The guard, whose last name was McCauley, said, “Be kind, Isaak. The new boy’s name is Ariel.”
And that was my introduction to the king of the orphans and his sergeants.
Isaak stood up and looked at me. He was tall and his shoulders were square. The other boys got up, too.
Isaak put his hand on my arm. I knew right away it was not a friendly gesture. You know how you can just sense that kind of touch, like a live electric wire.
He looked at the others and said, “Come on, Ariel. We’ll show you around. So you know what to do.”
Of course I didn’t want to go with them. What could I do?
Isaak walked on my left, so close our arms touched as he and the others who boxed me in like a captive led me through alleys formed between rows of tents, turning here and there, dodging people. I was instantly lost.
“Are you a good thief?” Isaak said.
“No.”
“You are now,” he told me. “Bring me something tonight, or you will pay.”
“What am I supposed to bring you?”
“Surprise me. Make it nice.”
“I don’t think I can steal.”
“Think again,” one of the other boys said, and pushed me hard from behind.
Isaak stopped and pointed down another narrower alleyway. “Here we go. Let’s take him this way.”
We turned another corner and the boys ushered me inside a tent. It was mostly empty except for a heater and an electrical wire that connected to a small hot plate. The place smelled like food, tobacco, and sweat. This tent was smaller than the one the orphans lived in. I could tell it was home to one or two families by the rugs and clothing that were neatly laid out. At the back of the tent hung a carpet that served as a sort of flimsy room divider, which curtained off a smaller, darker place.
Isaak and the boys grabbed me tightly and pulled me toward the small room at the back of the tent. I resisted, tried to jerk away from them. When I turned my face back toward the doorway, one of the boys—his name was Abel—put his dirty hand over my mouth and nose, and shoved me forward.
“Shut up!” he told me.
I was so scared, Max. They pulled me behind the curtain and forced me down onto the floor while they punched my ribs and back. All the while Abel’s filthy hand pressed into my face. Abel held me still by twisting his opposite hand into my hair. It hurt me, and I was terrified.
Instantly, I was sweating and crying.
“Don’t make any noise,” Isaak put his face right up to my ear and whispered.
The other boys pinned me flat on my belly. The thing I remember most was how bad they smelled, like piss and armpits. I was thinking that I wanted to ask them, what are you doing? what are you doing? But there was part of me that knew what the boys were going to do to me, even if I didn’t want to believe it.
“Don’t fight. Hold still or we’ll hurt you more,” Abel said.
Two of the boys pulled off my shoes and pants while Abel pressed my face into the floor, cursing me in a whisper and telling me over and over to shut up, to be quiet or they would beat me worse. Then the boys stripped off my sweater and undershirt, and Isaak climbed on top of me. Isaak braced his bare knees against my legs, straining to push himself up inside me. The other boys laughed and called me names.
It was sickening. I’m so sorry to be telling you this, but it’s what happened to me that day.
I struggled and tried to move my body away from Isaak, but the boys holding me down were too strong for me. They kept telling me to shut up, and that it was going to be their turn next, so I better take it or it would only make things worse for me. Isaak grabbed my shoulders hard and forced himself all the way into me. I screamed, but Abel’s hand sealed my mouth and nose, suffocating me, and Isaak pressed his chin against the side of my neck and slobbered on my face as he pushed and pushed and pushed.
Abel whispered, “You like it, don’t you?” Then he jerked my head up and down, forcing me to nod, and laughed. “Well, I’m next after Isaak. You’re going to like me even more.”
Abel licked the side of my face. I shut my eyes and gagged down vomit.
“Shut up. Don’t cry.” Isaak’s dripping mouth was right in my ear. “If you tell anyone, little chicken, we’ll kill you.”
“Hurry up,” Abel told him. “Let me at him.”
Isaak grunted and trembled.
Finally Isaak stopped. He put his teeth on my neck, panting and dripping his sweat on me.
I bit the filthy kid’s hand, and he cursed and jerked it away from my face.
Then I screamed as loud as I could, over and over, cursing Isaak and telling him to get off me, to get off.
Someone came into the tent, shouting.
“Hey! What’s going on here? What are you doing there? You again? Get out of here, you rats! I told you before! Get out!”
Isaak and the others ran past the curtain and the man who’d been shouting at them to get out of his home, leaving me lying there crying on the mats of what had been this man’s bedroom.
The man yelled at me, “Get out, you little pig! Get out of here!”
Everything was a terrible blur.
I glanced at the man. He looked as though he wanted to hit me, but was afraid to touch me. It was the most terrible thing, Max. I tried to pull my pants on and fumbled at buckling the belt Garen had given me, but my hands didn’t work and nothing went back into place. I remember that I was crying as I gathered up my shoes and the rest of my clothes in one hand, held my pants closed with the other, and ran outside into the daylight.
I’m sorry for giving this to you, Max.
- - -
Another of my lives ended that day.
After that, I hovered for so long between an old there—a refrigerator—and a distant somewhere else. Who knows where? It was like that ridiculous gate we’d pulled the wagon through. We could have gone around it just as easily, but crossing through the thing—the actual gate—somehow gave a measure of significance to the passage that would not be diminished by doubt. The gate was certain, and we had gone through it, and that was that. And here I was now—lost, so lost.
