Flight Risk

by Jennifer Fenn

  “We don’t have a house,” Robert pointed out to Hulk. “We have a trailer.”

  Go to Laundromat had been printed and then crossed off. Robert guessed Deb didn’t want him wandering too far.

  * * *

  Holt made a couple of calls and got the Kelley kid into Sea Brook Youth Home as part of his diversion agreement. Tucked into a sleepy beach town just over the bridge on the mainland, the “wilderness therapy” program focused on nonviolent kids and barred all media: no phones, no TV, no Internet. Holt liked the program’s emphasis on nature and physical activity. The juvie in Seattle was a rough place, and soon enough the kid would be done with his punishment, and land back on Yannatok. Holt didn’t want him learning any new tricks from the thugs in juvie. Besides, the kid could use a break, with the father he’d gotten saddled with.

  “I was there when we caught the father,” Holt had told Sea Brook’s director. “I’m sure you remember that mess. The kid’s like a lit firecracker. Can’t sit still for five minutes. But there’s something there. He’s looking for somebody to please, in a way. And a change of scenery would do him good. I bet he’s never been off this island.”

  That would change, Holt knew. The kid would get off Yannatok, eventually. Holt just hoped it wasn’t with a one-way ticket to Washington State Pen. They’d eat him alive in there.

  * * *

  As soon as Robert heard his mother’s truck pulling up, the trailer seemed to suck in its breath. Its walls constricted. Deb broke two days of silence by informing Robert that she’d spoken to a Sea Brook counselor who’d called her at work, and that he shouldn’t bother packing much. Deb ticked off items on her fingers, her voice cold. “Socks. Underwear. White T-shirts—no logos, no colors. Khakis. One pair of sneakers. No extras. The woman said not so much as a pack of gum. Start packing. They’ll be here tomorrow morning.”

  “What am I supposed to put it all in?”

  “A plastic bag, like from the grocery store,” Deb instructed. “They don’t want backpacks in that place.”

  Robert trudged to his room, started rifling through his drawers, but soon found himself planning for a different trip than the one he was about to take. One for which he’d certainly need more supplies than socks and undershirts.

  What would he need to pack if he were to take off into the woods?

  He abandoned packing, escaped from the trailer’s thick, stale air, and stood near the flagpole, bouncing a mottled tennis ball for Hulk. The dog raced and retrieved it, boomeranging back every time. Hulk was a smart dog; Robert bet he could have been trained to sniff out drugs or tackle murderers.

  If Robert was going to run away into the wilderness, he’d need some clothes he could layer on. Matches. Water. A knife, probably, for protection and hunting. He wouldn’t need that much, really. He’d take Hulk. He could hike his way to Canada and leave them waiting for him at the “wilderness therapy” school, which was only called that to make parents feel better about their kids getting locked up. Robert was going to jail, same as Joey in juvie, no matter what they called it.

  He watched the trees and remembered, suddenly, one of the best and only books he’d read from start to finish the entire time he’d been in school. Hatchet. He remembered the cover, with the ax printed right over the kid’s head, like the hatchet was part of his brain, and the tilted plane in the background, over the kid’s shoulder. The slow classes read it in eighth grade, the year he’d almost failed. He’d raced through it in one sitting. A kid named Brian is on his way to visit his dad in Alaska, but the Cessna he’s riding in crashes, and he has to survive in the wilderness with just this hatchet, catching rabbits and foraging for berries. Robert thought the book ended with Brian still out there, hunkering down for a long winter.

  He was supposed to turn in a report at the end, which he never finished. He could have either completed a standard five-paragraph book report about the setting and the characters and how the book made him feel, or a fake newspaper article in which he pretended to interview the main character. Robert opted for the article, which was obviously easier; he could just make it all up.

  He’d written a headline: Brian Is a Hero! And he’d scribbled out a few questions: What did you think when the plane crashed? What did you think when you realized you were alone in Alaska? What did you think when you realized you only had your hatchet? And he didn’t remember if he ever got any further with the assignment, but he doubted it.

