On the Free

by Coert Voorhees

  “Scared straight doesn’t work,” Santi says.

  “We had some former cocaine addict come talk to us last year at school. He tried so hard.”

  “But I bet the next weekend half your class went out and smoked weed or drank or did dumb crap anyway, right?”

  “Half my class?” Victor says with a smirk.

  “Dudes who are going to steal shit or get high are going to do it anyway, and anyone weak enough to get spooked by those stories isn’t strong enough to resist getting sucked in along the way.”

  “Is that what you told the judge?”

  Santi laughs. “You can have seminars and class meetings until your head explodes, but it’s no use. It doesn’t matter how much juvie scares you—the other detainees, the guards, the food, whatever. Because in that moment, when you’re about to make the decision that puts you inside in the first place, being afraid of getting your ass kicked on unit doesn’t even cross your mind.”

  “I don’t think they’re going to ask you to give a presentation at my high school.”

  “You should see these volunteers at the Justice Center,” Santi said. “Librarians and tutors and people like that, putting in all this effort just to have some kid disappoint them again. It’s like they’re cancer doctors. Coming to work every day even though most of their patients are going to die.”

  “Yeah, but cancer doctors get paid,” Victor says. Then, after a pause: “Must be crazy in there.”

  It’s not the first time Santi has noticed the curiosity in Victor’s voice. “If you want to know what it’s like, all you have to do is ask.”

  “You’re going to make me ask?”

  “You’re the one who wants to know.”

  “You really are a douchebag. You know that, right?”

  They listen to the rain. It’s coming down in curtains against the fly.

  It had poured like this the last time Santi went camping with his dad. Just the two of them. Santi, almost ten years old. Rain playing the most epic drum solo on the fabric of their tent. The perfect night.

  Two weeks later, a driver in the oncoming lane was grasping for an onion ring from his Sonic extra-value meal. An onion ring on the floorboard, a jerk of the wheel, a swerve, a collision. Their mom’s brother, Ray, was the only relative they had left. And that was that. Because of an onion ring.

  “What’s juvie like?” Victor says.

  Santi laughs, and Victor does too. What does that mean, that they’re laughing together? Probably nothing. He relaxes into the air mattress.

  “There was a guy there,” Santi says. “I think his name was Curt, or Curtis. You can ask the librarian to bring you pretty much anything, right? They just want you to read. So this dude Curt had all these books and magazines on birding. And he remembered it all; he could tell you anything you needed to know. Nobody could figure out why birding. There were no trees anywhere near the center.”

  “Why’d you go the first time?”

  “Only time. Not first. I’m here with you this time, remember?”

  “Excuse me. The only time.”

  “I got caught with some weed when I was fifteen,” Santi says. “Nothing big, not even an ounce, but it was enough that they wanted to try me with intent to sell.”

  This seems funny to Victor. “What were you doing walking around with an ounce of weed?”

  Santi shakes his head. His first week in high school, and one of his new friends had asked him for a favor, simple as that. “Wasn’t even mine.”

  “Right.”

  “It wasn’t. I was just a kid who agreed to watch someone else’s bag because I didn’t know what else to do. Just a stupid kid.”

  “As opposed to now?” Victor says, but there’s a kind of warmth in his insult that hadn’t been there before.

  “I remember the slippers, mostly,” Santi says. “Like shower sandals? Plastic ones with a big wide strap across the top of the foot. Everyone on unit had to wear them all the time. Shuffling around in our socks and slippers.”

  “Sounds like an old folks home.”

  “We got to wear real shoes when we played basketball. You had to go to this big pile of black high-tops—I don’t even remember if they had a brand—and dig through it for some that would fit. You just had to hope there weren’t too many pendejos in there with your shoe size.”

  “That’s what you remember? The footwear?” Victor exhales. “Man, my stepdad was way off.”

