(Dis)Orientation

    That's what I keep telling myself, at least. It's the only comforting idea I can think of. That in fifty or sixty years, I'll be sitting in my favorite chair on my front porch, peacefully rocking away, enjoying the setting sun and the soothing breeze, watching my grandchildren out in the yard play hopscotch or Cops and Robbers or whatever the hell normal children play, and something will trigger this exact memory I am currently living—maybe it'll be the school bus in the distance or the gunshots from the Hillbillies who live next door or my worsening dementia—and I'll think about this odd time of my life, something so far in the past that it will almost feel like someone else's memory instead of my own, and I'll smile and grin and chuckle and drool and wonder how I was ever so scared in the first place.

    But I'm not there yet. Far from it. If I ever want to make it to that point in life, I need to first survive this one. From here on out, the only thing that matters is survival.

    And here I am. Sitting towards the back of the bus, staring out the window, watching my world scroll and bump on by, backwards into oblivion, gone forever.

    The traffic we’re in is thick, composed mostly of taxis and other buses (except these buses don't have bars across the windows like mine), but it doesn't take long for the clamor of honks and street chatter to soften, the throngs of pedestrians to thin, the stops to dwindle, the buildings to shrink and spread apart. I was really hoping to savor these final views of freedom, to try and force my brain to record every little detail so I can play it back later like a home movie, but my thoughts are far too congested to accomplish this. Before I am even aware of it, concrete gives way to asphalt, and asphalt to gravel. My fate as a juvenile delinquent is already upon me.

    As the Bleak Hills approach, the sun retreats, and the driver flips a switch by the radio. A row of stained lights blink on, running the length of the ceiling. All morning I have been feeling nauseous, and the tobacco-colored glow does not improve my condition. I once heard that, for most first-timers, it takes about two weeks of hard time for regret to sink in—unless a kid was a fetch, of course, and then it might take as little as a day or two. For me, regret has already taken hold; it arrived with my very first step onto this bus.

    My forehead rests against the window pane. The corrugated steel pinches my skin. My bangs dangle in front of my eyes, the dirty, sweaty hairs sticking together in slick clumps. The glass of the window is cooling quickly, already collecting the moisture in my breath.

    I lift my hands, which are restrained together at the wrists by cable ties, to wipe away some of the condensation. A childish urge interrupts me, a small voice that pleads with me to first draw in the fresh dew, to not waste such a perfect canvas. I carelessly allow the impulse. Using my thumbs, I press two eyes into the moisture, and then, with a lazy twist of my pinky, grant my artwork a smile.

    Pain slices through my fingertip. Instinctively I shove my finger into my mouth and suck until the stinging subsides. From the corner of my drawing's grin, where I can now clearly see a chip in the glass, a splotch of red sullies my sketch.The smiling face in the glass vanishes, and I have neither the energy to replace it nor the desire to restore my view.

    I turn my attention away from the window. The other passengers are silent. Like me, they are all children. The steady grinding of gravel under the tires puts us into a dull trance, like listening to a broken radio over a long stretch of time. The sound toys with my perception. My awareness stretches little further than my own nose. The things at the front of the bus—like the screeching windshield wipers and the hacking clutch, or the Correctional Officer checking the chamber of his shotgun—feel as far away as the horizon, as do the rattling from the back where the shocks aren't as effective and where the lack of road maintenance is most apparent.

    Beside me, a young bunnygirl mumbles to herself. By sight alone, it is difficult to judge her age, but her squeaky voice suggests someone very young, perhaps even the youngest in the group.  "The wheels on the bus go round and round," she whispers to the back of the seat in front of her, "round and round...round and round....round and round and round....wheels go round and round...wheels go round and round and round and round and round...." These lyrics, irritating enough without the addition of depressed hysteria, drive me deeper into myself.

    With no sun or stars for reference, it is hard to guess how long the trip has lasted. We eventually arrive, and the engine sputters off, and this seems to drag all of us from our haze. I glance over at my neighbor, who had stopped singing some time ago. She is weeping silently now, hunched over and with shut eyes. I empathize with her. I wish I could give her some comfort, but I have none of my own to share.