  * * *

  For his last dinner at home, Deb microwaved two frozen pizzas. She dropped two plates onto the table with a clatter, and let the steam waft off her dinner while she slugged a beer. Robert didn’t wait. The gooey cheese seared the roof of his mouth.

  “An army recruiter called. Asked for you.” Deb glowered through rings of fatigue and smudged eyeliner. “You know anything about that?”

  “I’m going to enlist. Like Dad.” His mouth burned. He pushed back from the table to get a glass of tap water.

  “Like Dad?” Deb’s cigarette hung in the air.

  “Yeah. He told me all about it once. Desert Storm.” The cabinets were emptied of cups; food-encrusted dishes teetered in the sink. He considered slurping out of a bowl, Hulk-style.

  Deb snorted. “Your father wasn’t anywhere near Desert Storm.”

  Robert sighed. He should have known she’d react like this. “Yeah, he was. He told me about rescuing Daniel McQuaid, and getting a medal—”

  “The military wouldn’t even take him. He had a rap sheet miles long.” Deb stubbed out her cigarette. “In and out of jail is where he’s been for your whole life. You know that.”

  “Why would he make that up?” He slammed the cabinet shut. He knew his mom was mad at him, but who was she to call his dad a liar? He’d asked her, to her face, why she’d been stockpiling his Adderall and he knew she hadn’t told him everything.

  Maybe she knew where his dad really was. Maybe she’s known all along, and she’d thrown Robert off the trail all these years, inventing a prison Robert Senior could never escape from.

  “Why do you think?” his mother yelled back. “Because he’s a loser! He was nothing and he wanted you to think he was something. He killed an old man! Thought he was playing some stupid prank, stealing a cop car, and then he hit a seventy-five-year-old man! And left him bleeding in the middle of the road. And forgive me, I never wanted you to know!”

  “You’re a loser! And you’re a liar! He hit a deer.” Robert stormed out of the kitchen and stomped into his sneakers. He called over his shoulder, “You were the one taking the Adderall! You should be going to prison, too!”

  “If you walk out of here, plan on staying outside!” Deb crashed after him. The next trailer’s porch light flickered on. “You don’t think I’m tired at the end of the day? Have you ever thought for one second about how hard it is to work all day and then go to school? And you want to judge me over a couple of pills!”

  “I knew it! I knew you were lying, just like you’re lying about Dad,” Robert yelled over his shoulder as he slammed the door. The porch was much colder than the cramped trailer, but Deb kept following him, pawing at his shoulder.

  “I could have had my own horse by now! The only thing I ever wanted!” she screamed. “I spend all my money on you! All of it! And all you care about is your father. Name one thing he ever did for you!”

  Robert shrugged out of her grip. “Get off me! Don’t do anything for me ever again! I never asked you to!”

  Deb stepped backward. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “None of your business!” He whirled toward the road.

  The door crashed shut. Robert stood by the road with his thumb cocked. He’d take any ride, to anywhere. But not a single car passed and soon he gave up and trudged back to the trailer.

  Robert knew his mom had left the door unlocked, but he spent the night on the porch anyway, sleeping fitfully and listening to the wind in the spruces’ branches. He wrapped his arms around himself to try and fend off the col
d, but he shivered anyway.

  In the morning, a van painted with a yellow sun rising over rolling waves came for him. He waited on the porch with his plastic bag at his feet, rubbing his aching neck. Every gull’s squawk needled his forehead. His eyes hurt. Robert had packed his toothbrush, boxers, deodorant. He’d scrounged up the white shirts, though technically two of them were undershirts. He only had two pairs of khakis, though, one with cuffs so worn they trailed dirty threads like gray tentacles. He guessed the school would give him whatever else he needed. Deb hadn’t been in the mood for a shopping trip.

  His mom came out, bundled in her sweatshirt, its frayed cuffs pulled down past her chapped knuckles. She huddled beside him. She was hoarse. “I want you to think of this as a fresh start. It’s not going to be fun. It’s not supposed to be. But you need to listen to these people and try to learn something. You might be able to get on a different path.”

  Robert nodded, but he couldn’t make himself talk to her. The van pulled up. Deb hugged him and Robert patted her stiffly.

