I was heading home in the lazy afternoon, still idly scratching the Glory bite, when I first saw the gleam of pink. I’d cut through our neighbor’s property, twenty-five acres of scrubby grass, black snakes, and the foundation of a hundred-years-gone icehouse. Rumor was a plantation had been somewhere around there in the day. Now there was only scattered rock and an abandoned well.
The neon flash came from a foot-long scraggle of yellowing weeds. Hideously bright and a shade found nowhere in nature, it caught my eye. Curiously, I moved toward it, stomping my feet to scare off any snakes. As I bent over to study it, the smear of color finally shifted into a recognizable shape. A typically girlie thing, it was cradled in the grass as bright and cheerful as an Easter egg. Tessie’s shoe.
She’d lost it. When had that happened? It was far from the house. Yet Tess had lost her shoe way out here. I reached out and picked it up. The plastic of it was shiny and sleek against my skin. The only scuff was on the toe, and I traced a finger over it. It weighed nothing in my palm, less than a feather, it was so small. Tess’s favorite shoe, and she’d lost it.
But …
That was wrong.
My grip spasmed around the shoe until I heard the crack of a splitting sole. It was all wrong. Tess hadn’t lost her shoe. The shoe had lost her. I had lost her. Tessie was gone. Smothered in water and darkness, her wide blue eyes forever open, her hands floating upward like white lilies as if she were hoping someone would pull her up. No one had. My sister was gone.
God, she was gone.
How did I know? Easy. It was as simple as the river being wet, as obvious as the sky being blue. Unstoppable as a falling star.
The shoe told me.
2
They painted the walls pink.
They didn’t call it that, of course. They called it coral or salmon, more like Salmonella, or some such shit. Call it whatever you want, it was still pink. It was the last straw. Stupid, a simple color driving me over the edge. It wasn’t the bad food or the mind-numbing sameness of the rules. It wasn’t the bored, empty eyes of the teachers who could barely force themselves through the motions for kids they’d already written off. It wasn’t even the vicious fights or the fear of getting gang-raped in the communal bathroom in the middle of the night. Life in a state home wasn’t for the weak … it wasn’t for anyone who hoped to remain whole and undamaged, but I could’ve toughed it out for two more years until I was eighteen. I’d learned to hold my own. I was still skinny, but I’d picked up a whole bagful of dirty tricks that involved kicking or jabbing with my elbows. I could go toe-to-toe with your average son of a bitch and never have to touch him with my hands. That was another thing I’d learned. Touching people with my bare skin had gradually become a not very good idea. Even the split-second contact of fist against face would tell me things … show me things that I didn’t want to know. So I took my brawling in a different direction. It worked. The nickname Shotgun Jack didn’t much hurt, either.
Or the fact that I’d come by it honestly.
Yeah, I could’ve put up with it. Crappy meals and frequent doses of violence, it wasn’t so different from home … but home had been two years ago. The pink, though, that I couldn’t deal with. Every day I woke up to the reminder that home didn’t exist anymore. It stared at me with the blush of a cheek, the glow of a spring dawn … the bubblegum shine of a little girl’s lost shoe.
“I hate this goddamn color,” I growled, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.
“Maybe it’s supposed to be calming,” Charlie said reasonably from the other bed.
He was always reasonable. Charles Allgood lived up to his name. He was all about the books, polite manners, and staying out of trouble. Unfortunately, the Cane Lake County Home for Boys wasn’t the place for the good and wholesome. With those labels tacked to his character, he would’ve been better suited to a Boy Scout troop than Cane Lake. It wasn’t surprising that he’d been through the front door less than an hour when he was knocked flat by a certain Ryder Powell. That was my first sight of Charlie, lying on his stomach surrounded by textbooks and clothes. The guy who’d taken him down, a small-eyed punk with an unlikely soap-opera name, had unzipped Charlie’s duffel bag and dumped the contents on the floor to see if there was anything worth stealing. I’d rushed forward, pushed Ryder aside, and helped the new kid up. We picked up his stuff, exchanged hugs, and swore undying friendship.