    The C.O. with the shotgun hobbles to the back of the bus and orders us to stand. I comply. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see the bunnygirl's stubby legs still protruding off the edge of the seat. She makes no effort to stand.

    "Hey," I whisper. I nudge one of her fuzzy toes. "Hey, we're here."

    The girl shakes her head. She is still lost inside.

    "Hey! The guy said to get up! We're here!"

    "QUIET!" shouts the C.O. He fires his gun into the ceiling. A bean bag hits the roof, leaving a sizable dent among a cluster of sizeable dents. "You had your chance to chit-chat on the way over here. If you had paid attention to the video, you woulda known that."

    I prod the girl some more, but she ignores each attempt. The C.O. starts to pace the aisle, and I have to stop.

    "I have two responsibilities entrusted to me by our sovereign county of Townville," the man announces. He sounds bored, but this does not lessen the grimness of each word he speaks, the way an old Judge might sound as he declares a countless death sentence. "One of them is to accompany youths as they are transported to and from her facilities. This I have done. The second is to educate said youths on the rules and protocols of said facilities."

    He strides past the sitting bunnygirl, and he does not appear to notice or care that she is not standing. Once again, as he returns to the back, he ignores her, and I am relieved.

    "Three minutes," the C.O. says. "It takes about three minutes for my colleagues to get off their fat be-hinds, stroll across the premises, and escort you lads and lasses off my bus. Which means I have roughly two-and-a-half minutes to instill in your calcified, adolescent brains everything you need to know about the rest of your lives.

    "The only way to accomplish that," he says, and suddenly clamps a hand around both of the bunnygirl's long ears, "is through example." With ease, he plucks the child out of her seat and suspends her in the air. My body freezes, too afraid to even look. "For starters, when we say 'stand,' you stand."

    Still suspending the child in the air, the C.O. walks her to the front of the bus for everyone to witness. He reaches behind the driver and grabs a long-handled broom. As he leans back up, he speaks in the driver's ear, whispering but still loud enough for me to hear, "Take a break, Clarence. I know you don't like this part. And bring back some bleach, would you?" And the driver leaves, shutting the door behind himself.

    The C.O. cuts the restraints off the child, slides the broom through the sleeves of her shirt, rests the broom between two strap handles near the top of the bus, and displays the now-wide-awake bunnygirl like an adorable crucifix. "You boys and girls don't have to remember my lesson today, but your lives will be a lot easier if you do," he says. "If you do not perform what we ask of you, we will not ask again, and we will not feel bad for the things that must come after."

    He snaps open the barrel of his shotgun and shakes out the remaining beanbag round. "When Lucifer was banished to hell, it was because he refused the spoils of heaven. Hell was not punishment; God was only giving the boy what he wanted. In the same vein, if you ever find yourself bitter or sad or angry about the place you will soon find yourself in, keep in mind that you asked for this. If you ever find yourself saying, 'This isn't fair!', remember: you asked for the world to behave this way. If you wanted fair, you should've obeyed the rules of fairness to begin with. You turned your back on civilized society, turned your back on her principles and her spoils, and in turn she has turned her back on you. She no longer cares about what happens to you, whether that be discomfort or injustice or demise. Wilderness is what you children have asked for, and it is exactly what you shall receive."

    On his belt hangs three pouches. He fishes into one and pulls out a shotgun slug. "Now I know that you might think we Correctional Officers of the juvenile persuasion can't make lethal bullets, the way Policemen or Armymen can," he says, loading the chamber of his gun. "And maybe you think my people only know how to make the weak stuff. Maybe you even heard the term 'pansy pellets'." As he says these last two words, his movements sharpen, and he thrusts the explosive rounds into their chamber with less delicacy than they probably warrant. He snaps the gun back together. "Well, thanks to the adversity of Crumshack, we Northern Tribe C.O.s have adapted. We figured it out a few decades ago—how to forge live ammunition—in case any of y'all tried to escape." He tucks the end of the barrel under the trembling bunnygirl's chin. "Of course the definition of 'escape' can be very broad. For explanatory purposes, by not standing when I ask you to stand, I can only assume you were planning to make a run for it. I can always work the details out later, but you at least understand the premise."

