At the expulsion hearing, his mother cried like they were at a wake. Sobs tore from her throat and wracked her body. She coughed thickly. Members of the school board whispered to each other, then tried not to look, as she honked her nose into a thin, holey tissue. Robert left a seat between them, more angry than embarrassed. What did she have to be so distraught about? He was the one on trial. He tried to capture his shaking knee in his palm and refused to look at her.
Principal Simena wore a skirt and blazer. She patted Deb on the shoulder. She leaned down so that their foreheads almost touched, and she whispered and Robert’s mother nodded, and then they stood up and walked out, Simena’s arm around Deb’s jean jacket–clad shoulders. Great. Maybe they’d become best friends and ride horses together.
The principal could probably smell beer on Deb’s breath. She’d gulped several before they’d left for the meeting, while she tore through Robert’s closet, searching for a collared shirt. She’d found one balled up on the floor and then burned her fingertip on the steaming iron.
“Get off the goddamn game!” Deb had howled, kicking a loose sneaker across the trailer, her finger wrapped in a wet paper towel. The tattered shoe sailed over Robert’s head. He’d been standing at the computer, maneuvering his plane through crowded Atlantic airspace.
“Mom, you’re going to make me crash,” Robert complained.
“Get dressed!”
“You’ve been saying for days that I’m getting expelled! What does it matter what I wear? Why are we even going?”
“That’s it!” Deb stomped to the computer and yanked the plug from the wall. The screen flickered and darkened. “You’re done with this game! You need to go out and get yourself a job! Or I’m going to make you work at the stables. Shovel horse shit all day long and you’ll see how easy you really have it.” She wrestled the cord free from the computer, wound it up, and stomped away again.
He ended up wearing the collared shirt, wrinkled.
And that was before the board voted to expel him, unanimously.
Joey Kovach’s mom wore a blazer, too, and black pants. And Joey’s collared shirt was straight and spotless. And he got expelled, too, right after Robert. Robert was surprised by how quickly it all went down; he’d expected more of a courtroom scenario, with questions and arguing and maybe even a chance to talk himself. Instead his name was called and they didn’t even mention what he’d done, just that Simena and Barry were recommending him for “placement” until the beginning of the next school year, whatever that meant. He caught one important word: “residential.” After that, he couldn’t listen; he was too busy picturing the county holding cell and himself locked inside it, clad in a striped jumpsuit.
Not that Deb was in the room to hear the verdict. Robert sat by himself for another hour, as the board tackled the budgets and building reports, until Simena tapped him on the shoulder and told him to meet his mother in the lobby.
He passed two older people, concerned citizens, no doubt, and a science teacher he’d had in middle school, and was almost out the door when he saw Holt sitting in the back row, in uniform.
“Hey!” Robert said. He saluted sharply. The science teacher turned. Robert lowered his voice. “Hey. You got any other clothes?”
He wondered if Holt attended all the school board meetings, to keep up on the local scene, or if he’d specifically wanted to see what would happen with Robert. The sheriff didn’t lift his eyes from the board member, ignoring Robert as determinedly as Robert had been stonewalling his mother.
“Let’s go,” Simena whispered, hurrying him along.
“Till we meet again!” Robert crowed.
Deb wasn’t in the lobby, either; she’d already gone to the car. Robert didn’t tell his mom about Joey’s clothes and how little it all mattered. And he didn’t ask for the computer cord.
* * *
Robert signed a diversion agreement, whatever that meant, to dodge a drug charge. He pretended to read through the document, but he focused on one stipulation only: he’d be unable to take his driver’s test for another year. He hadn’t been able to take drivers’ ed; his mother thought it was a waste of money, since she always had the truck and Robert would rarely be able to practice. Still, that punishment stung more than any other. They might as well string the island with barbed wire.
Without his flight simulator, Robert was restless. The school district had ten days to set up his alternative placement. The residential school. He was starting to wish they’d hurry up.
He flicked through the twenty channels they got without satellite TV and only found soap operas and daytime talk shows. A grainy show where a man followed people around in a van to see if they were cheating on their wives or husbands. Arguments about paternity featured heavily in all three. Cooking shows.
One day Robert was inspired to make an omelet. He cracked four eggs against the counter. He smacked one too hard and wiped up the drippy mess with a paper towel. He mixed the eggs together with some milk and poured it into a scratched frying pan. The batter hissed and bubbled. Robert couldn’t find a spatula so he hovered at the ready with a fork, waiting to flip the eggs over so they folded into a tasty envelope. He tapped the fork against the counter, against the steel sink. Yellow liquid still pooled at the pan’s center. He turned the heat up as high as it would go to speed things up.
Then he heard Hulk barking, and realized that he’d forgotten his dog outside. He left the stove to let him back in, and even the fork still in his hand didn’t help him remember the eggs cooking on the stove when he saw a flash of brown at the edge of the evergreens. Twigs snapped and the brush shook. Too big to be a squirrel or a rabbit. A bobcat?
