She ignores me. “But see, it didn’t work the first time. They sent her off to Snowden or wherever, but then they sent her back. I didn’t think she’d do it again. I mean, I thought she might, but I wasn’t sure.”
“Why’d you tell her that?”
Bad Gina shrugs. “I know you’re not going to believe me, but here’s the truth: I did it to help her. I felt bad for her, for how much she hated it in here. I mean, it’s not like the rest of us love it or something. But Cell Seven was going crazy in here. So I found this loose metal piece on one of the chairs in the gym that I kept bending until it came off, and I gave it to her. But I was very specific about where to cut. I didn’t want her to really hurt herself. Just convince them she was suicidal so they’d let her out, let her go home or whatever. I don’t know what she used that second time. That didn’t have anything to do with me, anyway.”
I think about my conversation with Mrs. Simper the whole time Bad Gina tells me this. Nothing is ever what it seems to be in here. No one is ever who they present themselves to be. The first thing you give up when you walk through these doors is trust.
I realize it’s not simply that I don’t believe what Bad Gina is saying, but that whatever comes out of her mouth is just as likely to be a lie as it is to be the truth.
Once again I can’t sleep that night, and I forget to bring a book, so after an hour of yoga and just sitting, I decide to work on my running wall flips. This girl Allie Hoffman and I used to do them in the gym after basketball practice until Allie broke her arm one time even though we did it over wrestling mats.
I don’t have any wrestling mats in my cell, of course, so my mattress has to do. I drag it over next to the wall, but don’t get my first step high enough and land so hard on my butt that it feels like I bruise my tailbone. I bail out of my next couple of tries when I’m too tentative and don’t get horizontal. Finally, though, I nail it — everything but the landing, that is, since I land on all fours instead of my feet.
That jams both my wrists and bruises my knees, but not too bad. I limp around the cell a few times, shaking out my arms, mad at myself for being such a wuss. Then I attack the wall with everything I have, and this time I stick the landing.
I do a bunch more before I stop for a break, and I’m hunched over, hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath, when I realize somebody’s watching me — one of the night guards, staring through the narrow mail-slot window in my door.
I nod, but he just shakes his head and wanders off. I guess no matter what trick you’re doing, no matter how amazing, it gets boring to watch after a while.
At least all those running wall flips wear me out enough that I can finally fall asleep.
I dream about running. It isn’t one of those frustrating dreams, either, where the harder you try to run from something, the slower you get, like you’re stuck in molasses or mud or your legs are too thick or your feet are too heavy or you’re just too tired. My dream is just the opposite: I’m flying down the streets I grew up on, along paths by the river, through wide-open meadows I’ve never seen before that seem to go on and on forever.
There’s another new girl in the unit. They must have brought her in sometime during the night. I’m surprised I slept through it. Her name is Kerry — maybe fourteen, white, quiet, mousy even, with limp brown hair that hangs in front of her face like half-closed curtains. She sits next to me at breakfast. I say, “Hey,” and she says, “Hey” back, and we sit in silence after that until her spork breaks.
“Raise your hand and tell the guard,” I say.
“It’s OK,” she says. “I wasn’t gonna eat any more anyway. It’s gross.”
“Doesn’t matter. You have to tell them or they’ll think you broke it on purpose. You’ll get everybody in trouble and we’ll all lose our sporks.”
She looks frightened but raises her hand. The night guards are still on duty, and the one who watched me do wall flips snatches the spork away.
“Is it always like this?” Kerry whispers.
“Like what?” I ask, bothered that she thinks I’m some kind of expert on juvie.
Her voice is so soft I can barely hear. “You get in trouble if your spork breaks. And that way they search you at the intake room. And they make you look down when you walk, and keep your arms behind you.”
“Yeah,” I say through a mouthful of potato patty. “It is.”
When Officer Killduff and C. Miller come on duty Monday morning, they’re carrying armloads of shackles.
“Everybody line up,” Officer Killduff orders.