    He speaks softly to the girl. "Alright, sweetheart. Open your mouth."

    She shakes her head and sucks in her lips.

    "Come on, now," he says. "Open your mouth. I ain't gonna hurt you. I know it might look like it, but I ain't gonna hurt you. I'm almost done here."

    "Please," she croaks. Her tiny voice has to squeeze through her tight lips. "I just stole'm cause the girls at school were making fun of me. I didn't want to look poor, is all. But I felt so bad I didn't even try'm on! I swear! I know what I did was wrong! I know that now! I've learned my lesson! Please believe me, oh please!"

    The C.O. patiently listens to the tardy confession. Once the girl is done, he soundlessly moves his lips. Muted words drop from his mouth like bombs into clouds.

    O-

        pen

            your

                mouth.

    The bunnygirl closes her eyes, and the tears and snot really start to flow. Astonishingly, she relaxes her jaw. The C.O. pries it the rest of the way open with his gun.

    Keeping the barrel snug between her teeth, he turns and faces the rest of us. "If there's only one thing you take away from my lesson today it's this: no one ever escapes from the Shack—but they do occasionally disappear. Consider this your first and final warning shot."

    Before I can fully process that final statement, the C.O. pulls the trigger, and a boom blasts through the bus like a firecracker in a tin can. A cloud of blue smoke mercifully obscures the girl's head—or what remains of it—from the audience, and we gaze with disbelief at the limp body that hangs before us.

    The smoke clears, revealing the blank face and wide eyes of the girl.

    "We also learned to make blanks," the C.O. enlightens, taking down the stunned child. "For our reenactments, you see. Fun stuff at reunions."

    Despite my horror, a solitary and abrupt laugh barks out of my mouth. Everyone turns to look at me, including the C.O.

    "Something funny, son?" the man asks dully.

    I am so startled with myself, I have no idea how to answer that. I barely understand that it was me who laughed, nonetheless why I did it.

    "I can't tell," I answer, an admission that first makes me ashamed of its uncertainty, but ultimately proud of its honesty.

    The C.O. throws back his head and a laugh as jarring as the gunshot rattles through the bus. "Truer words have never been spoken on my bus!" he says, and laughs some more.

    His colleagues arrive. The doors open, and the C.O. with the shotgun herds us out. "Go on! Get on out of here! Shoo," he says while chuckling. He stands up the bunnygirl and pats her cotton-swab tail to encourage her out the door—a difficult task for her since she is preoccupied with what looks like five broken teeth, multiple forms of shock, a few types of soiling, two bleeding eardrums, and an unbreakable foundation for daily night terrors that will inevitably push away the ones closest to her. "Buncha crazy kids," the C.O. says, and laughs and laughs and blows his nose into a handkerchief and laughs and laughs some more.

WE MARCH SINGLE-FILE through a manmade canyon of cinderblock and chainlink. Spotlights cling to our every step. At the end of the trail where the stronghold stands, the girls are separated from us boys. A rhinolady with a lantern leads the female half away to the north, and the fog consumes the girls one by one.

    As for the rest of us, we are escorted to the southern wing. At the base of it, a card table waits in the swimmy glow of floodlights. Behind the makeshift desk, a woman with a clipboard questions every child that approaches her. I am near the end of the line, and, as I wait, I take in what little I can see.

    Most of everything is obscured by fog or blinding light, but Crumshack's stone exterior is just visible enough to discern a thing or two about my new home. The detention center is an old, ugly thing built by imperfect hands. And it's big. What I first take to be the moon is actually a spotlight far above the outward wall, somewhere high up on the roof. The light is weak in the fog, nearly a mirage, and I know that moonlight will never reach this place. Maybe not even daylight. Then I remember: this is daylight.

    The fog makes me think of Toby. Dreamily, I whistle a short tune. Looking up to the sky, I wait, and I receive exactly the response I expect. None. A few spectators glare at me, but I care little of their judgements.