  Hulk barked and tugged at his flagpole-bound leash until the van had driven out of sight, Robert the only passenger on its long bench seat.

  The van puffed along, the miles between him and the trailer widening.

  Dunes Road widened into two lanes just before Yannatok Bridge. Robert had only been across it a few times: a class trip to the aquarium, a visit to his now-deceased great-grandmother’s farm, a dentist appointment. On each excursion the allure of the mainland had had him bouncing in his seat. Even a fluoride treatment seemed exotic, compared to his sludge-paced school days.

  Traffic crawled onto the bridge, paused atop it like Ferris wheel cars dangling at the ride’s pinnacle. For twenty-five minutes the van inched across the bridge, Robert suspended between Yannatok and the mainland. Despite the van’s wide bench seat, he started to feel trapped. He whipped his head from one window to the other. The ferry passed them and blasted its horn, a single, bloated note.

  Then he was off the island.

  Like a deep-sea diver, finally coming up for air.

  He looked straight ahead, and told himself he’d never go back.

  NOVEMBER 2009

  Every dude wore identical white tees and khakis, like they’d been drafted into the Hanes army. Sea Brook also gave each student two green sweatshirts printed with the same rising sun logo that had been painted on the van. Lights-out at nine thirty and a wake-up call at six. A basketball court without nets. A cafeteria without knives or forks. They ate sandwiches and apples.

  The school was strict; the guys weren’t allowed to talk as they marched between buildings in single-file lines, rotating through their regimented schedules. But Robert quickly discovered that everyone here was getting away with something. Kids offered to sell him Ritalin, Percocet, Vicodin, weed, E. Some sold clean piss. The counselors and teachers gave out carved wooden discs, bottle cap–sized, that could be traded for snacks, breaks from chores, and trips off campus. The tokens were engraved with eagles’ wings, bear claws, shark fins. Guys sold those, too, though not for nearly as much as the other contraband.

  Each of the school’s housing units was named for a tree. Redwood was reserved for guys who’d been in fights or caught with drugs and put on twenty-four-hour lockdown; Robert was sent to Maple, the house with the most privileges. He’d been evaluated by an on-staff psychologist and determined not to have any substance abuse problems, major mental illness, or potential for violence, and so he was put in the house with the lounge and foosball table.

  Robert slumped through his first math and English classes, and the only nature he saw was the bushes outside his windows and the weed his roommate smoked after lights-out. But, he had been told in orientation, he could start earning Greens, the tokens, right away.

  His first day he got one for complying with lights-out at the first request. Robert flipped the Green over to see it was stamped with some kind of paw print; he couldn’t even tell what animal the carving was supposed to represent. He slipped it in his pants pocket and couldn’t find it by morning.

  “Hey.” Robert approached a counselor after breakfast, toast crusts piled on his tray. The food wasn’t bad: fresh fruit and eggs, a buffet of cereal boxes. “Can I have another one of those things? The Green? I lost it.”

  The counselor shook his head. A silver whistle hung from his neck. Every counselor had something dangling on a chain: whistles, stopwatches, compasses. Just my luck. A school full of gym teachers. “Sorry. We don’t give out duplicates. Gotta be responsible for your things.”

  Robert walked away knowing he’d never hold on to enough of those things to earn a bag of Doritos, never mind a trip off campus.

  He had to sit through a class three days a week about drugs and drinking, and he’d alternate between studying the floor and the ceiling.

  “Do you have anything you’d like to share, Robert?” one of the sad-sack counselors always asked him. These guys drank so much coffee their mugs might as well have been welded to their hands, along with their clipboards, free gifts from pharmaceutical reps. Their pens, handy for note-taking, were also emblazoned with logos: Concerta, Wellbutrin, Lexapro.

  Barry Lancaster had never asked him a dumb question like that. Robert shook his head and didn’t say a word.