  He could tell Victor what the dude wants to hear, but he’s worried that if he opens up even a little bit, it will all come out. The truth. The way he felt that first night. Walking into the facility with everyone else staring at him. That smell. The unit was almost full when Santi got there, and he took the last bed. Everyone else already knew each other, had already formed whatever alliances were going to get them through. And there he was, scrawny Santi.

  He remembers lying in his bunk, listening to the sounds of the place, with no idea how things worked in there. The buzzing of doors, always followed by the slamming. The whispers. He remembers thinking of Marisol, wondering what she was doing at home without him. He swore that he would never go back there. When his month was up, he was going to do whatever it took not to go back there. And now look at him.

  “What was up with you going all crazy with the Beard?” He turns to Victor, eager to change the subject. “‘You have no idea why I’m here’? What was that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing,” Victor says. “Forget about it. I was just pissed at him is all.”

  “Where did you go today? Really.”

  Victor shakes his head. “Just needed a break.”

  Before Santi can press the issue, Victor laces his hands behind his head and says, “My dad always used to tell me—my real dad, not my stepdad—that the world doesn’t care about you, and if you don’t look out for yourself, you’re fucked. He used to drill that into me, almost every day.”

  “He wasn’t wrong,” Santi says.

  Victor exhales a long sigh. “No. No, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He decided to take his own advice.” Victor laughs now. A genuine laugh. “He looked out for himself, and four years later the new guy was moving in.”

  Santi closes his eyes and listens to the rain. That sound, plus the laughter in the tent, is almost enough to make Santi forget where they are, who they are, why they’re here.

  “Do you hear that?” Victor says. He sits up quickly and turns off both of the headlamps.

  “What—”

  “Shh. Listen,” Victor whispers.

  Santi sits up and closes his eyes, but he only hears the rain. And his breathing. Then, the snap of a twig? Tree branches bending and whipping back?

  Fear always shocks him, how it sneaks up on him, how it changes him. He should be used to it by now, but he isn’t—the way it starts in his gut, spreads to his chest, reaches out from there. The way shame is always just a step behind.

  “Is that a bear?” Santi whispers, squeezing his fists tight to keep them from trembling. Whatever’s out there, it’s getting closer.

  14

  The sun was still low in the sky. A golden beam pierced the windows of Ray’s living room as Marisol sat with her homework at a small table in the corner. Santi lounged on the couch, watching a reality show featuring contestants who ate things for money. His adjudication was the next day, and he was desperate to find something that would take his mind off it.

  They had the place to themselves that night. As they did most nights. Over the six years since they’d moved in, Ray’s position on raising them hadn’t changed: he didn’t intend to do any such thing. Ray and their mom hadn’t been close—when she died right after Mari was born, Ray had “forgotten” to send a card—and their dad was a goddamn hippie, no offense. Besides, Ray had never asked for any of this.

  “Raw snake eggs wrapped in pig uterus,” Santi said over his shoulder. Marisol said nothing. “Would you eat that?”
r />   “For how much?” she said. “And is there a time limit? Do I have to eat it whole, or do I get a knife? Is the uterus raw or cooked?”

  “Like any of that makes a difference? Órale, Mari, it’s a pig uterus.”

  She tapped the end of her pen against the workbook. “I’m just trying to get a sense of the ground rules here. You need all the data if you want to make an informed decision—”

  “Blah, blah, blah,” Santi said. “Dumb genius.”

  Marisol laughed. “You’d probably eat it for free.”

  “Shut up and do your homew—”

  Tires screeched outside, and Santi instinctively shot to his feet. A car squealing to a stop sounded different than one peeling out. This was a stop. The dogs next door started barking.

  Santi looked out the window just in time to see three vatos in ski masks jumping off the back of an old pickup. Running toward the house.

  The dogs went crazy.

  “Come on.” Santi grabbed Marisol’s hand and pulled her down the hall.

  “What—”

  His heart smacked against his ribcage. “Just, shh.”

  They were in the hall closet by the time he realized that he was still holding the remote control. He’d left the TV on.

