Juvie

by Steve Watkins

  “So what happened?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “I’m not supposed to talk about it. They said I would see a lawyer. They would send one to talk to me.” She jerks her head up to glare at me. “You better not say anything, either. I didn’t tell you anything.” She pounds on her knees with her fists. “I swear to God. What was your name again? I forgot. I don’t care. You just better not repeat anything I said.”

  I edge my chair back. “Calm down, all right? You didn’t tell me anything, and I’m not going to say anything.”

  “Damn right,” she says. “Damn right. OK. I’m gonna go lie down. That’s my cell over there. You think they’ll give me something to help me sleep? They ever do that in here? You think I can ask the guards?”

  I say I doubt it but she can try if she wants.

  She shakes her head, still acting methed out. “Never mind. I’m going. OK. See you later. Bye. Thanks for talking.”

  Summer goes back to her cell, which is just ten feet away, sits on the bunk for a minute, then gets up and bangs her face against the wall. Blood sprouts from her forehead and nose. It’s all so sudden, I don’t react at first. She staggers backward into the opposite wall and then slumps to the floor, at first cradling her face in her hands, then pulling them away and staring at the blood.

  I call over to C. Miller and Officer Killduff.

  They put Summer on suicide watch — take away her juvie-issue clothes and make her wear the suicide blanket. She protests. She only hit her face on the wall that once, she says, and it was an accident. She swears it was an accident.

  “Ask that girl I was talking to,” she says from inside her cell. “The one that called you all. She saw it.”

  C. Miller, standing at Summer’s door, looks at me sitting at a nearby table in the common room and raises her eyebrows. Well?

  Summer can’t see me. I shake my head and mouth no.

  C. Miller has to sit watch after that, staying near Summer for the rest of the shift, walking her to the interview room down the hall to see a lawyer, taking her to Nurse Batch when she bleeds through her bandage.

  Bad Gina gives me grief about it the next morning at breakfast. “I saw you rat that girl out,” she says. Weeze nods in agreement, but I don’t think her heart’s really into giving me a hard time. It’s just what Bad Gina expects of her.

  “That’s so messed up,” Bad Gina says. “Getting her in trouble like that when she just came on the unit.”

  I’m planning to ignore her, but suddenly Fefu grabs Bad Gina’s potato patty and squeezes it into a ball.

  Bad Gina curses and grabs Fefu’s hand. “Let go, you little Mexican,” she growls. “I was going to eat that.”

  Fefu squeezes out a thin stream of grease, then drops the potato ball into Bad Gina’s Styrofoam box. The Jelly Sisters laugh so hard they both spit out food.

  Bad Gina scoots her chair as far away from me and Fefu as she can, muttering, until she’s almost sitting in Weeze’s lap.

  I hand Fefu a napkin.

  “Gracias,” I say.

  She grins. “De nada.”

  Carla comes on Sunday afternoon for visiting hour.

  “Hey, Sadie,” she says, sounding almost shy on the other side of the Plexiglas. “Mom says hi and she’ll come next week. Lulu says to give you a giant hug and a kiss. And an Eskimo kiss and a butterfly kiss.”

  She puts her hand up on the glass the same way Mom did when she visited. I put mine up there, too.

  “Tell her you did, anyway,” I say.

  “Yeah.” She taps the glass. “This sucks. Mom didn’t tell me.”

  “She tell you about my nose?” I ask.

  She nods. “You OK? It doesn’t look bad at all. Really. Not even swollen or anything. Just kind of bruised a little bit.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “It’s been more than a week. Anyway, you look good. Did you cut your hair or something?”

  Carla smiles at the compliment, which isn’t totally sincere, but not a complete lie, either. She’s way too thin, her cheekbones practically cutting through the skin — not heroin-chic thin but not far enough away from it, either. Her hair does look nice, though, cut shoulder length with a braid down the side. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen her shirt before, one of those French-looking Tshirts with horizontal black and white stripes. All she needs is a beret.

  “I’ve been working on things,” she says. “I even went jogging one day.”

