The Free - Softcover

Lauren McLaughlin grew up in Wenham, Massachusetts, a small town outside of Boston. After college and a brief foray into anthropology, she spent ten years as a screenwriter and producer before turning her attention to novels. She is also the author of the YA novels Cycler, (Re)Cycler, and Scored, and the children’s picture book series Mitzi Tulane, Preschool Detective.

Chapter 1
 
When you’re a thief, you’re also a liar. It comes with the territory. So I have no problem going along with the cock-and-bull story Mr. Flannery’s invented for me. I trust Mr. Flannery. The guy’s a genius. If an ex-con can be a genius. He doesn’t have a PhD or anything. But he’s the best thief I’ve ever known. And I’ve known a few. Flannery went down for grand theft auto, did his time, got himself a job as head of the Automotive Department at Donverse Vocational High School. That took some genius. The guy convinced people his life of crime was over. Got them to trust him with kids. Genius.
     “All you got to do is stick to the story,” Mr. Flannery’s telling me now, for something like the twelfth time. “Just like we practiced, just like you told the police. You were great in there. Just keep that up. You do that, you do your time. Then we pick up right where left off. Kabeesh?”
     We’re in Mr. Flannery’s office. It’s basically a dumping ground of tools, catalogs, and car parts separated from the roar of the auto shop by a dirty glass wall. If you’ve been invited in there, it’s either an honor or the worst day of your life. For me, Isaac West, it’s both.
     Pat Healy’s on the other side of that wall—all six feet, two inches, and three-hundred pounds of him. He’s staring at me through that dirty glass with a blowtorch hanging from his fist. Catch Healy in the wrong mood and he’s one scary ass white dude. Right now, he looks like he’s about to wet his pants.
      “Don’t you worry about Patrick,” Mr. Flannery tells me. “Lord knows he ain’t talkin’. Guy owes you big after this.”
     Mr. Flannery’s dead right about that. It should be Healy standing in that office, knees shaking, heart thumping, trying to put a brave face on his chickenshit thoughts.
     If there was any justice in this world.
     Which there isn’t.
     Anyway, I owe Healy. This will make us square. It was Healy who introduced me to Mr. Flannery in the first place. He vouched for me even though we hadn’t seen each other in over a year. Healy is Mr. Flannery’s nephew-in-law or third cousin or some kind of distant relative Irish people keep track of.
      “Thirty days,” Mr. Flannery tells me. “You lucked out there, son. Could have been a lot worse. Someone’s looking out for you.” He winks at me, which turns his freckled face into a mess of wrinkles. “You a praying man, Isaac?”
     The answer to that is hell no, but if that’s what it takes to get through the next thirty days, I can lie about that too. No problem.
      “Juvie’s not so bad,” he tells me. “I been. Course that was back in the Stone Age. Ask Patrick. He’s been in and out a coupla-two-three times. Maybe he’ll give you some pointers. He owes you that much. At least.”
      “Yeah, sure.” I keep my answers short because my voice is shaking and I don’t want Mr. Flannery to know how scared I am.
     I don’t want any “pointers” from Patrick Healy, either. After what happened that night, I am not taking Healy’s advice on anything.
      “Look at me, Isaac,” Mr. Flannery says. “You can do this. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t believe that. I seen a lot of kids come through here.” He looks around the place like he’s making sure none of the other students can hear him. Healy, maybe catching on that he’s being talked about, looks even more nervous than before. “You remember that first day, when Patrick brought you up here?”
      “I remember you making me pee in a cup.”
      “That’s right. Because I don’t take druggies into my operation. You into that nonsense, you got no business doing business with me. But I saw something in you. Even that first day. Didn’t surprise me in the least when you passed that piss test. You got focus, kid. That’s pretty rare in a fifteen-year-old.”
      “Sixteen,” I tell him.
      “Shit. When was your birthday?”
      “Yesterday.”
      “Well fuck me. Happy birthday, kid. Wish I had a better present than this.”
      “It’s all right.”
     Mr. Flannery puts his hand on my shoulder. He’s never actually touched me before. “You do this right, you and me got a long and lucrative career ahead of us. I am a loyal man. I do not forget the people who help me.”
     I’m no brown nose or anything but I have to admit it bigs me up knowing that Mr. Flannery is counting on me to do the right thing here. Before him, I was strictly small time. DVDs, cigarettes, beer—the kind of piddly crap I could steal and resell to the scumbags passing through my apartment. I’d bring down a few extra bucks a week boosting that stuff, then squirrel it away in this rag doll under my sister’s bed. Chump change. Especially compared to what I’m earning now with Mr. Flannery. And what I’ll be earning again soon. After this little hiccup.
     So sure, I’m squared away about taking the rap for Pat Healy. If you’re going to think big, you have to take some risks. But, truth be told, I’m not doing it for Healy or Mr. Flannery. I have someone else in mind. And for her there’s nothing I wouldn’t do.
     Not one goddamn thing.
 