  Santi opened the door a crack and pressed the remote, praying that there was a clear enough line of sight, and just as the TV turned off, the front door flew open and slammed against the wall, the wooden doorjamb splintering.

  Marisol trembled as he pulled her close. He felt like a coward, hiding in the closet, but what other option was there?

  “Do you know who it is?” she whispered.

  Santi put his finger to his lips. “It’s going to be okay.”

  There were crashes on the other side of the door. Dishes falling from the kitchen cabinets, maybe, or Ray’s jar of pennies in the living room. Santi squeezed her shoulder tighter. How was this their life? What had happened? What were they supposed to do?

  Footsteps, just outside the closet.

  Marisol flinched, and Santi grabbed the doorknob with both hands, propping his foot against the wall. If he held on tight enough, maybe he could make it seem locked.

  He wanted to believe that it was just another home invasion, that Ray’s place was no different from any of the other houses in the neighborhood that had been hit, but he recognized the truck. He’d seen it before, out with Eric one night. Eric’s cousin’s friend, or something like that.

  This was a message.

  This was Eric’s way of reminding Santi not to waffle at the adjudication tomorrow. Or maybe Eric had nothing to do with it. Maybe Eric’s boys had just taken things into their own hands, looking out for him, covering the bases. Either way, the message was the same.

  Eventually, the noises got farther and farther from the hall closet. The front door clattered against the broken doorjamb. A different screech of tires.

  “I’m going to get us out of this house,” Santi said. “We’re going to be okay. We’ll move.”

  But they didn’t move. They couldn’t, not for an hour after, at least. Santi and his sister stayed in the closet and sat on the floor and cried.

  15

  The whipping of another branch, this one closer than the last. Santi forces himself to breathe, to think. Their food is up the hill, dangling from the trees. They haven’t eaten in the tent. There’s no reason for a bear to attack them.

  Santi opens his eyes and notices a bobbing light through the tent fabric. He taps Victor on the shoulder and points toward it.

  “You guys?” A whisper. Rico. “You guys awake?”

  Just like that, Santi’s fear vanishes, leaving only shame, which fills the tent like smog. How could he have thought Rico was a bear? What an idiot. Santi turns the headlamps back on.

  “Go away, Rico,” Victor says.

  “I heard what you were talking about,” Rico says. “Dude, Victor, what happened to your real dad? Did he die too? Like Santi’s?”

  “Stop eavesdropping. Go away.”

  “Don’t be a dick,” Santi says to Victor. “Rico, what do you want?”

  Rico’s light shines just on the other side of the tent wall. “Come on, guys, it’s raining out here.”

  Santi says, “Why aren’t you in your tent?”

  “That dude snores, man. It’s like his big-ass beard catches in his throat or something. I can’t handle it.”

  Victor stifles a laugh. “You’re still not supposed to be out of your tent.”

  “I’ll just say I was taking a leak or something. Come on. I have candy.”

  “You brought candy?” Santi says.

  “What kind of candy?” says Victor at the same time.

  “Almond Joy. And Rolos.”

  “I already brushed my teeth,” Santi says.

  Victor unzips the tent and vestibule. “Take your jacket off first. I don’t need you bringing the rain in.”

  Santi looks at him, incredulous. “I thought you were a Boy Scout.”

  “Eagle Scout,” Victor says.

  “Didn’t they ever tell you not to eat in the tent? What happens if a bear—”

  “If a bear happens to smell the delicious combination of coconut and chocolate that is Almond Joy, then we’re screwed,” Victor says. “But I’m willing to take that chance.”

  Rico is whimpering now. “So can I come inside, or what?”

  “Jerry told us to stay in our tents,” Santi says.

  Victor waves Rico inside. “No offense, Santi, but you’re not exactly the first person I’d turn to for a reminder of the rules.”

  “Come on, it’s just some chocolate,” Rico says. He ditches his jacket in the vestibule and pushes his ass backward into the tent so he can untie his boots. “Make some room?”

  Santi keeps his voice low, even though it probably can’t carry through the rain. “Can’t we just get through this week and go on with our lives?”

