Ricky’s belly, and now from his mouth as well.
“Oh, God, I’m sorry, Ricky,” Nathan said over and over again, mantralike. In his heart, he knew he had killed him.
Out of nowhere, Ricky’s hand shot up to Nathan’s throat and shut off his air supply. For what felt like the hundredth time that night, Nathan locked his hands around Ricky’s wrist, trying to make him let go. But, like a mouse caught in an eagle’s talon, Nathan was trapped, feeling that his head was going to explode from the pressure. Ricky’s eyes showed murder. He was going to die, and he was going to take Nathan with him.
The knife! It was still on the floor! Nathan ventured a hand away from Ricky’s wrist, and found the blade an inch from his knee. This time, it would be no accident. Nathan mustered all the strength he had left to straight-arm the knife into Ricky’s chest. He struck over and over again, each impact making a grotesque slurping sound. After the second thrust, Ricky’s grip relaxed a little, once again allowing air and blood to flow to Nathan’s brain. After the fifth, Ricky let go completely, and with a last rattling breath, he died.
Nathan panicked. The Crisis Unit looked like a house of horrors. A supervisor was dead, and they were going to blame him. Sure as hell, there would be nothing that he’d be able to say to anyone to make them believe that Ricky had started it.
Say goodbye to a ten-month release. No sirree, baby, killing a supervisor was about the worst crime there was. They’d throw his young ass in jail until he was twenty-one, if he could get out even then.
No, staying there and facing the music was not an option. Nathan had to get the hell out of the Juvenile Detention Center. He had to run fast, run hard, and run now. But he’d need keys to get out. Tiptoeing through the river of gore on the floor, Nathan pulled the key ring off Ricky’s belt and darted out of the room, locking the door behind him.
From there it was easy. Every key he needed was right there on the ring. The door at the end of the hallway to the left led him into the area he recognized from his first night as the in-processing area. Nathan briefly considered rummaging through the storage closet for the clothes they had stolen from him eight months before, but he decided that every second spent inside the building was a second closer to getting caught. Moving swiftly and silently, he glided past the one-armed chair with the built-in handcuff, next to the desk where that fat fart Gonzalez asked new arrivals endless questions to which he already knew the answers.
The final door was the easiest; Nathan picked the right key the first time. He opened it only a crack at first, praying there wouldn’t be a cop or a supervisor on the other side. Again, luck was with him. He slipped through the opening, locked the door from the outside, and tossed the keys into the bushes. Ahead of him lay fifty feet of open grass, leading up a tall hill, and beyond that, freedom. He covered the distance in nothing flat.
Pausing for just a moment at the top of the hill, Nathan looked back at the JDC. Though the elevation changed his perspective, the view was exactly the same as when he had first arrived so long ago. It looked like such a friendly place, constructed of ornamental brick and stone and adorned with pretty flowers and shrubs. Yet, on the inside, the Brookfield Juvenile Detention Center was a garden for hatred. The seeds planted within its walls grew well, nurtured and cultivated by the likes of Ricky and Gonzalez.
From atop this hill, overlooking the entire compound, Nathan swore to himself that he would never allow himself to be confined within those walls again.
“.. and so I started running,” Nathan finished. He was lying on his stomach now, resting on his elbows and tracing the wood grain of the headboard with his finger.
“So, are you all right?” Denise asked, genuine concern evident in her voice.
“I guess so. My eye hurts some and my ear is sore as hell, but other than that I think I’m okay.”
“Do you have any idea at all why the supervisor would want to kill you?” As unbelievable as the kid’s story was, Denise believed him.
“Yeah, I think he was crazy. He was drunk. He was stoned. Grown-ups always get like that when they drink.”
“Grown-ups like whom?” Denise prodded, sensing a new wrinkle to this extraordinary saga. “Like your father?”
“No.” Nathan’s reply was startlingly emphatic. “My dad was a good man. He’d never drink or hit anyone. He was terrific.”
“What about your mother?”
His voice softened. “I never met my mom. She died when I was just a baby.”
Jesus, there was another avenue to pursue. Denise jotted a note on a legal pad. “So, did anyone in your life beat you?”
“I don’t want to talk about that,” Nathan replied curtly.
“Why not? It might help if people understood some of what you’ve gone through.”
“Bull. People want to think that everybody lives like those perfect families on TV. If I tell them different, they’ll just think I’m lying. They can yell and scream and hit their kids, and that’s okay, so long as the kid keeps it quiet. But if he hits back, or tries to leave, they call you incorrigible and throw your butt in jail.”
“Is that how you ended up in jail? Did you hit back?”
Nathan thought back to all the fights at Uncle Mark’s house. He pictured the comical lumbering stride Uncle Mark had when he was drunk, and the numbers of books and utensils and appliances that had been flung across the room, only to miss hitting Nathan not by inches but by feet. He nearly laughed at his memory of the stupid, gaping look on the drunk’s face. But then he remembered the leather cowboy belt, and the sound it made when it contacted the bare flesh of his backside, and the traces of humor were gone, snatched out of his soul just as Uncle Mark had snatched all the humor out of his life. Through it all, though, Nathan had known better than to hit back. That would have been his last act in life if he had ever tried it.
Maybe I should tell her everything, Nathan thought. Maybe he should tell her how he once did live a normal life; how his dad had raised him in a nice house in a nice neighborhood, just the two of them. Maybe he should tell millions of people that only three days after Dad’s funeral, Uncle Mark locked him in the crawl space under the living room just for grins, and how he only got out by making such a racket that the asshole saw the neighbors looking out their windows.
Surely the audience would enjoy hearing that his screams for help had earned him his first belt licking. Maybe he should tell all those people listening in their cozy houses and offices and cars how Uncle Mark used to like parties with all his druggie friends, and how some of those friends, men and women alike, used to come into his bedroom and touch him in places where kids weren’t supposed to be touched.
There were so many things that he could tell, but he wouldn’t. There was nothing there that he hadn’t already told judges and lawyers and police officers. And all that confiding had certainly cut him a great big fat break, hadn’t it?
“No,” Nathan answered at length, “I didn’t hit anybody back. I stole a car.”
Denise was flabbergasted. “You’re twelve years old, and you stole a car?”
“Actually, I was eleven when I stole the car:’ There was a trace of pride in his answer.
“And why did you do that?”
“I don’t want to talk about that, either?’
“Why not?”
“Because it’s nobody’s business.”
“But that’s why you got sent to the detention center?” “Yeah, except call it what it is—a jail.”
Was it possible that she was admiring this kid? Denise asked herself. This killer? There was something in the directness of his answers that struck a chord with her. It was within his power to lie about things he didn’t want to discuss, but he chose instead to not answer the question. He was sharp, all right. And he was apparently facing something that had more layers than she had first thought.
“So, what’s the end of the story?” Dehise asked. “Where did you run to? Where are you now?”
Nathan sighed. “I don’t think it would be real smart to tell you that, do you?” Grown-ups just couldn’t help trying to trick you. He gasped as a terrifying thought jumped into his mind. “Oh my God, can they trace this call?” He suddenly sounded panicky.
“No, no,” Denise assured him. “This is a radio station. As long as there’s a First Amendment, no one can trace our calls.” “You sure?”
Denise looked to Enrique, who was no help. “Sure I’m sure,” she guessed with a shrug. At least it sounded like the reasonable answer. She shifted back to the subject at hand. “So, what are you going to do next? You can’t