  Time seemed to slow and stretch during the ninety-minute class. Robert found his mind wandering to what Deb had told him about his father. He heard her accusations over and over again. But Robert didn’t believe his father had really killed anyone. Drank too much, no doubt. Gotten into fights, sure. Stolen a cop car, laughing as he did it, definitely. But when Robert thought back to that last time he saw his dad, he couldn’t imagine that Robert Senior had, just minutes before rapping on his son’s window, left another man to die in the street. And when Robert tried to imagine his dad locked in a cell like the one Holt had put him in, well, that just seemed impossible.

  More likely, Robert Senior was still on the run, and his mother couldn’t stand the fact that she wasn’t going anywhere at all.

  * * *

  One day a van left for the woods, taking five guys and two counselors on an “overnight wilderness encounter.” Robert watched from his window as they loaded rolled-up sleeping bags and tents. He thought of how Hulk used to wait for him to trudge off the school bus, his nose pressed to the trailer’s screen door. Robert abandoned the window for his bunk bed and stared at a water stain spreading across the ceiling like a dirty cloud.

  Four white cinder-block walls, two metal-framed twin beds, desks, and shelves built into the walls. A window over each bed, a beige shade, fluorescent lights. They were allowed to have books and crayons and paper. No markers, no pens, no pencils. All potential weapons.

  Through his window, Robert could see a swath of trees, and beyond that, vacation houses’ peaked roofs. He’d finally crossed the bridge off Yannatok and the view still looked like he’d never left the trailer.

  There wasn’t a fence.

  His roommate, Dalton, was quiet and gnawed at his nails until they bled. His T-shirt swallowed his lanky frame like a white whale. He’d stolen a car and snorted crystal meth. Once a week, Dalton forfeited his climbs up the rock wall for an NA meeting.

  “Crystal makes you crazy,” Dalton told Robert. “I was pulling out my hair, my eyelashes. Thought I had bedbugs.”

  They talked after lights-out while Dalton rolled joint after joint. Smoke curled up to Robert on the top bunk. Dalton said more in the dark than he ever did during class. He’d actually been living on Yannatok before his stint in Sea Brook began. His mother had hoped a move to the island from Seattle would keep Dalton away from his tweaker friends. He’d been enrolled in Yannatok High, but had only attended two days before hitchhiking back to the city to be reunited with his meth-smoking buddies. According to him, stealing a car, the transgression that finally landed him here, was the simplest thing Dalton had ever done.

  “I did it with a screwdriver. Just popped it in the ignition,” Dalton
bragged. “People are so dumb. So many people leave their cars unlocked. And it’s like ‘I wonder where I should park?’ Maybe all the way over here, where it’s pitch black? And I know what I’ll do! I’ll put one of those magnetic boxes under my bumper with the key right in it! Or maybe I’ll leave a spare in the glove box. And a lot of people out here never lock their houses.” He flopped over, ruffling the beige blankets. “It’s like they want their shit to get stolen.”

  “I really miss my dog,” Robert said.

  Dear Robert,

  I feel bad about the last time we talked, but you needed to know some things. I don’t want you going down your father’s path, and I’ve tried to keep you off of it. When you get home, we can talk more and try to make things better around the house. I hope you think about what you want to do in school.

  Mom

  * * *

  Robert rushed through his work and was just as lackluster a student as he’d been at his old school, but “wilderness therapy” was a different story. Sea Brook’s staff trained their charges with the goal of eventually sending them out to the cliffs and the dense woods. The school was equipped with a ropes course and a rock wall dangling with belays. They shot blunt-tipped arrows at rows of foam targets and practiced assembling and tearing down tents, a counselor with a stopwatch cheering them on to beat their previous times.

  Robert ruled at all of it. Some guys rolled their eyes and zombie-walked their way through the tires, hung from the rock wall limp as damp shirts on a clothesline. But Robert high-stepped across fields of tires, shimmied up the rock wall, balanced atop a revolving log like he’d been practicing his whole life. His arrows soared and pierced. His tents were sturdy.

  Mr. Drew, a counselor with tattoos snaking around his biceps and down his legs, asked him, “You play sports at your school?”

  “Nah.”

  Robert stooped to help Mr. Drew gather errant arrows from the bases of the targets. Each counselor went by Mister followed by their first name—chumminess countered by deference. “Why not? You’re a natural athlete.”