  I say I think I see a little color in her face.

  “Nah,” she says. “It was cloudy. Lulu rode her tricycle so we didn’t get too far. This is just some blush.”

  “How’d you get off work today?” I ask. “I thought they had you on the schedule for Sundays.”

  “I told the new manager I would quit if he didn’t let me off. He’s such a jerk. He said, did I mean if he didn’t get me off? So I threatened to report him for sexual harassment and he just laughed and said, Yeah, right, like anybody would believe me. Anyway, he actually even asked me out on a date after, if you can believe that.”

  “So what did you tell him?”

  Her face reddens some more, but it isn’t the blush. “We’re sort of going out Tuesday night. But it’ll be after my AA meeting, and yes, I said after my AA meeting. It will be my third one. Mom’s been watching Lulu. She had to cut back on her Target shifts, but she said she thought she could manage OK.”

  Carla quickly changes the subject before I can give her grief about dating her boss. She says she told Lulu that if she’ll start wiping herself when she uses the potty, she can have ice cream for breakfast once a week for the rest of her life.

  Lulu is holding out for twice a week.

  And Carla tells me about Mom’s crazy scheme about moving into Granny’s house.

  “As if,” she says. “God. Mom needs to get out or something. She needs to meet a guy, somebody who can pitch in for rent or move her to a bigger place. She’ll go crazy living next door to Dad and all his junk.”

  “Maybe,” I say. It’s typical Carla to dismiss Mom’s concerns about money, but I have to admit, she does seem to be making an effort, at least a little: jogging with Lulu, AA meetings, changing her look. Though she still hasn’t said anything about going back to school or finding a new job.

  “So tell me more about Lulu,” I say. “Has she been asking about me?”

  Carla rolls her eyes. “Oh, no, not much. Only starting when she wakes up in the morning, and ending about when she falls asleep at night. And she won’t wear anything to bed but that basketball jersey of yours, either. ‘Mommy, where’s Aunt Sadie? Mommy, is Aunt Sadie coming over today? Mommy, why can’t Aunt Sadie come over today? Mommy, can we go over to Moo-Moo’s house and see Aunt Sadie?’”

  I laugh but can’t help tearing up when she says that.

  Carla frowns. “It’s probably not healthy, her asking about you all the time.”

  I quit smiling. “I’m sure she’ll get over it soon. She’s probably still adjusting to not having me around.”

  “She’s three, Sadie. She just doesn’t understand.”

  I tighten my grip on the phone, fighting the urge to snarl at Carla, to ask her who she thinks she is, lecturing me about Lulu. Lulu is practically as much my daughter as Carla’s in a lot of ways — and it kills me to be away from her. And screw Carla, anyway. I wouldn’t even be in this mess if it wasn’t for her. And I wouldn’t be so far away from Lulu.

  I keep glaring at Carla in silence. She tries to glare back, but it’s no contest. She blinks and looks down.

  “My bad,” she says finally.

  “Maybe we should talk about something else,” I suggest.

  She agrees.

  “Hey,” she says, brightening. “You haven’t seen that girl in here, have you? The one in the newspaper? They said she was in juvie.”

  “I don’t know,” I say, though I suspect I know who she’s talking about. “They don’t let us read the newspaper.”

  “She killed her mom,” Carla says.
“It was terrible. Shot her in the face and then just went to work like it was no big deal. That’s where they arrested her. They said her boyfriend was involved somehow, like talked her into doing it or whatever. He wasn’t there when she shot her mom, but they texted about it. She texted him right after she did it. Her name is Summer. I can’t remember her last name, but they got it from the neighbors. The police wouldn’t give it because she’s a juvenile, but it wasn’t hard to figure out, I guess.”

  I nod. “Yeah, she’s in here. She’s on my unit.”

  “No way!” she says. “Did you talk to her?”

  “A little. She’s pretty messed up and wasn’t making a whole lot of sense. They have her on suicide watch.”

