The Free

by Lauren McLaughlin

  “Good.”

  “I got expelled for it.”

  “That’s bullshit. You don’t be calling someone’s mother a whore if you ain’t asking to get beat.”

  “Principal didn’t see it that way.”

  “Yeah, I bet. You some white kid, you’d a got a slap on the wrist.”

  “I had to transfer to Donverse Vocational. That’s how I met my partner, started stealing cars.”

  “Aw, don’t be playing that game.”

  “What game?”

  Cardo turns back to the mirror and f lexes his arms at his sides. “The backdoor game. If only I done that different, then this wouldn’t have happened and that wouldn’t have happened.”

  “Yeah, but it’s true. If Sean McKenzie didn’t call my mother a whore, I wouldn’t be here right now.”

  “So everything’s Sean McKenzie’s fault? That what you’re saying?”

  “No.” I collapse on my bed and stare up at the springs of Cardo’s bunk. “It’s my mother’s fault.”

  “How’s it your mother’s fault?”

  “Because my mother’s a whore.”

  “The hell you talking about?”

  “It’s true. I’m not saying Sean McKenzie should have said it out loud like that, in front of his friends. But it happens to be true. My mother is a whore. And if she wasn’t, none of this would have happened.”

  “If it weren’t for her, you wouldn’t be here.”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “No, Homes. If it weren’t for your mother, you wouldn’t be here. As in alive.”

  “Well, I guess that’s her fault then too.”

  Cardo moves in on his mirror for a closer look. “You’re not making any sense.”

  It may not make sense to Cardo. But it’s all starting to make sense to Isaac West. My mother is the reason I punched Sean McKenzie, got expelled, and wound up at Donverse Vocational. She’s also the reason I had to steal cars in the f irst place. She’s the reason Janelle is in danger at home and the reason I have to send her to boarding school. At the bottom of every shitty thing that’s ever happened, going all the way back to the beginning of my life, there’s Karen West.

  “I wish she was dead.”

  Cardo turns from the mirror and wags his f inger at me like some old lady. “You need to take that back, ese. I don’t care what she does for a living. She still your mom. And a mother is sacred.”

  I chuckle. I don’t doubt for a second that Cardo believes this line of bull. They all do. If you ever want to see a hard case cry, tell him a story about a kindhearted mother. It doesn’t matter that his own mother tried to sell him for crack once. Mothers are saints. End of story. Javier’s mother dumped him outside a hospital with a note pinned to his diaper when he was nine months old. He still loves her, blames himself for coming along at the wrong time.

  I must be the only kid at Haverland who isn’t under that voodoo spell. A mother isn’t a saint in my book. A mother is just a woman who got herself knocked up. If you want to be a saint, you have to do better than that.

  I close my eyes. That’s when the idea starts to take shape. Before, it was just a dark feeling, a hunger. Now it’s an actual possibility. I open my eyes again.

  “You could make it happen, Cardo.”

  “Make what happen?”

  “Oh come on, don’t play dumb.”

  But Cardo isn’t playing. He honestly has no idea what I’m talking about.

  Until he does.

  “Aw no,” he says.

  “It would solve everything.”

  “No way, man. You ain’t thinking straight.”

  But I am thinking straight, straighter than I’ve ever thought before. If I want to protect Janelle from my mother, what better way to do it?

  “You want to put a hit on your own mother?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because that’s some evil shit. You don’t come back from that.”

  Of course it’s evil to Cardo; he’s under the spell. I shut up and let him talk. He has plenty to say on the subject. The idea is diabolical, the devil’s work. It’s against nature, psychotic, and wronger than all the wrong things in the world combined, plus more wrong on top of that. But, after a while, I can see him coming around. He’s working too hard to convince me. He’s trying to convince himself. And you can’t miss that f licker of excitement in his eyes.

  Hell, it’s my mother we’re talking about. Not his.

