The Free

by Lauren McLaughlin

  Deon is in heaven. He’s writing an exposé on the corrupt Donverse police force. It’s not just GTA. There are rumors of drugs and prostitution too. “Pure gold,” in Deon’s words. He’s emailing back and forth with Jill Levy. I’m not sure how much actual information she’s feeding him, but she told him he has “chutzpah,” which apparently is Jewish for balls.

  ~

  A few days later I’m in the cafeteria with my tray and Cecil Boone waves me over to his table with the Bank Street Boys. Since you do not say no to Cecile Boone or Bank Street, I head on over.

  “Everyone loved your poem,” I tell him. “Got a lot of great feedback.” I make sure this is loud enough for his friends to hear.

  Cecil beams. “I got another one for you,” he says. “Can’t sleep no more. I’m writing all the time. Whyn’t you sit down. We got space for you.”

  Bank Street inviting me to sit with them? Believe you me, I am tempted. Having Cecil Boone and the Bank Street Boys catching your back is not something you take lightly. But then I catch a glimpse of Deon and the boys at the geek table.

  “Man, I would love to join you,” I tell him, “hear all about your new poem and everything, but I . . . um . . . I got some newsletter business to discuss with Deon and the geeks. You know how it is. Keeps us hella busy. All kinds of folks submitting to us now.”

  “You gonna have room for mine?”

  “There’s always room for you, Cecil.”

  I put my back to Cecil and the Bank Street Boys. I know there won’t be any drama. Truth be told, because of my position on The Free—not to mention the fact that I helped put away a bunch of cops—I could probably sit anywhere I want to. But I’m sticking with the geeks because they stuck by me.

  Chapter 51

  About three weeks later, Janelle comes to visit me. She has this new winter coat that looks mad expensive, with zippers and Velcro everywhere. Her hair is in neat braids in a spiral around her head. When we hug, she smells different, like a farm I guess. It reminds me of that time we snuck into the Topsf ield Fair and had to hide behind the horse stable until it was safe to come out.

  “So, you’re a farm girl now.”

  I don’t tell her that she smells like a farm. I’m so happy to see her, she could smell like a sewer and I’d be okay with it. She looks healthy and happy. That’s what matters.

  “I can’t wait for you to come,” she says. “Edson and Jo Jo are dying to meet you. They’re waiting outside.”

  Edson and Jo Jo are the old couple who run the farm. He’s a poet (an actually published poet), and she’s a horticulturalist, whatever that means.

  “Maybe later,” I tell her. “So you still like it there? They have showers and everything?”

  “Oh God, I smell like a goat, don’t I?” She sniffs her coat. “I don’t even notice it anymore. It’s from milking them, I guess.”

  “Goats?”

  “Yup. Every morning. That’s one of my jobs.”

  “So, they’ve got you working.”

  “Yeah, but we take classes too. And they are super strict about our schoolwork. They’re, like, scholars, you know. And then there’s these tests we have to take for the state or something ’coz of being a charter school. Then on Saturday morning, we have the market, and I get to run the cash register. You would not believe what people will pay for eggs, Isaac. And goat’s milk. We sell raw goat’s milk. I didn’t know milk was cooked. Did you know that? Did you know that the milk you drink is cooked?”

  I have never known anything about milk, except that there’s plain and chocolate.

  “You’re gonna love it there, Isaac.”

  “Is Mom still calling you?”

  “Ugh. I wish she didn’t have their number. She was calling every day, but I told her I’d only talk to her once a week. She’s drinking again.”

  I knew it wouldn’t take long. She held out for almost a month, which is a record for her. Stupidly, I allowed myself to hope that it would be different this time. But why would it be? Some people can’t change. If you keep waiting around for it, you’re the jerk, not them.

  “I do worry about her sometimes,” Janelle says.

  “Don’t. Worry about yourself. Mom is not your problem.”

  “Yeah, I know, but what’s gonna happen to her?”

