Disharmony

Right now, Zac’s duct-taped running shoes stood next to Luke’s in the icy, morning-wet mud of the soccer field. When Zac moved, shuffling his feet like everyone else to try to stay warm, his sock-covered pinkie toe peeped out through a split that the tape hadn’t covered. That had to be cold. He wondered why Zac wasn’t wearing the custody-issued sneakers that Matron gave everyone at intake. He also wondered what had possessed this kid to jump in to help him last night. People had jumped in when he was being bashed before, but only to help with the flogging.

Kitkat had warned him in his first week that he should try to change the way he spoke.

‘Like how?’ Luke had wanted to know. ‘Like Chinese?’

‘Like not so smart,’ Kitkat had said. ‘Sometimes you talk like you had dictionary for dinner.’

Luke changed nothing. He’d probably done less school than any of the kids in here, but he couldn’t help it if he had a brain bigger than Ronald McDonald’s.

Next to Zac, who was still shuffling to stay warm, Luke didn’t move. He could hear the ocean in his right ear, and the breakers were crashing hard. But he couldn’t feel the cold.

‘You can sit this one out, Black.’

Luke raised his head. Ms McNichol. Thank God.

‘You should be in the sick bay,’ she said.

Luke heard Toad snigger somewhere behind him.

‘I’d rather be out here,’ Luke said. ‘In the fresh air. It stinks in there right now.’

More laughs. Not Toad’s. Jason Taylor was in the sick bay with a broken arm.

‘Well, you’re not running. Not like that,’ replied Ms McNichol. ‘Take a seat in the stands.’

Luke shuffled up the steeply sloping hill towards the row of wooden benches at the side of the oval. By the time he got there and gingerly took a seat, he noticed that Zac had almost finished a lap. Between Zac and the next guy, Travis Roberts, was a quarter of an oval. Luke stared. In the four months since Luke had been here, Travis had always been the fastest. Everyone tried to catch him, and sometimes Luke got pretty close. But with Zac out there the others looked like they’d given up. Even Travis was only just ahead of the pack.

Jonas, Kitkat and Barry, Luke’s usual running mates, stamped and steamed through the mud. Behind them jogged the rest of Dorm Four, around forty boys in green T-shirts aged between eleven and sixteen, with Toad shambling along at the back of the pack.

Luke spotted Hong Lo, just ahead of Toad, flicking a nervous glance over his shoulder as he tried to ramp up his jog. Not many people wanted to run with Toad; if you didn’t keep ahead, you always left the track with a few extra bruises. Hong reached for his asthma inhaler just as he rounded the goalposts.

The freezing air felt great on Luke’s throbbing face and he angled it into the wind, towards the rear boundary of the secure complex. His left eye, swollen shut, oozed something, and he wiped it carefully, the moisture cold against his skin. The sensation was bizarre, and not just because the skin stretched over the puff of his eye socket was full of fluid and foreign-feeling, as though it belonged to someone else. Much more strange was the oozing liquid itself – Luke stared at his slightly wet finger. A tear. Huh. So that’s what they felt like. He’d forgotten. He put the finger to his tongue.

Sitting down was definitely best for the vertigo. He watched Dorm Four begin their third lap. And what with the hood up on his green standard-issue sweatshirt and the rushing sound in his ears, he didn’t even hear Mr Holt approach. His first warning was that vomit-sweet smell that always accompanied the senior warden.

‘Stand, Black.’ The voice was steel-capped boots crunching over gravel.

Luke turned to face the warden, swaying as he got to his feet.

‘Off with the hood,’ said Holt.

Luke peeled his hoodie back. The wind was ice on his brown buzz-cut.

Holt stared down at him silently. For a second Luke saw a smile in the warden’s eyes as he surveyed the wreckage of his face. Then the dead darkness returned. Clad in a great-coat and heavy-weather hat, he towered over Luke like a battleship over a dinghy.

‘Why aren’t you running, Black?’ he said.

‘Sick report, Mr Holt,’ said Luke.

‘What’s wrong with you?’

What do I say to that? thought Luke. No answer was going to work for Holt anyway.

‘Nothing,’ said Luke.

‘Nothing what, Black?’

Holt moved a half-step closer. Luke rocked back a bit with the vomit smell and the heat of Holt’s hatred.

‘Nothing’s wrong with me, Mr Holt,’ said Luke.

‘Well then, get your arse down there and run, Black. You’re three laps behind.’

Great.

It was never the pain that was the issue for Luke. He couldn’t explain it to anyone, but it was the injuries themselves that slowed him down. Pain itself was something much more remote, controllable. He made his way down the hill to the oval, Holt striding before him. By the time he reached the others he was invisible to Ms McNichol, as he knew he would be. He watched her hunch deeper into her coat and turn back towards the dormitories, her face studiously blank.

***

Luke was rounding the goalposts, a quarter through his first lap, when Zac Nguyen passed him, soundless, springing weightlessly over the sodden grass. Luke stared after him. Zac didn’t seem to kick up mud the way everyone else did. In fact, he didn’t seem to be making any footprints at all. Stupid, Luke told himself. Of course he’s leaving footprints. How could anyone see anything in this muck?

He’d made it to his first halfway point when Zac lapped him for his final circuit. The new kid made no sound. No laboured breathing, no sign of sweat or strain.

‘Can you believe that skinny bugger?’

Luke turned his head – Jonas was coming up beside him. Two years younger than Luke but almost as big as Toad, Jonas was a softly spoken Islander who bunked next to Kitkat and Barry.

‘Fast, huh?’ managed Luke.

He was taking small sips of air as he hobbled, attempting to limit the stabbing in his ribs whenever he took a deeper gasp.

‘You look like hell,’ said Barry in his too-loud, flat, nasal tone, pulling up beside him.

During his first night, Luke had watched Barry interacting with others. The scrawny blond kid always leaned in close, concentrating, like they were saying something really intense and meaningful to him. And then Barry had introduced himself.

‘I’m Barry and I’m deaf not dumb,’ he’d shouted in a singsong voice. ‘Don’t ever call me deaf and dumb. Some of the geniuses in here call me Deafy, but I wouldn’t do that if I were you. I’ve got privileges with Matron, and if you do, well, maybe you won’t get all your re-ups from your friends and rellos.’

‘What are re-ups?’ Luke had responded.

‘Resupply. You know, chips, lollies, snacks from your visitors.’

‘I won’t be getting any re-ups, Barry,’ Luke had said. ‘And how come you can hear me if you’re deaf?’

‘I lip-read. So talk straight. Whatchoo-in-for?’

Luke gave him the story that had impressed all the others. But it was when he’d tripped Toad on the way to giving ‘Deafy’ yet another friendly flogging that he’d won Barry’s loyalty and Toad’s undivided attention.

Now, Luke tried to keep pace with Barry, Jonas and Kitkat. They’d slowed it right down to help out.

‘Don’t look, but Holt’s watching,’ said Kitkat.

Kitkat was the tallest kid in Dwight, and definitely the skinniest. He looked as though he needed to eat a truckload of chocolate just to keep himself from snapping in half when he sneezed. Luke had assumed that this was where the nickname had come from. But who knew.

‘We’d better keep it moving,’ said Jonas. ‘We don’t need any more of Holt’s attention. Why does he have such a thing for you, Black?’

‘I’m just special, I guess,’ said Luke. The air tasted like metal, and he thought maybe he was bleeding inside somewhere.