“Mom, I want Janelle to be safe too.”
She snorts.
“Oh come on. When have I ever wanted anything else?”
“You don’t know what’s best for that girl. You’re not her mother.”
“All I’m saying is maybe the two of you could use a break from each other.”
As she sizes me up, I can’t help myself. I dare to hope that some part of her will jump at the chance to let both of us go—maybe to focus on rehab or, more likely, to drown herself in gin. No matter how crap you are as a mother, it still must be hard raising two kids on your own. Hell, I’m offering her a vacation, something she probably thinks she deserves.
But her face turns from suspicious to bitter. She doesn’t want a vacation; she wants company. That’s what Janelle is to her now that I’m in juvie: a companion, a sounding board. If she had a boyfriend to complain to or a friend to conf ide in, she wouldn’t be here searching for Janelle at all. She might not even have noticed Janelle was missing or that I’m locked up. But living alone in that pigsty of an apartment, with no one to clean up after her and no one to complain to about the mess? No way am I selling that to her. I should have known. Now I’ve made her my enemy. She’s pissed at me for trying to manipulate her, just like she’s pissed at the world for its never-ending shitstorm of bad luck.
No one has ever been unluckier than Karen West. Just ask her. Good luck rang her bell once, realized it was her living there, and split before she opened the door.
Boo-eff ing-hoo.
My mother has never, not once in all my life, taken a single scrap of responsibility for the shit that happens to her. No matter how many times I’ve dragged her passed-out ass off the bathroom f loor or mopped up her puke, she’s always the victim. She can wake up from a stone-cold blackout midtirade and not once spare a thought for her own contribution to the situation. She even blamed the gin once for being “so goddamn full of alcohol.”
“I’m telling you the girl is trouble,” she tells me. “I know you like to pretend she’s a little angel, but come on.” She forces a little putt-putt of a laugh through those thin lips. “You know as well as I do that she ain’t no angel.” Her cold blue eyes pin me to that bench. “Isn’t that right, Isaac.”
A f lash of something goes through me. Ice water. Or f ire. A voice in my head hisses a single word:
Ashland.
That’s how it comes to me when it comes, like a snake winding itself around my ankles.
Ashland.
It never goes away for good. It always comes back.
Ashland.
Sometimes it settles like a cold draft and I can’t shake it off, can’t get warm.
If I was in the orange-rug room right now, Dr. Horton would be pointing that f inger at me and saying, “That! Right there. Let’s focus on that.”
But I can’t. Ashland is a place I can never return to.
Even though I’m always there.
I slump onto the table, catch my forehead on my f ists.
“Aww, come on, Isaac,” my mother says.
“Why can’t you just leave her alone?” It comes out like a whimper.
“Don’t be stupid. I need her. You know that. Things ain’t right at home. I’m sick. My insides are damaged. I can’t do it no more.”
“Then stop.”
“And how we supposed to eat?”
I lift my head off the table and look at her, try to f ind a wavelength we can share, some way to get her to understand me, to understand the way the rest of the world thinks. “Why don’t you just get a job?”
This shuts her right down. “Why don’t you mind your business? Get a job. Yeah, like they’re just dropping out of the trees. What the hell do you know? Get a job. Nobody’s offering jobs to me, Isaac. We are broke. In case you didn’t notice. And you know they’re going to throw us out of that apartment. It’s not free. It’s only subsidized. And them damn neighbors . . .”
She goes on for a while about the stoners next door—how nosy they are and what hypocrites. Smoking pot all day, then complaining about the so-called noise she makes. I let her speak because there’s nothing I can do now. I’m at the bottom of my own sinkhole, staring up at her like I’m about to be f lushed. That’s what it’s like to be Karen West’s son. It’s like drowning in slow motion.
But that’s nothing. It’s even worse to be her daughter.