  This is a conversation I’ve been dreading. Janelle is under the impression that I’m coming to live on the farm as soon as my sentence is up. I never told her I was, but I never told her I wasn’t, either. I had to make sure she settled in there. I didn’t want her getting ideas about coming home once I get out of Haverland.

  “Isaac? What aren’t you telling me?” Her hands f ly up to her nose. “Oh my God. You’re not coming, are you?”

  “Janelle, look—”

  “But why? I told them all about how you studied cars. And Jo Jo says that could be really useful on the farm. I know it sounds weird and everything, but it’s not, Isaac. We go walking in the woods sometimes. And there’s a lake for swimming in the summer. And you’ll like the other kids. I know it’s the middle of nowhere, but . . .” She searches my face. “You promised her, didn’t you? You promised you’d come home. That’s why she let me go.” She closes her eyes. “I’m so stupid. Why else would she let me go? You bargained with her. I can’t believe you did that, Isaac.”

  “I did what I had to do.”

  “But I don’t want to be away from you.”

  “You’re better off being away from me, Janelle. Look where I am.”

  “So?”

  “I’m a criminal, Janelle.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “But it’s true. I wasn’t in the wrong place at the wrong time, either. I stole that car.”

  “You think I don’t know that? I’m not stupid, Isaac. And I don’t care. You’re my brother.”

  Just then, a little kid from the next table toddles over and trips on Janelle’s shoe. Janelle bends over to help him, but his mother, some girl around seventeen, scoops him up, plops him on her lap, then slumps over the table with her cheek in her hand, bored. The guy she’s visiting, around seventeen, antsy, keeps talking at her like she’s his lifeline. He doesn’t care how bored she is; he’s going to keep on talking until the guards take her away.

  “There’s something you never understood,” Janelle tells me.

  “What?”

  “I never blamed you,” she says. “Sometimes I think you blame yourself for what happened, but I never did.”

  “Janelle—”

  “I know you don’t want to talk about it. Believe me, I don’t either. But you need to know that it wasn’t your fault.”

  I feel like I’ve been punched. And like she’s broken a promise.

  “It was her, not you,” she says.

  It was an unspoken promise. I’m not even sure how we made it. But it was understood that we’d never talk about Ashland. It wasn’t a story we could tell or a secret we could share. It was like a crack in the universe. Talking about it meant living with it, and neither of us—no matter what we’ve been through—is damaged enough to live with something like that. But before I know it, my head’s in Janelle’s lap and I’m sobbing. Big, wet, noisy sobs with tears spilling everywhere.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I’m so sorry, Janelle.” I’m crying so hard it shuts everyone up. I don’t care. After a few minutes, I sit up and wipe my face.

  “I’ve been crying a lot too,” Janelle whispers to me. “Jo Jo says there’s a well of tears inside all of us, and we have to bring up the water whenever we can.” She laughs. “She says some pretty weird stuff sometimes. But she’s really smart. Hey, that reminds me, I brought something.” She pulls a small plastic bottle out of her coat pocket. When a guard gives her a dirty look, she shakes it for him. “Holy water,” she says.

  The guard looks like he’s about to come over f
or a second look, then changes his mind.

  “I know it doesn’t matter now,” she tells me. “But I wanted it anyway. For you and me. But not Mom. It’s not actually from a priest. It’s just from Jo Jo. She said a prayer over it from a book. She said as long as we believe it’s holy, that’s all that matters. So let’s just say we believe, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “And it’s just for us.”

  “Just for us.”

  “And not Mom.”

  “Not Mom.”

  She opens the bottle, dabs some water on her f ingertip. “I’m not sure what to do actually, so . . .” She rubs it on my forehead. When she gives me the bottle I do the same to her. Then we press our foreheads together and close our eyes.

  I’m hoping something important will happen, like a weight lifting or a cloud parting. Or maybe even the heat suddenly coming on in that freezing-cold visitors’ room. But all that happens is our foreheads get slippery, and when we pull apart, the water feels cold.

