Cages (11 page)

From that day on, I developed an unfailing sense of exactly how many
people were in the bathroom when I was in the stall.  My ears painted a
clear picture of the sneakers walking to the urinals; even if two came in on
one door opening, I knew.
 
My talent for
counting the numbers of people in a bathroom from one locked stall was matched
only by my capacity for stillness when someone else sat down in the stall next
to mine.  I had perfected my timing and control such that I could do my
business in perfect lockstep with toilet flushes, running water from the sink, or
a particularly loud conversation. 

This is a pretty odd thing to be proud of, granted, but never before
Quarantine had my talents been put to such a severe test.  The dorm cells
were set in two blocks above the gym, trisected by three hallways.  The
end hallway was the boys’ bathroom and showers.  The middle was the
girls’, and the end was mainly for security patrols to canvas the entire dorm.

After many nights of feeling out the low traffic times, I had found a
single time where, more often than not, I was absolutely alone.  Two
fifteen in the morning. 

“Sam’s going for his poop break,” Dave muttered as the hallway light
poured in through the open door.  My roomies had been surprisingly
tolerant of me, so I in turn decided to ignore whatever I heard them doing in
the middle of the night.  Fair’s fair.

The bathrooms were sparse.  No mirrors.  In place of sinks
there was a single long trough with six crooked spigots.  A shot
air-drying machine no one ever bothered with any more.  Six urinals built
into the wall like sunken mouths with pouting lips.  Six stalls made from
particleboard and aluminum hinges.  Toilet paper rolls locked into rigid
metal dispensers.  Tile everywhere that led into the shower room, where
there were six shower poles that could accommodate four boys apiece.  We
had each been assigned shower times; mine was in the afternoon just after
lunch, so I often had the pleasure of going to half my classes wet if no one
had refilled the towel hamper by then.  Some days I just didn’t bother,
but I always brushed my teeth and put on deodorant.  I wasn’t a
barbarian.  You’d think the bathrooms would be a more violent, littered
place, except for the slowly rotating cameras in every corner.  Privacy
was an amusing idea in Quarantine.  They even had little windshield wipers
for the steam.

The walk from my cell, two doors down from the girls’ showers, was pretty
quick.  Usually I was seen and appraised by the security guard roaming the
halls on night shift, my trip noted in a little notebook, but that night the
halls were empty.  I took a book with me, as I always did:
One Hundred
Years of Solitude
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  I was curious to find
out what the story had to do with transformation, because sixty pages in, I
hadn’t seen it yet.  The bathroom was satisfactorily empty, so I chose a
stall by the wall and settled in.

Seven minutes later, the bathroom door swung open.  I barely had
time to panic before a quick knock warned of a blonde, gelled head popped up
over the door. 
No, no, no, no!
My brain screamed, but I was too
shocked to say anything.

“Oh, hey.  It’s you,” Kenny Stoppard said.

“Get out of here.”

“Oh, grow a pair.  Lucky I caught you, I was just looking for some
company.” 

“Company?”

Kenny grinned.  “Thought we could break your Blind Hall cherry.”

There are only a few things people really needed to know about Kenny
Stoppard.  He was a Vocational track.  He had a grating sense of
humor and a violent temper.  And, he ran the Blind Hall.  Dave had
him on his List of People Not to Piss Off.  Alan Tallart was also on that
list. 

I hunched over more to cover my bare legs.  “I’ve been there.”

Kenny whooped.  “Not at night you haven’t.  Come on, man,
everybody’s starting to talk about how I can’t get the guy who got even for
Jeremy Emmet into my Hall.  You’re a celebrity!  It ain’t a party
till you show up!”

 He had me grinning.  Maybe this once, I should take something
at face value.  I was a kind of celebrity, wasn’t I?  Besides, I was
getting tired of my dorm cell.  Dave farted in his sleep.  “Ok. 
But stop looking at me and let me finish up.  Don’t want the camera to
think you’re a funny-boy, do you?”

Kenny’s smile slipped a bit, but he nodded and slipped down off the
door.  “Kenny and Sam, steppin’ out tonight!”

I cleaned up quickly and pulled my pants up.
 
On the other side of the door Kenny waiting
with a broad grin.  Squirt of soap, quick lather with water and we were
gone, me drying my hands on my shirt,
One Hundred Years of Solitude
abandoned by the faucet. 