    Still detached from the moment, I treat the experience with as much trepidation as remembering a dream. Slow breaths spill out of my mouth and turn into creamy, swirling puffs. The small clouds spread out and become one with the fog, like the girls had done just moments before. It is colder than it should be for almost March, and I stupidly wonder if I should have brought a sweater.

    Two C.O.s, who do not seem to be a part of the check-in process, are smoking nearby, gossiping to each other and chuckling. One of them finishes his cigarette and smacks his buddy's shoulder. The guy walks over to the front of the line and places his hand on the head of the first child.

    "Wolf," the C.O. shouts back to his buddy, grinning.

    The kid is not a Wolf. None of us are. There is a duckboy and a Cow with acne, but no Wolves.

    The C.O. places his hand on the next boy and again says, "Wolf." He continues down the line. "Wolf. Wolf. Big wolf. Scary wolf. Constipated wolf!" He laughs.

    "That's all they send us anymore!" shouts the man who is still smoking. "Wolves!"

    "Wolf. Wolf. Wolf. Wolf. Wolf," the man says, continuing his survey. Then, when he reaches my small, shaggy head, "Well! Lookie here Eric!" The C.O. firmly grips my scalp and pulls it to the side so his friend can see. "We got us a sheep!"

    The smoking man whistles in appreciation. "About time! It's been a spell. I think the boys are starting to forget what veal tastes like."

    The C.O. releases his grip and tussles my already-messy hair. "Kid, I don't know what you did to get here," the guy privately says to me, "but you sure as heck mucked up." He moves on. "Wolf. Wolf. Some kind of duckwolf, I guess. Wolf. Wolf..."

    I am unfazed by this. I stand in line, admiring the hockey jersey of the brute in front of me, and before I know it, it's my turn.

    "Name?" the woman behind the desk asks without removing her eyes from her paperwork.

    "Elroy," I say softly. I check to make sure none of the other boys can hear me. "Elroy Kidd."

    The woman gives me a suspicious look and makes me repeat my name louder. When I say it again just as quietly, pretending like I am trying my hardest to speak up, she makes me spell it. Each letter emerges as a raspy yell. She shakes her head, but ends up marking something on her paperwork and smacking a transparent tub on the table.  "Shoes, socks, belts, wallets, watches, and jewelry—including all piercings and hairpins," she says. "Now turn your pockets inside out and raise your arms."

    I do as I am instructed, and one of the guards pats me down thoroughly. The guard sticks two of his fingers inside my mouth and makes me cough. He's not wearing a glove, and his fingers taste like charcoal and ham. After I finish retching, the man nods an assurance to the woman and backs off.

    "Male...norman...brown eyes...how about your hair?" she asks me, her pen pressed on a blank line. "Is it dirty blonde or just blonde and dirty?"

    "I was born with red hair, my mom says. But at some point it turned blonde. Also, if you look at the roots of my eyebrows—"

    "Blonde. And your size?"

    "Oh. I'd say...four foot even, maybe? It's been awhile since—"

    "The size of your clothes, darling."

    I wince, as much out of embarrassment as annoyance. It would have been nice if her clarification had come before the question. "Extra small," I say, and she thrusts a cardboard box into my arms. The word MEDIUM is scrawled across the front of it in faded marker.

    "Take this and go with the others inside," she says. "Once you're done with the shower, remove your new clothes from the box and put your old ones in. Here's a bottle of delouser. Use the whole bottle. Don't skip your privates. Next!"

    A guard shoves me from behind, and I stumble forward in the direction of the looming stone building. I grimace at the man who shoved me and follow the others through an iron door and into a poorly-lit concrete hall. Inside, the air is humid and smells like towels that have been left on the bathroom floor for too long. A cacophony of droning noises vibrate just underneath the surface of everything. Buzzing lights. Humming machinery. Dripping pipes. Together, they have a similar effect as the wheels on the bus. (Go round and round and round and round and round!)

