I am fourteen, and I’m in the juvenile detention center again for something I don’t remember doing. But now I want to commit murder.
With my ankles crossed, I slouch backward on the wide cement stairs that lead down to the pathetic exercise yard inside the Lexington Juvenile Detention Center. It’s November, so the weather is turning cold and gusty. I pull the collar of my JDC-issued sweatshirt up to cover my ears as the icy wind whips my hair. Vapor swirls from my mouth and nose as I force myself to breathe slow and deep.
Even the name of this place is a joke. The only “services” they offer are mystery-meat dinners, lumpy mattresses, and cold floors. Dr. Scanlon, the shrink, is around if you act like a wacko, but he just sends you to solitary on pills. There’s no help here. Just bars and locks.
Sometimes it still beats being home, though. The last five times I was sent here for some mess-up, it was almost a kind of relief—a break from the hell that is my life, even if it came with locked doors and rules I hated.
This time around, I’m here because I tried to beat up my dad. I don’t remember most of it though. Last I can picture, Dad had just thrown my mama down the stairs in front of me. Her arm was all mangled. The cops came, for once, and they marched him out in handcuffs.
Then he spat in my face, and the room went red before Brody took over. I woke up in the back seat of the cop car, my knuckles bloody and swollen. My left pinky finger looked broken. Cops say Roland was knocked clean out. Can’t say I’m not satisfied.
Thankfully I’ve got a couple of buddies on the inside. TJ has been here the longest, going on his fifth year. He’s a gang banger, tattoos and all. When he was twelve, he got into a fight with a kid from another gang and left that kid paralyzed. TJ had already been running the streets for a couple of years, so the JDC has no idea what to do with him other than keep him locked up. He never forgets anything, and he always takes care of payback even if it’s years later. He likes me though, so we’re cool.
Charlie is my other buddy. We knew the same kids growing up, and we like the same kinds of music and games and stuff. I think he might have some of his own Others. I can be myself around him, so I’m glad he’s my bunkmate.
This morning a new kid named Isaac showed up at breakfast. He must be at least twelve years old because all of the younger kids are in a different building. But he looks eight, maybe nine years old, tops. Scrawny and ugly, he’s afraid of his own shadow. He wouldn’t talk to anyone during breakfast. He just pushed his cold scrambled eggs around on his plate. A few times I saw him wiping his eyes. Every time someone would make a loud sound or scrape their chair across the floor, Isaac would jump out of his skin.
I thought about making him my punk. Then I saw the marks inside his left arm.
Three cigarette burn circles in the shape of a triangle.
Sliding my food tray over to Charlie, I stood and made my way to the seat across from Isaac.
“Hey,” I said. “My name’s Danny. You’re Isaac, right? They told us you were coming.”
Shrinking into himself, he looked at the floor and nodded.
“I’m in for beating up my dad because he hurt my mom. What are you in for?”
His voice was so soft I could barely understand his answer. “Running away.”
“Yeah, I’ve been there, man. What’d you run away for?”
He pulled down the sleeves of his oversized JDC-issued sweatshirt and crossed his arms. “None of your business.”
I raised my palms. “Okay, man, no problem.”
We sat in awkward silence for a while. I cleared my throat. “Okay, well, over there at the middle table, the big dude with the frizzy hair, that’s TJ. He’s a gang banger, so whatever you do, don’t get on his bad side. He’ll leave you alone otherwise. Across from him with the blond choirboy hair is Charlie. He’s nice. If you see him talking to himself, just leave him alone. That boy in the corner that looks like a linebacker is Nicky. Everybody stays as far away from him as possible. Watch out for Officer Pelham, he’s the one with the massive beer belly and the pizza face. He hates being here and hates kids even more. Officer Dunkirk is cool, it seems like he cares about us, you know?”
“Why are you being nice to me?”
I pulled up my own sleeve and laid my arm on the table. At the recognition of my scars, Isaac drew his own arms closer into himself. He wiped an escaping tear with his shoulder.
I pushed my sleeve down again. “I remember what it was like on my first day in JDC. Plus a lot of us in here have been through the same crap storm. Sometimes it’s nice to know you’re not the only one. I know it’s helped me.”
Standing up to leave, I heard a quiet “Thanks” and stuck out my hand. Isaac studied me for a few seconds, then he finally accepted my handshake.
“Nice to meet you, Isaac. See ya ’round.”
As soon as Charlie and I got back to our pod after breakfast, Officer Dunkirk stood next to my bed with a trash bag. “New bunkmate, boys,” he said, tossing the bag up to the top bunk. “Keep him away from Nicky, would ya?” he asked as Isaac came up behind us escorted by Officer Pelham.
“This is where little boys who run away from home get to live,” said Pizza-face with a sneer. “Breaking the rules will get you a trip to solitary. Got it?”