The door beside the shop opened up into a totally different world than it
had been when Remi had attack Alan.  The red lights had been sterile
before, but now the shadows of bodies cast everything in sinister silhouettes.
I had imagined it to be like a trendy nightclub, filled with sweaty, nubile
young bodies, dancing to techno and getting each other off between snorts of
who-knew-what.  Instead, the Hall was mostly quiet.  A single boom
box blared at the end of the hall, but its speakers were busted and couldn’t
intelligibly produce any significant volume.  No one danced.  Few
people were even standing, most lying in groups together on the floor, belching
smoke like dying dragons.
 
Here and there
a couple pawed at each other, but I couldn’t see anyone having sex
outright.
 
Franklin Fogerty, the quietest
and least engaged member of the Literary Society, was slumped against one dirty
brick wall, a needle left forgotten like a lawn dart fallen just shy of the
rubber tie around his bicep.  His eyelids fluttered and his arms twitched,
but other than that he gave no movements.  Now I knew why he kept so
quiet.  He was probably just biding his time in classes until he could get
back here for his hit. 

There was nothing exciting here.  Nothing erotic, nothing
dangerous.  It was like visiting an infirmary.

“Don’t worry,” Kenny said, slapping me on the back.  “It hits
everyone different the first time.  It’s the only break we get from
Conyers and his goons.  Want a beer?”

  No way was I gonna do any drugs; I had made my mind up about that
in the bathroom.  But beer was the only vice that came with status. 
It’s drilled into every young Southern boy’s head from birth.  Drink beer
and you’re a man.  My dad had relished his Sunday afternoon Marietta Light
for years, all the while lamenting that Budweiser had been more or less
eradicated in the Outbreak.  He would have given me some if I’d asked, I’m
sure, but he could never evade the eagle eye of my mother long enough to have
the chance.  Now, just as I was starting to think that I was coming into my
own, my dear crazy dad’s equal, why not have a beer?  “Sure.”

Kenny grinned again.  “My man.”  He walked over to a cooler
perched on a pipe midway down the hall.  There was an older boy standing
beside it, stone cold sober.  The cooler guard, I realized.  Kenny
opened the cooler and threw a tall can at me.

I nearly fumbled the catch, but luckily it bounced off my palm and I got
a second shot to grab it. 
Miller South IPA.
“It’s warm.”

“Where am I supposed to get ice around here?  You people, never
pleased.”

Well, where did you get the beer?
I wondered.  The tab popped
with a satisfying hiss, though it didn’t fizz like I expected it to. 

Kenny looked at me expectantly.  “Bottoms up, Sam.”

I took a deep breath and took a sip. 
Don’t gag!  Don’t
gag!  Oh my God, it’s awful!

“Good stuff, huh?”  Kenny put one finger under the can, guiding it
back to my mouth.  “You gotta chug it, you wanna do it right.”

I had no idea how anyone could drink beer as a beverage.  It was the
most vile thing I had ever put in my mouth.  But I tried to think like
James, remember his alpha-dog rules.  You gotta look badass if you want to
be treated like a badass.  So I chugged that can as fast as I could,
trying to pour it past my taste buds.  I finished it with what I hoped
sounded like a satisfied gasp, intended to hide the disgusted snarl. 

“Bobby!” Kenny called to the cooler guard.  “Looks like Sam here
needs another.”

I drank at least two more, but I was starting to get a little
loose.  Or tight.  Isn’t that how Hemingway referred to it in
The
Sun Also Rises?
  Tight?  I was laughing easily now and Kenny
turned out to be a real funny guy.  He did an impression of Remi that was
spot-on.  The only harsh tone I remember at that point was when some
skinny kid approached him and asked for something, but Kenny had punched him
hard in the arm and he went away.
 
Even
the beer was starting to taste good.  The Blind Hall was a good place.

“Hey,” Kenny said, getting really close to my face.

“Hey,” I responded.

“You a virgin, buddy?”

I went quiet then, because I didn’t want to lie to my buddy, but I was
ashamed that my answer was yes.

“No worries, man, everybody’s been there. But I can take care of that for
you.” 