Robert strode closer, but whatever it was had disappeared.
Had they ever caught that bear? A whole family could live back there by now. How big would a bear cub be? Bigger than Hulk, surely.
He waited, watching the woods, trying to detect movement. He held Hulk back by the collar. The dog’s ears stuck straight up. Birds tweeted, unseen.
Then Robert smelled smoke. The front door slammed behind him just as the smoke detector blared to life.
The eggs had burned into a charred blob. He ran water in the pan and left it steaming in the sink, blackened bits of egg swirling down the drain.
When Deb got home, he begged her for the computer power cord. “I’m so bored. Can I have it just for a day?”
“I threw it out,” she replied. She sniffed. “Why does it smell like something burning in here?”
“You threw it out?” Robert moaned. He tugged at his hair and kicked the kitchen table.
The next day she left a list of chores on the counter, written on the back of a grocery store receipt. Vacuum whole house. Do dishes. Give Hulk a bath. Dust whole house.
“We don’t have a house,” Robert pointed out to Hulk. “We have a trailer.”
Go to Laundromat had been printed and then crossed off. Robert guessed Deb didn’t want him wandering too far.
* * *
Holt made a couple of calls and got the Kelley kid into Sea Brook Youth Home as part of his diversion agreement. Tucked into a sleepy beach town just over the bridge on the mainland, the “wilderness therapy” program focused on nonviolent kids and barred all media: no phones, no TV, no Internet. Holt liked the program’s emphasis on nature and physical activity. The juvie in Seattle was a rough place, and soon enough the kid would be done with his punishment, and land back on Yannatok. Holt didn’t want him learning any new tricks from the thugs in juvie. Besides, the kid could use a break, with the father he’d gotten saddled with.
“I was there when we caught the father,” Holt had told Sea Brook’s director. “I’m sure you remember that mess. The kid’s like a lit firecracker. Can’t sit still for five minutes. But there’s something there. He’s looking for somebody to please, in a way. And a change of scenery would do him good. I bet he’s never been off this island.”
That would change, Holt knew. The kid would get off Yannatok, eventually. Holt just hoped it wasn’t with a one-way ticket to Washington State Pen. They’d eat him alive in there.
* * *
As soon as Robert heard his mother’s truck pulling up, the trailer seemed to suck in its breath. Its walls constricted. Deb broke two days of silence by informing Robert that she’d spoken to a Sea Brook counselor who’d called her at work, and that he shouldn’t bother packing much. Deb ticked off items on her fingers, her voice cold. “Socks. Underwear. White T-shirts—no logos, no colors. Khakis. One pair of sneakers. No extras. The woman said not so much as a pack of gum. Start packing. They’ll be here tomorrow morning.”
“What am I supposed to put it all in?”
“A plastic bag, like from the grocery store,” Deb instructed. “They don’t want backpacks in that place.”
Robert trudged to his room, started rifling through his drawers, but soon found himself planning for a different trip than the one he was about to take. One for which he’d certainly need more supplies than socks and undershirts.
What would he need to pack if he were to take off into the woods?
He abandoned packing, escaped from the trailer’s thick, stale air, and stood near the flagpole, bouncing a mottled tennis ball for Hulk. The dog raced and retrieved it, boomeranging back every time. Hulk was a smart dog; Robert bet he could have been trained to sniff out drugs or tackle murderers.
If Robert was going to run away into the wilderness, he’d need some clothes he could layer on. Matches. Water. A knife, probably, for protection and hunting. He wouldn’t need that much, really. He’d take Hulk. He could hike his way to Canada and leave them waiting for him at the “wilderness therapy” school, which was only called that to make parents feel better about their kids getting locked up. Robert was going to jail, same as Joey in juvie, no matter what they called it.
He watched the trees and remembered, suddenly, one of the best and only books he’d read from start to finish the entire time he’d been in school. Hatchet. He remembered the cover, with the ax printed right over the kid’s head, like the hatchet was part of his brain, and the tilted plane in the background, over the kid’s shoulder. The slow classes read it in eighth grade, the year he’d almost failed. He’d raced through it in one sitting. A kid named Brian is on his way to visit his dad in Alaska, but the Cessna he’s riding in crashes, and he has to survive in the wilderness with just this hatchet, catching rabbits and foraging for berries. Robert thought the book ended with Brian still out there, hunkering down for a long winter.
He was supposed to turn in a report at the end, which he never finished. He could have either completed a standard five-paragraph book report about the setting and the characters and how the book made him feel, or a fake newspaper article in which he pretended to interview the main character. Robert opted for the article, which was obviously easier; he could just make it all up.
He’d written a headline: Brian Is a Hero! And he’d scribbled out a few questions: What did you think when the plane crashed? What did you think when you realized you were alone in Alaska? What did you think when you realized you only had your hatchet? And he didn’t remember if he ever got any further with the assignment, but he doubted it.
* * *
For his last dinner at home, Deb microwaved two frozen pizzas. She dropped two plates onto the table with a clatter, and let the steam waft off her dinner while she slugged a beer. Robert didn’t wait. The gooey cheese seared the roof of his mouth.
