Palindrome (17 page)

Looks at me long and hard.

“I'll go first,” he says.

“I know. We discussed this.”

“Sorry.” He bites his lip. “I'm nervous.”

“Me too.”

Courtney squirms.

“What are we looking at here?” he asks. ­“Couple months in jail for B and E on federal property?”

“Let's not go there,” I say.

He drops the daisy chain and reaches back into his bag. Pulls out two disposable needles and his Mason jar filled with ruddy brown fluid. Fills up the first syringe.

“Forgot to take our vitamins.” He smiles. “You first.”

I bend over on the wall and wince as Courtney jabs it into my ass.

“Double yesterday's dose,” he says as I feel the warmth filling my chest. My bruised ribs and hips seem to be touched with the vitamin's glow. I'm filled with love and confidence. I can do this.

“Now you do me,” he says, handing me the second syringe and bending over a little too eagerly. He exposes his pale, rosy, hairless bum to me like a bouquet.

“I really hope we don't die in a few minutes,” I say. “Because I'd hate for this to be my last memory.”

I shoot vitamins into his boney ass, and Courtney jerks up straight, looking refreshed and flushed.

“Alright!” he says, then clips both daisy chains to his ankle with outrageous enthusiasm and pulls out his suction cups. Two are gloves, two go on your knees. He showed me last night in the motel room: twist right to engage, twist left to disengage. It's not too tough on the hands, but rotating your knees 90 degrees in either direction is pretty fucking hard. Wish Sadie had dragged me to that yoga class a few more times. Courtney breathes in deep, staring intently at the brick wall, psyching himself up. Then he's climbing.

I watch his backside ascend slowly, methodically. Too slow. I shake my leg in agitation.

Left arm up, twist to engage. Right knee, twist to engage. Right hand, twist to engage. Left foot engage, and then disengage the left hand.

His stepwise crawl is distinctly turtlelike, and I can't help thinking how exposed and vulnerable he is up there.

But they can't see us on this side. It's only a fifteen-­foot wall, and Courtney is at the top, peering over, in about two minutes.

“So?” I whisper from below. He looks down at me and gives a thumbs-­up. Then reaches back into his pack for wire cutters, gets to work cutting a path through the barbed wire.

I dance around nervously like I have to pee, shifting my weight between my two feet. Actually, I
do
have to pee. Really fucking bad, all of a sudden. While Courtney is clipping the wire I pull down the front of my scrubs—­no fly—­and urinate on the brick wall like a dog. Only as I'm finishing up do I realize that my urine is possibly as incriminating as fingerprints. Guess that will be one for me and Courtney to laugh about in our jail cells.

“Done,” Courtney whispers. He tosses the wire cutters down to me, then takes off the four suction cups and throws them down to me as well. I hastily tie on the knees first, then put on the gloves. Courtney gives me a terrified thumbs-­up, takes another deep breath, then disappears over the wall. Both lengths of daisy chain go taut, and I try not to imagine him sliding down the other side. Then the chains loosen up. He must have landed. I count to three, waiting for shouting or shooting.

God, I hope they use rubber bullets here.

Nothing.

I unclip one daisy chain from the anchor, clip it into the climbing harness I have on over my smock. Leave the other one attached to shimmy down on the other side.

Close my eyes and take a few fast, deep breaths.

Don't think, Frank. Just fucking do it.

I attack the wall, trying to do just like Courtney did. It should be easier for me, too, since I have him helping me out by pulling from the other side. Gotta hurry. The longer he stands there in the shadow of the wall, the likelier someone is to notice. I'm a scant two feet off the ground and my arms are already on fire. Courtney's jerking me up on the daisy chain like I'm a fish on the line. Five feet up, I try to untwist my left knee and something pops in my hip area. Try to ignore the pain and twist again.

The left knee cup slides off the wall, but so does my right knee; guess I didn't engage it properly. I'm suspended, just hanging by my hands, Courtney tugging urgently on my harness. But I'm not budging.

“Shit, shit,” I groan.

I'm breathing hard from exertion, and it hurts like hell. My eyes tear up from the pain in my abdomen and ribs. I simply cannot lift up my left leg to engage again. I'm stuck. Should I just let Courtney go alone?

