Gecko and Arjay moved in yesterday. Gecko is showing Terence the two dresser drawers that are reserved for him. But the new arrival is more interested in the fire escape that passes just outside the bedroom window.
“Don't even think about it,” Gecko tells him. He raps on the heavy metal security gate locked over the opening. “Healy has the only key.”
Terence looks at him pityingly. “You're kidding, right? I could have that key, and probably his underwear too, and he'd never know they're missing. I don't know about you guys, but I've been on a desert island for seven months. If I'm in New York City, I'm going to see more of it than the inside of this dump. Who's with me?”
Arjay sits on the single bed, picking at an acoustic guitar, which looks like a toy ukulele against his enormous frame. “Count me out,” he drawls without glancing up. “I was at Disney World before this. I've had enough fun for a while.”
Gecko regards Terence in surprise. “Didn't Healy give you the warning? That he had to fight to get this program going, and the whole thing is kind of a trial run? Mess up, and you go straight back into the system.”
Terence dismisses this with a wave of his hand. “These do-gooders blow my mind. There's always somebody trying to save your soulâlike that's going to happen.”
Gecko sticks his jaw out. “Look, man, I came from a pretty bad place before here. I'm not doing anything to risk getting sent back.”
The newcomer frowns at him. “Whoa, they put me in with the Boy Scouts by mistake! How'd you end up in the system? Get caught stealing merit badges?”
Gecko's face flushes red. “Is that how this works? I recite my rap sheet, and you recite yours, and we see who's the biggest gangster?”
Terence snorts. “Yeah, like
that's
up for grabs! Back in Chicago, my crew
owned
every block southeast of Evergreen! We ate solid citizens like you for breakfast!”
Gecko is surprised, and more than a little scared, by the intensity of the emotions roiling inside him. Terence's in-your-face arrogance is nothing new. Gecko has been taking this kind of crap from his brother since birth.
And how did I handle it? By not thinking while Reuben made me his getaway driver!
Not thinking with Reuben landed him in juvie. Not thinking with Terence will only get him shipped straight back there.
He peers into Terence's tough-guy sneer. His fist comes up, clenched and ready.
Healy and Kellerman sit at the small dining table, filling out Terence's transfer paperwork. There are forms from the federal government, the states of Rhode Island, New York, and Illinois, and the city of New York.
Healy sighs in frustration. “If anybody had paid this much attention to the kid
before
he got into trouble, he probably wouldn't have gotten into trouble at all.”
“I hear you,” Kellerman agrees. “Nobody ever lifts a finger to help them until they're in so deep that they can't be helped.” He shoves a paper under Healy's nose for the final signature. “Tell me somethingâwhy are you doing this?”
Healy gives Kellerman his copies and sets aside his own for filing. “Same as you, probably. I want to give these kids a fighting chance.”
The Lion's Head counselor shakes his head. “No. Then you'd get a job like mine. I can only imagine the kind of wheeling and dealing it must have taken to get approval for a special project like this. Not to mention a New Directions grant to help pay for it all. Why? What possibilities do you see here that are so different from a hundred other group homes and alternative setups?”
“The system is so vast,” Healy explains, “that my contribution would disappear like spit in the ocean. But here I know I'm making a difference for three boys. It's only three, but it's definite.”
“And why these three?” Kellerman persists.
Healy looks embarrassed. “That's a little more selfish. To tell you the truth, they remind me of me.”
“How does the Incredible Hulk's kid brother remind you of you?”
The group leader appears haunted. “More than you could ever know. Arjay's the rarest thing in the systemâa genuine innocent man. He just ran into a DA up for reelection in a bad year for youth crime.”
“That happened to you?”
“Well, I didn't kill anybody, if that's what you mean. But I spent nearly three years in juvie for something that was an accident. An accident that never would have happened if I hadn't got mixed up with a crooked relativeâlike Gecko did.”
The man from New England takes this in. “What about Terence?”
