After (23 page)

Devon is surprised that she can actually hang with them. Like soccer, she’d learned basketball basics during the years she spent after school at the Boys and Girls Club. But when the time came to choose, when Devon turned eleven in fifth grade—“You’ve gotta pick one sport, hon,” her mom had said. “I’m not made of money, you know.”—Devon chose soccer. Her height, athleticism, and having Jenevra as her partner are what keep her in the game now.

“Let’s break a sec,” Jenevra says after they’d played hard for about twenty minutes.

Sam drops the ball; it bounces, then rolls along the cement floor, finally stopping in a far corner. The girls lean against the glass wall overlooking the common area inside and catch their breaths. They don’t say much. Devon is relieved that they’ve stopped playing; her inner thighs are shaky and sore from the quick movements, and her crotch throbs. She may have overdone it, just as Ms. Coughran had warned the other day, playing so soon after. . . . But the sweat, it feels great. Her heart pumping, not from stress and fear for once, but from pure physical exertion. Devon looks up the cinder block walls to the patch of sky that’s visible from the courtyard—a solid gray. No clouds, no sunbreaks. She takes in a long, slow breath.

“You play much?” Devon hears Jenevra ask.

Silence.

Sam nudges Devon. “Hey. Dude. She’s talking to you.”

Devon looks over at Jenevra. Her shaved head, pale face, intense blue eyes. Especially against the overcast day, those eyes seem to glow, they’re so blue. “Oh, sorry. Um, not really.”

“She plays soccer,” Evie says.

Devon turns to Evie, curiously.
How does she know that?
“Yeah?” Jenevra wipes her forehead on her sleeve.

“Yeah,” Evie says, “at Stadium.” She looks over at Devon and adds in explanation, “I go there. Junior.”

Devon nods. “Oh.”

“She’s really good,” Evie continues. “Starting varsity keeper as a freshman and everything. She even plays with the boys sometimes.”

“Cool.” Jenevra stretches her neck, cracks it. “Whenever you can kick a guy’s ass, kick it hard.”

Devon turns to study Evie closely. Does she know this Evie? Seen her in Stadium’s hallways? In class? She’s ordinary-looking—long dishwater hair, brown eyes, medium height. But no—Devon has no idea who she is. There’s that feeling in her gut again, that queasy loss-of-appetite feeling. Devon’s not anonymous at all. These girls in here, some of them know her. From before. What else do they know about her?

And—she looks at the three girls in their orange jumpsuits and rubber slides, talking just like any other girls in any other place—why are they here?

“Well, I go to Foss,” Sam says. “They’re putting in a new track this summer. Hey, let’s get some water. I’m dying.”

“Right on.” Jenevra pushes open the door into the pod.

A screeching from inside blows out to them.

The four girls stop, crowd in the doorway.

“What the—” Jenevra starts.

Devon leans over Jenevra’s shoulder to get a better view. The screaming is Karma, though it took Devon a second to recognize who it was. The braids are gone, her long hair frizzed and clumped instead, as if she’d ripped out her rubber bands and just tore her braids apart. She’s kicking at the doors, throwing herself against the walls.

“This fucking place! This fucked-up, fucking place!”

The spiky-haired staff rushes across the room at Karma, yelling. Two others—men—come flying into the common area from the pod’s entryway.

The staff gets to Karma first, twists her from the wall and in one violent motion—her hand in Karma’s hair, elbow jammed in Karma’s spine—Karma is slammed to the floor, facedown. The two men drop down on either side of her, hold her flailing limbs. They snap plastic flexi-cuffs around her wrists behind her back.

The staff steps aside, breathing hard, shouts, “Lockdown! Everybody! You’ve got ten seconds! Now!”

Girls from all around the room drop what they’re doing and hustle toward their cells, giving Karma and her attendants a wide berth.

Karma is kicking and squirming against her captors, her spewed obscene speech and sobs partially muffled by the floor. One of the men hauls her to her feet by use of her cuffed wrists, roughly pushes her toward her cell. “Cool it, Karma,” he yells, giving her a hard shake. “Watch your mouth!” He gives her a sharp shove into her cell. “You relax, and the cuffs come off. Let’s move. Now. Inside.”

