The Latina rewarded her with a glass-cutter look—apparently, her domestic skills were supposed to be a secret. But before she could acid-tongue a response, the Indian returned.
“You can go in now,” he said.
Gem and I both stood up. The Indian shook his head. “Just you, Burke.”
The place was a lot bigger than I’d been able to tell from the outside—a labyrinth of rooms opening off other rooms, most of them loaded with equipment: file cabinets, computers, something that looked like a giant periscope. There were people around, too, but they all seemed too busy to look up from what they were doing. I kept my eyes down, not knowing the rules. At the end of one of the long corridors was a pair of swinging doors, like saloons used to have in old Westerns. The Indian pushed through. I was right behind.
A man was seated behind what looked like a triple-size drafting table. He looked up. Studied my face for a second, and … connected. Flashing us both back to where we’d started.
Inside, it was. Not the orphanage where they’d started me off, not the juvie joints I’d graduated to. This one they called a hospital.
It was different, all right. Everything was softer. The words, I mean. They didn’t call the windowless cells “solitary.” Even padded the walls for you. And, instead of clubs, the guards carried hypos full of quiet-down juice.
My trip to the crazy house started when I was locked up for thieving. One of the look-the-other-way “counselors” said they had a new program for kids like me. I was too young to be paroled to the streets, and I had no parents, so they had these special foster homes. For kids who’d had “trouble with authority,” as he put it, not even bothering to hide the sneer.
And I
Same rules, though: always walk light and be ready to move, fast.
I ran away from the first one they dumped me in. I probably could have stayed out forever except for some lousy luck. I was steering for a hooker, only the john turned out to be a cop. Not an undercover looking to make a bust, just a freak with a taste for pain and a badge to take it on the house. I always hung around outside the ratty hotel room where Sandi took her tricks. If it worked out good, sometimes she gave me a little extra on top of what the johns paid me for “finding” them a girl.
Of course, when Sandi wasn’t working, I switched from legit steering to mini-Murphy. I’d bring the johns to another hotel, then tell them I always held the money for my sister—she was nervous about getting robbed up there. I’d give them the room number and a key that wouldn’t fit any of the doors … and run like hell the second they started climbing the stairs to the top floor.
When I heard Sandi scream that time, I wasn’t too worried, at first. She always made noises when she worked. Told me the johns liked that. But in a minute, I knew it was for real. I was old enough to know what it sounds like when someone’s doing … the things people do to kids. This was the same. I pounded on the door, real hard, yelled, “I’m calling the cops!”
The john ripped open the door. Sandi was lying on her stomach. The back of her was all bloody. The john told me to shut the fuck up, gave me a hard slap to the face. I came up with my knife in my hand. He laughed. But when he saw I knew how to hold it, he backed up a little, being careful. I grabbed an ashtray from the dresser and threw it as hard as I could. It missed him by a mile. But it went where I aimed it—right through the window. It was only on the second floor. I heard the fat pig at the front desk yell something. The john looked like he didn’t know what to do.
Time stopped, freezing us all, until we heard footsteps pounding up the stairs.
Cops. In uniform. They took over. One of them pulled me outside the room and cuffed me. He didn’t say anything.
I could hear Sandi inside. “That’s not him,” she said. “He came in after this other guy was … doing it to me.”
“That’s your statement, miss?” one of the uniformed cops asked her.
“Yes,” she said. The door swung open and I could see inside. Sandi had a sheet wrapped around her shoulders.
“That little bastard pulled a knife on me,” the john said, pointing at me.
“I saw you—” I started to say, but a look from Sandi cut me off.
So they took me back to the institution. And, after a while, they tried me on another foster home.
That’s when it happened. That’s when they … did what they did. To me. Whenever they wanted. It was summer. No school. Nobody ever came around to check on me. I was theirs.
But no matter how bad they hurt me, I never forgot what Wesley had told me the very first time we were locked up together. One night in the dorm, we saw a kid twice our size make a little one suck his cock in the shower. “They all have to sleep sometime,” the ice-boy whispered to me.
I knew I couldn’t shank them. Even though they were passed-out drunk most nights, there were still three of them. The man and his wife, and their teenage son. If any one of them screamed out while I was doing it, I’d be finished. And even if I pulled it off, got them all done, I’d still be the only suspect.
But I remembered something else Wesley had taught me. And that’s all I thought about, from then on.
One of the things they made me do was clean. All the time. Everywhere, especially their foul bathrooms. It took me a while, but I found a place to hide the plastic squeeze bottles of cleanser I emptied—some by using it up, most by just dumping it down the sink.
I never really slept. I was too afraid. Late one night, I got into their garage and filled my plastic bottles from the gas can they kept for their power mower. I hid them again, waiting.
I knew they took pills, but I didn’t know where they kept them. The only thing I could find in the bathroom was aspirin, so I started stealing that, a couple of tablets at a time.
They kept hurting me. I knew someday I’d just split into pieces from what they were doing to me.
