Charlie's Key (6 page)

I nod.

“Okay,” says Frankie. “See ya.”

I don’t bother looking after him. Instead, I look for the cigarette, which the wind’s blown up the Catwalk. I hate litter. I don’t know why—guess it’s something I got from my dad. He always used to pick up any garbage he’d see laying around.

“Take care of your own crap,” he’d say.

So I take a few steps on the Catwalk to pick up that smoke, which is cold now. I bend down to grab it and shove it in my pocket. When I stand up, off in the distance there’s someone looking down at me from the locked gate at the top of the hill. It’s a girl at the far end of the Catwalk, staring at me through the fence. She’s a ways away, so I can’t really tell what she looks like, but she looks nice, standing there, soft against the hard fence. She’s got jeans on and a brown jacket, zipped up against the wind. We look at each other for a bit. Should I wave? I want to. But I wait. Maybe she’ll wave first. I think she’s going to— but no, she’s just brushing her hair outta her face. Of course she doesn’t wave—why would she wave at some stupid little kid who’s out picking up some big kid’s old cigarette? Still, she might, I think, and I get ready to wave back, just in case. But she doesn’t move. I don’t know how long we stand like that, waiting. All of a sudden I turn round and start inside. Better to turn away before she does.

EIGHT

It’s suppertime when I go in, everybody heading for the cafeteria. I go to the bathroom first, though, to wash my hands after picking up that butt. I’m squishing the bubbles through my fingers when all of a sudden the lights go out, and a second later two arms grab me in a bear hug. It’s Flarehead. “I owe you something, Puke Pants,” he says, reaching down to grab my hands. Still holding me tight from behind, he starts squeezing, his fat paw squishing my fingers so hard I can feel my knuckles crushing together. My fingers are slippery from the soap, though, and a second later I pull ’em free, giving Flarehead a faceful of soapy water when I yank my arm back.

“You little prick,” he says, wiping soap from his eyes. I back toward the door.

“Go on,” he says. “Run to your buddy, Frankie. But I’ll tell you something before you go, Puke Pants. Frankie’s gettin’ outta here in a couple a days, and when he goes, it’ll be just you and me. And I’m gonna break yer neck, you hear me, Puke Pants? And I know just how to do it, ’cause I done it before.”

“You’re crazy,” I say, closer to the door all the time.

“You’re right—I’m crazy. Got a piece of paper to prove it too—signed by a doctor. And soon as Frankie boy walks out the front door, I’m coming for you.”

All of a sudden his arm shoots out, but instead of grabbing me, he yanks the door open.

“Go on,” he says. “Get out. Plenty of time to get you. I ain’t going nowhere, and neither are you.”

Nothing’s broke, I don’t think, when I look at my fingers later. A couple of them look bent a bit, but I can wiggle them. It feels better when I rub them, just a little bit, which I do while I try to fall asleep.

You know the saddest thing I think of, lying in this bed? Sadder than my hand hurting or having a crazy bully planning to break my neck or being stuck in a boys’ reform school? It’s that nobody cares about me in this place. Not one person who wants to see me. Not one person who’d smile if they saw me come round a corner.

The moon is coming through the window again tonight, making stuff white and gray in millions of little dots. It’s bright enough I can see the time on my dad’s watch—
1:15
. I bet I could almost read the Bible if I tried, but I leave it under the pillow, where I’m hiding it now. I reach under and it’s still there, with the tip of the key still there too.

I had a good look at the key tonight. It’s as long as my pointer finger, but flat. It’s got three bumps cut in it at one end, and the other end is round, with a hole in it. There’s writing on that end with a number stamped underneath—
Diebold
, it says,
158
. It’s kinda yellowy gold and old-timey looking, like something somebody would take out of a vest pocket in a black–and-white movie. So that’s what it looks like, but what it opens, I don’t know. What I do know is that my hand would stop paining so bad if I could run some cold water on it— numb it up a bit. Which I do, by heading down to the bathroom, making sure Flarehead’s not around before I go in. It’s when I’m sneaking back from the bathroom that I hear the noise again—the crying. And this time I know it’s Ribs.

