Juvie (15 page)

The conversation shifts back over to me way too soon, but I have to leave so much out about what has been going on in juvie that I quickly run out of things to talk about. We’re both ready to say good-bye when the time is up.

I don’t start missing her until about two seconds after she leaves.

I avoid Bad Gina, and the Jelly Sisters, and pretty much everybody for the next couple of days. The trick is to sit close to the teachers during GED classes and pretend to be fascinated by such mind-numbing trivia as the fact that Virginia has a state drink (milk), a state shell (oyster), and the distinction of being one of a handful of states that isn’t just a state (but also a commonwealth).

I can’t hide during gym, though, and on Wednesday Officer Killduff orders everybody to run wind sprints — even me. I don’t try to race, just keep up with the others until half of them drop out, exhausted, gasping like fish. Then I go down, too. I’m pissed off that I have to do it with my broken nose, which still aches, but manage to keep my mouth shut.

Officer Killduff stands over us as we sprawl there on the court, grinning his sour grin. He nudges Bad Gina’s friend Weeze with his boot. She’s lying flat on her back, heaving with every breath. “Looks like we got us a beached whale here,” he says. “Whole school of them.”

“You mean ‘pod,’” someone squeaks. We all look up, surprised. Nobody talks back to Officer Killduff, even I know that. It’s Karen, the middle-school girl. I don’t think I’ve heard her speak the whole time I’ve been in juvie.

He steps over to where she’s sitting cross-legged on the floor. I can see her staring at his black, spit-shined boots. Maybe she’s looking at her reflection, at her long brown hair hanging straight down her cheeks like curtains.

Officer Killduff taps his boot. “Say again?”

She lifts her gaze to his knees. All the other girls just keep staring, eyes wide.

“Pod,” she says, squeaky voice rising higher. “A pod of whales. You can call it a school, too, but usually you call it a pod of whales.”

“A pod,” Officer Killduff repeats, his face twisted in a strange way, as if he’s stepped in gum, or shit, and hasn’t figured out how to get it off his shoe. “Well, aren’t you just the little encyclopedia.”

“Yes, sir,” Karen says. “It’s from Trivial Pursuit. We used to play it. At my house.”

Officer Killduff squats. She lowers her head so the curtains of hair close in front of her.

“Well, that’s just by God fascinating,” he says. “Thank you for setting me straight.”

“You’re welcome,” Karen squeaks from behind her hair.

“‘You’re welcome,’” Officer Killduff repeats, looking over at Officer C. Miller. “You hear that? ‘You’re welcome.’ Now, how polite is that?”

C. Miller seems reluctant to play along. “It’s polite, all right.”

“Polite as all get-out,” Officer Killduff says. He seems to go deep into thought for a minute, stroking his chin, furrowing his brow, the works. Then he speaks again to Officer C. Miller, though really it’s to all of us.

“And for a reward for all that politeness, and all that fascinating information about the whales, how about we let this one pick the next activity?” He thumps the floor with his knuckles in front of Karen. “How about that?”

“I guess she earned it,” Officer Miller says.

Officer Killduff nods. “I guess she did earn it,” he says. “So there you go. What’s it going to be, Encyclopedia Brown? Dodgeball? Jump rope? More wind sprints?”

“Really?” Karen asks, as if she actually thinks getting to choose is going to end up being a good thing. “I really get to say?”

“Really,” Officer Killduff says.

“Well, can we go outside?” Karen asks. “Like for recess?”

Officer Killduff laughs so hard I think he’ll fall over. Why can’t she just keep quiet? I figure we’ll be running wind sprints for the rest of the gym hour once Officer Killduff finishes making fun of her.

He keeps laughing his sardonic laugh and shaking his buzz-cut head, as if he still can’t believe what she said, or that she spoke at all. Finally he stands up. “Well, why the hell not?” he says. “Let’s all go outside for recess. Officer Miller, if you’d be so kind as to radio to control. And ladies, if you’d be so good as to get up off the floor and get in a nice line over there by the door.”

We do what he says, everybody bewildered. I take my now-customary place in the back of the line, behind Karen, but Officer Killduff has other plans. “No, no,” he says to Karen. “This was your idea. I’d like you to lead our little pod out to sea. Why don’t you swim on up to the front of the line, if that’s what you’d call it — a line of whales?”

