The Juvie Three (10 page)

A low profile is absolutely vital. Scrutiny—from neighbors, teachers, social workers, doctors, and even other teenagers—is the one thing they must avoid at all costs. No one can be allowed to reach the point where they decide to complain to Healy. There is no Healy.

“We were better off in jail,” Terence moans from the depths of his algebra book. “At least nobody expects you to be smart. Think they're solving for
x
in lockup?”

Arjay is relentless. “We're not going back inside because you're too lazy to do what every other kid is doing right now.”

“I'm not being lazy,” Terence defends himself. “I'm just being
me.
”

How can he ever explain it? Even when his old man used to threaten him with a copper pipe, nobody could make him study. They could force him physically into a classroom, but that was where the learning ended. To expect him to do this
now
, after a lifetime of slacking off, is like asking the guy who sweeps up in the missile silo to defuse a nuclear warhead. Right place, wrong person. It's not his gig.

The reading is pure misery. His teachers must all think he's got nothing better to do than sit around with his nose in some book! And to make matters worse, Jumbo stands over his shoulder, watching him do it.

“No wonder you hate this stuff, man!” the big boy exclaims. “You can barely read!”

His frustration with the work, and anger at Arjay for rubbing it in his face, is like nitric acid and glycerin sloshing around inside Terence. He wheels in his chair and starts throwing punches at his tormentor.

It takes Arjay and Gecko to pin him down. “I'm trying to help you!” Arjay pants, pressing Terence's shoulders into the carpet. “If you don't get better at reading, it's never going to stop being torture!”

“Listen to yourself, man,” Terence mumbles resentfully. “You sound like a teacher. Don't you get it? Our jailer is gone, so now we're jailing ourselves. Even Healy wasn't as Nazi as you guys.”

The whole world is upside down. With Healy in the hospital, the three finally have a chance to have some fun. Instead, they're waking up early, going to school and community service and therapy, and cleaning the apartment in case Ms. Vaughn pulls a surprise inspection.

That makes the least sense of all. “Listen, if that pickle-faced buster shows up here, we're all dead, no matter how clean the place is. You think she's going to say, ‘Three felons are on the loose, but, hey, you could eat out of their toilet bowl, so no harm, no foul'?”

He listens raptly to Gecko's hospital reports, rooting for Healy to come home and get Arjay and Gecko off his back. But the group leader is still vegging, so the rat race goes on with no end in sight.

On Tuesday afternoon, they show up at the Business Improvement District to find the electronics store sealed off with yellow crime scene tape.

Never, not even when they shipped him from Chicago to that East Bumwipe Island, has Terence experienced such despair. Sure, he already knew DeAndre's crew would be taking the place down. But to actually see it—your plan working perfectly, with you on the outside—it feels like a death in the family.

On top of it all, Arjay gets suspicious when Terence spends the entire two-hour shift sweeping up around the yellow tape. “Tell me you don't know anything about this.”

Terence turns furious eyes on him. “How could I know anything about anything? The only time I'm out of your sight is to go to the bathroom. Thanks for the privacy, by the way.”

The next morning at school, DeAndre is waiting by the front entrance. His eyes never meet Terence's, and his lips never seem to move. But as he brushes by, he says very distinctly, “Got a present for yo.” And he stuffs something into Terence's jacket.

Mystified, Terence inches a small flat item out of his pocket—a video iPod, brand new.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Gecko pushes the juice cart along the seventh floor hallway and stops to allow Roxanne to load up a tray of choices. She disappears into room 708, and he listens to her usual banter with the occupants.

“Hi, guys. Do you want the pheasant under glass or the beef Wellington? Oh, sorry. That's for the good patients. You two get cookies and juice….”