  This is an opportunity if you look at it the right way. And Cardo’s looking all right. He’s an ambitious little fucker, especially now that he’s back with the Disciples. He doesn’t want to be some bit player. He’s “Jefe material.” Always has been. My proposition may be outrageous, but it touches something in Cardo, something deep and hungry. And I know just how to work that particular angle.

  “Come on, Cardo. You could be my miracle.”

  Chapter 38

  It’s a shitty plan. I know that. But life, as I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, is not a series of best-case scenarios. You play the cards you’re dealt, which in my case is a two and a four, a joker, and a torn coupon for tampons with a nine and a heart drawn on it. But once my mother is gone, DCF will have to place Janelle somewhere. Anywhere is better than where she is now. Maybe Mrs. Rodriguez will take her in.

  I sit dead-eyed through all of my classes, wondering how Cardo will pull it off. Will he actually do it? I’m not stopping him. I’m not calling the whole thing off. I don’t feel guilty about it either. In fact, it’s the f irst time in a long time I don’t feel guilty. I know I probably will someday, once the hate has cooled down and the few happy memories I have of my mother have room to breathe. Like that time she gave Janelle and me twenty bucks and sent us to the carnival in the vacant lot around the corner. We spent it on the scariest, sickest rides, and when we ran out of money, we waited for her at the gate and she bought us both fried dough.

  Sure, there were some good times. But that changes nothing. Karen West made this bed. Now she’s about to lie in it.

  Forever.

  Chapter 39

  “Ten thousand dollars,” Cardo whispers when he gets back to our cell that night. “You ain’t got that, we got problems.”

  “Ten thousand?” I whisper back. He may as well have said ten billion.

  “Any chance you can get your mom down to Mexico? ’Coz I can get it done for, like, f ive hundred bucks in Mexico City. Shit, they’d probably do it for a Yankees cap down there.”

  I slump onto my bunk. “Yeah, Cardo. Now that she’s out of rehab, I think she’s planning on taking one of them cruises to Cancun.”

  Cardo snickers, then goes back to his mirror. I’ve never seen anyone so in love with himself. He’s especially in love with his shoulders. “Sorry, man. Why don’t you steal a few more of them Escalades, then we’ll talk.”

  It’s easy come, easy go for Cardo. His ambition can wait for the next opportunity to come around, which it def initely will. But for me, this is the end of the road. I’ve got twelve hundred dollars in that doll under Janelle’s bed. But even if Janelle hasn’t already spent it on rent and food, I’m good enough at math to know that ten thousand minus twelve hundred is more money than I can get my hands on.

  Chapter 40

  When you coming back to group?

  That’s Barbie emailing me from across the computer room. I sit as far away from her as possible now because I can’t face her. I can’t face any of them. Luckily I don’t have to. I’m stuck at Haverland for another year no matter what I do. Group therapy is voluntary now. And I volunteer not to go anymore. Great incentive system, right? Way to be wise, Judge Hayes. I can feel the waves of rehabilitation washing over me. You’re right. Haverland really is special.

  I ignore Barbie’s email, but this is not a reaction she’s down with.

  Dr.
Horton’s all broke up about it. He won’t talk but I can tell. You gonna let him think he messed up your head? That’s cold. Man only trying to do some good. Got a bunch of criminal psychopaths to deal with. Cut him some slack, Ike.

  I ignore this one too. I’ve got enough on my mind without having to worry about Dr. Horton’s feelings. Dr. Horton’s feelings go in a box labeled not isaac west’s problem. Barbie has a different take on this, though. She stalks over and stands behind the kid using the laptop next to me. He’s new, some black kid who never says anything. He’s working on Stanley Huang’s All-Important, Life-Changing Word-Processing Tutorial, and he’s as happy about that as I was. When he f inally gets around to noticing Barbie hovering like the Grim Reaper, he turns practically white. Barbie points to the laptop she’s just left on the other side of the room.

  “Stanley,” she says. “This young man’s gonna need you to set him up over there, ’kay? Thanks, big guy.”

