did you bring your notebook? Are you carrying it everywhere?”

  “Yup,” I tell her. “It’s right here.”

  She takes it from me and f lips to the last page, where I’ve written my crime story.

  “‘I was bored one night so I decided to steal a car,’” she reads. “‘It was late, blah blah blah.’” She scans down the page. “Okay, here we go. ‘I punched him back once and he fell over and didn’t get up. I got back in the car and drove it away.’” She turns to the next page, which is blank. “That’s it?”

  I nod.

  “So where’s the giant?”

  “The what?”

  “The giant. The white guy. The abominable snowman who was with you that night.”

  “Um, my lawyer said—”

  “This has nothing to do with your lawyer. This is about you, Isaac, and the fact that this crime story is a f iction.”

  Ms. Jomolca has tiny adorable features, but when she’s mad, she can scowl like nobody’s business. There is nothing I can say that won’t make an already shitty situation worse, so I keep my mouth shut.

  “Was there or was there not another individual present?” she barks at me. She looks like she wants to launch herself over that desk and throttle me if I don’t answer. All I can do is stare at my hands, like I always do, that damn giveaway. But I have to think before I answer. How much does she know? How much do I have to tell her? Will she go to the ADA? Is there a conf identiality thing here?

  Finally she sighs. “Okay, let me ask you this, Isaac. Do you like it here?”

  “Huh?” I look up.

  “At Haverland. Do you like it here?”

  “It’s all right.”

  She’s smirking now. “Really. Just all right? Not excellent? Not fantastic? Not so wonderful you want to stay here for as long as possible?”

  A trick question. Obviously. But what’s the right answer?

  “It’s . . . um . . . it’s . . . f ine?”

  She digs through the pile of folders on her desk and pulls one out that has my name typed on the tab. She opens it and starts leaf ing through the papers. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Thirty days. You’re here for thirty days, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So am I to understand that thirty days isn’t enough? You’re hoping for more than that?”

  My pulse picks up a little bit. “What are you saying?”

  She shoves a stack of papers in my face. “What does that say?” She fumbles around her desk for a highlighter, then marks up one word. “Read that.”

  “Contingent?”

  “Contingent. Exactly. You do know what contingent means, right? Shall we look it up?” She types the word into her laptop. “Here we go. ‘Contingent : occurring or existing only if certain circumstances are the case; dependent on.’” She angles her laptop toward me so I can read it. “Do you understand what that means, Isaac?”

  I nod. I can read. I’m not stupid.

  “Your thirty-day sentence is contingent upon your successful completion of the program here,” she says.

  I nod again. “Okay.”

  She shakes her head. “No, it’s not okay. Because you decided to come in here and lie. Don’t even open your mouth right now. Just sit there and listen. I’ve been at this ten years, Isaac. Believe me, I can spot a liar. And thieves are the worst. Pimps, drug dealers? Nine times out of ten, they’re so proud of what they’ve done, they can’t wait to tell you all about it. But thieves, yeah, they know how to lie. And this?” She holds up my notebook. “I can’t believe you thought you’d get something like this past us.” She tears the offending page out of it. “Is this what you told the police?”

  I blink at her.

  “And they believed it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well that is some shoddy police work, but in here we have higher standards.” She rips the page down the middle and tosses it into the trashcan. “As of now, we are in a bullshit-free zone. I don’t care what you tell your lawyer or the police or the ADA. What I do care about is what you write in that notebook, and what you tell your team. Honesty is the only thing that matters in here, Isaac. You don’t bring that to the table, then you don’t get out of here in thirty days. Comprende?”

  “Yes, Ms. Jomolca. I . . . wait, what?”

  “This program is not voluntary. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. It’s a condition of your sentence. Why are you looking at me like that? Didn’t your lawyer explain this to you?”

  Slater never explained anything to me. He barely said a word that day in court. He spent all his time speaking to the judge in some language I couldn’t understand. Thirty days was the takeaway. I understood that part just f ine.

  “See, how it works is I have to write up a report at the end of your sentence telling the judge how you did in here. And what the judge wants to hear is that you worked your program and came out a changed young man. And that’s not some vague promise, Isaac. That’s not you standing in front of the judge saying, ‘Why, yes, Your Honor, I am a changed young man.’ That’s you working your program and being able to identify the errors you made. That’s you taking full responsibility for those errors, understanding them, and equipping yourself with the mental and behavioral strategies to avoid them in the future.”

  Ms. Jomolca pauses, maybe to make sure I’ve understood so far. Yes, I understand. But I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say, if I’m supposed to say anything at all.

  “The f irst order of business in all of that is telling the truth,” she continues. “The whole truth. What have you got now, twenty days? That’s not a lot of time. In fact, that may not be enough time to get through the layers of BS you have now introduced into this situation. You have basically wasted the f irst ten days of your program. No, worse than that, you’ve taken yourself backward. We’ve got to play catch up now just to get you back to where most kids start out. So I’d suggest you get yourself busy, Mr. West.” A brief smile f lashes across her face. “Because I want to be able to write up a glowing report about you. I want to be able to use all my favorite words, like transformation and renewed sense of empathy. You know who else likes those words, Isaac?”

  I shake my head. I want to understand her now.

  “The judge. He hears words like that, they make him feel wise about handing down lenient sentences like the one you got. And believe me, Isaac, wise is how a judge wants to feel. You make him feel unwise, he’ll send you back here until your eighteenth birthday.”

  “What?” I shout.

  “Oh for crying out loud, Isaac, did your lawyer explain anything to you?”

  My heart races. “He said thirty days.”

  “Yes. Thirty days, pending the successful completion of your program. You have to pay attention to the details. You have to ask questions when you don’t understand something.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. Look, that’s all behind you now anyway. That’s the sentence you got, and if I were you, I
wouldn’t complain about it. You took the rap for sending a man into a coma, Isaac. If you ask me, that sentence was a gift. You’re lucky you didn’t wind up at Metro or John Jay. Haverland’s a f ield day compared to where you could have been sentenced. Now, if you want to get out of here, you’re going to have to give back. You do want to get out of here, right?”

  My throat dries up. “Yes.”

  “Good. So here’s what we’re going to do. You have group in . . .” She checks the time on her phone. “Twelve minutes. That should be enough time. I’m going to sit here and you are going to rewrite your crime story while I watch.”

  She hands me the notebook along with a pen.

  I stare at her openmouthed.

  “Go ahead,” she says. “Twelve minutes and counting. Either you write down what really happened that night, or you better make yourself comfortable in that cell of yours, because you’re going to be there for a while.”

  Chapter 14

  “Whenever you’re ready, Isaac.”

  Dr. Horton does his best to sound reassuring, but it doesn’t help. No matter how you look at it, I’m surrounded, ambushed. My so-called teammates are staring at me like I’ve personally insulted each and every one of them. Now it’s payback time.

  There’s no point in stalling. The deed is done. The crime story is written, spilled out under Ms. Jomolca’s nasty scowl. All that’s left is to say it out loud.

  May 27th. We drove to Waverly in my partner’s pickup truck. We parked by the side of this vacant lot. Around the corner there was a cul de sac with four big mansions on it. We got out of the truck and just listened for half an hour. There were no lights on and nobody was making a sound. It was my job to handle the tow line, so I got that out of the back of the pick-up and hooked it up. Then we waited again to see if the noise woke anyone up. It was real quiet. All I could hear was the wind. We went to the driveway where the Escalade was parked. We knew the alarm was disabled, because it has this blinking red light inside that tells you when it’s on.