  “Jerry said this was going to be a transformative experience.” Rico scoots all the way into the tent and pulls out two Almond Joy bars and a pack of Rolos. “That’s what he called it.”

  “I don’t want a transformative experience.”

  “Don’t be a pussy,” Victor says.

  Rico laughs. “Yeah, don’t be such a pus—”

  “You shut up,” Santi says. He snatches the Rolos, takes a couple, and tosses the pack to Victor.

  There’s a welcome peace as the three of them dig into the chocolate, the only sounds the unpeeling of wrappers and the rain on the tent.

  “My dad’s not dead or anything,” Rico says after a while. “But he’s not around much.”

  Victor shoots Santi a glance that seems to say: The kid brought us candy. Might as well eat it while he talks.

  “We bounced around a lot ’cause he builds oil rigs,” Rico says, leaning to the side and propping himself up on one elbow. His face twitches when he blinks. “Not the offshore stuff, but the ones on land in the middle of nowhere. Have you ever been to west Texas? Man, there’s nothing there. You can see why my mom went a little nuts.”

  When Rico takes a deep breath, Santi figures it’s probably his turn to say something. He clears a chunk of caramel from his teeth with his fingernail. “What does ‘a little nuts’ mean?”

  “Not nuts, really. She’s my mom and all. But she has this deal where she gets super excited about one thing at a time. For a while, it was a tiny house for the family, like one room to fit everyone. She begged my dad to build it, but then she got all into motor homes. RVs and stuff. She told my dad that as long as we were moving everywhere, we might as well just buy a house with wheels on it.”

  Rico unwraps an Almond Joy and nibbles off the almond with a crunch. “They don’t get along so well.”

  “So what the hell are you doing here?” Santi says. “I assume we’ll find out soon anyway, but—”

  “Drugs,” Victor says. “I bet it’s drugs—”

  “I burned a house down,” Rico says. Not bragging, just stating a f
act. “Not a real house. A shed. There was nobody in it. I don’t even feel bad.”

  Santi laughs in disbelief. “You burned a shed down? On purpose?”

  “Have you ever seen one of those movies where someone spills gasoline all over a house and then lights it with a Zippo? I always wanted to do that. So I did. There was this kid I knew who had a storage shed with tools and old boxes and stuff, and there was a can of kerosene. I figured, what the hell? It was sweet the way the fire followed the little trail of gas until it hit the walls. And the fire was so hot.”

  Santi says, “That’s the funny thing about fire.”

  “No, I mean it was really hot. From far away, across the yard, I felt like I was still right next to the fire. I couldn’t believe how hot it was.”

  “Congratulations,” Victor says. “Never met a pyro before.”

  “Good thing Jerry’s carrying the camping fuel,” Santi says.

  Rico gives an embarrassed shrug, then another full-face blink. “It’s not like that. I just wanted to see what it would look like.”

  “So you’re a sociopath,” Victor says. “Not a pyromaniac.”

  Santi says, “I’m glad we cleared that up.”

  Victor tosses the last of the Rolos into his mouth and smiles with it tucked in his cheek. “Well, it’s about that time, don’t you think?”

  Rico looks crestfallen. “What?”

  “Unless there’s more candy somewhere, I figure we’re done here.”

  Santi can only chuckle. “That’s harsh.”

  “I don’t want to sleep next to that guy,” Rico says.

  “Well, you’re not sleeping next to this guy.” Victor points both thumbs at himself.

  Rico slides his feet into his boots and shakes out his rain jacket in the vestibule. He’s about to put the jacket on when he stops and turns back, as if he’s just remembered something.

  “What do you think of Amelia?” he says. “Do you think she’d ever, you know?”

  Santi laughs. “Órale, you said you already had a hot girlfriend.”

  “I’m not sure Amelia’s your type,” Victor says.

  But he says it too quickly. Too quickly for there to be nothing behind it. There’s the hint of a challenge in Victor’s voice. The first bark of a guard dog.