Phoenix Island (6 page)

Davis shouted something, but Carl kept running. He was going to stay out of trouble.

Farther back, red-faced stragglers fought to breathe. One drooled.
Carl tried to be encouraging. He fell in step beside each, patted them on the back, and told them they’d be okay. A few cried. All wore looks of shock and desperation.

In the very back stumbled the redhead who people had begun calling Medicaid, since he’d gone to the medical center the first day. He looked like he might faint again.

“You’re all right,” Carl said and patted his back. The shirt was wet, and Carl’s hand peeled away.

Medicaid shook his head, wheezing. His face was bright red and wet with tears.

“Concentrate on your breathing,” Carl said. Dumb advice, considering the kid sounded about a dozen wheezes from the grave, but what else could he say?

All at once, Medicaid quit. Carl continued on a couple of steps, then looped back and jogged in place, waiting. Medicaid bent, hands on knees, struggling for breath.

“Stand up straight,” Carl told him. “You can breathe better that way.”

The kid stayed bent over.

“Really, it’ll make you feel better. Just stand up, and your lungs will expand.”

Medicaid gave him the finger.

“Nice,” Carl said. After about thirty seconds, he said, “Come on. We’re going to get into trouble if we don’t step it up.”

“I don’t care.”

That makes one of us,
Carl thought. He’d known this place was going to be tough—military-style boot camps were famous throughout the juvenile system for their “scared straight” strategies and “tough love” tactics—but these drill sergeants genuinely did not play around. They knocked the wind out of kids, stomped on fingers—kicked Davis in the ribs—and never hesitated to deprive “individuals” of food, sleep, or both. One night, Carl had gone without dinner simply because Parker didn’t like “the look on his face.” He really didn’t want this kid bringing down a rain of fire upon them both.

“I can’t do this.” Medicaid lifted the bottom of his shirt to his face
and blew his nose into the fabric. The sound was long and wet, like tires driving through slush.

Carl could have puked. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s at least walk before somebody comes back and finds us standing here. You don’t want to end up in the sweatbox, do you?”

They started walking, Carl very much aware of the mess on Medicaid’s shirt.

“Heads up,” a woman called from behind, and Carl heard footsteps approaching. “Wide load ahead!”

The ensuing laughter made his face burn with embarrassment.

First Sergeant Oteka passed, saying with her African lilt, “Pick it up, children.” The girl running beside her glanced at Carl, then sped up the road. She was thin, running easily, her head shaved like all the others. Recognition, frustration, and embarrassment rushed through Carl as he registered her eyes.

Her gray eyes.

He felt the need to run after her, introduce himself, and explain he was playing cheerleader . . . but that would mean trouble, and he needed to avoid trouble.

Girls jogged past. Some whistled and teased. Others laughed. Others just looked disgusted. A girl with a large birthmark on her face ran past alone, staring straight ahead.
Lost in the middle,
Carl thought.
Almost invisible. Not a bad idea.

Out-of-shape girls trickled past, red-faced and gasping, but still running.

Carl nodded to Medicaid and smiled, trying to keep his voice light and friendly. “Hey, man, we’re letting the girls pass us. Want to step it up to a jog?”

Medicaid cried harder and shook his head.

Carl spat. An overweight girl in a knee brace limped past.

They started up a hill. Medicaid wheezed harder. Someone appeared atop the rise, running in their direction.

The gray-eyed girl.

Carl smiled.

She smiled back, and suddenly, Carl was very happy.

“Hey,” she said, and she slowed down and turned and walked with him.

“Are you lost?” Carl asked, and instantly hated himself for making such a stupid joke.

“Oteka sent me back. Straggler patrol.”

Carl chuckled. “Me, too.”

“Aren’t you the kid who got in trouble the first day? What did you do?”

Carl rolled his eyes. “I was being ‘an individual.’ ”

“Well, I’m glad you survived.” She smiled wider, light coming into her gray eyes, and Carl saw she was even prettier than he had thought—shaved head and all, a little patch of white stubble at the front. “I love running. This is the first time I’ve felt right since leaving Washington.”