“Screw you,” she hisses. “‘The harder I fall, the higher I’ll bounce,’ Big Tough Guy! ‘What doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger. ’ Ever hear of Nietzsche? Huh? Ever hear of—”

“Let’s go,” Jenevra whispers. She, Evie, and Sam move forward into the pod. But Devon stays frozen in the doorway. The staff, how they slammed Karma around. Karma, how crazy she was acting.

Jenevra stops, turns around. Blue eyes lock on Devon. “Hey! Come on!” She jogs back to Devon, grabs her hand, pulling her into the common room. “What, this your first takedown or something?”

Devon says nothing, just lets Jenevra guide her through the common area.

Jenevra makes a sound, a sharp laugh. “Look, it’s
Karma.
Okay? Believe me—this isn’t
her
first. She probably just had a fight with her dad or something. He’s some big CEO dickhead with, like, this parade of bitchy trophy wives. Karma was caught with drugs the other day, you know. He probably just came to give her crap. Stuff like this happens all the time during visiting hours.”

“You two, move it!” the spiky-haired staff yells at Devon and Jenevra. “This ain’t no promenade, do-si-do square dance, ladies! Get in your cells. When you hear the lock pop, you can come out. Until then, stay quiet.”

“Well, see ya,” Jenevra says. She drops Devon’s hand, moves to her cell. Devon finds her own cell, D-12. Pulls open the door, steps inside.

The door locks—
clank
—behind her.

She slumps back against it, stares down at the floor for a long time.

Her heart won’t stop hammering.

She closes her eyes.

Rushing feet, doors slamming. Indistinct voices. The sound of panic.

Devon opens her eyes. Looks around. Cool cement floor under her numb butt. Her back’s to the door, her neck stiff. She rubs at her eyes. She must have been sleeping.

The commotion outside continues. Devon remembers now—Karma had freaked out earlier. They’d all been locked down because of it. The basketball game out in the courtyard, it ended.

The pod had been quiet for a long time after that.

Devon hears the static of a radio—the police kind.

She pushes off the floor. Her left foot is asleep. She stomps it, the sharp tingling making her wince. Turns to look out her cell door window.

The movement she’d heard out in the common area is from several staff rushing around. And two paramedics with a stretcher between them. An orange-jumpsuited girl is strapped down on the stretcher, an IV bag swinging from a metal hook over her head. When the paramedics veer the stretcher toward the entryway, they pass Devon’s door, and Devon sees who the girl is.

Karma.

Her face is pale, and her eyes are closed, unnaturally serene. Her hair is wild, flattened against the thin pillow. There’s blood on the orange jumpsuit, but most prominent is the blood soaked into the white thermal undershirt Karma always wears underneath, its sleeves especially. Devon sees blood smears across the white linen of the stretcher.

The source of all the blood—Karma’s arms.

Devon feels cold inside.
The spork!
Karma had used it.

The white thermal undershirt, stained red.

Devon stumbles backward, away from her window. Feels the bile rise, burn in her throat. She should’ve told the staff. Why didn’t she tell?

The stretcher. The IV bag swinging, a liquid-filled pendulum. The black straps securing Karma to the stretcher.

The black straps.

The black straps, they held Devon down once.

Devon had been on a stretcher, too.

The dark-eyed man. The bright lights of the emergency room.

The doctor with the rectangular glasses, layers of shirts under a white lab coat.

Devon, too, had bled.

Devon shakes her head, tries to clear it, but the images come crashing now, fast and unstoppable.

Blood. Blood everywhere.

A piercing scream. Devon covers her ears with her hands.

She sits up. Looks down, between her legs.

A pulsing purple cord, tough and slick. Connecting them—Devon and IT. Clumsy fingers—Devon’s hand—grasping. Somehow finding the clippers in the bathroom drawer. The toenail clippers. Trembling fingers, difficult to manipulate. The clippers, slippery, blood-smeared, clatter on the linoleum. Again. And again. The constant screaming. The pulsing cord, finally shredded and frayed. Spurting, an unchecked garden hose. Blood everywhere.