Not an option. There's no way he can deal with Silas alone. Plus I have the ID card in my backpack. Courtney took the climbing tools, I took the clothes, shoes and any other shit we might need: ceramic knife, notepad, some tools of persuasion, fake ID card for one of us, and the real one he ripped off of Dennis for the other.

Courtney's tugging now seems desperate, like
what's happening over there?
I try again to get my left knee to catch. No dice. I look up. Only like six feet to the top of the wall. Six measly feet.
C'mon, Frankie.

I slide my feet into a small crevice in the wall between a layer of bricks, disengage my left hand, and reach up as far as I can. Twist back, engage. Right up as far as I can, twist engage. I clench my teeth. I was never good at pull-­ups. With every ounce of strength I have, I pull up on my two hands, then instantly slide my feet into another crack, disengage the left, shoot up, engage, disengage the right, shoot up, engage, and then I have my first hand on the top of the wall.

For a second I'm so proud, so ecstatic, that I forget myself. And then I see the guard tower to my right, maybe a hundred meters away. If there's a guard there, he's not out on the balcony looking very closely. Or, I guess, he's looking for ­people trying to get out, not in. I pull myself up to the top. Not careful enough, though. The suction cup gloves spare my hands from the barbed wire, but the metal tendrils catch my right ankle. It's not deep, but it still hurts like fucking hell. Blood instantly stains the bottom of my white pant leg.

Down at the base of the wall, Courtney is gesticulating wildly.
Come on.

I unclip the daisy chain that Courtney had been using to assist me and let it drop. Then I grip the one still attached on the outside of the wall and half climb, half slip down as fast as I possibly can.

My butt hits the hard, cold earth at the bottom with a thud. Courtney grabs my elbow and jerks me to my feet. We dash across a stretch of completely exposed yard. I've never felt so vulnerable in my life. No cover, frosty sun, just a seeming eternity of cold, hard grass that Courtney is pulling me across.

Finally we tumble into the shadow of a small shed about twenty yards from the wall. Flatten ourselves against the grey wall. I try to catch my breath but can't, try desperately to gulp down air, but it feels like my lungs can't get full, fingers tingling, like an elephant is standing on my chest.

“Frank,” he whispers. “Settle down. You're going to hyperventilate and pass out. It's okay, you hear me? We're in.” He puts a hand on my shoulder and taps gently. “That was the hard part. We're in. We're okay.”

“Oh my god,” I wheeze. “I need to join a gym.”

“Concentrate on slowing down your breathing,” he says.

He's really gripping my elbow now, looking into my eyes seriously, his long horse-­face consuming my entire field of vision.

“You know,” I pant, “you really need to pluck your nose hairs.”

He shakes his head, rolls his eyes. He takes the suction cup gloves off my hands and unclips the ones around my knees. Then notices my wound, a growing patch of red around my ankle.

“Oh no.” He's on his knees, lifting up my scrubs, inspecting the gash caused by the barbed wire.

“I'm fine,” I say. “Looks worse than it is.”

“We gotta clean this up. ­People will notice the blood.”

“What are we gonna do, launder it?”

Courtney thinks for a moment, then takes a T-­shirt out of my pack and ties it around the wound.

“This will at least help it scab and stop you from passing out from blood loss.”

He rolls my pant leg back down but stares fixedly at the scarlet splotch, biting his nails. I grab his skinny shoulder and jerk him to his feet.

“Don't think about it,” I growl. “Let's just fucking go. In and out. I'm not planning on getting close enough to anyone for them to notice.”

Courtney chews on his thumb desperately. Completes a scan of our surroundings like a prairie dog.

“Okay, okay,” he concedes. “Let's go. Sachar is right there.” He points to the low building we entered two days before to speak to Dr. Nancy. It's about two football-­field lengths away. “Then we get to the front gate and just get the hell out of here.” He looks at me. “Ready?”

I try to concentrate on my breathing, which has steadied somewhat but is still way too fast.

“If we get caught, I'm gonna try to pin this all on you,” I say.