She rambles on and on. She can go for hours. Ticking off all the ways the world is screwing her. It’s the same list, with different names. Landlords, neighbors, people looking at her funny, people judging. I try to block out her voice so I won’t remember any of the names. I don’t want those people in my head. And I can’t take her side anymore. I can’t even pretend to. It costs too much. I’ve got nothing left.
“Janelle’s got to come back to me. I really need her right now.” My mother slouches forward, trying to draw me back. She likes it when I take her side. It’s what she craves more than anything: a united front against all enemies, especially Janelle.
God, how she hates Janelle.
But her voice is noise now, a mindless hum of empty sounds, pure nonsense. I know why she needs Janelle back. She doesn’t have to say it. She can’t say it. She doesn’t have that kind of courage. But she knows I know. She makes me think it. Makes me dig it up out of that box where I keep it. The one labeled Ashland. The one buried deep at the bottom of my soul, beneath the rot and a thick layer of forgetting that only sometimes works.
Chapter 19
It’s cold and bright out in the yard the next day. I roam the perimeter on my own for a while, let Cardo and the Disciples give me the stink eye. There’s nothing to be gained from challenging me. I’m small-time. As soon as I’m back in the free, they’ll forget all about me. And I’ll be there soon, fourteen days to be exact, which is a hell of a lot better than what Cardo’s facing. I sit down with my notebook and pretend to write.
A few seconds later there’s a commotion by the entrance to the yard. A few catcalls and some whistles, then Stanley Huang shuff les out into the harsh sunlight like a quivering noodle. The rest of the geeks follow him, trying to be invisible. And failing. Badly. The geeks almost never come out to the yard. They have some arrangement with the warden that lets them stay in the computer room. But here they all are, venturing out into “the rectangle of pain,” as they like to call it. They look as out of place as they must feel, like china teacups set loose in a cage of hammers.
When Deon spots me, he whacks Huang on the chest then leads everyone over.
I close my eyes and brace myself. The geeks are of no use to me out in the yard. Even sitting with them at lunch is only slightly better than sitting alone. When they arrive, Little Anthony, a skinny white Italian kid from Revere who’s no bigger than Janelle’s stuffed Tigger, hugs his arms against the cold and bounces on his toes. “Man, it’s cold out here.” Here comes out as heeyah.
Deon tells him to stop being such a pussy.
Salim, a Pakistani stringbean, stops shivering too. He’s scared of Deon. He’s scared of everything, and I don’t blame him. He’s got wide black eyes and probably weighs even less than Anthony. I wonder if he’ll survive in here. I wonder what put him here in the f irst place.
“What the hell are you guys doing?” I ask them in a low voice.
“We got something to tell you,” Deon says.
I look at Huang. “What? Are you kicking me out of the computer class or something?”
“Nobody’s kicking anybody out,” Deon says. “But listen, Little Anthony’s been reading your emails, and—”
“What?”
“Chill out,” Deon says. “Little Ant reads everyone’s emails.”
Little Anthony, still shivering but with his arms pressed to his sides, nods. “I have problems with boundaries.”
“Yeah,” Deon says. “You need to get ov
er the whole privacy thing.”
“Privacy’s so last century,” Huang adds.
So the prick’s a philosopher too. Good for him.
“Anyway,” Deon says. “Little Ant showed me and Huang and we decided to do some research.”
Huang gestures toward the redhead. “It was mostly Fitzpatrick.”
Fitzpatrick is busy scanning the yard for anything that looks like a threat, which is basically everything and everyone. “Yeah,” he says. “We were wondering if you’ve thought about foster care for your sister, ’coz, like maybe your mother’s not in a position to take care of her right now?”
I’m still pretty freaked out about the fact that they’ve been reading my emails. The idea that this band of criminal nerds is in possession of intimate personal details about my family is something I can’t even make room for yet. I’m going to have to take some time over that one.
“What? Because she’s a drunk?” I say.
“Well, yeah,” Fitzpatrick says. “That and the fact that she’s . . .”
Fitzpatrick is a wise man not to f inish that sentence.