But Devon is free. Free from IT. Free and panting and shaking all over. Watching the miniature writhing limbs, the tiny opened mouth. The blood-spattered face.

That ear-shattering scream, grating and unrelenting.
Shut up! Make it stop!
Devon frantic, spots the sink. Like a cradle, just to hold IT, contain IT for a moment. Until the black bag, billowing open and wide, finally swallows the scream.

Devon grabs her head, squeezes her temples with her palms. Hard. Harder. Her fingers clutch at her hair. But the image is still there: IT was alive—breathing and bleeding and screaming. And she—Devon—had scooped it all into a black trash bag and tied that bag tight.

POP!
The lock on her cell door.

Devon starts, opens her eyes.

The door is ajar. The spiky-haired staff is standing there in the opening. Flushed and tense.

Devon is breathless. Her body dripping, sweat running down.

The staff gives Devon a quizzical look. “Your attorney is here to see you. In the conference room. Great timing, but what can you do?” She pauses, glances around the cell. “Is everything okay in here?”

Devon clears her throat, releases her hair, smoothes it down. “What . . . what happened to Karma? I, uh”—Devon takes a breath, trying to calm herself—“saw her from my window. The stretcher . . .”

The staff turns to look over her shoulder momentarily, as if imagining Devon’s perspective, what she might have seen. She faces Devon again. “Just an incident in which Karma made the unfortunate choice to hurt herself. Now, if you please, cross the common area to the conference—”

“But she was bleeding.” Devon brings a thumb up to her mouth, chews the nail. “A lot.”

The staff nods. “You’re right, she was. But your attorney is waiting for you, and I have—”

“Did she cut herself?”

The staff sighs with exasperation.

“She did, didn’t she?”

“Stop.” The staff raises her hand firmly. “Right now.” She takes a breath. “I’m not at liberty to discuss the incident with you at this time. But later this afternoon, during our Saturday Pod Meeting, we’ll discuss the incident at length with everyone. All right? But right now, you are required in the conference room.” The staff pulls the door wide, steps aside, inviting Devon to pass.

Devon takes in a shaky breath, wipes her damp forehead on her sleeve. The horrific picture in her mind is still there, that last glimpse. The blood-speckled mass slumped inside the sink’s basin. The tiny scrinched face, the struggling little fists. IT was alive. And still she held that bag firmly between her two hands, closed her eyes, and done it.

Devon feels her stomach lurch. She just can’t see Dom right now. Devon looks at the staff. “Um, can you please tell her, my attorney, that I . . . I’m, uh, not feeling very good right now. I think I need to lie down—” She turns for her bed.

“No.” The staff yanks Devon back by the arm. “No. One foot in front of the other. Now.”

The staff’s mouth is a stern straight line. Devon has no other choice. She thinks of Karma, throwing herself against the walls, shrieking profanities and sobbing. It would be effective. But no, Devon would never—
could
never—lose control of herself like that. She obediently steps out into the pod.

She slowly crosses the common area to the conference room.

When she reaches the door, she turns to look back over her shoulder.

The staff is watching her, her arms crossing her chest.

Devon grasps the handle and pushes down.

“Great timing, huh?”

Dom is sitting at the table, scribbling away on her legal pad. Today she’s wearing black cycling shorts and a pink cycling jersey with a large yellow flower on the front and her hair in a loose ponytail. Her bike helmet, with black cycling gloves and sunglasses shoved inside of it, is tossed behind her stool in the far corner of the room.

Finally Dom looks up, pen in midstroke. “No response?”

Devon drags over to the stool opposite Dom, sits down. “Yeah, with all the stuff”—she waves a hand toward the door behind her—“that was going on just now . . . ” Her voice trails off.

“It
was
kind of crazy out there.”

Devon looks down at her hands. “I really don’t want to be here right now, Dom. So, yeah. You’re timing really isn’t the greatest.”

“Sorry to screw up your day,” Dom says, her tone tinged with sarcasm. “But thanks for your honesty.”

Devon jumps up. She’s way too jittery, her mind too jumbled; planting herself on that stool isn’t going to work right now. She stands awkwardly behind it. “So, you rode your bike here?”