    The C.O.s halt us in the center of the corridor. They forced all of us to stand behind an orange line and face a grimy wall. "Hands on the wall," one of the C.O.s yell. We do this, and I hear what sounds like a swarm of hornets flying towards the backs of our heads. Someone's hand reaches around my face and grips my forehead and pulls it back. An electric shaver plows across my scalp. I can feel my hair falling down the back of my shirt. I glance to my right and I can see the duckboy. He is squawking in pain as the feathers on his head get plucked.

    When the job is done, the shavers turn off and the Officers back away from us.

    "Now strip," someone yells.

    I hesitantly undress. I have never undressed in front of anyone before. I try not to look at the other boys. But maybe I should have—doing so would have informed me that I was the only one to leave on underwear.

    "Something WRONG with your BRAIN, son?" yells the head C.O., coming up so close to me that the hairs on the back of my neck flex in the hot breeze of each word he speaks. "Take them underbritches off! This is a shower, not a dougdam fashion show!"

    I comply. I barely slip my briefs from around my feet when another guard pulls on a dangling chain. Torrents of icy water fall from exposed pipes above our heads. There is no filter of any kind on the pipes, so I feel less like a boy in a shower and more like a salmon returning to spawn.

    "Y'all got two minutes before it shuts off," the head C.O. yells through the rushing water, and the other guards toss the bottles of shampoo against our backs. "If you ain't clean by then, we're coming in and doing it for you."

    An unnecessary threat. The frigid water is quite the motivator. When I finish, I stand over the drain cradling myself and shivering with the rest of the kids. "Alright, boys," the C.O. says, and we are each tossed a pair of stale jeans. "Wipe yourselves dry, then come over here and try on them clothes in them boxes."

    The experience is so stunning, the only response I can muster is to stare at the jeans, raise my hand, and inform the guard: "These aren't my jeans."

    The C.O. wiggles his fingers in the air and feigns concern. "Oh! Your highness wants to dry himself with his own pair of pants!" He spits. "This is a detention center, not a dougdam two-star motel. Hurry it up! I ain't got all day."

    Like the buses, the uniforms are pink, including the boxers. The kits provide no socks, just a pair of white canvas slippers. I dress myself from the bottom up, saving my top for last. The shirt is so roomy I nearly get lost trying to put it on.

    The head C.O.'s footsteps echo in the chamber as he paces and inspects. He stops in front of me. "Why is your shirt on backwards?" he asks. I scramble to get it straight. Rather than simply remove the shirt and put it back on like a sane person, I draw my arms inside and shimmy my shoulders like a washing machine. Inch by inch, the shirt corrects itself. The other boys chuckle nervously, but the C.O. is trembling with impatience. "Christ, boy! It's a shirt, not a dougdam rubik's cube!"

    I finish, and the C.O. squints his eyes. The man is wearing a hat so starched, it may very well be what he uses for pullups. Cleaning his teeth with his tongue, he sizes me up. Enough time passes for his mouth to finish brushing itself and for it to begin chomping on a non-existent wad of gum. "Funnyman, huh?" he eventually concludes. He snorts up a rolling ball of phlegm and smacks it against a wall. "Well we'll just see how long you'll be cracking jokes. Funnymen don't make it long around here. This is a detention center, not a dougdam barber shop. C'mon y'all! Let's git!"

    The guards corral us down the corridor and into a mining elevator big enough to transport a car. Its walls are constructed out of crisscrossed steel bars. Through them, I can see the slimy limestone the shaft is carved out of. Below my feet, darkness tunnels downwards into infinity. I have to close my eyes to avoid dizziness. When the elevator finally lurches upwards, I am grateful for the choice in direction.

    All along the walls of the shaft, crude hollows are carved into the stone, divots just large enough to hang a suit. These hollows are dark, but not empty.  Sometimes, when the light from the elevator slips into a hole, big, circular, black eyes reflect out. This makes my hair stand on end. But my hairs calm down once I realize that the eyes do not belong to some monstrous cave creatures, but actually to other children, restrained by chains, their faces concealed behind gas masks. But, of course, once I comprehended that they are children, my hairs rise to attention once more.