And if you believe that story, you’re going to love the movie version.
Truth was, I just kept walking. I was no one’s hero. Besides, this sort of thing happened on a daily basis. Superman himself would run his ass ragged trying to clean the place up, and Superman I was not. Primary colors, not my style. But as I moved on through the commons area, not giving Ryder’s fallen victim another thought, I heard a loud thunk from behind me. Turning, I saw Powell waver, then collapse to his knees. The hand he had clasped to the back of his head slowly became stained with small rivulets of blood. Charlie was standing over him with a large book in his hands—biology, I think it was. “I told you to leave me alone,” he said calmly, as if it were the most rational request in the world. Maybe it was in the outside world, but here … Allgood was going to have to keep swinging those books.
He was put in the Quiet Room that night, which didn’t bother him in the slightest. Charlie was perfectly happy with his own company. The next day, he was assigned to my room. Shotgun Jack and Book-Thumping Charlie, one helluva dynamic duo. In the beginning, I ignored him. I wasn’t there to make friends. I was only marking time until I could get out and find my sister. I couldn’t do anything for her now, just as I hadn’t been able to do anything for Tess, swallowed by water, but when I was eighteen, they’d have to let me see Glory. I was her brother, her only remaining family. That meant something. It had to.
Charlie didn’t mind the rejection. He only fixed me with his odd blue eyes, smiled, and reached for the next book. He was seventeen, a year older than me. A little short for his age and wiry, he had a close-cut pelt of intensely black hair that whispered of Asian or Hispanic blood. That might have been belied by the pale color of his eyes if it weren’t for the slightly almond shape to them. Despite that exotic feature, he had a face typically referred to in the South as five miles of bad road. And the hair, while short, was always disheveled, as if distracted finger-combing was the most attention he could spare it. Pleasantly homely was what Granny Rosemary would’ve called him. If she’d still been around.
He kept to himself, studied nonstop, and left me alone. Once in a while when I was erasing holes in my paper with frustrated force, he would offer to help me with my chemistry homework. Usually, I said no, but once … hell, it only takes once. Math I got. It was just numbers, like money was numbers. For that, I had an innate skill, and it was one that I still planned to use to make a life far different from this. People left you, people died, but money was forever—if you knew what you were doing. And when it came to money, unlike everything else, I always knew what I was doing.
After the chemistry, he started to creep in, bit by bit. I put it down to boredom. I mean, it wasn’t as if I needed anyone. I didn’t. But when you spend the better part of your day with someone in a nine-by-twelve room, you eventually have to talk … talk or kill each other. And Charlie wasn’t as annoying as some. He was quiet, he didn’t steal, and he kept his shit on his side of the room, which kept me from accidentally touching any of it. And two months later, he was still swinging a mean book.
I grinned to myself as I moved my eyes from the hated pink to the neutral tile of the ceiling. Charlie said he wanted to be a doctor, and that’s why he carried so many books around. It was true enough; the kid had his nose stuck in one 24/7, but they also came in handy reenacting his first day. Thick and heavy, they were better than a sock full of pennies. Charlie might be a few inches shorter than I was, but he took care of himself fine.
“I saw Ryder in the library yesterday, believe it or not,” I said, hands behind my head. Hunger was a junky
ard-dog growl, even at the prospect of a breakfast of leathery scrambled eggs and petrified mystery-meat sausage.
“Library.” Charlie snorted as he turned over in a rustle of sheets. “Five books in a milk crate isn’t a library.”
“Whatever, geek boy. I think he was looking for a weapon. Maybe he’s going to challenge you to a duel.” Dusty yellow light began to creep across the ceiling like the incoming tide. “Lab manuals at fifty paces.”
“If it got that idiot to pick up a book, it might actually be worth it.” There was the sound of his bare feet slapping against the floor. I expected him to follow his usual routine. Up to squeeze in ten minutes of studying, then off to the showers. But he didn’t, not this time. Instead, he said quietly, “My birthday’s next week.”