Karen says, “OK,” and “I guess so,” and slides up ahead of the Jelly Sisters, who nearly always lead. I haven’t seen the sky in nine days. Even lined up at the door to the yard, I still can’t see it. None of us can. There aren’t any windows in our part of juvie, none even in the gym. It’s all I can do to keep from lifting my gaze from the floor, to catch the first glimpse of the outside world once the door opens. I can’t wait to be out, even surrounded by a thirty-foot fence — to breathe fresh air, to feel the sun on my face, to hear blue jays squawking and the wind in the trees.

Officer C. Miller speaks into her radio, and the door buzzes and clicks and swings open to the yard.

Where it’s pouring down rain.

All the girls huddle under the eave, pressed against the dirty concrete wall to escape the rain. There doesn’t seem to be a gutter on the roof, so if you don’t stay close, water drips on your head. Everybody is cursing Karen under their breath, just loud enough for her to hear. I’m pretty sure even Fefu is doing it, too, in Spanish.

“Putita estupida.”

Officer Killduff and Officer C. Miller stand outside the door under an awning, just out of earshot. Officer Killduff lights a cigarette, which surprises me since he’s so buff, the kind of fitness freak you just know spends hours a day in the weight room. C. Miller waves the smoke away from her face and edges away.

Karen starts crying after a few minutes, standing as far away as she can from the huddle of girls. The only one farther away is me. Finally I guess Karen can’t take it anymore, pushing herself away from the wall even though the rain is still coming down. She wanders toward the outdoor basketball court, which is just an uneven patch of hard-packed dirt with a couple of hoops but no nets, then she negotiates her way around what looks like deep mud puddles toward the fence farthest from the building. Once she gets there, she leans against it and stays.

“Good,” Chantrelle says. “Serves her right. I hope her ass melts out there.”

“I know, right?” Good Gina says. They’re standing closest to me now, so I still have a buffer between me and the Jelly Sisters and Bad Gina and Weeze, just not enough of one. “I mean, what was she thinking talking like that to Killduff?”

“Yeah,” says Chantrelle. “He was playing with her, like a cat and a mouse. She too dumb to even see that. Probably thought she made her a new friend in juvie. Probably can’t wait to get her phone call this evening. ‘Hi, Mommy, I made me a new friend. Officer Killduff. He so nice, let me play out in the rain and I didn’t even have to have me an umbrella.’”

I don’t want to stick around to hear any more. The poor girl is just eleven or twelve; how could she have known any better? Plus I don’t want Bad Gina or the Jelly Sisters to have a chance to come over next to me and maybe start up a conversation, or interrogation. So I step away from the wall and into the rain, too. It drips down my neck and down my back, soaking me quicker than I anticipate, but I lower my head and keep walking, following Karen to the back fence and away from the other girls.

“Hey,” I say when I get there. She’s sniffling.

“Hey,” she says, wiping her nose. “You’re not going to be mean to me, too, are you?”

I smile. “No. Just got bored standing over there. Thought I’d come stand over here for a while. It’s such a great view.”

We stare together out at an empty parking lot, and a dirt field beyond that, and then a desultory stand of skinny pines and scrub brush and a heavy gray sky.

“What grade are you in?” I ask, casting around for a way to start a conversation, maybe make her feel a little better about things.

“Seventh,” she says.

“What school?”

She tells me. It’s in one of the counties west of town.

“How long have you been in here?”

“Just two weeks,” she says. “I was the last one to come in before you. I have my second court hearing tomorrow, I think.”

“Are you nervous?”

“A little, but not too much. My mom says they’re going to let me out. She says my lawyer thinks just a couple of weeks of juvie is enough for the judge. I hate it in here. Everybody is so mean. Everybody gets mad at you and makes fun of you if you say anything. Those two black girls, I think they’re sisters, they keep taking my dessert every night. They practically got in a fight over my Jell-O one time.” She pushes her wet sheets of hair behind her ears. “Don’t you think everybody is so mean?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe.”

She studies my face. “Well, look what those girls did to you — to your nose. Don’t you think that was mean?”

“It was probably an accident,” I say, lying because I don’t feel like getting into it. “That’s all. Another week and you won’t even be able to tell it happened.”