Isaac’s shoulders relaxed when he saw me and Charlie. “Yes, sir,” he squeaked. Climbing up onto his bunk, he untied his trash bag and pulled out the sad little pile of his things. He quickly shoved a small, brown teddy bear under his pillow and wiped away another tear.
“Yo, Isaac, me and Charlie were gonna head out to the exercise yard if you wanna come,” I offered.
Considering his options for a moment, Isaac nodded and jumped down from his bunk.
Once we were all outside, Charlie headed straight for the basketball court. Isaac and I made our way to the far corner of the wide cement stairs that led down to the yard. This part of the stairs was still in the sun, and we could lean back against a fence railing and watch the whole yard.
We sat in total silence for a good thirty minutes. Isaac had stopped crying, and he watched the group of boys in the exercise yard with a mixture of curiosity and distrust.
He eventually broke the silence. “What happened to you?” he asked, tipping his head toward my arm.
I stretched out my still-swollen hand. “I blacked out and punched my dad in the face until he was unconscious. Think my pinky is broken.” I winced as I opened and closed my fist.
“No, I mean your arm. The scars,” he answered, staring at the ground.
“Oh, that,” I said. “Let’s just say that I used to live with some sick, evil people.”
“Evil,” Isaac echoed. “That’s a good word for it. Definitely evil.”
Isaac toyed with a small ant near his foot before smashing it with his toe. “You had them scars long?” he asked.
I looked up at the sky as I did the math in my head. “I don’t know, maybe eight or ten years? Something like that. I was in foster care, so it was before I got adopted. You?”
“About two years ago, I guess. That was when I ran away the first time.”
We watched the terribly one-sided basketball game for a few plays. It’s a miracle that no one was throwing punches.
“Come on, Charlie!” I yelled. “Gotta be quicker on that rebound!”
Sticking out his tongue and saluting me with his middle finger, Charlie grinned and charged back into the game.
“You said you got adopted?” Isaac asked, picking at a hangnail on his thumb.
“Yeah, I think I was about eight. Wasn’t a whole lot better than foster care. I mean, some of it was better.” I opened and closed my sore hands again. “Obviously it wasn’t great.”
Picking up a lone piece of pine straw from the ground and tossing it into the wind, Isaac turned toward me. “Anybody ever help you? Like, anybody ever get in trouble for what they did to you?” The sadness in his face and the dark circles under his eyes hurt my heart.
I cursed. “Definitely not. Two days ago was the first time the cops ever came to help my mom, and I’ve been there,” I paused to do the math. “What’s fourteen minus eight?”
“Six.”
“I’ve been there six years, and not one police officer, not one child services worker, not one single school counselor or teacher has ever once lifted a finger to help me.”
Glancing at the basketball game again, I shot up to my feet. “Charlie, watch the screen!” I slapped my forehead as Charlie took a hard elbow to the chin. After a few shoves and shouting, they resumed the game.
Sitting down, I massaged the knuckles around my broken finger. “What about you?” I asked, wincing at the pain. “Anybody ever help you?”
Isaac thought for a moment. “Nah. I mean, there was this one lady at the county office who seemed super nice. I don’t remember her name, but she was older with long white hair that she kept in a braid. I told her about some of the stuff that was going on in my foster home, the one I’ve been at for four years now. She was actually sad for me and said she’d help me. Next thing I know, somebody gave my case file to someone else. The new child services lady told my foster parents that I was a pathological liar and that I probably needed mental treatment. Then I never saw another child services person again. That’s been about a year now. And they wonder why I keep running away.”
The next month went by fast. Other than talking with me and Charlie, Isaac kept to himself. He spent most of his time reading books. Some nights he would wake us up as he fought off an evil abuser in his dreams. I would never tell Isaac the nasty things he would talk about in his sleep, mostly because they sounded too close to home.
This morning, Isaac’s sentence at JDC ended. He’d gained a little weight from eating three times a day, which apparently wasn’t a normal thing for him at home. After we shook hands, I made my way outside to the back corner of the cement stairs above the exercise yard. The bars of the fence railing gave a somewhat unobstructed view of the drop-off and pickup zone in front of the JDC building.
A rusted old blue Chevy Impala was parked at the end of the sidewalk. Its motor running, the car’s oily exhaust rose from the tailpipe like a mist in the cold. A stocky young man wearing a Yankees baseball cap held Isaac’s arm firmly as they hustled to the car. Opening the back door, the man shoved Isaac into the back seat and kicked the door shut.
White-hot rage began to swirl from deep inside as I watched the hefty man remove his Yankees hat and run his fingers through his thick, red hair.
I will murder Carl Blackwell with my bare hands if it’s the last thing I ever do.