  Carla’s eyes widen. “She tried to kill herself?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Carla says they figure she was high when she shot her mom — with her dad’s shotgun. That her parents didn’t want her seeing the boyfriend, that he was bad news, into a lot of nasty drugs, that she’d been this nice girl when she was in middle school, until she got with the guy.

  “She went all Columbine, I guess. That’s what everybody said. You should stay away from her, Sadie,” she says, trying to sound like the big sister she hasn’t been to me in years.

  “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” I say. “She spends all her time in her cell. And if she does try anything, they’ll put her on lockdown.”

  “Good,” Carla says. “Some people need to be locked up.”

  She catches herself, realizing what she’s just said.

  I’m already grinding my teeth in anticipation of the apology. But of course that doesn’t stop it from coming.

  They let Summer have her clothes back and come out of her cell after a couple of days. Nobody will talk to her, though. Whenever she tries to sit next to anybody, they move. Me included. She corners Fefu once — she must know a little Spanish — but the Jelly Sisters walk over and pull Fefu away. I can’t hear what they say to Summer, but she doesn’t approach Fefu or anybody else after that.

  I don’t say anything about what Carla told me, so I’m not sure how the other girls know about Summer, but they all seem to. Maybe they heard something when they called home or maybe there’s some kind of secret juvie news channel that I’m not privy to. Nobody talks about her, and after the incident with Fefu, nobody even acknowledges her when she’s around.

  She’s different from everyone else in juvie, or that’s how it seems. She reminds me of those dead zones in the Chesapeake Bay I read about, where the red algae grow out of control from all the runoff and fertilizers and pollution and poisons. Dead fish float to the surface. Nothing can live there except the algae. And those dead zones are spreading, merging into one another, threatening to take over the entire bay.

  Summer is like that: using up too much of the available oxygen, not leaving enough for the rest of us to breathe. Maybe anybody who kills somebody is like that, especially if it’s their own mother.

  A couple of days later, Summer disappears somewhere off the unit. Maybe another conference with her lawyer. Or maybe she’s gone to court. Or been transferred to adult jail and charged as an adult for the murder. Or escaped. I don’t give it much thought. Nobody does. She could be a ghost for all we know or care.

  Summer never comes back — not that night or the next day. A janitor comes down on Saturday and mops and scrubs and disinfects her cell, the same as they did when Middle-School Karen left, and soon there’s nothing left to confirm the fact that she was ever even here. Nobody tells us anything, of course, and we don’t talk about it, though I see all the girls at one time or another staring at her cell door — more interested in Summer now that she’s gone than they were during the week she was here. I catch myself doing it, too, though I can’t say why. It’s as if we’re all wondering if she left something behind, some trace, some aspect. A blood splatter. A clump of hair. A message carved into the wall. A coded confession. Or maybe it’s that darkness she brought in with her, which has mostly lifted but still won’t all go away.

  I knew it Monday morning, the third week after the arrest, the minute I walked into school. Kids were staring at me at the lockers.

  “What?” I said to this one boy, a little sophomore with floppy blond hair. I recognized him from the JV basketball team. He blinked at me but couldn’t hide his grin.

  “Nothing,” he said nervously. “I was just getting my books.”

  Maybe I was being paranoid.

  But then I ran into Julie Juggins on my way to homeroom and she confirmed it.

  “What are people saying exactly?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “It’s pretty bad.”

  “Julie …”

  “They’re saying you were dealing drugs. You and your sister. That those guys in your car were your suppliers or something.”

  I punched the wall outside homeroom. “Shit, shit, shit. Did you tell anybody?” I demanded. “How did people hear about it?”

  Julie looked offended and drew back. “You know I didn’t. I would never do that.”

  “Then how did people hear about it?” My phone was practically buzzing itself free from my backpack. I checked, and there were four texts. Five. A couple were from teammates. Two were from Kevin. The one that had just come in was from Coach.

  Mrs. Tomzcak came out of homeroom to shut the door. “In or out, girls?” she said.

  “In,” said Julie.

