The Bulletproof Boy Read online

  Is this how Cole grew up, around sweet and loving people like this?

  No wonder he turned out so amazing.

  And now, after a few months of being around me… he’s in prison.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I am lying on the top bunk, on top of a thin mattress that mostly feels like metal bars under my back, when my roommate dives into the lower bunk, causing the whole bed to shake.

  “Fucking bullshit!” he shouts, and the bed shakes again as he punches or kicks the metal railing. “This place is a fucking shitshow. I hate this place. I fucking hate it! Everyone in here deserves to go to hell.”

  Luckily, I never sleep, or his carrying on like that would have really startled me. Folding my hands over my stomach, I wonder whether I should speak to him. At least he’s speaking English, and I can understand him, unlike most of the boys in here. I haven’t really been big on introductions—I figure that the less I speak to people, the better.

  But then I hear a whimpering sound, and I realize that the boy is crying.

  Taking a deep breath, I begin to wonder what is wrong. It’s only been a few days, and we haven’t exchanged names. I have tried to remind myself that this is temporary, and it will pass. I really don’t have to get comfortable and make friends.

  I still don’t really understand how I ended up in prison.

  Sitting up on the cold, hard bed, I stare at the metal toilet in our small room, wondering how I’m going to survive the next two years in here. I was so psyched for the architectural program at MIT. It felt like everything was going my way, until Mr. Brown decided to get drunk and try to choke Scarlett to death.

  While I was found not guilty of manslaughter, I was still convicted of arson, due to the fact that my parents’ home burned down when I was very young. While they didn’t have evidence to convict me for that crime, they said that the fact that I stand to inherit a large sum from their death showed motive, and a pattern of behavior.

  They also said that even if I killed in self-defense, to save myself and Scarlett, it was unnecessary to start the fire. Mrs. Brown was also in the house, along with all of the family’s belongings. They said it was an enormous destruction of property and that I had little respect or value for other people’s homes, lives, or safety.

  Now, my whole life is ruined. I am forced to eat my meals in the cafeteria with dozens of other young boys who are actual murderers and drug dealers. I suppose they are not too different from some of the people I’ve already encountered in foster homes, but these boys are the cream of the crop.

  So far, all I’ve done is try to look down and avoid eye contact. I’ve read books and written to Scarlett, and tried to ignore my surroundings. But I know I’m going to have to talk to someone sooner rather than later, and find my place in this little social ecosystem. I am not the kind of person who can stay hidden forever. I know I need to come to some understanding with the other boys.

  Besides, I’m sure they have interesting stories, and I can learn a lot from them.

  I just need to focus on getting out of here soon, and getting back to Scarlett.

  When my roommate continues blubbering quietly, I sigh, turning to dangle my legs off the side of my bunk. “Hey, what’s wrong? You okay?” I ask.

  “No,” he says tearfully. “That fat guard keeps following me around. He won’t even let me take a piss without watching me. And that’s fine, but I had just taken my shower and I went to use the urinal. He smashed my face against it while I was taking a piss. For no reason. That thing is disgusting, it hasn’t been cleaned in weeks. My teeth cut the inside of my lips, and it hurts. But worse, I can still taste the urinal. Johnny and Marco were there and they thought it was hilarious. They stuffed my whole body into the urinal,” he says with a quivering lip.

  The kid is smaller than most of the boys here. I would guess his age at being around ten or eleven? He is tiny. I hate to think of the older boys picking on him, or ganging up on him. My heart hurts for him, and I wonder what the hell I can possibly do to help.

  “They kept kicking and pushing me back into the urinal every time I tried to get out,” the boy went on. “The guard just stood there and laughed. I can still feel that shit all over me, and now I can’t take a shower until tomorrow. I can still smell it.”

  I find my face twisting up into a grimace. I still haven’t gotten used to the restrictions of three-minute showers only once a day. What can you really clean in three minutes? It’s enough time to get some soap on your sweaty underarms and your balls, and maybe your ass. That’s about it.

  It’s barely enough time to wash the soap off.

  Using the ladder to lower myself to the floor, I retrieve a piece of paper and a pencil from my mattress. “Write it down,” I tell the boy. “Every incidence of abuse that you face—write it down. You need to also see if you can get corroborating witnesses, especially other guards. How long do you have left in here?” I ask him.

  “Fourteen months,” he says.

  “That’s not much more. It will go by fast. When you get out, you can sue the guard, maybe for discrimination. Maybe, I can try to find out if he’s hurting other boys, and we can complain to the warden even sooner than that.”