“Hey,” I whisper into his room. “Ribs—it’s me, Charlie. You okay?”

More snorting like last night, except this time he can’t stop crying.

“Hey, Ribs,” I say, taking a couple of steps into the room. “How come you’re crying? I won’t tell anybody.”

No answer, so I show my hand to him.

“Busted it up,” I say.

“How?” he says after a bit.

“Squeezed it in the door—in the bathroom.”

“Let’s see.”

I give him a closer look.

“Don’t look like much,” he says, leaning forward to squint in the moonlight.

“Hurts though.”

“Yeah,” says Ribs. “I’ve had plenty of stuff happen that hurts. But I weren’t crying about anything like that.”

“So why were you crying?”

“It’s too stupid.”

“I do some pretty stupid things—like squeezing my hand in the door.”

Ribs lets out a little laugh that he kinda chokes on.

“Stupid, right?” I say.

“Well,” says Ribs, “what I’m crying about is really stupid… you promise you won’t tell nobody?”

“Promise.”

“You know them
Harry Potter
movies?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“They showed us one a couple of weeks ago. It had a girl in it—I don’t know how you say her name.”

“Hermione…”

“Guess so,” says Ribs. “She got a secret potion that turned her into somebody else.”

“Polyjuice Potion. Where you take something from a person and drop it into a potion, and it turns you into that person.”

Ribs sits up in his bed. “I tried making my own—to turn me into Billy, the van driver.”

For the first time in about a month, I almost laugh. But I don’t.

Ribs keeps going. “I don’t know what she put in her potion—it don’t say in the movie—so I tried using some Pepsi and a bit of his hair.”

“Billy’s hair?”

“Yeah. Off a his jacket. Just a little one. Dropped in the Pepsi, let it sit there for a day…”

“And you drank it?”

Ribs nods. “A bit last night, and the rest tonight. I felt a bit funny today, so I thought it might be starting to work, but I finished the last of it after light’s out and nothing happened— I feels just the same as I always did.”

He leans close to me. “Do I look any different?”

“Pretty much the same.”

“Jesus,” says Ribs, starting to cry again. “I got six weeks left in here—I gotta figure something out. If this don’t work…”

He turns back to me. “Do you think stuff like that can work? Magic stuff?”

I sit there for a bit, thinking about what’s right to say. ’cause the truth is I don’t really believe in that stuff, in wizards and potions. I don’t even believe in Santa Claus. Haven’t for a long time, three years—four if you count the year I didn’t really believe but really wanted to at the same time. Which is how I feel about a lot of things like magic and religion. I sorta want to believe it, but I don’t.

Like in the hospital, when I was looking at my dad hooked up to all those wires. Right then, I shut my eyes real tight and squinted out a little prayer—not an official one, but a quick little one of my own, direct to God. Said my name, Charlie Sykes, and what I wanted—that my dad would be okay. Not even okay, I said after that, just that he’d live. And even when I was doing it, I thought, This isn’t going to work. But right at the same time—the same instant—I tried to keep that thought away, buried down inside, so God wouldn’t know I was thinking it. That’s a complicated thing to do, to try and fool a God you don’t think is out there into thinking you really believe in him.

What I was really doing was hoping. I was doing it again this morning, thinking about my mom maybe being alive. And Ribs, he’s doing it too—hoping for a way to get himself outta here. But is it right to keep that hope going with a lie about pretend wizards who’re going to solve all your problems with a wand?

“Is there…?” he asks again. “Is there some potion stuff I can use?”

I let out a big sigh. Jesus, I’m doing it now, the sighing.

“I don’t…,” I say, then start again. “I think a lot of the stuff in books is made up, and that it can’t really happen—stuff like, I don’t know,
Jack and the Beanstalk
.”

“What’s that?” says Ribs.

I look at him, but I can’t tell in the dark if he’s joking or not.

“You don’t know
Jack and the Beanstalk
?”

