CHAPTER

1

Every morning at five o’clock another correction officer came on duty and started to count. For five months it had been the same. One of them would drive in from someplace nice, like Long Island, while another went home. The one coming on would start down the row of beds, counting, before he could steal an hour or two of sleep in the Plexiglas bubble—their little command center at the front of our module.

They can’t take the count by looking. Just like in the movies, a kid could roll his clothes up under a blanket and be on the loose. So they count by feeling for a warm body.

There’s nothing worse than waking up when a CO touches you. For a second, you might not remember where you are. You might even think you’re home. Then it all comes rushing back into your brain. You’re on Rikers Island. To fall asleep again is like spending another night in jail.

“Thirty-six . . . thirty-seven . . . thirty-eight,” the CO muttered.

The new jack next to me had spent the night before fighting off the wolves for his good kicks. He didn’t know the routine yet, and wasn’t ready for anyone to touch him while he was still asleep.

“Who’s that?” he screamed, jumping up in his bed.

“Yo, thirty-nine!” the CO shot back, pinning his shoulders to the mattress. “I’m just takin’ the count, kid. Grab a fuckin’ hold of yourself!”

It seemed like half the house was awake for a few seconds, until they saw it was nothing.

“Forty, court!” the officer hollered, and shook me with one hand.

I was going to court this morning. I got my best clothes—my cleanest jeans and collared polo shirt—from the plastic bucket under my bed. Then I got dressed in the dark.

I didn’t tell anyone I expected to go home. Some inmates will start trouble with you because they’re jealous or think you won’t fight back and chance getting a new charge. The ones you owe from juggling commissary will want to settle right away. Anyone who owes you will put it off, hoping you don’t come back from court. And the sneak thieves will be looking for your blanket and what’s left of your commissary and clothes before your bed gets cold.

I walked up to the bubble where the COs sit, and I got in line with the other courts. A CO pulled my ID card from the box and threw it on top of the pile of black and brown faces. It read, “Martin Stokes—Adolescent Reception and Detention Center, Mod-3, North Side #40.” I had been answering to “Forty” for so long, it was almost like that was really my name. I would only hear “Martin” when I called home, or when Mom came on a visit.

The picture stapled to the corner of the card was taken my first day on the Island, two weeks before I turned seventeen. I thought I’d be here for a hot minute then. It was such a bubble-gum charge. I thought Mom could make my $5,000 bail, or I’d get a program and probation when I got to court. But my case was put off twice for bullshit.

First, my lawyer had to tell the judge we weren’t ready. Then the judge got held up on another case. Now it had been five months since I was out in the world, and I was hungry to see it again without peeping through a chain-link fence.

There was a bang at the steel door to our mod.

It was a woman CO who’d come to collect me and four other kids. We eyeballed her up and down. She was pretty enough. But women don’t have to look too good in jail to get a lot of attention. Most times, inmates, especially adolescents, are just happy to be anywhere near one. Only I was thinking more about Mom, and getting a chance to see my little sisters, Trisha and Tina, and Grandma again.

We deuced it up in the hall, getting into two lines. That woman CO had inmates from other houses out there, and we were already mixing with adults, who have their own modules.

Then she marched us down the main corridor. Except for other officers standing their posts, it was totally empty. And with the sun coming up behind those barred windows, I started to think about how it’s almost peaceful on Rikers that early in the morning, when the only movement through the halls are the courts.