I will tell you this, Max: I can’t remember where I went after I came out of that tent. It was as though I moved through the city in a state of consciousness with neither identity nor language. Nothing made sense; no components could be categorized, defined, broken down. And at some point I found myself standing beside a spigot where a woman worked over a bucket, filling it up with water and wringing out a cloth to wipe the face of her child, and at that moment I knew who I was again, and remembered what happened to me and why I was standing there holding my pants up with one hand and my shoes and the rest of my clothes in the other while my belt dragged in the dirt behind me like a donkey’s tail.
I managed to button my pants and thread the belt through the loops. Then I slipped my shoes back onto my feet and put on my pink undershirt and the dead boy’s sweater. I don’t know how long I stood there watching the woman and the bucket.
She held the cloth up to me and said, “Here, son. Do you want to wash your face?”
I must have looked terrible. I could feel the tightness of dirt where it had dried around my eyes after I’d stopped crying. But it was almost as though I couldn’t understand what the woman was saying to me at all. I shook my head and turned around and walked away from her.
Of course I didn’t know where I was going. How could I? The sky was fading to evening, and I was completely lost in that city of tents. But something occurred to me, Max, and it may strike you as the thinking of a crazy boy. I realized that I had to steal something for Isaak.
I’m sorry. It’s irrational, I know. But I had to do it.
- - -
It was well past dark when I finally found my way back to the orphans’ tent. The boys had already been fed, and most of them w
ere lying on their mats on the floor, sleeping.
I’m not proud to admit any of this—or that I became a good thief. The things I’d stolen were hidden against my belly, tucked inside the sweater and pink undershirt Garen and Emel had given me.
Isaak and his sergeants sat nearest the heater, in the center of all the other boys. I hadn’t realized how cold it was. I suppose I wasn’t feeling very much at all. But the older boys instantly saw me when I stood inside the tent’s doorway.
Isaak nudged Abel’s shoulder with the back of his hand.
“Look, there. Our new friend has come back.”
Everyone turned to look at me. I felt sick, like I would have thrown up if I had eaten anything at all that day. I looked down at the blue tarp floor and wondered how many times someone had vomited on it.
Isaak said, “Jovan, get Ariel a bed. He must be very tired.”
And Jovan, one of the boys who’d held me down and stripped me that day, got up from his place near the heater and carried a mat to where I was standing.
Jovan said, “Did you bring something for Isaak?”
I nodded. I took my bed and placed it outside the group of orphan boys, who all made orbital rings that tightly packed them in a cluster around the heater. I put the mat against the edge of the floor so I could lie down facing all the others and keep my back against the tent’s wall.
“You’re going to be cold there,” Abel said, and laughed.
Isaak laughed, too.
“Well, let’s see what you got,” Jovan told me.
Isaak kept his eyes directly on my face as I carefully stepped between the beds of the other boys. I would not look at him, but could feel his stare on me. I was sick and scared. Abel and Paul, the other boy who’d held me down for Isaak, scooted over slightly so I could stand in front of the bigger boy.
Abel nudged my foot with his. “Don’t forget. It’s my turn next.”
I will tell you this, Max: I thought about fighting then and there. I knew they would kill me if I did.
Isaak said, “Did you bring me something, Ariel?”
I nodded.
I slipped my hand up inside my shirt and pulled out the thing I’d stolen for Isaak. It was a crucifix, made of wood, and as big as both of my hands together. On the crucifix was a painted plaster Jesus, small nails through both of his hands and feet. Plaster Jesus’s head lolled onto his right shoulder, and his pale skin was streaked and smeared with rusty blood. To be honest, the blood looked real; I’d seen enough of it to know. And Plaster Jesus had an agonized and pitiful expression on his face, his eyes rolled upward as though confronting a tormentor with the question that didn’t need to be answered: What are you doing to me? He wore a stained knot of rags slung around his hips that barely covered his groin.
Isaak turned the thing over and over in his hands. He nodded.
“This is nice. I can trade it for something good. Maybe some tobacco. Do you smoke, Ariel?”
Isaak kept staring at me, but I didn’t say anything to him. I turned and went back to the place where I’d made my bed.
And Isaak called after me, “You’re going to get cold there.”
The older boys laughed. They knew what Isaak meant.
It hurt to lie down. I’d almost forgotten the beating I’d taken on top of the humiliation of everything else they had done to me. I put my arm across my eyes and tried to shut everything out. It was impossible.
This is how it was now, Max.
I will tell you this, Max: The Jesus was not the only thing I’d stolen that day. I also stole a short paring knife, which I wrapped in a rag and kept snugged away inside the waist of my pants. It was a strange and desperate thing for me to do, I think. Because I could never use a knife on anyone, not even if he was harming me. That’s stupid, isn’t it? Still, I hoped to believe that just having that knife would act as some charm of protection, a deliverance that would keep those boys from ever touching me again.