“Was it a movie?”

“It’s a story—an old story. What’s a story you know?”

“I seen that
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
.”

“Okay. Like that. The movie shows rivers of chocolate and stuff, but you know there aren’t really any rivers like that…”

“I guess not,” says Ribs.

“So I kinda think that’s the way it is with wizards and potions. They’re good in a book, but I don’t figure you should count on them to get you out of a place like this.”

“Get out?” says Ribs, looking at me like I’m crazy. “It ain’t getting out that I wants to do.”

Then he’s crying harder than ever, turning round to hide his face in the pillow.

Looking at him, so little, crying and shaking like that, it doesn’t seem fair. I mean, what’s a kid got waiting at home that makes him want to stay in a place like this? It makes me sorta angry, thinking about that. Ribs is even littler than me, younger than me, so what could he do that he deserves a home that’s so bad he doesn’t ever want to go back?

I put out my hand to give him a pat—just a little one. And it’s only when I see it sitting there on his shoulder that I notice it’s not hurting so much.

NINE

Next afternoon I meet Frankie again at the Catwalk, both of us on landscape duty. Soon as he sees me, he reaches into his jacket and pulls out a cardboard tube—the thing that goes in the middle of a roll of paper towel.

“Here,” he says, putting it in my hand.

He sees my fingers are hurting when I take hold of it.

“What happened to your hand?” he says.

“Jammed it in a door.”

“But you can still write, can’t ya?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Test’s in that—all rolled up, nice and clean. Just pull it out and fill it in. But don’t go folding it—it’s gotta look just like the one Aikens hands out. Got it?”

I nod.

“And take this too,” he says, reaching in his jeans and pulling out a piece of loose-leaf. There’s writing on it in blue pen:
Frankie Walsh, 119 Saunders Avenue, St. John’s
.

“What’s this?”

“My address,” says Frankie. “It’s about the only words I knows how to write. You study on it, then make your answers look like that. And don’t do too good a job. Get a few wrong, leave a couple hard ones blank. Just get enough right to get me a pass.”

“It still feels like it’s cheating,” I say.

“Not that shit again,” says Frankie. And I can tell he’s getting mad. “I told you—it’s just doing right by me, after I done right by you.”

“So once I do this, we’re all even. And then maybe you can do something else for me.”

Frankie gives a wink. “Right, b’y.”

“I got a favor in mind,” I say, but Frankie holds up his hand.

“Whoa, Cowboy. I don’t want to hear it till I gets my pass. Once I gets that, we can talk about what happens next.”

“Okay. When do you need this?”

“Test is tomorrow, second period, so I needs it at breakfast. Just do it up tonight and leave that tube on your breakfast tray. I’ll be right there.”

He lights up a smoke and grabs his rake.

“You stay here while I heads out front,” he says. “And remember, don’t be too smart. And use a pencil. And make it look like my writing. Okay?”

“’Kay,” I say, leaning against the Catwalk rail as he heads off.

Once he’s gone I look for the girl from yesterday. I been thinking about what I’ll do if I see her—how I’ll give her a nod and walk on up to the gate, real slow, and maybe say “Hey” when I get there.

And she’s there now—or she’s almost there, walking over the top of the hill, down toward the gate. Now that I see her, I kinda forget about my plans and feel like running away. But before I can move, she waves. At least I think it’s a wave. She just sorta tosses her arm out and lets it fall. But I think it was a wave. I look round but there’s no one else to wave to, so it musta been to me. Then she does it again, which means it’s gotta be a wave. So I give a little wave myself, which, even when I’m doing it, I think is the stupidest wave ever—just a little floppy-arm wave that a two-year-old would do.

Then she does what I was going to do—nods her head, and again, the Come Over Here sign. I go over. And not as slow as I had been planning.

“Hey,” she says when I get close. “You
can
see.”

“Sure,” I say. “I can see fine.”

“I wasn’t sure. I waved a couple of times and you just ignored me, so I thought maybe you were blind.”