  Still, something about it feels right. It’s something only we will ever know about. A secret we don’t have to lock up in a box. This secret can run free whenever we need it. When we’re feeling lonely. When we’re missing each other. It belongs to us.

  And not our mother.

  “I’m good now,” Janelle whispers. “I’m safe.”

  It’s all I’ve ever wanted. To hear those words and to believe them. No matter what else happens, no matter how long I have to stay at Haverland or what I have to go home to, if Janelle’s safe, then everything’s okay.

  She takes a pair of thick wool mittens out of her coat pocket and wipes the water off of our foreheads. “So don’t worry,” she says. Then she smiles with those square teeth I love so much. “It’s about you now.”

  Chapter 52

  We’ve got this new girl in group. Black, f ifteen, a real hard case. She’s been in listening mode for a week, and now it’s time to read her crime story. When she comes in, she’s hugging her notebook to her chest like it’s going to protect her from something. She should know better than that.

  “Are you ready, Desreen?” Dr. Horton asks her.

  Desreen swallows.

  “It’s okay to be nervous,” Javier says.

  “Yeah, you be a warrior later,” Barbie adds. “Right now you just give those words to us and we take care of them for you. Ain’t that right, Isaac?”

  Barbie turns to me, and when she smiles that crooked smile, her gold tooth f lashes. But I don’t hate it anymore. There is nothing about Barbie Santiago that I hate. How could I, after the way she stepped up for me? She put it all on the line just to help me and Janelle. Barbie Santiago is my miracle. Maybe someday I can be hers.

  “That’s right,” I say. “They’re just words, Desreen. Just words on a page.”

  Desreen soaks it up, trying to f ind the strength to open that notebook. I’m not sure she ever f inds it. I think she just f igures she has to get this part over with. Whatever she’s hiding, it won’t stay hidden forever. Things have a way of spilling out into the open whether you want them to or not.

  I guess it all started ’coz I wanted these earrings.

  She’s a thief like me, a shoplifter. She worked with her friend, Tandi, boosting things from the mall. Risky stuff. The mall has cameras everywhere. As she tells her story, I’m right there with her. When she knocks that shop girl to the ground, when she aims that gun at her face, we’re all there, nodding, looking her in the eye, willing her to keep going, to tell us everything and hold nothing back. Her voice is so quiet, we have to lean in to hear.

  Tandi was telling me to just shoot the bitch, but I didn’t want to do that, so I smashed her in the face with the gun instead. I went backhand and forehand and split her lip. There was blood everywhere. Then Tandi tries to grab the gun out my hand and that’s when it goes off.

  While she’s reading, I can feel myself lifting up and away. But it’s not like that time I went apeshit. That was me trying to escape my own head. This time it’s more like I’m seeing things for what they really are but with an extra dimension or something. And these facts Desreen is sharing, these details about this or that, they’re just things that happened, things that she did. But once she brings them in here, they become something else. A story.

  Then I realize that Ashland is like that too. There are the terrible things that happened that day—the things I did and the things I didn’t do. And then there’s the story of Ashland, the one I shared with these people. Sharing it means it’s not a secret anymore. And the thing about a secret is that it has more power than you. The more you hide it, the more powerful it gets. Now that I’ve shared it, something feels different. I’m not free of it or anything. I know Ashland will always be with me. But it’s not bigger than me anymore. I’m bigger than it.

  Then I feel something I’ve never felt before. I don’t even have a word for it. It’s like I’ve been living under a shadow my whole life, and now the shadow is gone. I can see things, possibilities, futures I’ve never imagined. Maybe I will go live on that farm with Janelle. Maybe there’s some way to make that happen. Why the hell not? If I can be an editor on a juvie newsletter, why not that? And why not Barbie too? Maybe she’ll come with me. Maybe she’ll win her court case and we’ll both be farmers and live in Vermont.