Healy's face clouds. “The system took a city kid and plunked him down in the middle of nowhere, a million miles from everything he knew. That was me, a native New Yorker. I sat on a farm in Nebraska, wondering where the sidewalks were.”
Kellerman stands up. “When you put it that way, I can see why Terence wasn't very happy feeding chickens on the island.”
Healy follows his visitor to the door. “How do you think he's going to do with me?”
“I'm sure he'll be just fine,” the counselor replies, a little too glibly.
Healy stops him on the way out. “No, I want your honest professional assessment of my arrangement here.”
Kellerman faces him. “I can't speak for the others. But the first chance he gets, Terence Florian is going to put a kitchen knife right between your shoulder blades.”
On that note, he heads down the rickety stairs. The group leader watches him go, stunned by somewhat more honesty than he bargained for. And then the commotion reaches his ears.
He's across the living room and through the bedroom door in three frantic strides. The sight that meets his eyes is memorable. Arjay stands between the other two, straight-arming them apart. One hamlike hand is wrapped around Gecko's balled fist. The other is gripping the front of Terence's shirt.
Gecko's panting breath bubbles through his bloody nose. Terence is cursing through rapidly swelling lips. The nightstand has been upended, knocking a tall bowling trophy to the hardwood floor.
“What's going on?” Healy bellows.
Silence from Gecko and Terence.
Arjay says, “They slipped.”
“That better be true, because fighting is one of the things that gets you kicked out of here!” Ruefully, the group leader picks up the fallen trophy. The metal figure of a bowler has snapped off the top, exposing the spike that held it in place.
Gecko reads the small brass plaque:
CITY FINALS
â1977;
DOUGLAS HEALY
â2
ND PLACE
. “Sorry,” he mumbles.
Terence turns to Healy. “It's
your
trophy, man; what's it doing in
our
room?”
The group leader tries to replace the bowler on its pedestal. “It's the only thing I ever worked hard for when I was your age. I just thoughtâ” The figure drops with a clatter. “Never mind. A little Krazy Glue and it'll be good as new.”
Out the gated window, he can see Kellerman walking along Ninety-seventh Street to his truck. A shiver runs along Healy's spine.
Does he know something I don't?
CHAPTER FIVE
The Alma K. Walker High School is located on East Ninety-first Street, a ten-minute walk from the apartment. The stately old building's original three stories were built in 1867. The “new addition,” the fourth and fifth floors, was constructed in 1912, shortly after the sinking of the
Titanic.
Douglas Healy delivers his charges there the next morning. They are already preregistered, but the principal has requested what he calls an “orientation meeting.” This consists primarily of chewing them out in advance for all the evil things they are probably going to do in his school.
They sit on the hard wooden bench and take it for a while. Finally, the group leader speaks up for them. “Dr. Cavendishâall due respectâI don't think this is fair. I'm not suggesting anyone should get special treatment, but none of these boys has so much as spit on the sidewalk.”
“I did,” pipes up Terence. The look he gets from Healy would melt steel.
The principal regards the group leader impatiently. “What's your point?”
“These are
my
kids. If you have any problems with them, you come to me. Pretend I'm their mother. Because, practically speaking, I am.”
Dr. Cavendish either refuses to accept it, or is too dumb to understand it, because he concludes the interview with a warning: “I'm keeping my eye on you three. Expect a zero-tolerance policy here at Walker.”
Healy leads them out of the office, and they stand in the hall, gathered around him.
“Thanks, Mom,” Arjay intones.
Healy tries and fails to keep the corners of his mouth from turning up. Then he spots something that wipes all thought of smiling from his mind.
Gecko is alarmed. “You okay, Mr. Healy? You look like you've seen a ghost.”
He has. And worse than that. Marching across the dark-stained terrazzo floor toward them is a woman built like a missile silo, her gunmetal-gray suit falling straight from the shoulders past a nonexistent waist.
“That's Ms. Vaughn!” he hisses. “She's the social worker in charge of our case!”