I must have given him a funny look because he punched me in the
arm.  “Not me, you idiot.  Girls.  I got girls here that’ll do
for you.”

Another beer would have been a godsend at that point, to calm my
fluttering heart, but Kenny didn’t offer me any more.  “I don’t know,
Kenny.”

“No worries, man, no worries.  We’ll start you off slow.” 
Kenny beckoned to the throbbing groups at the door end of the hall and one
shape peeled away.  She approached slowly, a skinny girl maybe a year
older than me.  No boobs, at least none I could see in the oversized shirt
she was wearing.  Black hair, sunken, hungry eyes.  “Hurry up over
here.  Now, Sam.  This is Gail.”

“Hi Sam,” she said in monotone.

 “Hi.”  The buzz was starting to wear off a little, and that
sinister feeling was rising up again. 

“You two go back to the end there and we’ll give you some privacy,” Kenny
said, pushing both of us toward the far side of the hall, where no one else had
gathered.  I held Gail’s hand, a limp collection of bird-bones. 

“You look like a nice guy,” Gail said lifelessly.

“I am,” I said, taken aback.

She glanced back at Kenny.  “I really don’t want to do this. 
But I will if you make me.”

Even through the beer I felt like a cad.  What was I doing
here?  I was the worst kind of scum. Taking advantage of people. 
Using them.

She must have seen the confusion on my face, because she quickly offered
to pretend that we had done something, so Kenny wouldn’t think I was a
wuss.  She hugged me close, feeling more vulnerable than I would have
thought.

“How did you get this way?” I asked, finally finding my voice. 

“No small talk,” she said.  “It’s nothing special.”

We waited out of sight behind the husk of a brand new outdoor air
conditioner unit abandoned here when construction fizzled for about fifteen
minutes, when she pulled hard on her hair and declared that had been enough
time.  Now that it was over we didn’t hold hands on the way back. 
She walked faster than me, pulled, I could tell, by whatever was in Kenny’s
front pocket.  He reached in and gave it to her.
 
She beelined back into her group.

“She’s good, right?  My most popular.”

 Suddenly the nagging disappointment I felt was replaced by
relief.  Most popular is something you want to hear about an album or a
car.  Not about someone with whom you could have been sexually
intimate. 

“Sam, I want to talk to you about something.  We’re friends now,
right?  Friends?”  Kenny put his arm around me.

“Sure.”

“Well, there’s some rumors going around.  Rumors about you. 
About Conyers.”

I stopped breathing.  Had I been found out?  “I don’t know what
you mean.”

Kenny frowned, the first time I had really seen him do so.  “What
you got going on with the Principal just ain’t gonna fly around here, brother.”

I backed away from him, towards the double doors.  “Nothing.  I
got nothing going on.”

Kenny shook his head.  “Not wise, Sam.  Not after all the
trouble I went to so we could be friends.”  He gestured for Bobby, the
cooler guard, and the big kid stepped forward.

James had always told me that being aware of my environment was key to
surviving Quarantine. 
Home court advantage works, Sam.  If you’re
in his territory, he’s got you dead to rights.  If you get stuck all you
can do is try to change your circumstances.
  So I turned on my heel
and ran, tripping over and stepping on the moaning carpet of teenage life that
covered the floor like dozens of old rugs.  I burst through the double
doors and pushed off the opposite wall to keep running down the hall towards
the stairs.  The first flight took me past the chain-locked entrance to
the gymnasium itself, but the third would put me back on the Dorm Hall.

Inches away from the bar-handle that would open my path to freedom, a
hand caught hold of my shirt and yanked me back.  I fell on my attacker
and we both tumbled down the stairs, me landing heavily on the other boy, who I
guessed was Bobby.  The breath had been knocked out of him, but he still
held tight to my shirt, so I wriggled out of it and shoved roughly through the
doors to salvation.

“On the floor!” A guard was in my face, the night watchman, MP5 in
hand.  I dropped instantly, feeling oddly safe, even as the barrel came
closer.  The guard looked down the stairs and seemed to find no sight of
my assailant.  He turned back to me.  “What are you doing?”

“Just trying to go back to sleep, sir,” I muttered against the linoleum.

The guard sighed, as if mentally calculating how much trouble I was
worth.  Not much, it seemed, because he motioned me to my feet and sent me
on my way.