  Stupid, right? The odds of Barbie Santiago going to Vermont with me are about as long as me winning the lottery. I’m no fool. I know most of the kids at Haverland—hell, most of the kids in this room—are bound to wind up in prison. Or dead. But those are just facts, like the ones Desreen is sharing now. And facts aren’t everything. They’re just raw material. The things you can’t change because they already happened. What matters now is the story. And how you tell it. How much you lie. How much you tell the truth. What you include, what you leave out. Who you tell it to, and how they take it in.

  “Um . . .” Desreen says. “That’s all I wrote.” She closes her notebook and sits back in her chair.

  She may think she has something behind her with that story, but already we’re sharpening our claws.

  “So, Desreen,” Barbie says. “You want to tell us ’bout how that gun goes off on its own, with no f inger on the trigger? Or you just forgetting something?”

  “Yeah,” Wayne says. “I was wondering ’bout that myself.”

  Desreen’s face shuts down. She looks to Dr. Horton, but he’s not going to save her. Well, he might, but not in the way she wants.

  Barbie makes a gun with her hand. “’Coz I’m thinkin’ if I gotta role-play this and I got a gun in my hand, where the hell my trigger f inger at?”

  Desreen gives Barbie a look of death, which only makes Barbie smile. She’s one tough bird, squaring up against Barbie Santiago like that. I have to give her credit. But no way is she scaring Barbie off. Barbie is fearless. She feeds off looks like the one Desreen’s throwing at her. She’ll keep clawing at Desreen’s bullshit story about a gun “accidentally” going off until she draws blood. Then she’ll claw some more. That’s how it works in the orange-rug room. You bleed and bleed, but you never bleed out.

  “Desreen,” I say. “How much time you got in here?”

  “One year.”

  “Good. ’Coz sometimes it takes a few tries before the truth f inds its way out of that notebook.”

  “Yeah, listen to Ike,” Barbie says. “He knows all about that.”

  The others laugh.

  Not Desreen though. She’s on her way to hell. And she thinks Barbie is leading the way. But she’s wrong there. If anyone’s going to get the truth out of her, it’s me. Thief to thief. Liar to liar. And I have plenty of time to get it too. Eleven months to be exact. So I can get in deep with Desreen, cut through the bullshit, straight into that gaping hole at the center of her heart, that darkness so black she can’t even see it. I can lead the way, all right. But I won’t be alone. I’l
l have Riley, Sandra, Javier, Wayne, and Barbie Santiago backing me up. No matter what Desreen thinks of us now (and I can see she’s working up a big hate), we’re the only ones who can guide her on this journey she’s about to take.

  To hell and back.

  Because we know the way.

  Author’s Note

  When I began researching Isaac’s story, I encountered kids who’d been “jumped” into gangs as children, kids who’d been sold into prostitution by their own parents, kids who’d been bumped from broken home to broken home, never finding anything like the kind of stability, nurturing, and unconditional love that most kids take for granted. In short, I discovered kids who, even before their eighteenth birthdays, had already endured lives of epic struggle. I wanted to write about their humanity, their stolen childhoods, and their dogged spirit of survival.

  I also wanted to explore the surprising, and often ignored, flip side of the criminal life—the potent sense of camaraderie that comes with gang membership, the entrepreneurialism of the small-time thief, the ad hoc friendships and on-the-spot problem solving among kids for whom so many choices are literally life or death. For these kids, the world doesn’t stitch itself together to catch them before they fall, like it does for the luckier among us. For these kids it takes extraordinary character just to get by. It’s in their honor that I created Isaac West.

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to Daniel Ehrenhaft, my editor at Soho Teen, who believed in this book from the beginning and without whose brilliant contributions and tireless support this book would not have seen the light of day. Thanks also to Sandy Smith, epic copy editor who understands the dark art of the comma better than I ever will, to Rachel Kowal for holding my hand through the entire editing process with indulgence and patience, and to Bronwen Hruska for her vision and encouragement—not to mention the Lambrusco!