    The elevator jerks to a unsettling stop, and the scissor-like gates open. We are escorted through a series of bleak hallways and rooms. On the way, I pass several inmates. On all of their faces hang a heavy expression of boredom. Their eyes are dull and their movements slow. Most of them are doing chores like mopping or pushing laundry bins, but in the final room we enter, there are two kids doing nothing of apparent significance. One of them is a turtleboy with glasses and a scarred shell. The other is a fat Luchagirl in a wheelchair. Her gender is questionable, the only clue being the eyelashes painted on her colorful facemask. Unlike the other inmates, her jumpsuit is orange, not pink.

    "Buenas, Lewis," she says to the hatted C.O. Her voice is high-pitched and clashes sharply with her large size. Contrary to her wheelchair, she has one foot lifted out of its stirrup and pressed against a steel table, the other foot crossed underneath her. She is painting her toes. "Is Renata going to henjoy what you brung?"

    "Only if you like scrawny comedians who can't dress themselves," the C.O. grumbles.

    The Luchagirl hums and nods. "Quizás," she says, "quizás."

    Standing at attention, our escorts line the rear. On the far wall, a plexiglass window separates our room from a smaller one—an office of sorts. Sitting at a desk behind the glass, reading a magazine and sipping on a cup of coffee, is a man relaxing with his heels on the counter. The C.O. with the hat knocks on the window, and the man inside presses a button. With a loud buzz, the exit door unlocks just long enough for Mr. Hat to walk out.

    An uncomfortable quiet settles in the room. We are left with no instruction, and the guards stand in the back as useless as stone. The only noise is the Luchagirl's brush tinking against the well of her polish jar. There is nothing for us twenty-or-so boys to do but intently watch her color her toes, as if she is painting some historic masterpiece. Once she is satisfied with her work, she returns her feet to their rests, screws the brush back into its bottle, and lifts the bottom of her shirt to expose a flabby, heavily-tattooed breast.

    The guards make no move to stop her, and she holds the shirt up until she gets a good look at each of our faces. She laughs heartily and lets her shirt fall back down.

    "You chicos turn into hombres so quick," she says. "It is not often dat Renata gets to see children who still blush at tings like cursing and flesh." She meets eyes with me and winks. "Renata love dat."

    Indeed I had blushed, and the awareness of this only makes my cheeks hotter. I advert my eyes from hers. But then I am distracted by what is going on behind the girl, on the other side of the plexiglass.

    Mr. Hat is now in the office, chatting to Mr. Coffee. He hooks a thumb towards us, and Mr. Coffee leans back in his chair and shuffles through some clipboards on the counter behind him. He plucks one out of the assortment, glances at it, then hands it over to Mr. Hat, who takes it, seems to thank his coworker, then starts for the door, flipping through the papers.

    But mid-stride he stops. A perplexed expression washes over Mr. Hat's face, and he returns to Mr. Coffee, pointing to something in the paperwork.

    "Can Renata give you chicos some adbice?" asks the Luchagirl. "Renata has been in el Shacko for a long time, so Renata knows how to get what Renata wants, and Renata would listen to Renata if Renata was you and not Renata."

    With a silent sigh, I return my attention to the girl. It is apparent that her monologue is going to demand my full concentration.

    "Take your first day bery seriously," she says. "Because jou gonna leave here esactly as you come in. If de first ting jou do is act like a fetch, den we gone see jou as a fetch, treat jou like a fetch. Den later—maybe minutes, maybe jears—jou gone to die like a fetch, alone and wetting your detbed."

    In the other room, Mr. Hat is shoving the clipboard in front of Mr. Coffee's face, the back of his hand slapping against the papers. Mr. Coffee seems confused, but he cooly sips from his mug and rolls his office chair over to a computer. I can't see what's on the screen, but both men are studying it intently. Their eyes dart up over the monitor and scan across the lineup of boys.

    "Dry dem," Renata says over her shoulder, and the turtleboy, as motionless as the guards until now, falls to his hands and knees, blowing on her toes. Renata's speech resumes.