  Stanley does as he’s told, the little pussy. Big guy, my ass. Stanley Huang weighs less than me. But Barbie knows how to stoke his ego. She takes the kid’s seat and pulls it closer to me.

  “You think you’re the only one got something like that in your past?” she whispers.

  “I’m not talking about it, Barbie.”

  “Fine.”

  She starts typing on the kid’s laptop. A few seconds later I get an IM.

  —You don’t cut out on your group. That’s low.

  I know her well enough to know she’s not going away. So I IM her back.

  —Why do you care if I come back or not? What difference it make to you?

  —It’s called loyalty, Ike. What are you blind deaf and dumb or something? You honestly telling me you didn’t feel something in there soon as you told the truth? You got in deep with us. That’s why the shit went down. Because you stopped lying to us.

  I laugh out loud.

  “What’s so funny?” she says.

  “You are.”

  “Oh, is that it? You just gonna laugh it all off now, like it’s nothing. Like we’re nothing.”

  “I’m laughing because I never told you the truth. I told you the bare minimum. I told you what I could get away with.”

  “The hell you talking about?”

  Just then, I notice a new email in my inbox. It’s from Ian.Slater@publiccounsel.com. Now that it’s too late to mean anything, I actually remember my lawyer’s name. The f irst thing I notice in his email is the photograph of Pat Healy. His face is all puffy and his eyes are closed. He looks like hell, like maybe the cops did a number on him when they picked him up.

  Hi Isaac. Can you just conf irm for me that this is Patrick Healy, your accomplice? I know the photo’s not great. The ADA would like your conf irmation so she can close the case. I’m sorry to report he was found dead in Revere. Drug paraphernalia found at the scene indicate an overdose. It was near a well-known shooting gallery. Regards, Ian Slater.

  When I look up, Barbie’s reading over my shoulder. She reaches across me and hits the up arrow so she can see the photograph herself.

  “That your partner?”

  I ignore her. I hit reply and type, “That’s Healy.”

  Barbie stares at me, those amber eyes burning holes through my head. But I can’t pull my eyes away from Healy’s dead face. He doesn’t look peaceful or angelic, the way people sometimes describe a dead person. He looks destroyed.

  “Heroin,” Barbie says. “He into that shit?”

  “No.”

  “You sure?”

  I shrug. I thought I was sure. Healy had to pee in that cup just like I did. Flannery wouldn’t take him onto his crew unless he was clean, relative or not.

  “Sorry, man,” Barbie says. She taps my shoulder with her f ist, then goes back to her laptop.

  “You getting me those pieces or what?” Deon asks me. “’Coz if you ain’t up to it, I got to replace you.”

  “Naw, I’m on it,” I tell him. “I’ll get you your poems and shit. Don’t worry.”

  My heart’s not in The Free anymore. Most of the crap I read just gets me down. But I told Deon I’d keep at it because I don’t want to lose the cred that comes with the territory. Right now the Disciples of Vice are trying to prove themselves by getting me to print this lame-ass rap by one of their own, a kid named Felipe who can’t rhyme for shit. I promised Cardo I’d run it so he’d shut up for once. Then, to appease the Bank Street Boys, who are “at war” with the Disciples, I’ve got to print this “essay” by one of theirs about how racist the criminal justice system is.

  Whatever. At least Deon’s happy. And Klein thinks we’re “building something big” with The Free by giving fucked-up kids a voice or something. Not like anyone’s listening, except other fucked-up kids. I start running that essay through the spell-checker, but I can’t stay focused on it. I keep f licking back to Healy’s face in that email from my lawyer. I’ve never seen a dead body before, and I can’t make sense of this particular one. When Ms. Jomolca told me the cops were having trouble f inding Healy, I was hoping he’d left the state, maybe gotten into that pickup truck and just disappeared. He has an uncle in Chicago. I remember him saying that once. Why would he run to that shooting gallery in Revere? Even when I knew him back in that shithole shelter, he wasn’t into the hard stuff. Booze and pot, those were Healy’s things. But heroin? It doesn’t make sense.