“Anyway,” he goes on. “That Mrs. Rodriguez lady, she could apply to be Janelle’s foster mother. Make the whole thing legit.”
“Get some money out of it too,” Deon adds.
“See, my brother’s in foster care,” Fitzpatrick explains. “And his foster mom, Julia, she’s this really nice lady over in Saugus, and she said she’d help walk Mrs. Rodriguez through the whole process. She says a lot of the Hispanics do this kind of thing for free, but if they went through the right channels, they could get money from the state. You just have to prove your mother’s unf it.”
I laugh. If there’s a guidebook on how to be an unf it mother, Karen West’s picture is on the cover. Unf it mothers the world over could learn a thing or two from Karen West.
“That guidance counselor your sister mentioned should be able to help with that too,” Little Anthony says. “The one at her school? He seems to be taking a real interest in her. That’ll help.”
“So you’ve read all of my emails?”
“Except for the spam. You need to upgrade your f il—”
Little Anthony was going to say “f ilter.” I know this because I’ve heard people batting the word around in the computer room. But Little Anthony never has the chance to f inish the word or the thought, because he’s too busy getting thrown away—and by that I mean being literally lifted off the ground and tossed aside like crumpled-up garbage—by Flavio Pendon. Little Anthony isn’t even his target. He’s just in the way. Pendon is coming for me, all the while machine-gunning something in Spanish I can’t understand.
There’s no way out of this one. It’s either f ight this psycho or let everyone see me run away like a pussy. So I get ready, ball my hands into f ists. I f igure I’ll go straight for the throat, one punch. Maybe that’ll be enough to get him on the ground. Maybe the guards will see it before the rest of the Disciples jump in. That’s my only hope, because if the Disciples decide they want me on the ground, or under it, I’m history. And nothing my new geek friends have to say on the subject will make any difference.
It’s my lucky day, though. Miracle of miracles: I’m not Pendon’s target either.
Salim is. Salim actually has a couple of inches on Pendon, but they’re a scrawny couple of inches, nothing that’ll help him in a f ight. If anything, they expand the bull’s-eye Pendon has, for whatever reason, plastered on him.
A few yards away, Cardo and the other Disciples look on. They’re curious but not jumping in yet—just letting us know they’re ready, they’re locked and loaded. I keep looking for Mig, their leader, to come and get his boy, but he’s nowhere in sight. Pendon’s on his own. He’s freestyling. The other Disciples draw closer, form that half circle again. I know what that half circle means: any of you geek turds make a move on our boy, you just declared war on the Disciples of Vice.
Well, they can chill the hell out on that one. If anything is for damn sure, it’s that the geeks are not stupid. They’re a bunch of pussies. And I mean that with all due respect. If you can’t defend yourself with your f ists, your weapons, or your posse, being a pussy is basically your best and only defense. All the geeks have to do—and I think they know it—is ride out Pendon’s tirade until he runs out of steam.
And they’re riding. They’re taking it like bitches. It’s a perfect performance.
Until Memmo—Mexican, f luent in Spanish—decides to f lip the script on the silent treatment. He’s only trying to be helpful, providing a little translation service for Salim, who, if he does speak anything besides English, it sure ain’t Spanish.
This does not go over well with Pendon. He puts his tirade on hold, takes a breather from Salim and steps straight up into Memmo’s business. Memmo’s the shortest guy at Haverland, basically the size of a third grader, so now he’s looking up at this pissed-off Disciple like one of those babies in a sling, his dumb brown eyes blinking, blinking, blinking, like he’s surprised Pendon’s mad at him.
“What’s going on?” Fitzpatrick mutters.
Shut up! I think to myself. Do these people not know the script? When a pissed-off Disciple of Vice has something to get off his chest, especially one as crazy as Flavio Pendon, you sit tight and leave him to it. You don’t go asking for an explanation. But I don’t say anything because I am trying to disappear. My plan is to blend right in to the brick wall behind me. If anyone happens to look in my direction, all they’ll see is a light brown smear of mud. That’s what I’m hoping.
