There are boys here who enjoy beating on another person. Terrell understands that, since he’s felt the same way. Some mornings he spits up blood; some of his ribs feel splintered, sharp.
It can come at night, or with any lapse in supervision. Quick and savage, since the boys never know how long they have. They try to bruise the face less—that shows. And if he lets anyone see the bruises under his clothes, that’s as bad as snitching. All he can do is protect his balls, and then, once he goes down, curl up and let them work on his back.
He had not told on Darnay or John, he has not, though maybe they believe he has—the boys here believe they know something; they call him snitch, squealer, worse. While they beat him, they repeat their names, daring him to tell.
They ask him if he’s afraid, and he always says he is. There isn’t a right answer to that question. His ribs are bruised, his hips, the long bones of his thighs. He never fights back, and that makes the boys more angry. They want to provoke him, to bring him down where they are; in the midst of it, he doesn’t so much feel pain as relief that the waiting is over, even if it’s about to start again. And he feels he deserves every punch, every kick.
The sun seems higher in the sky here, farther away. He wears a stiff shirt, the pants that are not his own, the whole outfit worn by someone else before him; a whole line stretches back, other boys handing down their missteps and mistakes, some ashamed and some not. His black leather boots are the same as everyone’s—no laces, a zipper up the side, two sizes too big.
Today he walks circles, around and around a field of dirt. There are fences on every side; low, but there’s no reason to climb them, nowhere to go. Fields stretch beyond on every side, with hardly a hill, all the trees far away. Crows sit atop the fence, unevenly spaced. Once, Terrell walked all the way to the edge, and the crows just cawed at him. They didn’t even unfold their black wings.
The sun is so weak he can stare into it. The day is hot, though, sticky. He sweats, then shivers. Looking up, he sees a plane flying over, slicing through the clouds.
The hour is almost up. Some of the other boys are over on the blacktop, playing basketball. The game is only an excuse to get on the wrong side of someone, do or say something you’ll pay for later, and if a fight starts on the court, the counselors will just watch it for a while—for their entertainment, and to let the boys wear themselves out. There are some big kids in here, much bigger, much meaner than Darnay. Country boys, Spanish-speaking boys, some from Philadelphia, not far from Terrell’s own neighborhood. There are others who are preyed upon, too; they cluster together, trying for safety in numbers, flinching when someone reaches for the salt. Terrell doesn’t need that kind of friend. After a week, already he draws less attention; more recent arrivals are more interesting—new boys with new weaknesses to explore.
He steps on his faint shadow as he turns a corner. The shadow slides around him, taking another angle. He misses Ruth holding him, his big sister sleeping heavy beside him, and he misses Swan. Not because Swan is dead, but because he’d feel better if Swan was here. And not so much to talk to, just to stand beside him, to walk these circles.
He feels half-asleep, time blowing around him. Here there is no comfort like Swan or Ruth, here there is only the row of bunk beds and the hope that he will not be the first one to fall asleep. Boys whisper, asking if he’s awake, and it is a mistake not to answer. He’s made that mistake before.
If he felt comfortable, that might mean he belongs, which he does and he doesn’t. He can see how his time will pass. He can see that it will. The night-time, then breakfast, exercise, lunch, time inside with the books and the ten-year-old video games, and then the counseling sessions, and dinner, into the showers and then the bunks again.
The other boys had laughed at his tattoo in the shower, but they still wanted to know how he got it, if it meant anything more than the first letter of his name. Swan had given it to him, put the ink under his skin; he would not, could not forget that. If he started, he’d tell everything, and the boys did not deserve to know about Swan.
That night at the waterworks, Terrell was laughing wild, the moon above, the machine lurching under him; the headlights swept jerkily back and forth, catching Swan’s shoes, then the top of his head. And then the stars buckled and slid away. Terrell bit his tongue, lost his grip. The ground reared up.
Darnay scrambled over the top of him and Terrell followed; there was nothing to push off against and then the ground came chopping beneath his feet, the air crashing around him.