T
HE PLACE IS
dead at this hour. No morning calisthenics or forced marches at dawn. I check my watch: 7:43. Animals still asleep. Guess there's not much reason to get things started early around here. I think about all the psychos still tucked away in their bunk beds. Wonder what they're dreaming about.

We try to stride casually toward Sachar. No question now that the guards in the towers have seen us, but hopefully it's not that unusual for orderlies to be walking the periphery of the property this early in the morning, or for them to be wearing backpacks.

Courtney keeps his hands in his pockets, eyes locked on the two-­story building that houses our man. If I don't say something to shatter the eerie silence, my head is gonna explode. My ankle pulses biting pain. I'm not limping yet because of adrenaline, but each step sends a twinge of sharp discomfort shooting up my leg.

“I wonder if there's a better way, Frank,” he whispers. “Maybe we should wait until lunchtime or something when there's more going on to distract everyone.”

“No,” I say. “We're not changing the plan now. Can't second-­guess ourselves. We're here. We're doing this. The longer we stay here, the worse our chances.”

We won't have to get through any chain-­link fences to get to the front entrance to Sachar, because the fenced-­in pen built to contain the tier-­three nut jobs during recess is attached to the rear of the building. We walk past the empty cage.

I imagine what the pen must look like around lunchtime, filled with milling psychos. Not much to do in there—­a lone, netless basketball hoop, what looks like a rusty bench press, four wooden lunch tables. The ground is hard black pavement with sharp green weeds sprouting out of the cracks. If Silas wasn't nuts when he checked in, he's probably there by now.

We go around the beige, stucco exterior of Sachar. Looks so innocuous from the outside. Could easily be a shitty public library or insurance office. Across endless acres of flat, tired grass rises the old factory, which now houses the Category One dormitory. I can also make out the admissions center, where Harrison works, and what I think is the front gate. Without a golf cart, it's a pretty long walk. Especially with a bleeding ankle.

Front doors of Sachar. Unquestionably cameras on us now.

As if reading my mind, Courtney mutters, “Just relax, Frank. With a little luck, they'll never even have reason to review any footage.”

I grip the ID card around my neck. There's the little magnetized black square to the left of the reinforced glass doors. I bend over and extend the card like I saw Dennis and Luke do for each of the doors inside. Moment of truth. When it beeps and I hear the lock click, my breathing speeds up again. We're going for it.

I exchange a look with Courtney as I pull open the heavy door and step inside, adrenaline firing like a drum circle in my brain. Court's mouth is closed; he's breathing loudly through his thin nose.

We're in the same bland, green-­tiled entranceway we stood in a few days ago, but it feels distinctly different this time. I'm more cognizant of how many murderers and rapists we're sharing this building with.

Courtney points his long chin,
this way
.

Down a silent corridor illuminated by caged-­in fluorescent tube lights, past those dozens of blue doors.

They can't hurt you through those doors, Frank
.

Turn a corner. Another identical hall with more identical fluorescent lights and identical blue metal doors. Pain and fear seem to be heightening my senses, making time move slowly and each square inch of linoleum appear in high-­res.

“You remember how to get upstairs?” I whisper.

Courtney doesn't respond, just plows ahead with the purpose of a man possessed. I try to keep up with him. Try to ignore the pain in my ankle and the pulsing fire in my stomach. Turn another corner that I don't remember from last time. Think about my ceramic knife in my backpack, think about how quickly I could have it out if one of these—­

I jump out of my skin as a sudden pounding from one of the doors snaps the quiet. It's the same guy from a few days ago, face smushed against the window of his cell, white of his eye as big as a silver dollar and flat against the glass, throbbing red veins, staring at me.

Courtney snatches my elbow and jerks me along.

“We don't know how much time we have,” he whispers. “My guess is staff shows up at nine, but who knows.”

Half tripping over each other, we jog down the hallway. I'm keeping my eyes straight ahead, ignoring looks or sounds coming from the cells. Ignoring the fragrance of the distinctly institutional cocktail of high-­potency cleaning products, very nearly disguising the smells of bodily fluids, rotting food, and man—­which will never leave these hallways no matter how long you scrub.