The Juvie Three (2 page)

The fear races back.
It's all a mistake. They've called the wrong kid. I'm going straight back to the laundry, where those guys can finish the job! I have to figure out a way to defend myself….

The stranger stands up. “Graham Fosse?”

“That's Gecko.”

“All right, Gecko. Come on in. Have a seat.”

Warily, Gecko sidles into the room and perches on the edge of a chair.

The newcomer turns to Bell. “Thanks. I can take it from here.”

Bell is reluctant. “I don't think that's such a good idea.”

“Don't worry. I can handle myself.”

Bell doesn't budge. “He's outside lockup. Regulations say he has to be accompanied.”

Gecko sizes up his visitor. He's about five foot nine—not tall, but not short either, and neither thin nor fat. His hair is kind of sandy—not blond, not dark; red, maybe. He doesn't have a single distinguishing feature, like a scar, birthmark, or mustache. Even his eyes are not quite blue, not quite brown, not quite green. Gecko can't imagine anything more difficult than being asked to describe him. He's practically an
un-
guy.

“I'm Douglas Healy.”

Gecko waits for more. It doesn't come.

Should I know this person?

“I'm the one behind this new program you've been hearing about—the alternative living situation.” Healy frowns. “Well, surely you've been told you're a candidate for…” His voice trails off. “No?”

Gecko doesn't know how to respond. He doesn't want to get himself into any more trouble, but he's never heard of Douglas Healy, and has no idea what the newcomer is trying to say.

Healy's nondescript eyes flash with anger as he wheels on Bell. “It's taken more than a year to get this program approved! To get the funding in place! I've been talking to
parents
, for God's sake! Are you telling me that nobody even bothered to mention to Gecko that he's being considered?”

Bell shrugs. “This is the first I'm hearing of it. You want to see if the superintendent's in? He'd be the one to ask.”

The newcomer lets out an exasperated breath. “The last thing I need is more red tape, thank you very much.” He addresses the teenager in the orange jumpsuit. “Gecko, how'd you like to get out of this place? I mean right now—today.”

Gecko is wary. When something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. “With you?”

“I've received a New Directions grant from the Garfield Foundation to create a living situation for boys in the juvenile detention system. A halfway house, if you will.”

“Halfway to where?” Gecko asks suspiciously.

Healy smiles. “Here's how it works: you live with me and two other boys in an apartment. You go to school; you go into counseling; you do community service. To be blunt, you work your butt off and keep your nose clean. If you're looking for a vacation, this isn't it. But it also isn't juvie. ‘Halfway' means halfway home. You do your time with me, and you walk away from all this. Mess up, and you're right back here.”

Outwardly, Gecko betrays little emotion. Inside, though, his brain is processing feverishly. Could this be real—a chance to get out of Atchison? To erase the nightmare of the last two months? To escape the torture that awaits him in the laundry room, if not today, then soon enough?

A dozen possible problems appear in his mind. “What about my family—my mom?” he corrects himself. It's unlikely that Reuben will be a factor in anything for the foreseeable future.

Mr. Bell supplies the answer to that one. “When you're in the system, the Juvenile Justice Department is your family. We can transfer you at our discretion. From our perspective, a halfway house is just an extension of our facilities.”

Gecko tries hard to keep his voice steady and his expression unreadable. “What if my mother comes to visit me and I'm not here?”

“I spoke to your mother,” Healy says quietly. “She understands that you're being given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. You won't be seeing her anytime soon. No contact at all for the first six months. That's a condition of the grant. No phone calls, no e-mails, no letters.”

“And if I say no?”

“You won't,” Healy replies confidently. “Living in jail or living free. It's not much of a decision.”

Gecko nods. He made the decision back at
right now
—
today.
To avoid a return visit to that laundry room, he'll happily follow this unperson to the end of the earth.

CHAPTER THREE

As dreary and depressing as Atchison is, Douglas Healy's next stop makes it seem like a theme park. The Remsenville Correctional Facility is a medium-security adult prison with high walls, guard towers with fixed machine guns, and trained attack dogs at the gates.