Then he was outside the fence, the buildings inside, and he couldn’t remember sliding under, couldn’t remember climbing over. His wrists ached from how he landed, on all fours and already moving, arms and legs going in mid-air, eager to touch anything.
They gathered, the three of them, shouting, drawn together, and then moved backward, through the bushes, against the cliff. They called Swan’s name, but he did not answer; John still had hold of his walkie-talkie, and they tried that, too. Nothing but static.
“He’s probably halfway home by now,” Darnay said, and then they heard the sirens—still distant, but definitely on the way.
First, it was only one police car. An officer got out, then climbed back in, and the car eased into the gate until the chain snapped. And then a whole string of vehicles, all the sirens going, all swerving to a stop, men waving to hold back, not to get too close. The red lights flashed along the white walls of the buildings, spun in and out of the pillars.
Men approached the dark edge of the hole, slowly, their hands out in front like the ground might give way and suck them down. None of it made sense. They shouted down into the hole, words that couldn’t be understood. Some of the men had their pistols out, pointing down. The hole swallowed all the spotlights’ brightness.
And then the old man came out of the building behind all the policemen, carrying something over his shoulder. No one noticed until he was close, and then they turned, all together, guns drawn.
When they took Swan away from him, the old man fought, and when they led him away he was trying to get back, trying to see what was happening. The paramedics surrounded Swan. The policemen got the old man’s hands behind his back, pushed his head down, forced him into one of their cars.
They turned the spotlights to shine into the bushes, and the boys flattened out on their stomachs, breathing dirt, not moving at all. What else were they supposed to do?
Swan was strapped onto a stretcher, rushed away in the ambulance, and the boys sat still, not moving or talking until all the cars and trucks and lights were gone. Then, one by one, they stood and walked to the fence. On the other side, halfway to the dark, ragged edges of the hole, were Swan’s shoes, left behind, and pieces of his clothing, where they’d been torn and cut and thrown aside.
The moon dimmed and slid behind clouds; the headlights across the river became scarcer and scarcer. Then, Terrell out in front, the boys walked away, under the overpass, past people sleeping, past whispers in the bushes. They climbed into an empty boxcar, and sat there, unwinding a series of possible stories. Low voices echoing, faces hidden in the darkness, they wanted to handle the night, to make sense of it while they still could. None of the stories they expected to use—they would wait to see what happened to Swan, see what he’d said—but when things turned out the way they did, it was the story with the old man in the middle that worked out best.
That story would have held, most likely, except Terrell had a harder and harder time repeating it, knowing how the blame was coming to rest, wondering what Swan would think. So Terrell told, at least his part, and that is how he ended up here.
Here where they always want to talk with him. It was only trespassing, destruction of property—unless, they said, he still had more to tell them. He’ll be out after school has already started, but they say he can probably catch up, probably won’t lose a year. All he knows is when he returns to the city things will have changed. He can’t return to where he was—that place no longer exists.
Often, Terrell thinks of Lakeesha. She had not been at Swan’s funeral; he expected her there, maybe only because he was afraid to see her. He has written Lakeesha letters, but he has not sent them. Writing to her is almost like explaining himself to Swan, trying to. He admits what he did, owns up to the lies he’s told. He tells her he didn’t lie because of what he saw her do with Swan in the woods, and then admits maybe it was, that that’s part of what he was after—only it was her way of talking, too, joking about clotheslines and dogs and her eyes on his, daring him. Maybe it’s too late to be honest, but still he wants to say it, what kind of friend he’s been, the way he feels now. In his letters, he asks her to send him her necklace, tells her he wants to loose the teeth from their string, spill them rattling across a tabletop; that he wants to line them up, their sharp edges in his hand; that he wants to put one in his mouth and think of her.
Would she even open a letter from him? If he knocked on her door, would she unlock it?
The horn is blowing now, and the counselors echo it with their whistles. Terrell has five minutes to be inside the building. He begins walking back across the field.