front of these people. The fact that they all took such pleasure in it really pissed him off.
One foot at a time, Nathan scooped off his socks and handed them to Ricky, who abruptly left, locking the door behind him. Nathan listened to the footsteps disappear down the hall.
“What did I do wrong?!” he shrieked, loudly enough that his ears rang from the echo off the concrete walls.
Cold, confused and miserable, Nathan drew his legs up and rested his forehead on his knees, forcing himself to regain his composure. A single swipe of his sleeve cleaned his eyes and nose. Only ten more months, he told himself Only ten more months, and I’m out of here. It’s been eight months already. In half that time, it’ll be a year, and after half of that, I get out. I can do this. Easy as pie.
The trick, he had found, was to make the time go as quickly as possible; and no time passed more quickly than sleep. Keeping his knees up, Nathan lay on his side, and tried to make his feet disappear into his coveralls for warmth.
“These people are such assholes,” he. said aloud.
The sound of a key in the lock awoke Nathan with a start. Though the light was on within his cell, he could tell through the three-by-five-inch observation window in the door that the hallway beyond it was dark. For a long while after the lock turned, nothing happened. Nathan sat up and brought his knees to his chest again. He remembered seeing a scene like this in a movie once, where the door creaked open and at first there was nothing there. But then, all of a sudden, a vampire appeared and made everybody scream in their seats.
It was a stupid thing to think about, he scolded himself. There were no such things as vampires, and that stuff in the movies was all made up anyway. They called it special effects, things that some brainiac engineers thought up just to scare people.
His dad had always chided him for having an overactive imagination, always imagining creatures and burglars in the dark. Though he told himself in those seconds when he sat on the bunk waiting for the door to open that there was nothing to be afraid of, the fear he felt was quite real. His heart pounded in his chest like a drum. His breathing started to get noisy. Should he get up and go to the door? Was somebody coming in? Maybe he had a friend in the JDC after all, and this was a signal that it was okay for him to walk out.
Nathan jumped again when the door finally started to move inward, revealing Ricky standing alone in the doorway. He was drunk. Or stoned. Nathan could tell by the empty look in his eyes. It was the look that always preceded the beatings from Uncle Mark. Ricky was hiding something in his right hand, keeping it just out of sight behind his back. The look in his eyes got even emptier.
Nathan knew something was going to happen. For the first time in his life, he felt that his life was threatened. Without thinking, and without changing his position on the bed, he rolled his weight to the balls of his feet. He had an idea there was going to be a fight, and while he wasn’t much of a fighter, something in Ricky’s face told him that this would be the fight of his life—for his life.
Ricky entered the room slowly and smiled oddly. “You poor bastard,” he slurred. “You never really belonged here, you know. Sooner or later the others would have killed you anyway.”
Anyway? Nathan’s mind raced now. Did he say anyway? That meant….
Ricky halved the distance between them in a single step.
Nathan reacted by pressing himself against the block wall. He was cornered.
“I’ll try not to make it hurt too bad, kid,” he said, his weird smile getting broader. “You ever cleaned a fish?”
Nathan stared fixedly at Ricky’s hidden right hand. Sure, he had cleaned a lot of fish. You start with a sharp knife low in their bellies, and then split them open up to the head. You let their guts slide out onto the table. Then…
Nathan looked desperately for a way to dash around Ricky. It was easy to outmaneuver a drunk; he had proven that a hundred times with Uncle Mark, though there was always hell to pay later. But the cell was so small and Ricky was so big that there was nowhere to duck and dash to get around him.
He saw the knife. If Ricky had acted quickly and just lashed out at Nathan, it would have ended right there. He was certainly close enough. But Ricky had chosen drama over efficiency, waving the knife around in front of Nathan’s face. “What do you think it’s gonna feel like…”
Nathan didn’t hesitate. Bracing his back against the wall, he shot his leg straight out, driving his heel squarely into Ricky’s testicles. Ricky staggered a half-step, then slumped to his knees. Nathan attempted to vault over Ricky’s stooped shoulders, but the cot moved as he pushed off, and he only made it halfway, his knees contacting Ricky’s head and making them both tumble to the ground. Before he could get fully to his feet, Nathan felt a strong hand around his wrist, pulling him back down to the floor.
