by Nico Augusto
The main hallway had a sign that pointed one direction for the cafeteria and the other for the administration offices. As they passed the main staircase Miss Pearce pointed out that it separates the building into two parts. One wing of the building hosted the boys and the other the girls.
The only color in the place seemed to be represented by the many drawings and doodles and old film posters hung along the walls of the long corridors. Yann was terrified, and it was only made worse by the fact that he was going to miss Ani so badly. He hadn’t left him yet and Yann’s heart already ached for him.
The austere woman showed them a dull, bland room and a cold looking metal bed where Yann would be living until Shirley came back for him. Shirley shuddered once more at the bleakness of it all. The poor boy had lost his parents and now while he was still grieving and trying to understand it all, he felt like he was losing everyone else he loved.
When Shirley finished up the paperwork and went to say good-by to Yann, he was no longer begging her to go home. Now, he was silent, having withdrawn into himself. Shirley hugged him tightly and promised him again that she would be back for him. She let Ani lick his face once more and then with the little dog tucked under her arm she left him there on his bed, all alone.
Yann lay down on the bed, engulfed by the darkness and overcome by loneliness. The dormitory that housed the bed he lay on was huge with rows of beds on each side lined up with military preciseness. There was no sound in the room other than the heavy breathing of the other boys who slept there. The large windows that lined one wall of the room let in nothing but more darkness and Yann missed the window in his room, the one where he and Ani could look out and see the moon and the stars.
The thought of Ani caused another arrow of sharp pain to tear through his heart and land like a boulder in his already upset stomach. He thought about his parents then…Shirley had tried to explain things to him without coming right out and saying the word. She had said they’d had to go away…they could never come back…they were watching over him…they were in a better place. Yann had spent many hours processing all of that. He came to the realization that what she was trying to say, without saying it was that they were dead. Yann understood dead….kind of. He didn’t want his parents to be dead. He missed them and he’d give anything to see them again, but he understood that he couldn’t. He’d gotten through it so far by holding Ani, pressed to his chest…against his heart. It made him feel safe and warm and like everything would be okay someday. Now that he was really and truly alone, it was hard to hold on to that belief. His mood was as bleak as the building he now lived in. His emotions were as torn up as the walls and the floors. As he at last drifted off to sleep, he couldn’t help but wonder how the other children here were going to receive him. Yann knew he was different and within the circle of friends his parents had created for him, he’d done just fine….But these children were not likely to be as kind and tolerant as his friends had been….
He woke up the next day and as the morning light streamed in through the dirty windows, he was able to see just how vast the room actually was. He could also see the other boys and they all seemed to be looking at him. One of the boys, much bigger than Yann started to approach him and although Yann didn’t know why, fear began to coil in his belly like a snake. The door opened before the boy reached him, however and faced with a choice at that moment, Yann would have chosen the bigger boy.
In through the door marched the “general” of the orphanage. He walked briskly up to Yann’s bunk with the loose and flabby skin of his body shaking and rolling with each step. Yann didn’t know yet who he was or how bad his reputation fared at St. Josephs, but he was intimidated by the man’s size alone.
“Yann Northman.” It seemed more like a statement than a question, but to be polite, Yann said,
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m Mr. Pratt. I’m the director here at St. Joseph’s orphanage.” The man spoke in a cold, controlled voice. His face seemed to move involuntarily as well as he spoke just above his lip like a nervous twitch or a tic. His black hair and inky little mustache stood out against his almost glowing white skin.
“Hello,” Yann said, casting his eyes down towards the scuffed linoleum floor. Mr. Pratt didn’t return Yann’s greeting. Instead, he launched into his “welcoming” speech which was a litany of rules and regulations. When he finished with that he called another boy over.
“Lyle, this is Yann. You are to proctor him and make sure that he knows where everything is and keeps to the rules until he commits them all to memory.”
“Yes sir,” the other boy said. He looked to be a year or two older than Yann. He had strawberry blonde hair and freckles and he wore a tattered pair of blue jeans and a white t-shirt. From what Yann could see of the other boys, it seemed to be the uniform of the place. The larger boy that had started towards him earlier was still giving him the eye. Yann was trying to ignore him, but something about him seemed so threatening.
Over the course of the following weeks, Yann found out that the bigger boy was indeed threatening. He was the leader of a group of boys who liked to fight and went out of their way to make life miserable for the smaller, younger or weaker ones. Yann was not a fighter neither in terms of strength or attitude. He was blessed with a witty astuteness however and he was often forced to use it to avoid or escape a confrontation. He learned a lot of other things about his new “home” as well.
He learned that it was a place with a lot of staff…twenty total nurses and caregivers during the day and five at night, as well as a security officer or two on each shift. In spite of all the people with ample opportunity to care for children that society had all but forgotten, there was very little caring that went on. It seemed as if everyone were out for him or herself only.
The toys were always old and broken and with missing pieces. They were all donated toys and no one ever donated “new” stuff to an orphanage. The coloring books were filled with pages colored by children who were still in possession of their parents and if one was lucky enough to find a page uncolored, he colored it with broken, chipped crayons.