“You saying you want five bucks in a card?”
There were eighty-four tiles up there under the shimmering light. Correction, there were eighty-four spaces, and one was empty. Underneath the missing tile was a black hole that blew sour air directly over my bed. In the middle of the night, I could easily imagine it was the tainted breath of death itself. Not for one moment did I think he’d come to take me away. That would be too easy. No, he was only paying a visit to a junior varsity player, clapping my shoulder with an approving bony hand.
“No, I don’t want a card.” His foot tapped on the floor, the bump of heel then slap of toes. “I just wanted you to know, Jack. That’s all.”
He would be eighteen. Eighteen and free. Charlie had told me that his parents had both been killed in a car accident several months ago. With no other relatives in the picture, he’d ended up here, but as of next week, he could walk away. As solid and logical as he was, I was sure he already had things worked out. An apartment, school … like me, Charlie had his plans. They were different plans with different goals, but we were both looking to get away from our here and now.
“So, now I know.” My eyes dropped back to the pink wall. Next week was as perfect a time as any to leave. It would give me time to squirrel away some supplies, maybe steal some money from one of the teachers. Neither Charlie nor I would have to break in a new roommate. It was good … right. No more bullshit, no more being at the mercy of people who were damn deficient in the emotion. And no more goddamn pink.
“Sorry, Tess,” I murmured under my breath. She’d loved it, but the color reminded me of too much.
“How much longer for you?”
Exhaling, I sat up. The morning was moving along, and if I wanted any breakfast, I’d better get moving with it. “Two years,” I answered absently. It wasn’t surprising that he didn’t know. I wasn’t one for telling personal details. As for my story, how I’d gotten here, he probably did know that … from the grapevine but not from me. Whether he knew or not, he didn’t treat me any different from how he had since the first day. He didn’t stare, and he didn’t ask prying, greedily vicarious questions. A good roommate, all right. Damn good.
“Two years,” he repeated, the corners of his mouth tightening. He’d experienced two months in Cane Lake; he could certainly imagine two years more of it. “That’s a long time. Maybe I could write you sometime, see how you’re doing.”
I slid him a look that wasn’t half as scornful as I meant it to be. “You’re not a doctor yet, Allgood. You’re not getting paid to take care of me or anybody.” I didn’t have a problem not telling him that I wouldn’t be around to receive any letters. He had a conscience, Charlie did. As bad as Cane Lake was, it was possible he might think that being on the streets was worse. A runaway from the state didn’t have many opportunities in the way of legal jobs or housing, and Charlie was smart enough to know that.
“They say they might let Hector come live with me,” he said, changing the subject, or so I thought. “I just have to prove I can provide a stable household.”
I could hear the bitter emphasis on the last two words. Even easygoing Charlie knew that the places the state sent kids were anything but stable. Not enough foster homes. Blah blah blah. Like any excuse could explain away places like this. Skimming my sleep-rumpled T-shirt off, I grunted noncommittally. Hector was Charlie’s brother, younger by a year. He was in another facility. Charlie said Hector was more of a jock than he was and capable of watching his ass. Not that he had put it quite like that, Mr. Prim and Proper. Still, I knew the separation bothered Charlie, like being apart from Glory bothered me. They were all either of us had left.
“I wish they’d let you come, too.” He said it with such sincerity. He meant it; he really did. The guy would take a killer like me into his home because he thought it was the right thing to do. Because he thought he was my friend.
It wasn’t going to happen, of course. There were rules. Strict rules, fair rules, the kind that put children back with their biological parents to be beaten to death all in the name of keeping the God-given natural family whole. Rules to keep people like me away from good, wholesome folks until I was old enough to do some real damage. But even if those rules were different, I wouldn’t go with Charlie. Couldn’t. Depending on someone else only got you in trouble. I’d learned that the hard way at fourteen, and it was still true at sixteen. Trusting your parents, trusting your friends, it just wasn’t a route I was going to go. Not again. I liked Charlie, I did. But like wasn’t anything more than that. Like wasn’t trust. I was going to be there for Glory, one day, but I didn’t plan on anyone being there for me. Depend only on yourself, and you won’t be let down. That was a rule of my own. An iron-fucking-clad one.