Memmo’s in rare form today. He’s left his brain in his cell. He actually answers Fitzpatrick’s idiot question.
“He says he don’t like what Salim wrote in that movie review.”
“What?” Fitzpatrick says, his pink face all pinched up. “You mean that review of Deadpool ? In the newsletter? He actually read it?”
“He says it disrespecting his man.”
“But it was a good review,” Fitzpatrick says.
Who cares? I want to scream. The problem here isn’t some stupid movie review. It’s the pissed off Disciple with an army at his back.
“It’s ’coz he said it was better than X-Men,” Memmo explains. “And X-Men his favorite movie.”
Just then, Pendon backs away from Memmo to shake his head in disbelief. These two, Memmo and Fitzpatrick, have just inserted themselves into a dispute he had with Salim and Salim alone. Now he’s got to f igure out what to do about them. He scans the geeks until he spots me up against that wall. I hold my hands out in front of me like, This ain’t my f ight. I’ve got nothing to add. Pendon fumes for a few seconds while he makes up his mind about something. He’s got a lot to think about now. The reasons for justif iable, possibly even necessary, violence just keep adding up.
This is not the f irst time I have witnessed this f lavor of bullshit, either inside Haverland or out. But that doesn’t mean it’s predictable. There are all kinds of wild cards. A shiv in the waistband. A signal to the Disciples. A yard-wide riot. It’s not choreography we’re doing here. It’s chaos.
For one blessed moment, it seems like Pendon has run out of ammo. Maybe he’s thinking that Salim, Memmo, and Fitzpatrick are such a lowly trio of juvie pussies he doesn’t need to waste any more time on them. And his posse is in no hurry to escalate this. They’re hanging back, showing their support, but no way are they looking to brawl. Pendon turns to go, and I can feel the relief running through all the geeks.
But then, two paces out, he spins around and drops Salim with a professional-grade right hook.
Salim goes down like a sack of onions.
He doesn’t get up either. I can’t tell if he’s unconscious or faking it. Either scenario is f ine as long as it puts an end to this. And it should put an end to it. Pendon’s said his piece, landed his punch, upped his cred as the baddest dog in the Disciples pack.
Surely a knockout punch of that caliber is enough payback for one stupid movie review, right? Nope. This particular Disciple plays by his own rules. And those rules involve raining down more fury in one beat down than most people see in a lifetime.
Deon, Huang, and Little Anthony can’t just watch anymore. They start clawing at Pendon’s back. The other geeks start circling, like they want to help but they don’t know how. I’m still sitting against that wall, trying to blend in. When I stand up, hoping to sneak the hell out of there, I catch Cardo staring at me.
That’s when I f igure out why he and his friends are standing where they are. They’re positioned there to block the view of the guards. Everyone else in the yard read that signal perfectly too. Even the ones who want in hang back.
I do not want in. This is not my f ight. I never read that newsletter. I never watched those movies. I’ve got no opinion on any of this.
Eventually, the guards run over and peel Pendon off of Salim, then march everyone—myself included—to the door. The rest of the Disciples watch us go. Just what they wanted. They played the whole thing perfectly.
Chapter 20
Nobody disputes that the f ight was instigated by Flavio Pendon, drug dealer, man-slaughterer, and middle ranking Disciple of Vice. The guards do not blame Salim for writing that review or Memmo for volunteering his translation services or even (and I actually disagree with them on this one) Fitzpatrick for trying to talk sense into the guy. Only Pendon gets sent to solitary with a mark on his record that will make a star appearance at his next court date.
This is a mixed blessing, since Pendon will eventually be released from solitary. He’ll be in the same cafeteria and, in some cases, the same classes as the geeks. The odds of someone like Flavio Pendon using his stint in solitary to examine his “rage issues” or his demented allegiance to the movie X-Men are long. If anything, he’ll come out with a chip on his shoulder about the whole thing.
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