  The room gets quiet all of a sudden. It’s because Barbie’s stopped typing. The girl types like she’s punishing her keyboard, like it’s one of those dumbass banger wannabes she hates, some asshole that needs some sense smacked into him. Now she’s looking at me like she just f igured something out.

  “What?” I ask her.

  “You tell me, Ike.”

  I turn back to my laptop and that essay covered in red marks from the spell-checker. Right next to it is Healy’s face, silent, blind.

  Gone.

  Chapter 41

  It’s colder than usual in the visitors’ room on Saturday. They must be serious about saving on their heating bill, because that radiator isn’t doing anything. It’s radiating more cold if anything, like it has an attitude about it too. I’m nervous as hell over what I’m about to do, and when the bell rings and people start shuff ling in, I change my mind. It’s a dumb idea. Possibly my dumbest yet. Then my visitor comes in, hands stuffed into the pockets of his Carhartt jacket, eyes darting around the room, like he doesn’t want to be seen. For the f irst time ever, I’m afraid of the man.

  “That was a nice touch,” he says when he sits down at my table. “Emailing the school principal.”

  “I didn’t know how else to get in touch with you, Mr. Flannery. I wasn’t sure that guy on the phone would pass you the message. He doesn’t appreciate being called.”

  “Yeah, yeah, don’t worry about it. So how you doing?”

  “Not so great, Mr. Flannery. I heard about Pat.”

  “Yeah, I f igured.” Flannery rubs his papery white forehead with his freckled f ingers. “It’s a shame. It really is.”

  “My lawyer says it was an overdose.”

  “That’s what they’re saying.”

  “But Healy wasn’t into drugs. Was he?”

  Mr. Flannery shrugs.

  “’Coz I remember how I had to pee into that cup for you. And Healy said he had to do the same thing. No druggies on the crew—I remember you saying that. No druggies, no thugs, no bangers.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So what happened?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  I stare at him for as long as I can, trying to read something there, but I can’t. He’s not going to make this easy on me.

  “I heard you got an extension on your sentence,” he says. “That true?”

  “How’d you hear about that?”

  “I make it my business to hear about things. The hel
l’s that about anyway? You get yourself a boyfriend in here? Some Latin lover boy you don’t want to leave behind?”

  Is he referring to Cardo? Does he know who my cellie is?

  “It’s complicated,” I tell him.

  Mr. Flannery chuckles. “Ain’t it always. Well, look, you gonna be okay with that? With the extra year I mean? ’Coz you know it doesn’t have to change anything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, you do your time, you can still come back, pick up where we left off. A year, thirty days, it doesn’t matter. Nothing changes.”

  “Really?”

  He meets my stare. “Sure. Just don’t do anything stupid like get your GED in here. You play your cards right, you can get out of here and come straight back to the Voke, stay till you’re twenty-one. Half the auto kids are in their twenties. I had a kid once who was twenty-f ive before the higher-ups f igured it out.” He laughs, real casual. But then he bites his lip and I realize his leg is bouncing up and down. He’s as nervous as I am. And it’s not just because he doesn’t want to be seen here. “So what do you say?”

  “How did you do it?” I ask him.

  “Do what?”

  He waits me out. He wants me to show my hand. He wants to know exactly how much I know. Of course I could pretend I don’t know anything, just play dumb. A part of me wants to do that. Just forget what I know and go back to the way things were between us. If only I could get Healy’s face out of my mind.

  “Did you hold a gun to his head?” I ask. “Make him stick that needle in his own arm?”

  Mr. Flannery closes his eyes for a second. His body has gone still, f inally, and when he opens his eyes again, he looks like the whole world just shifted on him.

  “Did he beg for his life?”

  “What are you doing, Isaac?”

  “He was your nephew.”

  “Second cousin.”

  “Is that how you justify it?”