“DC?”

She shook her head. “The state. What a nightmare, coming here. The whole thing, you know? But now—do you think they’ll let us run a lot?”

Carl shrugged. “I hope so.”

“You guys aren’t supposed to be talking,” Medicaid said.

“Don’t worry about it,” Carl said, wishing he could make the kid disappear. “Concentrate on your breathing, buddy.”

“He’s right, though,” the girl said. “I have to keep going. A couple girls are farther back.”

“Yeah,
Hollywood
,” Medicaid said, all sassy. “You don’t want them to put her in the sweatbox, do you?”

“Hollywood?” The girl said. “That’s a weird name.”

“It’s not my name,” Carl said.

Medicaid said, “That’s what everybody calls him because he thinks he’s so special.”

“Um, okay,” the girl said, frowning a little and cocking an eyebrow. “I better go.” She started running in the opposite direction.

“My name is Carl!” he called after her.

“Octavia,” she called over her shoulder, and disappeared around a bend in the road.

Z
ERO-ZERO-EIGHT! ZERO-ZERO-NINE! ZERO-ONE-ZERO!”
they shouted in unison. The platoon stood at attention, lined up single file, faces forward, their left shoulders against the corridor wall. Three drill sergeants faced them, Parker in front.

Four o’clock in the morning and the walls were already sweating with humidity. The green PT shirt in front of Carl was already dark with perspiration. Above its collar, sweat-beaded blond stubble.

“Book Man!” Parker yelled.

“Yes, Drill Sergeant,” Carl called. Since, thanks to Medicaid, Carl had come in last on the previous day’s run, Parker had appointed him book man. That meant he had to do secretary stuff: take notes, record the day’s schedule, set up the duty roster. It was a drag, and it cut into free time he didn’t have.

“Get up here, Hollywood!”

Carl jogged to the front of the line. “Yes, Drill Sergeant?”

“What’s your problem, Hollywood? Can’t you read? Or are you just trying to screw everybody out of chow?”

“I don’t know what you mean, Drill Sergeant.”

“
I don’t know what you mean, Drill Sergeant,
” Parker mimicked. He pointed to the whiteboard. “You didn’t block out any time for your platoon to eat breakfast, Hollywood.”

“Blue falcon,” one of the other drill sergeants commented.

“You can say that again,” Parker said.

“Drill Sergeant,” Carl said. “I copied the schedule just like—”

“Oh no,” Parker said. “You’re not going to pin this on me, Hollywood! You just cost every orphan in this hall thirty push-ups. Front-leaning rest position!”

Groans. Movement. Outraged, Carl dropped down into push-up position.

“Get set! Hold the show. . . . Hollywood! Stand up. I didn’t tell
you
to push. You’re going to watch your buddies push. And then, since you decided to leave breakfast off the schedule, we’ll all just go without today. How does that sound, orphans? Can I get a hooah?”

“Hooah,” they mumbled.

“What are you, Girl Scouts? Get motivated! Sound off like you mean it!”

“Hooah!” Their roar filled the narrow hallway.

Parker said, “Count them off, Hollywood. This is your show.”

“Yes, Drill Sergeant.”

The platoon glared up at him with anger burning in their eyes.

“Get set,” Carl said. “Down-up.”

“Zero-zero-one!” they roared, hating him.

DAYS PASSED.
Brutal days ending in fewer than four hours of sleep.

“Look on the bright side,” Ross said. “As book man, you don’t have to pull duty.”

“Don’t remind me,” Carl said. “That just makes everyone hate me more.” It was stupid but true. Guys resented Carl for assigning guard duty, as if it were his choice. Even the duty itself was stupid. They were society’s rejects, sleeping in barracks, within a patrolled fence, on an island in the middle of nowhere. It was like locking your trash in a vault and hiring armed security guards to watch it. Absurd. More military crap, all because somebody somewhere believed if you got kids to play soldier for a while, they’d become law-abiding citizens.