Gecko smiles to himself. She's the ultimate volunteer, and everybody loves her. He looks forward to the weekend because it saves him the mad dash from school and back on his lunch hour. Plus he knows Roxanne basically lives here on Saturday and Sunday, so he'll be able to hang out with her. And he isn't exactly longing for apartment 4B either, where Arjay is “helping” Terence with his book report on
To Kill a Mockingbird.
The only thing more agonizing than making Terence read is making Terence write. Each letter is formed as if someone is holding a blowtorch to his wrist. By now, the two of them are probably rolling around on the living room floor, beating each other's head in.

Roxanne emerges. “Satisfied customers.”

They work their way to the end of the hall, conspicuously skipping room 704, where Healy lies in comatose solitude, taking all his nourishment through a drip in his arm.

When they're done, Roxanne offers to take the cart back to the pantry. “Why don't you go sit with your John Doe,” she suggests. “You've been eyeing that door all morning.”

Room 704 is the place where the pleasant glow of the day turns chill. The patient's unmoving silence is such a stark contrast to the warm and vivacious atmosphere around Roxanne. It never fails to dampen his mood.

On Roxanne's advice, Gecko has been talking to Healy, praying that the sound of a human voice will percolate down to wherever his consciousness is hiding. “If nothing else, it'll make
you
feel better,” is her philosophy.

And it does, kind of. It's a little less like he's visiting a corpse. “I got a B-plus on my chemistry report. The labs go a lot smoother now that Diego isn't so scared of me. All my grades are pretty good….”

Funny he should be turning into a student now, of all times. It's almost as if school never really
counted
before. A bad grade was just a letter on a report card. But these days, a blown quiz or ditched homework could set in motion a disastrous domino effect—a teacher slaps you with an F; Ms. Vaughn sees it on the weekly report; she calls Healy; he doesn't call back; she comes to the apartment to investigate….

Fear is making me smarter.

Or maybe he always had the brainpower. Fear is just his motivation to use it.

“…I'm doing better than I did in eighth grade, although that might have had a lot to do with my brother. He'd rip me out of bed at three a.m. and drag me off on some job. Next morning, I'd sleep through a test and take another zero. It gets to the point where you don't bother studying.…”

These conversations are obviously one-sided, so Gecko has to work in some natural pauses. He walks to the window and opens the blind. The slats of the venetians are dusty, and he rattles off four sharp sneezes in quick succession.

“Gesundheit.”

He turns fast enough to pop all the disks in his neck. No doctor or orderly has entered the room. That's when he realizes that Douglas Healy is
watching
him.

Gecko's reaction is so electric that, in dashing over to Healy, he stubs his toe on the IV pole and very nearly winds up sprawled across the patient's bed.

“It's you! You're awake! We're so sorry! You
know
we didn't do it on purpose! We're okay! We're still in the apartment, doing all the things you set up for us, just praying that you'll get better and give us another chance!”

Healy's eyes are bloodshot and barely focused. “Do I know you?” The eyes widen. He's coming back, taking in his surroundings, working to dispel the fog. “What's your name?” Suddenly, his expression changes from confusion to alarm. “What's
my
name?”

Gecko is frozen to the spot.

“Gecko,” comes a singsong voice, “it's time to take out the library cart.” Roxanne pokes her head into 704. The shriek that escapes her is barely human. “Gecko, you did it! You reached him! You brought him back! Nurse!
Nurse!
”

Healy tries to lift himself up, but falls back, exhausted. “Get me a mirror! Please!”

Roxanne steps forward and flips open the rolling tray caddy.

John Doe stares at his reflection on the underside of the lid. “My God, I don't recognize my own face!”

It's plain from the panic in his voice that this is no mere groggy confusion. The patient may have been dazed at first, but he's wide-awake now.

The room fills with nurses and orderlies. Several interns come running, and finally a staff physician.

“I'm Doctor Radnor. Good to have you with us. What do you remember about what happened to you?”

Healy's voice is rising. “You're the doctor! You tell me! I don't even know who I am!”

“All right, calm down, sir. Let's take this one step at a time….”

The room and everyone in it fade out for Gecko as his thoughts whirl. He alone knows Healy's true identity. The doctors should have it.
Healy
should have it.