  “Nobody’s gonna snitch on the guard,” the boy says. “He threatens us. He says he can do a lot worse if we complain.”

  Frowning, I shake my head. “What can he do? There are rules. We have basic human rights. A lot of the kids in here have had really awful lives, and prison shouldn’t make that worse. This should be a positive experience that teaches us discipline and responsibility so that when we get out, we can live our lives better.”

  “No,” the young boy says. “It’s about breaking us, so that we know that we’re all alone and no one cares. And even if we get out, we’ll probably end up right back here soon, because we’re not smart. We’re not good at school. We’re all poor. So we keep stealing shit, or doing whatever led us to be in here in the first place.”

  “I’m smart,” I tell the boy with a smile. “And when I get out, I’m staying out.”

  He glances up at me. “Probably. You’re white, so I bet it’s easier.”

  Sighing, I nod slowly in acknowledgment. “Probably.”

  “Sometimes, I think I just get in trouble for walking down the street with my friends, or my brothers, being not-white. My friend got arrested for possession, but he ain’t ever done no drugs or touched them in his life. He’s a good kid. He swears the cop planted the drugs on him to get him in trouble on purpose. How fucked up is that?”

  “That’s messed up,” I say honestly, wondering if it’s true.

  The boy sniffles and wipes his hand across his snotty face. “And I didn’t do nothing either. I shouldn’t be in here. I just miss my mama.”

  I move to sit down beside him on his bunk, to try and be friendly. “I miss my mom, too. She’s dead.”

  “Mine’s a whore,” he confesses. “But she’s really nice, and she’s an amazing cook. She always makes the best tacos on Taco Tuesday.”

  I stare at him for a moment, trying to think of how to respond. “Better a prostitute mom than a dead mom.”

  “Totally,” he says, and we both laugh.

  It might be the weirdest way I’ve ever started a friendship.

  Is that what I’m actually doing? Maybe the word ‘friendship’ is going a bit too far. We are roommates, so we need to be cordial. We need to communicate. I might be so desperate and lonely in here that I’m just clinging to any kind of humanity. I’ll probably never talk to this kid again once we get out of prison. I’ll probably forget his name.

  Actually, I don’t even know his name.

  “So, what are you in here for?” the boy asks.

  “I killed my foster father and burned down his house,” I answer plainly.

  The little boy’s eyes grow wide. “Wow. I won’t mess with you. Hey, if we’re gonna be friends, you hafta promise you won’t kill me or kill other people randomly all the time. I find that
very stressful.”

  “Don’t worry, I don’t do that sort of thing often,” I assure the boy. “He was a bad man. He was hurting my sister.”

  The boy nods enthusiastically. “Good. That’s why I did what I did, too.”

  “What did you do?” I ask him.

  “I stabbed my mom’s pimp and his whore wife a bunch of times, and took all their money. But they stabbed my mom first and took all her money, so I did the right thing,” the kid says, sticking his chin out proudly. “Except my mom survived. They didn’t. You have to stab the right places, if you’re going to stab someone. It’s basic anatomy.”

  “Damn, kid,” I tell him, impressed. “I’m lucky you’re my roommate! You’re probably the toughest guy in here.”

  “I totally am!” he says, puffing out his little chest. Bless his heart. “That’s why they shoved me in the urinal. They’re just scared of me.”

  “Damn straight,” I tell him. He’s so adorable. I kind of want to give him a noogie. But that might lead to me getting murdered in my sleep, so I probably shouldn’t do that.

  “Hey, I don’t even know your name,” the kid says.

  “I’m Cole,” I tell him.

  “Sweet. They call me Little Ricky,” he says with a grin. “But my dad was really tall, so I’m going to hit a real big growth spurt any day now. Then they’ll regret teasing me.”

  “Do you want me to call you something different?” I ask him.

  “Sure,” he says, thoughtfully. “You can call me Rodriguez.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Does everyone in prison honestly believe they shouldn’t be here?

  This is the question I ask myself as I sit in the cafeteria, eating my slop. Yes, the stuff I am eating is literal slop, like out of Oliver Twist, or a pig’s pen. I don’t know why I ever expected being an orphan in the twenty-first century to be any better than nineteenth century Victorian England.

  At any rate, at least prison has given me a lot of time to read. I also write regular letters to Scarlett, and work on sketches of a house I’d like to build someday. A fireproof house. Dreaming about a future accomplishment gives me hope that I’ll get out of here someday and be able to live my life again. Soon, this will all be a distant memory.