  “Out,” I said, turning and running down the hall to the restroom. I was pretty sure I was going to be sick.

  I had to work at the car wash after school, so couldn’t meet with Coach until later that afternoon. He didn’t have an office. The AAU team just had use of the gym at my high school. We sat on the bleachers. The other girls were in the locker room getting dressed for practice.

  “You want to explain?” he said, clearly pissed. I hadn’t seen him since the game where I got ejected. He yelled at me a lot for that. I couldn’t imagine what he was going to do now.

  I didn’t want to look at him — I knew I looked guilty, and there was no way he was going to believe me. Plus, since I’d confessed for Carla, I couldn’t tell him the truth, anyway. Or not the whole truth. “I messed up,” I whispered. “I should have said something, but it’s just been this big mess, with lawyers and my mom, and going to court.”

  “So it’s true, then,” he said, keeping his voice low, which was the one good thing.

  I nodded. “I’m not sure what you heard, but, Coach, the drugs weren’t mine. There were just these guys, they had them, and I gave them a ride somewhere. The drugs — it was just pot — it was theirs. They got out of the car and left the pot there for somebody to pick up.”

  Coach sighed. “So you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Sort of like that,” I said, desperately wishing I could explain.

  “That’s it, then,” he said, still with the low voice. “You’re off the team. First there’s what you did to that girl in the game last week, which was inexcusable. Now this. I want you out of here and I mean right now. You can give your uniform to one of the other girls to turn in.”

  “But, Coach,” I said, blinking back a flood of tears, stunned. “I haven’t even gone to court yet.” As if that mattered. “It’s not until Thursday.”

  Coach just shook his head, letting me know how stupid I sounded, and how pathetic.

  Kevin came looking for me a couple of hours later. I was sitting on that limestone outcropping on Government Island, staring out over Aquia Creek at what was left of the sunset. I heard him a good ten minutes before he got there — calling for me and crashing through the underbrush when he lost the trail.

  And then, finally, after he’d frightened off all the birds and squirrels and deer and muskrats and beaver and herons and anything else that lived on the island, he found me.

  “Hey, Sadie.”

  I didn’t turn around. “Hey.”

  �
��Mind if I sit down?”

  I scooted over to make room for him on the rock.

  “You’re all wet,” I said. “And muddy.”

  He pulled off his boots and banged them on the rock. “Yeah. I don’t exactly know the dry way to get here through all that swamp. I brought a blanket, though.” He held it out to me.

  “Did you think I’d want to fool around?” I asked, annoyed. “Is that what you had in mind?”

  “No,” he said. “God, Sadie. I just thought you might be cold. It’s getting dark, you know. Jesus.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s OK.” He opened the blanket and tucked it around both of our shoulders. “There.”

  I’d expected him to be mad at me — for getting arrested, for keeping it a secret, for running off without telling anyone where I was going, for not answering when he kept calling my name just now — but the way he was acting left me feeling helpless suddenly. It felt good to lean against him, and we sat there for half an hour without saying anything else. The last traces of sunset melted out of the sky. There was an early moon, though, and soon everything in the world turned black and silver.

  “You want to talk about it?” Kevin asked finally.

  I waited until I thought I could speak without choking on the words. “I thought I could just make it all go away,” I said, “if I didn’t tell anybody, if I did everything exactly right. Like it never even happened. Like I would do my community service but just tell everybody it was for National Honor Society or something. I even thought about going down to the food bank so you and I could work there together. Driving forklifts, loading trucks, all that stuff.”

  Kevin actually laughed. “They don’t let us drive the forklifts. You just stock shelves and go through the donations and organize them and do inventory and help customers.”

  “Yeah,” I said, sagging against him more, leaning my head on his shoulder. “I figured.”

  He put his arm around me and pulled the blanket tighter around us. “You could have told me,” he said. “I mean, I love you, Sadie. I would have been there for you no matter what. Look at me. I’m all wet and everything. I probably have leeches and ticks all over me from wading through that swamp and trying to find my way across your island.”