The drill sergeants pushed and pushed. Mostly, it was pointless and boring, marching around and cleaning and running and forming it up and then marching some more. The drill sergeants forced them to learn rules and codes and poems and songs, and then, as soon as they’d
learned something, the drill sergeants would change it on them. The barracks smelled like sweat and Pine-Sol, and everything was damp to the touch.

The staff issued them boots and uniforms, and there was a constant emphasis on maintaining and securing gear. Every couple of days, the platoon failed another inspection. More punishment. They had to square it away, the drill sergeants reminded them again and again, before the Old Man arrived.

Some of the kids were real screwups. One night, drill sergeants pulled the whole platoon out of bed and smoked them for an hour, shouting as kids duckwalked up and down the hall, hands atop their heads, loaded rucksacks on their backs, the whole thing like a bad dream. Once it got whispered across the platoon how Medicaid had caused it, falling asleep on guard duty, kids glared at him and hissed curses. Whenever Medicaid, who was too weak to duckwalk with a pack, crawled around the bend in the hall and out of sight of the drill sergeants, people would slam into him, punch him, tip him over. Carl watched with aching knuckles as the helpless kid suffered. His brain knew he had to stay out of it, had to think about his future; but the rest of him wanted to rush in there and stop the bullies—and because he didn’t do that, he boiled with self-loathing.
Coward,
he told himself.
Punk.
By the end of the hour, Medicaid was bawling like a toddler, and the drill sergeants’ laughter filled the barracks. They knew, and they didn’t care.

As the days passed, Parker continued to ride Carl. Carl kept his mouth shut and bore up.

Other than Ross, the rest of the platoon wanted nothing to do with Carl. Campbell, who’d been named platoon leader, was all right—not friendly, but not unfriendly, either—and Carl found he could work with him.

One night, Davis and his crew came into his bay and started trash-talking, and Carl thought he was going to end up fighting all six of them. He was so sick of Phoenix Island and Parker and everybody’s crap that he found himself standing there grinning as Davis laid down his rap, and even felt disappointed when it all came to nothing.

Later, Campbell surprised him by initiating conversation. “Watch those guys.”

Carl nodded. “I will. Thanks.”

“They’re checking you now, seeing how you take it. They’ll come for you when nobody’s around. They’re cowards, all of them. But they’re dangerous cowards. I hate gangs.”

“You hate them enough,” Carl said, “give me a hand.”

Campbell raised a brow. “And spend the rest of my time here waiting for the shank? Little guy like you, a white dude, they’ll just throw you a beating. If I cross them, with my size, me being black? They’ll figure they have to kill me. And they would, too. Because they can’t see anything else. They can’t even spell
diploma
. They’re just waiting around.” He shook his head. “ ‘Get rich or die trying,’ all that street mythology.”

It wasn’t help, but it was the longest conversation they’d had . . . a step in the right direction. Campbell was the coolest guy in the platoon. Smart, composed, tough, independent, utterly squared away. Carl thanked him again for the advice and went about his business.

Small fights broke out. Pushing and yelling, mostly. A few guys got sent to the sweatboxes and came back an hour or two later, looking wasted, like they had heatstroke or something. It rained twice a day, every day, once midmorning or early in the afternoon, and again in the night. The world felt like an overfull sponge.

He didn’t see Octavia for days. Every time girls filed past, he’d look for her. He’d just started to worry that something had happened when he saw her leaving the chow hall one day. He tried to get her attention, but she didn’t see him, and, lying in bed that night, he tortured himself, wondering why she hadn’t been looking for him like he’d been looking for her.
Because she’s not interested in you, Hollywood,
he told himself, and in the darkness of the bay, someone farted loudly.

One night after chow, Drill Sergeant Rivera called them into the back bay and let them sit on the floor. After days of dress-right-dress and square-it-away, even that small freedom felt like a godsend.

Rivera paced before them. “You must subordinate your individuality and embrace your group membership. You must work together, orphans, and you must stay motivated. Back in the world, you got yourselves into
trouble, acting as individuals. Here on Phoenix Island, you’re going to unlearn that. You are going to learn to work as part of a team. What is it, Ross?”