 
 
Chapter 2
 
“Lights out, people!”
     Reggio, the guard on night watch, a barrel-chested Italian with skinny legs. While he walks the length of the unit, I force myself to yawn. I’m hoping it’ll trick my brain into thinking I’m tired. That way, when Reggio kills the lights, I won’t have to lie awake in the dark thinking. There’s no reason to think now. I’m in survival mode. It’s my second night at Haverland Juvenile Detention. Twenty-eight days to go and I haven’t slept a wink.
     Reggio slows down as he passes my cell. “Time to put that pen down, Ernest.” My name’s Isaac, but for some reason Reggio has decided to call me Ernest. Probably on account of that writer, Ernest Hemingway.
     Cardo, my cell mate, chuckles into the mirror, some cheap plastic thing he has puttied to the wall. It’s so warped you can barely recognize your own face in it. “What are you doing?” he asks. “Rewriting the Bible or something?” Cardo’s been trying to pick something out of his teeth with the nail of his pinkie for about five minutes. Whatever it is, it’s real comfortable in there.
     I answer him with a grunt. I figure that’s safer than telling him the truth, which is that every time my felt-tip pen touches that notebook, my mind sets off on these crazy journeys. Not like I’m any kind of a writer or anything. Sometimes I’ll start one story, then, by the time I get to the end, I’ll be telling a completely different one. I don’t bother with spelling, and my grammar’s all over the place. Once, in middle school, a teacher asked me if English was my first language, probably on account of my being mixed race and looking sort of Cuban. I get that a lot. But English is my first language, and I speak it just fine.
     I’m supposed to be writing my “crime story.” That’s the assignment from my counselor, a spiky little Cubana named Ms. Jomolca. Don’t call her Miss Jomolca whatever you do though because “a woman’s marital status is her own business.” I learned that on my first day here. I’ll call her Queen of the Galaxy if that’s what she wants, but no way in hell am I writing down my crime story. That is the one story I cannot tell. And even though I have Mr. Flannery’s version memorized and can say it out loud without notes, I figure the less said the better. Bad liars always screw up by piling on the BS, like they can razzle-dazzle you with details. Good liars know that silence is golden because it makes the other guy do all the wondering. Besides, I have plenty of other stories to tell. It’s not like my life before juvie was boring. I can write about all the stuff I didn’t get busted for, like the time I stole that teacher’s watch right off her desk when she wasn’t looking. That was a sweet take. Lady totally had it coming.
     Cardo rips open the Velcro on his sneakers. They’re a gift from juvie—stiff white clunkers that make you feel like you’ve been dipped in concrete. They don’t have laces so you can’t use them to strangle anyone. The guard who explained this to me at intake actually thought this detail would make me feel safer. At night the sound of Velcro ripples down the unit, and all I can think about is all those necks being saved. For now.
     Cardo hops up to the top bunk. A second later, his face pokes over the edge of the mattress. “You get your team assignment yet?”
      “What team?”
     Cardo coughs out this chimplike laugh, which he does practically every time I speak. “’Coz I hear Barbie Santiago’s been reassigned. Again.”
      “Should I know who Barbie Santiago is?”
     Cardo laughs again then rolls back up to his bunk. My ignorance about everything in juvie is already his favorite subject.
     I haven’t seen any of the girls at Haverland yet. Their cells are in a different wing. But I’ve overheard the name Barbie Santiago once or twice. Rumor has it her stint in solitary came after a savage beatdown of some girl in her math class who insulted her cousin. Latinas are real big on their cousins. According to the guys I overheard talking about it, Barbie Santiago has a reputation for “fighting like a girl,” which is not an insult, by the way. Guys fight for show. Girls fight to kill.
      “She a good actress or something?” I ask the springs of
Cardo’s bunk.
     Cardo’s face appears over the edge again. Something about his expression reminds me of a monkey, but I keep that observation to myself.
      “’Coz I hear there’s, like, acting and stuff?” I say. I actually know nothing about nothing, but I’ve overheard some guys talking about role-plays.
      “Yeah, homes. There’s acting. But Barbie? She only ever plays the perp. And she real good at it too. She got them Golden Globes locked up, plus an Oscar on the side.”
      “Awesome.”
     Too late, I realize that may have come off as sarcastic, which is not the vibe I want to set with Cardo. I’m aiming for cool. I want Cardo to think I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t want any trouble but I’m not about to take any crap either. It’s a tough balance and, if I’m honest, I don’t always get it right. But Cardo doesn’t seem to notice. Or care. He’s wrapped up in his own game. Whatever that is.
      “And don’t think about lying in there either,” he says. “Especially if you get Barbie. Girl got some kind of ESP, no’m saying?”
      “Yeah, sure.”
“Yeah sure. Like you already know everything. You don’t know nothin’ homes.”
     I’m not about to argue with that. When it comes to juvie, I am greener than snot, which is fine by me. The last thing I want to be is an expert on this hellhole. Get in. Get out. Get back to GTA. That’s my game. I have big plans for the money I’ll be making with Mr. Flannery, and they do not include playing Mr. Big Shot in a ten-foot-by-six-foot cell for the sake of some Latin gangbanger.
      “Good night, ladies!”
     Reggio again. He’s finished his sweep of the unit, so he kills the lights. There’s an eruption of shuffling, some whispers, a few shouts of “Shut up!” Then, once the unit settles, it’s dead quiet. Supposedly, Haverland’s “special.” That’s what that judge said, like it was a privilege to get sentenced here instead of some other juvie center. But outside my cell all the local gangs are represented: Bank Street, Sol Dominicano, the Disciples of Vice. I don’t see what’s so “special” about them, except that they’re the worst kids from every school I’ve ever gone to or been kicked out of. No way am I starting any trouble with these guys. But trouble has a way of finding me. You could say trouble has an unholy crush on Isaac West.
     Cardo’s face hangs down from the edge of the bunk, a wisp of a starter mustache catching the red light from something outside our cell. An exit sign maybe. “So, there any blood in your scene?” he whispers.
     By “scene,” I assume he’s talking about my crime story, the one thing I do not want to talk about. With anyone. But I don’t want to get on Cardo’s bad side by telling him to mind his own business, either. For one thing, Cardo is the only inmate who’s spoken to me so far. For another, he’s a member of the Disciples of Vice, which is something I put together myself from the Disciples tattoo on his stomach—a smoking joint with a halo around it—because I’m quick like that.
      “Yeah,” I whisper back. “There’s a bit of blood.”
      “Whatever,” he says. “Save it for your team.”
     I still don’t know what he means by team.