“It’s the thought that counts,” I said with an honesty that I rarely bothered with anymore. You didn’t need the truth when you couldn’t be bothered to waste words on anyone. Charlie had made himself the exception to that when I wasn’t looking. Sneaky little bastard. It wasn’t trust, but it was something. Yeah, something. Slapping the warm feeling back down to the murk where it belonged, I grabbed a towel and a melted bar of soap wrapped in plastic wrap before heading toward the door.
The week passed quickly, for both of us, I think. Charlie spent his time finishing off paperwork, talking to his brother on the phone, and neatly packing his few belongings. Or putting together his bookmobile, as I told him. It was something to see, Allgood in action. With all their corners lined up in anal-retentive cheer, the books were piled around his bed three high and two deep. It was hard to believe they’d all fit into a duffel bag to begin with, even if it was one bigger than Allgood himself. He tried to give a couple to me, but I didn’t plan on organic chemistry being a big part of my future.
I was busy, too. I didn’t steal any money; I’d wait on the last day for that. They took that shit seriously here. There would be room searches. Hell, strip searches if the former didn’t turn anything up. I’d lift what I could on the day I left. By the time the staff noticed anything, I’d be gone. I’d hit Mrs. Candy Tidwell first. Candy, shit. You’d think with a name like that, she’d be sweet as homemade peach pie. Cheerful as a puff-chested robin welcoming the dawn. Far from it. She squatted on the other end of the spectrum and squatted hard. With the jowls of a bulldog and the cold, round amber eyes of a muck-eating catfish, she had probably cried a river when corporal punishment was taken out of schools. Cried and promptly got a job at a place that ignored an occasional slap or shake, and that place would be here. She had a fist as big as a ham and as heavy as a falling rock. Act up in one of her classes, and it was likely to come crashing down on the back of your head. I’d seen guys bust their noses in a spray of red on their desk from one of her blows.
Who the hell named their kid Candy? A girl like that had three choices when she grew up. Stripper, hooker, or sadistic teacher with a dark line of fuzz on her upper lip. Wasn’t it my luck that I was saddled with the third option? Squeezed into a gray polyester pantsuit like a summer sausage popping from its skin, she was the thick, choking smell of chalk, lilacs, and blood. She was frozen stares, cracking knuckles, and the voice launched by a thousand cigarettes. In other words, she was not a good time. I would take
her money and piss in her empty purse.
After her, I’d drift by the offices, see if any were open and empty. It didn’t happen often, but once in a while, someone would take a bathroom break and forget to lock their door. Except for our beloved leader and administrator, Lewis Sugarman. He never forgot. With an eerie smile that had been frozen on his face for the two years I’d been at Cane Lake, he always kept a careful distance from the inmates. And that’s what we were, really. Prisoners, unwanted scum—at least that’s what you’d think from the look that would blossom in Sugarman’s eyes if he thought he might actually have to interact with one of us. Pure, unadulterated disgust. He would pass through the rec room as fast as his fancy shoes could take him. And if he saw a kid on the floor getting the living shit kicked out of him—well, he’d just keep walking. Tall and thin, he had shiny shoe-leather brown hair that owed a lot to a dye more expensive than the drugstore kind. They’d missed the eyebrows and lashes, though; pale gray, they were all but invisible. He looked like a surprised Chihuahua but with the poisonous scuttle of a fiddlehead spider.
Did he care about us? Hell, no. He’d walk through a lake of our blood in those shiny shoes and not blink. It was about the paycheck for him, nothing else. Indifference and malice, sometimes it was one and the same. Charlie had said that, him and his big words, but he was right. Too bad Sugarman was so paranoid about locking that door; I would’ve liked to take a slice of that check with me.