“We're golden,” Terence says smoothly. “I'll just turn on the charm andâ”
“Do
not
mess with that woman!” orders Healy through clenched teeth. “She fought me every inch of the way when I was setting up this program. She has the power to shut us down and send you guys back to lockup. And she's just looking for an excuse to do it!”
“Good morning, Mr. Healy. Boys. I was planning to stop by the apartment yesterday, but my caseload kept me hopping. The last thing I needed was another halfway house in my territory.” Her expression implies that she has never uttered a kind word and isn't about to start now.
“Everything is great so far,” Healy tells her. “The guys are really excited about starting their classes. In fact, they were just about to head to first period.”
“And you have a plan in place for the end of the day?” Ms. Vaughn prompts.
“Absolutely,” the group leader assures her. “We're meeting right outside the main entrance at three o'clock.”
She nods briskly. “And they're aware that if they're not in your custody within fifteen minutes of dismissal that you are required by law to report them to the police as fleeing felons?”
“Right. They know all thatâ”
“
And
if they are unaccompanied more than one hundred feet from the building, they are subject to arrest?”
“Yes, they know that too.”
“Excellent,” Ms. Vaughn approves. “Then let's go to class.”
The social worker plows through the crowded halls like an icebreaker, her Stonehenge-block heels resounding on the terrazzo. Dozens of probing gazes make the journey from Ms. Vaughn to the small party scrambling in her wake.
Connecting the dots, Gecko realizes,
If we're with the social worker, we must be Social Services casesâ¦.
Half an hour in the building, they're already being labeled and pigeonholed.
Terence picks up on it as well. “Man, too bad we can't take the witch with us everywhere! You can't buy this kind of cred!”
“Shhh!”
The first stop is a science lab, with students spread out at the experiment tables, heating up beakers of Pepto-Bismol-like pink liquid on Bunsen burners. Ms. Vaughn lingers just far enough inside the doorway for everybody to get an eyefulâthe Problem Lady delivering her latest Problem.
The teacher, a youngish woman in a lab coat, looks at Gecko questioningly.
“Umâis this freshman chemistry?”
“You've got the right place. What can I do for you?”
Gecko hands over his course card.
“Oh,” the teacher says dubiously, “a new student.” The tables seem overcrowded already.
“I see you're fitting right in,” announces Ms. Vaughn. “Have a nice day.” She pounds away, leading Healy and the others.
The teacher files his course card in a drawer. “Everybody say hello to Graham.”
“People usually call me Gecko.” He's momentarily disconcerted by the whispered buzz, which churns out words like “foster home,” “halfway house,” and “juvie.” It's an eerie reminder of walking into the mess hall at Atchison for the first time and having every inmate in the place size up the new guy.
The teacher musters a semblance of a smile. “Gecko it is. Go work withâ” She scans the room. “Diego. Table six.”
Diego is a small dark boy who tries to make himself even smaller at Gecko's approach. He shrinks turtlelike into his collar and backs away from the experiment as if it has suddenly grown fangs.
Gecko tries to put him at ease. “Okay, what are we doing? Bubbling up this pink stuff?”
Too frightened to speak, Diego merely nods.
They boil the solution away and smear the pink residue on a glass slide. The microscope is so old that it's impossible to see much. Gecko fiddles with the knobs for a long time before he realizes that he has focused on a reflection of his own eye.
Disgusted, he reaches for his notebook to cross out half a page of observations, but succeeds only in knocking the beaker off the counter. It shatters on the floor, showering pink sludge on the immaculate white sneakers of a kid working at the next table.
He's big, muscular, and very angry. “Hey, what the hell?” He freezes at the sight of the offender, Gecko, the Social Services kidâpossible gang member, possible felon, possible psychopath.
Gecko picks up a paper towel. “Let me clean that up for you.”
“It's nothing!” the guy babbles. “Don't worry about it!” He wheels back to his own microscope and peers into the eyepiece with great concentration even though there's no slide on the tray.
Diego is beyond speech, as if he's just witnessed a terrible crime and is convinced that he'll be whacked to ensure his silence.