“An army recruiter called. Asked for you.” Deb glowered through rings of fatigue and smudged eyeliner. “You know anything about that?”
“I’m going to enlist. Like Dad.” His mouth burned. He pushed back from the table to get a glass of tap water.
“Like Dad?” Deb’s cigarette hung in the air.
“Yeah. He told me all about it once. Desert Storm.” The cabinets were emptied of cups; food-encrusted dishes teetered in the sink. He considered slurping out of a bowl, Hulk-style.
Deb snorted. “Your father wasn’t anywhere near Desert Storm.”
Robert sighed. He should have known she’d react like this. “Yeah, he was. He told me about rescuing Daniel McQuaid, and getting a medal—”
“The military wouldn’t even take him. He had a rap sheet miles long.” Deb stubbed out her cigarette. “In and out of jail is where he’s been for your whole life. You know that.”
“Why would he make that up?” He slammed the cabinet shut. He knew his mom was mad at him, but who was she to call his dad a liar? He’d asked her, to her face, why she’d been stockpiling his Adderall and he knew she hadn’t told him everything.
Maybe she knew where his dad really was. Maybe she’s known all along, and she’d thrown Robert off the trail all these years, inventing a prison Robert Senior could never escape from.
“Why do you think?” his mother yelled back. “Because he’s a loser! He was nothing and he wanted you to think he was something. He killed an old man! Thought he was playing some stupid prank, stealing a cop car, and then he hit a seventy-five-year-old man! And left him bleeding in the middle of the road. And forgive me, I never wanted you to know!”
“You’re a loser! And you’re a liar! He hit a deer.” Robert stormed out of the kitchen and stomped into his sneakers. He called over his shoulder, “You were the one taking the Adderall! You should be going to prison, too!”
“If you walk out of here, plan on staying outside!” Deb crashed after him. The next trailer’s porch light flickered on. “You don’t think I’m tired at the end of the day? Have you ever thought for one second about how hard it is to work all day and then go to school? And you want to judge me over a couple of pills!”
“I knew it! I knew you were lying, just like you’re lying about Dad,” Robert yelled over his shoulder as he slammed the door. The porch was much colder than the cramped trailer, but Deb kept following him, pawing at his shoulder.
“I could have had my own horse by now! The only thing I ever wanted!” she screamed. “I spend all my money on you! All of it! And all you care about is your father. Name one thing he ever did for you!”
Robert shrugged out of her grip. “Get off me! Don’t do anything for me ever again! I never asked you to!”
Deb stepped backward. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“None of your business!” He whirled toward the road.
The door crashed shut. Robert stood by the road with his thumb cocked. He’d take any ride, to anywhere. But not a single car passed and soon he gave up and trudged back to the trailer.
Robert knew his mom had left the door unlocked, but he spent the night on the porch anyway, sleeping fitfully and listening to the wind in the spruces’ branches. He wrapped his arms around himself to try and fend off the cold, but he shivered anyway.
In the morning, a van painted with a yellow sun rising over rolling waves came for him. He waited on the porch with his plastic bag at his feet, rubbing his aching neck. Every gull’s squawk needled his forehead. His eyes hurt. Robert had packed his toothbrush, boxers, deodorant. He’d scrounged up the white shirts, though technically two of them were undershirts. He only had two pairs of khakis, though, one with cuffs so worn they trailed dirty threads like gray tentacles. He guessed the school would give him whatever else he needed. Deb hadn’t been in the mood for a shopping trip.
His mom came out, bundled in her sweatshirt, its frayed cuffs pulled down past her chapped knuckles. She huddled beside him. She was hoarse. “I want you to think of this as a fresh start. It’s not going to be fun. It’s not supposed to be. But you need to listen to these people and try to learn something. You might be able to get on a different path.”
Robert nodded, but he couldn’t make himself talk to her. The van pulled up. Deb hugged him and Robert patted her stiffly.
Hulk barked and tugged at his flagpole-bound leash until the van had driven out of sight, Robert the only passenger on its long bench seat.
The van puffed along, the miles between him and the trailer widening.
Dunes Road widened into two lanes just before Yannatok Bridge. Robert had only been across it a few times: a class trip to the aquarium, a visit to his now-deceased great-grandmother’s farm, a dentist appointment. On each excursion the allure of the mainland had had him bouncing in his seat. Even a fluoride treatment seemed exotic, compared to his sludge-paced school days.
Traffic crawled onto the bridge, paused atop it like Ferris wheel cars dangling at the ride’s pinnacle. For twenty-five minutes the van inched across the bridge, Robert suspended between Yannatok and the mainland. Despite the van’s wide bench seat, he started to feel trapped. He whipped his head from one window to the other. The ferry passed them and blasted its horn, a single, bloated note.
Then he was off the island.
Like a deep-sea diver, finally coming up for air.
He looked straight ahead, and told himself he’d never go back.