I didn’t really sleep much at all, just sat there on the edge of my cot, rocking back and forth. There was a bare light bulb over my head that came on when you pulled a string, and I left it on because when I turned it off for a minute it made me feel like the walls were moving in on me.
I was staring at this little bundle of stuff that was everything I owned, that the social worker had given me. A brush and comb, toothbrush, washcloth, pajamas, bar of soap, all rolled up in a towel. I wasn’t wearing the pajamas, because I had never gotten out of my clothes, because I didn’t really feel like I was going to bed. Just mostly rocking there on the cot, getting panicky.
At least the lady had washed my clothes, so that was something, but I felt like she did it for herself and not for me. Like I might be bringing some kind of cooties into her house. But maybe I’m reading too much insulting stuff in. It’s hard to know.
I felt like in a minute there wouldn’t be enough air to breathe, even though there was a pretty big space under the door. Big enough that I knew there actually would be air, and that it was only a false feeling that there wouldn’t be, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling.
Then all of a sudden somebody banged on the door and I just about jumped out of my skin.
“Turn off the light,” Lisa yelled, and I knew it was her, even though she hadn’t said a word around me before, because her voice sounded five. And because she would be the only one who could see my light coming out under the door into her bedroom. “It’s keeping me awake.”
I turned it off and tried to lie down on the cot but I ended up sitting up again and rocking, trying to convince myself that the walls weren’t getting closer.
It was a long-ass night.
In the morning I didn’t go to school.
I pretended to, but then I ditched, and used my bus pass to ride all the way down to the county jail near where Bodhi and I lived. I knew where it was because people we knew from the street got put in there from time to time. Not that we knew them well enough to go see them or anything, but word gets around and we knew where it was.
Now, getting there from Sherman Oaks was a whole other thing. I had to ask a lot of bus drivers a lot of questions. Took me all morning, but I got there.
Then, just as I walked in the door of the jail, I got a bad feeling because it hit me that maybe they would ask my age and why I wasn’t in school.
So I walked out again and stood on the street for a minute and tried to work that out in my head. I had ID, sort of, so if they asked for any I could probably squeak by. I still had my wallet, which I’d managed not to lose since I left Utah, and it had a Social Security card and my school ID in it, which had a picture of me and everything.
I walked in, and right up to this round desk with men and women in uniforms sitting behind it. And I just acted like I knew exactly what I was doing. There was a sign that said visiting hours were Monday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., so I figured so far so good.
A lady with nice, neat braids all over her head asked if she could help me.
I said, “Yes. Thank you. I’m here to visit Denver Patterson.”
Everybody behind the desk laughed, except for one guy who I think just wasn’t paying attention.
“The Bodhi Tree,” one lady said.
“Why is that funny?” I asked them, sort of all of them at once.
“He’s just quite a character,” the lady who was helping me said.
And, well, hell, I couldn’t argue with that.
She gave me a form to fill out, and I had to give my name and address—which was interesting, because I all of a sudden had one—and I had to show ID.
“This is from Utah,” she said, looking at my school ID.
“Yes, ma’am. I just moved here.”
For a minute she just stared at my ID, and I was waiting for her to ask me why I wasn’t in school. But then she just handed it back to me and buzzed me through a door into another room, sort of deeper into the jail.
At first I thought maybe she just didn’t care, but then I decided that kids drop out of school at sixteen, which she knew from my ID that I was, and maybe they think that’s a terrible idea, but there might not be too much they can do about it, law-wise.
I sat at this table in a big room with a guard in the corner and about ten or twelve tables, but there was nobody else there visiting, which seemed really sad.
Then I looked up and a big, noisy metal door was being opened, and Bodhi walked in. He sat down across the table with me and gave me the biggest grin. His face was shaved clean, and I didn’t know if he’d done it as a change of pace or they made you do it in there. And he had this look on his face like it was all a big game—being caught by the police, being stuck in this place. Life in general. That was a very Bodhi way to be. Nothing really seemed to set him back much.
“You okay?” he asked, with that crooked little thing going on with his face.
“I guess so,” I said. It was also a very Bodhi thing to