“What's a fifteen-year-old doing in a place like this?” Healy mutters as armed sentries search the car, even checking the undercarriage with mirrors.

Gecko labors to conceal his terror behind a tight-lipped stoic expression.

Healy sees through it. “Take it easy. I'm not bringing you here. You're not even coming inside with me. There's a kid I have to see so I can make him the same offer I made you. I can only imagine what he's been through after fourteen months in a charm school like this.”

Gecko stays with the gate crew while Healy proceeds through the series of checkpoints, metal detectors, and pat-downs that will admit him to Remsenville.

He sits in a bare interview room, waiting—ten minutes, then twenty. Douglas Healy has pretty much seen it all, but the approaching sound of clanking and shuffling makes him stiffen in horror. Surely this shackled prisoner can't be fifteen-year-old Arjay Moran.

The hulking figure that appears in the doorway indeed looks very little like the average young teenager. He is a six-foot-five, 260-pound African American, built like a wrestler, with a barrel chest and huge arms that make his loose-fitting prison jumpsuit appear tight. Only his beardless face betrays his real age.

Healy stares at the shackles on the boy's arms and legs and the four guards who accompany him. Only Hannibal Lecter received more security. “Take those shackles off! I can't talk to someone who's chained like an animal!”

The oldest of the guards seems to be in charge. “No can do, Mr. Healy.”

“He's a fifteen-year-old kid!”

“A fifteen-year-old kid convicted of manslaughter.”

Healy turns to Arjay. “Is that really how it went down? You killed that guy?”

Arjay shrugs. “I hit him, and he didn't get up.” Although his voice is low and rumbling, he speaks with an openness that's almost childlike.

“The report says he banged his head on a stone statue.”

“Garibaldi,” Arjay supplies blandly.

“So maybe it was an accident?” Healy prompts.

“Are you a lawyer?”

Remembering the meeting with Gecko, Healy asks, “Do you even know who I am?”

“You're the one who thinks he can get me out,” the prisoner tells him.

“You don't seem excited by the idea.”

It draws a snicker from the head guard. “This one—he isn't exactly what you'd call a live wire.”

“In here, all anybody talks about is getting out,” Arjay explains. “It doesn't happen very often.”

“Well, this time it will.” Healy lays out the same scenario that he presented to Gecko a few hours before.

Arjay has only one question. “Can I bring my guitar?”

Healy is blown away. Arjay Moran has just been offered a ticket out of hell, and the only thing he can think of is a
guitar
?

One of the younger guards speaks up. “You get used to the strumming after the first thousand hours.”

“I like music,” Healy announces. “Take the chains off.”

Brilliant sunshine turns the choppy waters of Narragansett Bay to diamonds. It's a perfect New England scene—blue sky, whitecaps, even a family of seals basking on an outcropping of rock.

It means less than nothing to Terence Florian. He stands on the deck of the motor launch, never looking back at Lion's Head Island, where he has lived for the past seven months—or five hundred years, depending on whether you go by calendar time or how long it feels.

“You're an idiot,” the counselors told him time and time again. “Lion's Head is one of the top alternative detention programs in the nation. There are thousands of applications for the spot we're wasting on you. Do you realize what life is like in a federal juvenile detention center? Those places are torture chambers compared to the way you live here.”

Probably true—if you don't count the boredom.

Natural beauty? Try a useless rock in the middle of the ocean, too small for the seagulls to use as a poop target. Try milking cows, planting seeds, feeding chickens, and shoveling out barns. Try no TV for seven months, no contact with the outside world. For a Chicago kid, born and bred, it's like being exiled to the moon.

In his opinion, the only beauty in this ride is the fact that it's taking him away from Lion's Head. Where to? That's not important. He'll cross that bridge when he comes to it.

The terminus of the ferry service is a ratty ancient dock that's destined to sink into the ocean at any moment. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen today. It would be a great farewell to this dump.