C. Miller is assigned to me, Fefu, and the new girl, Kerry. I’m last. “What’s going on?” I ask.
“Work release,” she says, cinching everything tight. I want to ask where. And I want to ask what happened to the girls they took off the unit. Most of all, though, I want to ask how things went on the playdate with Carla and Lulu and C. Miller’s daughter. She’s too busy, though, and Officer Killduff is standing too close with the Ginas and New Nikki.
As soon as they have us all shackled, Officer Killduff and C. Miller walk us off the unit, a ten-minute procession down a couple of corridors and through a couple of automatic doors, all the way past Intake and through a wide set of double doors.
And suddenly we’re outside — or mostly outside, in a giant loading cage with a big juvie transport van. I drink in as much of the fresh air as I can swallow. It’s the first time I’ve been out since that afternoon in the rain.
It’s a crisp December day with a high blue sky — we could use visors and sunglasses. Before our eyes can adjust, though, and almost before I even have time for another breath, they herd us into the back of the van. I can still see outside, but everything looks artificially green through the tinted windows. Officer Killduff and C. Miller get in with us and off we go — first around the outside of juvie and through the parking lot where I left my motorcycle seven weeks ago, then down the access road to the highway.
We stop an hour later at Lake Anna State Park, which is south of juvie and about as deserted a place as I’ve ever seen.
“Hell, yeah,” Bad Gina says as we climb out of the van. “Sweet ass.”
If anybody is alive at Lake Anna, we don’t see evidence of it — just an empty boat dock, and an empty food pavilion, and an empty boat-rental shack, with canoes and Jet Skis lined up near the water like so many big dead fish. A wide expanse of white sandy beach opens out in front of us, and the lake seems to go on and on, ringed by a thick forest of trees and, mostly hidden but still looming high above the tree line, the two massive cooling towers of the Lake Anna nuclear power plant.
I remember now why I never come down this way. They use river water to cool the reactors, then dump it into the lake. They say there’s no danger of exposure to radioactivity, but I’m not convinced.
Officer Killduff and C. Miller unlock our shackles and hand us enormous canvas bags that we sling over our shoulders. Then they give us grabber tools with claw ends for picking up trash.
“These Spotsyltuckians that live around here left a serious mess over the weekend,” Officer Killduff says. We’re in Spotsylvania County, but I guess he thinks saying “Spotsyltucky” makes it sound more redneck. “You’re picking it up. Once your bag is full, Officer Miller or I will escort you to a Dumpster to empty it. If you need a break, if you need to go to the bathroom, if you so much as need to stop working for a second so you can sneeze, you will ask permission.”
The beach is disgusting. Cigarette butts, beer cans, broken soda bottles, soggy disposable diapers, uneaten or half-eaten or half-chewed and then spit-out hamburgers and chicken and coleslaw and hot dogs and chips and other unidentifiable food are scattered everywhere. And there’s more garbage besides: wrappers, bags, tissues, busted Styrofoam coolers, bent Frisbees, popped balloons, cups and straws and lids, ripped towels, and piles of dog poop.
After an hour, we’ve barely cleared twenty feet of beach, and haven’t even started on the stuff bobbing in the water or sunk
to the bottom, but nobody seems to care. It’s nice to be outside. As we move into the second hour on trash duty, Good Gina starts singing. First it’s one of those sappy teen-girl ballads. The new girl, Kerry, grins and sings along softly. Fefu shakes her head. Bad Gina and New Nikki are far enough away that they probably don’t hear, but when Good Gina starts in on a dance song we all know, I join in. Kerry and Fefu, too, though Fefu doesn’t know all the words in English.
By the end of that second hour, we’re all sweaty. It’s warm for a December day — hot as the sun climbs directly overhead — but I’m still happy to be outside and singing with Good Gina and Kerry and Fefu. Fefu seems happier than anybody and can’t seem to stop giggling, and I decide she can’t be the girl Mrs. Simper was talking about who put the guy in a coma to steal his bike.