    "But if the first ting jou do is stab someone, den we gone to see jou as a keeler, treat jou like a keeler, and jou gone to someday die a keeler. If the first ting jou do is stick up for jourself, even if it mean bleeding to deat or getting jour arms torn off by some Gorilla wit' a bad attitude, den we see jou as true, and jou will die strong and true. Like Luchador."

     Renata sticks a finger underneath the eyehole of her snug facemask and scratches her eyebrow. Some of the pale skin underneath the mask shines in the glare of the fluorescent lights. In Luchador culture, it is a serious offense for anyone other than one's spouse or mother to see the skin of one's head, but if Renata is aware of her exposure, she does not look troubled by it.

    "On Renata's first day, the queenpin of the chicas—some Mermaid molly wit' a stinky fin—give Renata grief. But Renata won' scared of her. Renata give her grief right back. Renata pull tread out of shirt, use tread like fish scaler while Mermaid take bat'. None of her amigos were fast enough to stop Renata. Know what Renata's first words in el Shacko were? 'Mmm...sushi bueno.' And Renata was judged den and dere. For long, Renata have amigos everywhere. For long, Renata get first seat at lunch. For long, Renata get contra so 'pensive, even the C.O.s are wanting some. For long, Renata have new clotes waiting on her bed. For long, Renata get job cleaning dead bees out of lights in chicos side of building on all the intake days. Like today."

    The office is empty now. Both Mr. Hat and Mr. Coffee are gone. I can hear arguing on the other side of the door. Behind us, the C.O.’s earpieces hum with muffled voices. For the first time since entering the room, the guards move. They unholster their weapons and check the rounds inside.

    Unease winds its way through us, but Renata does not seem to notice. "Are dey still not dry, tortuga?" she demands of the turtleboy.

    "Look! I don't have lips, okay?" he shouts up to her, nearly out of breath, but he returns to his chore all the same.

    Renata disregards the slight and scans the lineup again. Her eyes fall on me, of course. She wheels right up to me and sniffs the air. She licks her blue, cracked lips. "What Renata is saying is dese, hombrecito." She coos and traces a pudgy finger across my chest. "Be careful of jour first impression, 'cause it will also be jour last."

    The exit alarm buzzes, and the door crashes open. In storms Mr. Hat, followed by Mr. Coffee and two other men with guns. With a sweep of his eyes, Mr. Hat points to me and says, "Him."

    The C.O.s on standby at last spring to action, physically restraining all the boys who are around me. Mr. Coffee rolls Renata aside, and Mr. Hat shoves me flat against the table. He shackles my wrists and ankles. "Someone call the warden! Tell him he needs to get here—"

    "No!" barks Mr. Hat. "No. Don't anyone dare touch that phone! We can handle this...we can handle this. No need to ruin the warden's vacation over something we can handle."

    My hot cheek presses deeper into the cold steel table. I can't see Renata anymore, but I can still hear her. "Hey!" she yells. "Renata was not done wit' him!"

    "Sorry, doll," Mr. Coffee says. "This one's off-limits. We'll get you someone new to play with. Promise."

    "What? No one is off leemits to Renata!" The Luchagirl rolls back into my sight. Her colorful head stares at me sideways across the table. There are many wrinkles in her mask caused by the tectonic fury happening underneath it. "Who is so imbortant that Renata cannot hab? Who? Who hab you brought into Renata's house?"

    A mug lands on the vast surface of the table. Mr. Coffee walks around and cooly grabs the handles of the wheelchair. He looks at me with a dark grin, then leans into Renata's ear and says: "Elroy. Kidd."

    The statement, as softly as it was spoken, travels through the room like a shockwave. The boys at the walls stop struggling, the Officers tense, and the fat girl sitting at the epicenter goes both stiff and limp. I can tell, even through her mask, that her skin is turning pale. As the C.O. wheels her out of my sight, she stares at me like a Ghost who just saw something much worse than a Ghost. 

    With hot breath, Mr. Hat growls into my ear: "I should have known."