“I don’t know,” Karen says. “It looks terrible. It’s all purple and black around your eyes, and your nose is all swollen up, and your face is kind of green. I mean, if that ever happened to me, I wouldn’t even leave my room for like about a month. I wouldn’t go to school or anything. If anybody ever saw you looking like that, they’d take pictures on their cell phones, and that would be the picture they used for whenever you called them or texted or whatever.”

I’m starting to regret coming over.

“So why are you in here, anyway?” I ask to change the subject.

She laces her fingers through the chain-link fence. I glance at the concertina wire; I imagine it would shred your hands if you ever tried to climb over.

“It was like this misunderstanding,” she says.

“About what?”

“About these silver dollars this girl had. She had about a hundred of them she kept in a jar, from her pop-pop or something. Her grandfather. I can’t remember. But that’s real money, anyway, even though you never really see coin dollars very often.”

“I think I’ve heard that,” I say.

“So anyway,” she continues, “what happened was I didn’t think she would ever use them or anything, so I thought I would take them when I found out you can actually spend them like real money. There were some clothes I wanted to buy at Justice. I really love Justice. They have a store at the mall. Have you ever been there? Do girls your age still go there, to Justice?”

“How old do you think I am?” I ask. I probably haven’t been to Justice since third grade.

“I don’t know,” she says. “College?”

“Close enough. And no, girls my age don’t shop at Justice.”

“So anyway,” she repeats — apparently that’s the way she starts most of her sentences —“what happened was she got mad that I took them, even though she didn’t have any proof it was me, but they found them in my room, so I got in trouble for that.”

I have a hard time believing they put a seventh grader in juvie for stealing silver dollars, even a hundred of them, and say so.

“Yeah,” she says. “So anyway, they were just going to make me give them back and pay her back the ones I already used. But we were mad at her, me and my other friends, so we kind of killed her dog by accident. And that’s why they put me in juvie. But I’m getting out next week, at my hearing. Did I already tell you that? I think I did. My mom said.”

“You did tell me,” I say, shivering as the wind picks up and I go from being just wet to being cold and wet. Karen doesn’t seem to notice. She shakes the fence, spraying more water on us. I put my hand on top of hers to make her stop.

“So what about the dog?” I ask.

“Oh. That.” She giggles. “We didn’t mean for it to die or anything. What we did was we got a box of Ex-Lax and mixed it up with a can of dog food and put it out for him to eat. We thought it would be funny when he pooped all over Emily’s house, but we might have used too much Ex-Lax because what happened was the dog ended up pooping himself to death.” She giggles harder. “I know I shouldn’t laugh about that. It’s really sad and all. But it’s kind of funny, too. But my mom told me I’m not supposed to laugh when I go to court. That’s the one thing. I have to let the judge know how sad I am that the dog died, and that it was an accident, and that I really love dogs.”

I’m nearly speechless. “You poisoned your friend’s dog?”

“Yeah.” She keeps on giggling. “His name was Pepper. He shouldn’t have died, actually. Even though we gave him the whole box. That’s what this veterinarian said. I guess Pepper was just really old or something, and he couldn’t handle all that pooping.” She giggles some more. “And then my friends, they all said it was my idea, so I was the one to get in all the trouble. I hate them. They’re going to be so dead when I get out of here.”

I step back to take a good look at Karen, her hair now plastered to her temples and cheeks, water dripping off the tip of her nose, talking as if the subject is new clothes for her Barbie and not some poor dog she murdered.

“Whose idea
was
it?” I ask.

“Well, mine, I guess. Technically.” She rolls her eyes. “But they didn’t have to tell everybody. God.”

I shake the rain off my own face. “Don’t you feel bad about it?”

She looks down again, trying to appear contrite, maybe practicing for court, but struggling to keep the grin off her face.

“Right,” I say, pushing away from the fence without waiting any longer for an answer. “Well, I’m going back over there now.” I point to the building where the rest of the girls are still bunched under the dripping eave. Officer Killduff flicks a cigarette out into the yard with the practiced ease of a chain-smoker, probably getting ready to call everyone into line to go to whatever is scheduled next.

I splash across the basketball court in my wet sandals and socks.