“Let go!” Nathan yelled, launching another kick, this one impacting Ricky’s nose and making a loud crunch.
Ricky’s hold on the boy’s wrist weakened, but it didn’t break. Nathan tried another kick, but this time missed completely, losing his balance and falling back down to the floor. Ricky was bleeding profusely from both nostrils, and as he struggled to catch his breath, he blew a bloody mist into the air. “I’m gonna cut your fucking head off,” Ricky hissed.
The knife came down at Nathan in a wide, powerful arc from above. Using his free hand, Nathan was able to deflect the trajectory just enough to make it miss, absorbing most of the energy in his elbow. The knife hand recoiled instantly for another strike, but Nathan held onto the wrist, causing Ricky to let go of Nathan’s own wrist. Using both hands now, Nathan concentrated his whole struggle on the hand with the knife, slowing down his assailant’s motion and limiting his ability to get a good stroke.
When the knife was back to the top of its arc, Nathan pulled himself up on his knees and lunged at Ricky’s knife hand with his teeth. He bit down as hard as he could on Ricky’s clenched hand, and he could feel the skin break and little bones give way to his incisors. The taste of blood filled his mouth, but he ignored it.
Ricky howled like a dog when the pain registered. “You fucking shit! You fight like a cunt!”
He waved his arm wildly, trying to break Nathan’s grip, but the teeth only sank deeper, until he finally let go of the knife, allowing it to drop to the floor. “Goddammit!” In one smooth motion, Ricky swung Nathan close, then drove a pistonlike punch into the boy’s right eye.
Behind his eyes, Nathan felt an explosion in his brain. He had never been hit that hard, and the impact of the punch sent him reeling against the cot, knocking it on its side. For a full five seconds, Nathan and Ricky stared at each other, allowing some of the agony to drain from their bodies. Then, together, they eyed the knife on the floor, and together they lunged for it.
Nathan had told himself a million times: a sober kid can outmaneuver a drunk adult any day of the week. And the Fourth of July was no exception. He snatched the knife from the concrete and whirled around in a backhanded slashing motion designed to make Ricky jump back.
But just as offensive moves are slowed by alcohol, so are defensive ones. Unable to react quickly enough to protect himself Ricky seemed to watch dumbly as the blade came around in a horizontal arc and buried itself to the hilt in his abdomen.
Nathan felt as shocked as Ricky looked as the knife drove itself home. Ricky fell straight back, like a tree, his lower legs folding under his butt, and his head impacting loudly against the concrete.
“I’m sorry!” Nathan shouted. “Oh, God, Ricky, I’m sorry!”
Ricky didn’t respond; he just stared at the ceiling. His hands gently massaged the handle of the knife, as though he were thinking of pulling it out, but couldn’t muster the courage.
Nathan didn’t know what to do. But he knew that if he didn’t do something, Ricky would die. Ricky seemed obsessed with the knife; maybe he should help him and pull it out for him. That would make him feel better. Nathan looked over his shoulder toward the door, in hopes that someone might have miraculously arrived with the answers. No, he was going to have to do this on his own. He moved hesitantly closer to the knife, closed his eyes, and pulled it free of the wound.
As the knife pulled clear of the wound, Nathan was instantly splashed with a torrent of blood pumping from the gaping wound, like crimson water from a vampire’s drinking fountain. The sound from Ricky’s throat was inhuman, half moan and half howl. His breath gurgled in his throat, like the sound of blowing bubbles through a straw.
Nathan knew right away that removing the knife was a mistake. Instinctively, he put his hands over the wound to try to stop the blood from spurting out, but it was useless; the gore kept pumping relentlessly from