THE CAT AND THE MICE
“This is the most fucked-up, unfair competition I’ve ever seen,” Max said.
“A bunch of bullshit,” Cobie Petersen added.
We should have seen it coming.
Because Jupiter was so far in the lead of the interplanetary games, the counselors collectively decided to make the final competition worth so many points that any cabin who won the last event would be named overall camp winners. And there was a prize at stake, which was this: The boys of the winning planet—and their counselor—would get to take the Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys van and spend the entire day Friday, which was our last full day trapped in our miserable planets, at the Little America Mall, where there was electricity and video games (which most of the boys of Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys salivated over) and clean toilets and pretzel stands and teenage girls (which only a few of the boys of Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys salivated over), and so on.
“We should have seen this coming,” I said.
And Max said, “Yeah, but you never know.”
On Wednesday morning during our sixth week at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys, the day before the contest was to take place, Larry gave us the disturbing news about the event before dispatching us to breakfast.
Max stirred his oatmeal sullenly. Cobie Petersen had a determined and focused expression on his face; he stared off into the woods, concentrating. Robin Sexton rocked back and forth slightly, dull eyed, plugs inserted, fingers twitching and stabbing at nothing, kite string dangling below his chin. And Trent Mendibles scratched his balls and tried not to listen to anything we were talking about.
The next day’s event was going to be the longest and most challenging contest of the six-week session. And unfortunately, it was also quite possible that any planet would get lucky and win it. It was an orienteering challenge in the woods that sounded like the sort of event where Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys might end up a few boys short when all was done.
Every cabin would be provided with a compass and a topographical map of the forestland around Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys, along with written instructions detailing where the individual teams were supposed to go. Each planet had a personalized flag that had been hidden somewhere in the forest, all of them three miles away from Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys. The instructions told us where to go to find our flags, which were hidden in different spots, so as to keep the planets from engaging in warfare or any other kinds of dirty tricks. So the game depended on the ability to judge distances on our own, use a compass to determine direction, and figure out what all the lines and patterns on a topographical map actually meant.
None of us had ever done anything like this before. But the planet finding their flag and returning it to camp first would win the competition—and the prize.
Six miles, considering the unlikely out-and-back shortest possible route, may just as well have been six hundred to some of the boys at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys.
I seriously doubted we’d be able to inspire Trent Mendibles or Robin Sexton to give it his best.
“We need to win tomorrow,” Max said.
Cobie Petersen looked at Trent Mendibles and Robin Sexton, then shook his head. And he said, “I have a plan.”
Of course Cobie Petersen had a plan. He always had a plan.
Cobie said, “Stay here. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
And with that, Cobie Petersen stood up from the breakfast table and bolted off into the woods.
We didn’t find out what Cobie Petersen’s plan involved until the next day, after they sent the five boys of Jupiter out into the woods, alone with a compass, a map, and some impossible instructions to direct us to our flag.
- - -
We could all see—well, Max, Cobie, and I could—that Larry was stoned.
We had just gotten back to Jupiter from lunch, which Larry, as usual, did not attend with us.
Cobie Petersen
raised his hand. “Having a good day, Larry?”
Larry fired a dirty look at Cobie.
“Why do you want to know?”
“I care about you, Larry,” Cobie said. “I think I’ll miss you in three days when we get to go home.”
“So write me a letter, kid.”
“You might be too busy with the fat boys.”
“There’s a fat-guy boss on level thirty-three of BQTNP that’s like impossible to beat. It took me over a week,” Trent Mendibles said.
“Really?” Max said, “That’s fascinating, and also really sad all at the same time. And how do you propose helping us win the game tomorrow with all your awesome skills?”
“Fuck you, dude. I swear to God, before we go home you and me are going to go outside and have it out,” Trent said.
“Have what out? Do you mean you want to go upload some streaming data with me? No thanks, I’m a solo artist.”
“Dude, you’re so fucking gross,” Cobie Petersen said. “Anyway, I know exactly what these two dudes are going to do to help us win. I have a plan. They want to get out of here for one day just as much as we do, and so does Larry, I bet.”
“I hate you all.” Trent Mendibles plopped down on his cot—crumple!
Robin Sexton stared blankly at the ceiling and twitched.
And Larry said, “Sure, I’d like to go to the mall. But it’s up to you fuckheads. Normally, the day before the last game is Carving Day, where we let the kids carve shit on the walls of the cabins. But after that Bucky fucker tried killing himself on day one, they told us no sharp shit allowed for the entire six weeks.”
Cobie Petersen raised his hand. “Larry? I pledge allegiance to Jupiter, and to you, Larry. And I also pledge to not stab myself in the throat if you let us carve our names in the wall. Please? Are you guys willing to take the pledge of not stabbing ourselves with me?”
Our general, back in action.
Faced with three raised hands, because Trent Mendibles and Robin Sexton didn’t care about anything, Larry sighed and sat up on his bed. And he probably would have given in to Cobie Petersen’s Pledge of Non-Self-Injury, too, but at that exact moment we heard the jangling war cry of Mrs. Nussbaum trumpeting her arrival at Jupiter’s door.