Kerry and I start talking after a while, during a lull in the singing. She asks me about visitors and phone calls. “I wasn’t really paying attention when they told me all this last night,” she says.
I explain how it all works. “Anybody in particular you want to see or call?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Can’t call. Don’t have any money in the phone account.”
I tell her she can call collect, but she shrugs off my suggestion.
“They don’t want to talk to me anyway.”
“Who?” I ask. “Your parents?”
She shakes her head again. “Anybody. And my parents don’t even live here anymore.”
“Where are they?”
She looks down at her trash bag. “I don’t know. Nowhere. Or nowhere I know, anyway.”
“So where do you live?”
“Foster family. And they definitely don’t want to talk to me.”
“Because?”
“I sort of tried to burn down their house.”
“Jesus,” I say.
“Yeah,” she says. “Well, it was just the bedroom that caught fire and they put it out before it did too much damage. I’ve never lived anywhere where they had so many fire extinguishers. They keep one in every room. Smoke alarms, too. They even have a sprinkler system. You’d think they had pyromaniacs living with them all the time or something.”
“Yeah, you’d think,” I say, though I’m not sure Kerry picks up on the intended irony, since she just shrugs.
“I just like fire,” she says. “It’s fun. I don’t usually set them indoors, but it’d been raining a bunch and everything outside was too wet. It was supposed to just be some paper in the trash can, but they had these long curtains that kind of caught fire, too.”
“So it was an accident?”
“Yeah, I guess. Sort of. They didn’t think so, though. Probably because I already burned down some other stuff since I’d been there. Their wooden swing set for their kids, and this little shed they had in their backyard. Stuff like that.”
I wander away on my own for a while, and it’s not until later that it occurs to me to wonder why Kerry wanted to find out about visitation and phone privileges. I guess it’s important just knowing there’s a way to have contact with the world, even if there’s nobody out there to take your call.
We finally get a lunch break. Everybody ducks out of the sun under the pavilion. C. Miller hauls out boxes from the van — limp sandwiches, warm fruit cups, bags of chips, and Wal-Mart–brand orange sodas.
“I know we’re not supposed to ask questions,” Good Gina says when we finish, “but would it be all right to lie down on the picnic tables while we digest our food?” Officer Killduff grunts, which we all take to mean yes.
The park is deathly still. Not a bird in the sky, not a fish jumping in the lake. And still no people. Officer Killduff lights a cigarette, and I can’t believe it but Bad Gina sits up and asks if she can have one, too.
That’s as close as I’ve ever seen Officer Killduff come to laughing. He takes a long, satisfying drag, then blows out the smoke slowly in Bad Gina’s direction. “It’s not allowed,” he says.
I ask Officer Killduff if I can go to the restroom, and he says OK. Before I even get up off the picnic table, Bad Gina says she has to go, too. He thinks about it for a while — I have no idea why it takes so long — then says, yeah, sure. “Be sure to flush,” he says. “And wash your hands.” Nobody laughs except C. Miller, probably because she thinks she has to.
Bad Gina and I sit in adjacent stalls, and she starts chattering right away.
“Wouldn’t it be so cool to ride those Jet Skis?” she asks. “I haven’t done that in forever. You ever ride a Jet Ski? I’d like to try this thing I’ve seen people do where you push the nose down and you actually go underwater and then pop out, like a whale or something.”
I’ve actually been thinking about those Jet Skis myself — that if Lake Anna wasn’t so junky and polluted, and if it wasn’t for those nuclear reactors, this might be a fun place to come back to sometime. Kevin would love doing something like that. Carla used to love doing stuff like that, too. I think I might tell her about it if I get the chance to call tonight. I bet Lulu would like it, too.
Bad Gina finishes before I do. I hear water running but don’t hear her leave.
When I finally come out of my stall, she’s still there, leaning against her sink.
“Hey, Sadie,” she says. “Check this out.” She points to a second door out of the back of the restroom, on the opposite side from the pavilion. “We could walk right out of here. Cut through those woods.”
“And go where?” We’re miles from the nearest highway.