Kellerman, the counselor, reaches out and hands him ashore.

“Grab your gear. We've got a long drive ahead.”

Terence doesn't ask where they're heading. He's not giving Kellerman the satisfaction of knowing that he cares. He tosses his duffel in the back of the pickup truck. The biggest tragedy of his life so far isn't juvie; it's the fact that everything he owns in the world fits inside one little pack. Not that he's got big dreams; dreams are for suckers. His old man taught him that lesson fairly early on. The jerk never understood that while shouting, smacking, and cursing the dreams out of Terence, he was also giving Terence a dream of a different sort—the dream of putting several hundred miles between himself and his father. So far so good on that score.

He climbs onto the flatbed after his stuff.

Kellerman laughs mirthlessly. “Sure—I'm really going to let you ride back there. You'll be gone at the first bend in the road. You know the rules. Get in the front.”

Terence isn't offended. He doesn't expect to be trusted. He's not trustworthy. “What do I care about the rules? What are you going to do—kick me out? I'm already kicked out.” He grins. “Hey, Kellerman, what did I do, anyway? How come I got the boot?”

“You're kidding, right? You know the policy. Three strikes and you're out.”

“That's the whole point,” Terence persists. “I got probably fifty strikes. What was so bad that it made even you guys give up on me? Or was it quantity, not quality?”

The counselor starts the engine and pulls onto the gravel access road. “Your new placement came through.” He won't meet Terence's eyes.

Not a good sign, that. In spite of everything, Terence knows there are some pretty horrible whistle-stops on the juvie express. But he's determined to play it cool. “Whatever,” he says with a yawn. For Terence, it's more than a word; it's a philosophy of life. If you've got it, you can survive equally at Alcatraz or Club Med.

Growing up with dear old Dad, if you make it past ten, you're a survivor.

He leans back in his seat and gazes idly out the window. Same old nothing, only now it's green instead of blue. And it goes on forever.

He breaks the long silence. “It was that state senator's visit, wasn't it? Like I was going to keep his stupid wallet. What was I going to spend it on, anyway?”

Kellerman shoots him a cockeyed glare. “So what was the point of taking it if it wasn't for the money?”

Terence shrugs. “Maybe
this
is the point. I'm out, right?”

The counselor sighs. “I know it's a waste of breath to tell you this, but a lot of us do what we do because we honestly want to help kids.”

“Come to think of it,” Terence muses, “it was probably just the lobster in the toilet bowl.” He's reasonably sure Kellerman turns away so he can smile.

He dozes off, and when he awakens, they're still nowhere, although the highway seems wider and busier. Then they round a bend, and there, on the horizon, is a vast city skyline.

For an instant, he wonders if they might have driven all the way to Chicago. But no. He recognizes the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building—

“Is that
New York
?”

Kellerman keeps his eyes on the road.

“You're putting me in juvie in New York?”

“There's an experimental new program here. Just three boys.”

Terence is astonished. “And they picked me? After the lobster thing?”

“Mr. Healy asked for you by name. Listen, Terence, I realize you never pay any attention to what I say, but hear me out: if your life isn't that terrible yet, it's only because you're the luckiest fool on the face of the earth. You just hit the lottery twice, and you don't even know it. There are only twelve placements on Lion's Head, and you frittered one of those away. Now you've been handed one of only three spots in this new setup. For God's sake, don't blow it!”

Terence makes no promises. Visions of the Big Apple are spinning in his head. Blow it? Maybe; maybe not. The important thing: there are definitely no cows in New York City.

CHAPTER FOUR

The apartment is on East Ninety-seventh Street—a narrow fourth-floor walk-up with peeling paint—cream over green over orange. It has to be the last place anyone would expect to find an installation of the United States Department of Juvenile Corrections.

Inside, the layout is tight and spare. There is a living room, a galley kitchen, and two bedrooms. The smaller of these is for Healy, the group leader. Two bunk beds and a single stand in the larger room, which the three teenagers are to share.