Personal things were practically non-existent and the reason for that was two-fold. Most of the children had no one to bring them personal items, and the ones who were lucky enough that they did rarely remained in possession of them long before they were stolen. Some of the lucky ones held onto their things by stuffing them underneath their mattresses and sleeping on them at night. Unfortunately that only worked for the boys that were large enough not to be moved or intimidated into moving when one of the bigger boys told him to.
The bathrooms were appalling even to an eleven year old boy. One bathroom was used by twenty-four boys. Some of these boys had never been taught the proper way to use the toilet or clean themselves and the bathrooms were cleaned about as often as they were at the local gas station.
Yann found out that the holidays and birthdays were rarely recognized much less celebrated, everyone wore everyone else’s clothes and the bigger kids bullied the smaller ones. Three different groups of boys constantly fought over who “ruled” which part of the orphanage. The group called “The eagles” had already been in the orphanage for a few years and felt like they’d “earned” the right to rule the entire place. They were too old to get adopted and too young to be on their own. Most of them were big and all of them were mean and it was futile to defy their orders. Yann decided that even if they had been adopted, the poor, unfortunate souls who adopted them would likely be asking for a return.
The other two groups weren’t quite as threatening. The “Hares” and the “Squirrels” were what they called themselves. Their “territory” as they saw it was the toys that they fought over eternally.
Overall, it was not a place that someone might choose to live, and the first chance he got, Yann made up his mind, he was getting as far away from it as he could.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“ESCAPE”
ORPHANAGE
As the days passed, Yann spent every waking hour either practicing self-preservation or plotting his escape. The self-preservation came in the form of avoiding the attention of the gangs, or the wrath of Mr. Pratt. For some reason, the director had taken a disliking to Yann and seemed to have the staff hovering around him at every juncture looking for things to cite him over. Once a citation had been issued, Yann would be summoned in front of Mr. Pratt and Mrs. Pierce, two of the most frightening human beings that he’d ever personally known. The punishment the hefty man doled out was harsh and sometimes cruel, but preferable to Yann than standing before them. To Yann, Pratt’s dark eyes seemed to be harboring a deep-seeded evil behind them, and Mrs. Pierce just appeared to be the most miserable human being on Earth.
Shirley visited often but not Ani. Ani wasn’t even allowed to visit and sometimes when Yann thought about him, he could actually feel his heart breaking. He craved his best friend’s company and he’d reached the point where he was willing to do whatever had to be done to make his way back to him. He started by observing the surveillance cameras. There were only a few and only in common areas. He wrote down their positions and in what rooms they were in inside of his diary that he kept wrapped in his extra sheets and tucked deeply underneath his cot.
The next thing he observed and wrote down was the patrol patterns of the nurses and assistants. They made rounds every half an hour. There was also a nurse on call that sat in a small room near the front exit. When she wasn’t there, a guard sat in her place.
The entrance door was always locked with a key and from what Yann had been able to discover. He knew that all of the staff had keys, but he also knew that there had to be a spare set somewhere. He was sure that Pratt had one, but that would never do. Pratt’s quarters were all the way on the fourth floor and getting up there and back down would be a problem in itself.
The dorm supervisor had an office just across from the cafeteria on the first floor. That was another place he was sure there had to be an extra set of keys. The office was always open; Yann would just have to find a way to get in and out unobserved.
Once he was able to get the key, he had a route mapped out. He slept on the second floor, so he would wiggle in the air vent of the second floor, and slide down to the first floor. Then he would pass by the security office while the nurse on call…a large, older woman who was rarely awake at her post, slept. It would be more difficult if the guard was there, but he was not going to let that keep him from trying. The last step would be unlocking the door and head home on foot. All he was waiting for now was the perfect opportunity for it all to come together. In the meantime, he was just surviving as he bid his time.
THE ORPHANAGE DORMITORY – NIGHT
Several Weeks Later
That night as Yann was lying on his bed and just about to doze off he suddenly heard two loud bangs. The dormitory resonated and chaos ensued. Yann didn’t get up; he didn’t want to be in the line of fire when the staff arrived. As it turned out, that was a good thing because Pratt himself suddenly appeared through the door. The dormitory became instantly silent, so quiet that a pin dropping would have seemed loud.
The boy who had lit the firecracker hadn’t even had time to ditch the lighter. Pratt didn’t ask any questions. He pulled back his fist and landed it in the center of the freckled face of the twelve year old pyro technician sending a wave of shock and fear through the silent observers. The boy’s body suddenly looked small as it flew back a few feet, spraying blood from his nose and landed in a heap on the dirty, cracked floor.
Pratt gave a glance around with his misshapen face and dark, evil eyes and said,
“I hope you all learned a lesson!!! Everyone in bed, NOOOOW!” He stopped only to pick up the crumpled form of the unconscious boy by the collar, drag him over to his bunk and toss him on like a rag doll. Yann watched in utter horror as the surreal scene unfolded before his eyes. Pratt then stormed out the door he’d come in through and slammed it behind him, plunging the room back into darkness.