She grins. “Mexico. I told you I’m going.”
“Right,” I say. “And how are we getting there?”
She keeps grinning. “There are ways.”
I wash my hands. “No, thanks. I like it in juvie too much. I’d hate to miss out on any of my time there.”
“Whatever,” she says, still leaning on her sink.
“Why don’t you bring New Nikki?” I say. “You guys seem to get along pretty well.”
“She’s all right,” Bad Gina says. “Just kind of young.”
“She doesn’t sound too young. Didn’t she say she stabbed a girl?”
Bad Gina rolls her eyes. “Yeah, well, who hasn’t?”
We work in silence the rest of the afternoon, except for Good Gina, who whistles a lot even though she can’t carry a tune. As the afternoon wears on, we wander farther apart on the beach, each of us carving our separate, meandering little paths through all the garbage.
C. Miller comes down to join me at the water’s edge.
“Pretty warm out for December,” she says, squinting up into that high blue sky.
“It’s not too bad once you’ve been out in it for a while,” I say. “You’re just coming from the shade. Cooler up there.”
“Yeah, I guess,” she says. “Anyway, you doing OK?”
“Sure,” I say. “It’s nice to be outside.” I lean on my trash grabber and survey the quiet lake and the verdant tree line. I always liked that word — verdant. Dad is the only person I’ve ever heard actually say it. He was always a good one for using uncommon words.
“So,” C. Miller says. “That sister of yours.”
“Yeah?” My throat closes up a little. I both want to hear this and don’t.
“We got together like I told you, with Lulu and LaNisha. We met at that park in town, with the tennis courts.”
“And?” I press, gripping my trash grabber. “How did it go? How’d she look? How was Lulu?”
C. Miller laughs. “Lulu was great. She and LaNisha decided they were best friends after about a minute. And Carla seemed OK, too. I don’t really know her that well, but she was different from how I’d seen her at Friendly’s. She was dressed a whole lot better. And she didn’t look so tired or so skinny, either. Maybe because of what she was wearing. Or maybe she’s taking better care of herself lately.”
I let go of the breath I hadn’t known I was holding and stare out at the water. “Thank you,” I say, glancing back at C. Miller. “Really, I can’t tell yo
u how much I appreciate you checking up on her for me.”
C. Miller smiles. “Like I said, it was nice to meet another single mom my age.” She hesitates, and I tense up again. I knew this sounded too good to be true.
“She asked if she could use me for a reference at Victoria’s Secret. She knows somebody who works there, but they aren’t sure about hiring her because of her record. She thought it might help to have me, since I work corrections.”
“What did you say?”
“Told her I couldn’t.”
“Oh.”
C. Miller kicks at something buried in the sand. It turns out to be a beer bottle. Heineken. “It’s not my job to save your sister,” she says. “That’s not anybody’s job but Carla’s. I can maybe be her friend, but that’s all.”
I pick up the Heineken and stuff it in my trash bag. “So she’s stuck at Friendly’s. With all her druggie pals that work there.”
“At least she’s trying,” C. Miller says. “You have to give her some credit for that.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Maybe.”
I thank her again for checking on Carla. C. Miller says don’t mention it.
Officer Killduff yells down to her to line us up and head back to the juvie van. It’s time to go. C. Miller and I survey the beach, which is still covered with trash.
I hate the thought of leaving. Probably everybody else does, too. Bad Gina curses and empties her trash bag into the Dumpster.
C. Miller tells me not to worry, we’re supposed to come back tomorrow.
I call Mom that evening. Lulu gets on the phone first and tells me she’s painting Moo-Moo’s toenails.
“She’s letting you use nail polish?” I’m afraid I’ll break down, it’s so sweet to hear her voice — the same as it’s always been.
“No,” she says. “Not with polish. With a paintbrush.”
“And paint?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What color?”
“Blue.”
“Just her toenails?”
“Her whole feet, too.”
“So Moo-Moo has blue feet now?”
“Uh-huh.”
Juvie Page 19