But what would the result of that be? Gecko, Arjay, and Terence would be exposed, and Healy would be in no position to speak up for them. The halfway house would be closed, and its occupants issued a one-way ticket back into the juvenile justice system. All this with no assurance that the information would do anything to bring back the group leader's lost memory.

It's too much—too many twists and turns and surprises. Suddenly, Gecko can't stay in the room another second. He slinks out into the hall and collapses into a wheelchair parked by the wall.

He can't shake off the cold sweat that's making him weak and dizzy. There he sits, rocking slightly, hugging his shoulders and trembling. There's excited chaos in 704, but he hears only white noise.

Amnesia! After everything else that's happened, amnesia too. It's like all this is a bad movie, hatched from the twisted imagination of some sadistic screenwriter who specializes in worst-case scenarios.

Healy is the one person who has half a chance of setting things right—but the guy in there isn't Healy anymore. And that's not even the worst part!

This is our fault. We took the only person who cared about us and ruined his life.

Surely there's nothing lower than that. This is absolute rock bottom.

A small hand appears on his hunched shoulder. He looks up to see Roxanne peering down at him, an intense expression on her face.

“I always figured it was just me,” she murmurs huskily. “I hang around here, and it's more than a volunteer job. These patients are a part of my life. I thought I was the only one—until I met you. When I see you with John Doe—”

He shakes his head helplessly. “You were right—I have to get a grip.”

In answer, she slides her hands behind his neck.

He almost smiles. “Not
that
kind of grip.”

But she squeezes harder. Then his hands are on her arms, and he's squeezing too—the way a drowning man hangs on to a life preserver. The wheelchair begins to roll slowly backward as their faces draw closer, the two of them in a trance. She stumbles forward as the motion pulls him away from her. He holds on tight—not out of romance, but because human contact is the only thing that makes sense just then. In fact, it makes more sense than anything has in a long time.

When her lips meet his, it seems like the most natural thing in the world—to be kissing on a moving wheelchair in a hospital head trauma unit. It's a rush no Infiniti could match, not even one with a nuclear reactor under the hood.

There's a crash as the chair upends a rolling tray, sending clamps and scissors clattering to the floor.

Gecko and Roxanne stare at each other blearily, as if waking after a long sleep.

An orderly stands over the scattering of metal instruments. “Roxanne, could you give me a hand with this stuff?”

“Coming.” Her eyes never leave Gecko.

He gets up from the wheelchair. “I should go.”

She nods. “See you tomorrow?”

The simple question appears dizzyingly complex. The way events have been going lately, making plans twenty-four hours into the future seems like an insanely reckless thing to do.

He stammers, “Uh—right,” because he wants it to be true. But that doesn't change the fact that he really needs to get out of there.

He sprints for the security door, shrugging out of his lab coat and tossing it into a laundry bin as he passes. Then down six flights of stairs, never pausing to catch his breath.

Roxanne! Talk about a bolt out of the blue. Of course he noticed her good looks before. But here at the hospital, he's got a lot more on his mind than hooking up—like devastating guilt and the terrifying uncertainty of the future.

Besides, who could have guessed that a totally hot girl would be into me?

The incredible fact that she
is
only mixes him up even more. A guy could get the bends from the highs and lows of this ride. The relief of Healy awake, the despair of his amnesia, Roxanne's lips—and now what? Home to tell Arjay and Terence their dilemma just got worse?

Gecko runs out of the building into the honking horns and other street sounds of the city. The chaos of New York seems simple and well ordered compared with the runaway train that is his life.

A UPS truck screeches to a halt beside him. The driver, obviously behind schedule, jumps down and races into the hospital carrying several small packages.

Gecko is in the van and behind the wheel faster than you could say
What can Brown do for you?
In that instant, he doesn't see a delivery truck, but a time machine. It can take him back before Healy, before Atchison, before the world got so complicated. Back to a day when all Gecko Fosse needed was a wheel in his hands and a motor roaring underneath him.