The next day as Yann ate in the crowded, noisy cafeteria, he couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d seen the night before. In Yann’s world, a grown man…or woman for that matter would never lay their hands on a child in anger. Yann knew from his own experience that Pratt wasn’t a compassionate man in any way. He knew that he wasn’t a nice man, but he hadn’t known until last night just how blatantly evil the man was.
Yann tried to push the frightening images of Mr. Pratt punching the child out of his mind by calling up memories of home. He thought about Shirley and Ani and how happy they would all be once he was back at home with them. Suddenly he told himself,
“Tonight is the night.”
He picked up his tray right then while all of the other kids continued to eat and the staff continued to watch them for unruly behavior. He dumped his tray and slipped out into the hallway, headed for the dorm supervisor’s office. He knew that he had to be quick, they’d be finished eating soon and the halls would fill with people.
As quietly as he could, he slipped into the office and tiptoed over to the desk. He began searching the drawers from top to bottom. He located a metal box in the bottom drawer that contained three identical keys with a tag marked, “Front Entrance.” He slipped one of the keys off the ring and into his pocket. As he quietly slipped back into the hallway he found himself wondering why the other kids hadn’t done this already. It was so easy…
********
That night as the children were all in their beds and drifting off to sleep, Yann waited. He’d begun to worry that someone would have noticed one key was missing and would be watching and waiting to see who tried to use it. He knew if he was caught that the punishment would be the most severe of anyone he’d received so far.
He lay on his bunk with his eyes closed, breathing as slowly and softly as he could, so it would appear that he was asleep. Within the first half hour, the supervisor passed and turned off the lights. The room was ensconced it darkness suddenly, only faint shards of light passed through the window from the outside. Another half hour and things were completely silent, everyone had gone to sleep.
Yann sat up slowly, making sure the bunk didn’t creak or let out a sound. He slipped on his shoes and then standing up just as carefully, he snuck between the beds towards the door. He slid quietly out the door and into the pitch black hallway. Using the walls to guide him he made his way down the hall towards the vent. He passed a door on his way and from behind it he heard a soft whining noise and the sounds of two people’s hushed voices. He didn’t stop to listen he had no time to lose. He continued to fumble in the dark, into the vent and down two floors.
He made his way to the main hallway. Once he was there, he felt even more anxious than he had upstairs. He crept down the hallway until the information office came into view. The guard was there and Yann held his breath as he crept underneath it. He was so afraid when he finally made it to the front door…too afraid to even turn around and find out if he was being observed. He put the key in his right hand and slid it delicately into the lock. He turned it gently and with more stealth than even he realized he had, he slipped out into the night, closing the door behind him. He was hoping that would slow them down if they discovered that he’d left.
Yann walked quickly, not running for fear of falling and injuring himself in the dark or making unnecessary noise. He knew if he didn’t get away now that he would be met with the darkest corners of the director’s soul when they took him back.
The fresh air felt so good on his face. He looked up at the night sky, covered in clouds as he walked. It was completely black and impossible to see the stars, only scattered and random shards of light broke through. Yann continued his path along the sidewalk and he lowered his head every time a car passed by. He observed the road signs trying to find his way in the dark. He didn’t want to waste time by getting lost.
He felt good to be away, but the fear of getting caught still silently ate away at him, feeding the terror that w
elled up when he considered what the punishment might be. He continued his path along the sidewalk lowering his head every time a car passed by, still observing the road signs. He felt lost but as he passed trucks and cars he feared asking for help or directions. What if they called the police? What would they think of discovering him alone, out in the night? He was already a few miles from the orphanage which made him feel good, but he knew that Shirley still lived quite a ways away. Her home was in a nice area. He had memorized the address and the directions. He needed to take Park Slope on the 15th St. to Flatbush Ave and then Prospect Park West to Fourth Ave. It was probably another forty minute walk, according to his calculations. That wouldn’t be the problem, he was comfortable walking. The problem was that the night was growing colder and the neighborhoods that he would have to pass through in the dark wouldn’t be near as nice as the one that Shirley lived in.
He considered his options. He could find a place to sleep until the sun came up, or he could run and get there faster. He started to run. He ran across the park, jumping over trash bags and vaulting benches. He was bound and determined to make it. It was still pitch black outside, but his eyes had adjusted and the occasional street lamp helped him find his way. He’d begun to almost believe that he was going to make it when there was suddenly an overwhelmingly bright beam of light in his eyes.
“Young man! Stop! This is the police! Come closer so that I can see your face!” It was a policeman. He would take Yann back to the orphanage…he couldn’t go back there. He had to find Ani. He didn’t stop, he ran even faster.
He heard the policeman yell out after him again…”Stay there!” Then he saw the swivel of the red and blue lights and heard the loud wail of the siren as the police car began to pursue him. Yann turned into a narrow street and heard the squeal of the car tires behind him. The road was too narrow and Yann too fast for them to catch him that one. One of the policemen jumped out of the car and began to pursue him on foot.