  As the weeks have passed, I’ve made more friends and talked to more of the guys here. Like now—I am sitting at a table surrounded by my peers. They are good kids, and they are making the most of this bad situation, cracking jokes, and trying to keep smiles on each other’s faces. I’ve learned a lot about their families and their lives, their bad experiences and their dreams. Little Ricky and I have gotten close, and he says he wants to enlist in the Air Force someday, like his father.

  But as I sit here, trying to force myself to swallow this slop, I can’t help thinking that some of their stories sound vaguely familiar.

  “There was no evidence against me, but Judge McFarlane sent me here anyway,” one kid is saying.

  I lift my head to better hear what he’s going on about. I think his name is Daniel, and he’s new here. Judge McFarlane is the reason I am here as well, although I secretly suspect that Benjamin had something to do with it.

  “Man, it was also McFarlane for me,” says another one of the kids, Nathan. “There was evidence that I was innocent, but he found reasons to throw it all out.”

  “Me too, guys,” I say suddenly. “I think someone else had a similar story? Matthew, with the possession charge?” When they all nod, I frown. “He swore that he’d never touched drugs and didn’t even know any drug dealers, and the cop and the judge just had it out for him. Do you think—maybe they had it out for all of us?”

  “Not all of us,” says Little Ricky. “There’s a couple guys here who are real trouble. Like Marco and Johnny.” His voice has lowered to a whisper when he speaks their names, and we all glance over in their direction. It’s true, we’ve all been terrorized by those kids, who eagerly brag about the terrible things they’ve done. Marco seems like the evil mastermind while Johnny is his willing sidekick. Some of the boys have even begun calling Marco by the nickname “Marco Polo Loco” because of how much he loves to torture us.

  As if they are just waiting for the opportunity, Marco gets up from his seat and walks over to us, proceeding to slam Little Ricky’s face down into his slop. He then bursts out laughing and returns to Johnny to share a high-five of victory.

  Sighing, I hand a few of my napkins to Ricky to help him out, as do a few of the other kids, mumbling apologies. The guards, as usual, do nothing to help. Later on, in less public settings, they will probably do even worse to us.

  This isn’t fair. I know some of us have done terrible things. I sure have. But they were done in self-defense. I had stab wounds in my body to demonstrate that. Scarlett had burns all over hers, including the older cigarette burns and bruises that indicated a history of abuse. In fact, there had even been a domestic abuse call to the house in the past, from Mrs. Brown, although she never charged her husband for the offence.

  Why do women never charge their husbands? They call the police in a moment of fear and anger—and clarity—immediately after the damage is done. But while the police are on the way, the man begs and pleads until the woman begins to slowly break down and realize that her love for him is stronger than her need to protect herself. Or her children. I have seen this sort of thing happen too many times in my foster homes.

  But the problem with taking pity on a man who does harm to you, is that he will eventually do harm to others. Other women, other children. And without that original conviction, it’s a lot harder to prove that he deserves punishment. There are so many people who deserve to be in prison right now, who aren’t.

  And instead, I’m here. We’re all here.

  “Guys,” I say, leaning forward. “I’m going to write to my girlfriend and ask her to look into this.” I’ve started referring to Scarlett as my ‘girlfriend’ instead of my ‘sister’ because mentioning a sister always seems to make everyone ask for details about her appearance and whether she’s single. Mentioning a ‘girlfriend’ stakes a claim that they seem to respect.

  “Your hacker girlfriend?” Nathan asks.

  “Yeah. I’ll ask her to do some digging on Judge McFarlane and see if she can find any evidence of him being biased against kids or something. It’s a long shot, but I might as well try. I also have a good friend who’s a lawyer, so maybe he can help.”

  Little Ricky stands up in frustration. “Cole, I’m sick of your positive attitude. Things are easy for you, compared to some of us. Don’t give us false hope, okay? It’s hard enough, waking up in this place every day, wondering if we’re gonna spend the rest of our lives in prison. Do you know what the recidivism rates are like?”

  Recidivism is a word I recently learned from Little Ricky. The kid is surprisingly smart. It’s also a depressing word and concept I wish I hadn’t learned.

  “Just shut up sometimes and let us vent,” he tells me gruffly. “You don’t have to try to fix everything. Sometimes, you just can’t fix things.”

  With that, he walks away to toss out his uneaten gruel. I’m still not sure if it’s supposed to be porridge or oatmeal, but it’s definitely where healthy appetites go to die. Oliver Twist would definitely not be wanting some more of this shit.

  I know that I shouldn’t be comparing youth prisons to orphanages, as they are very different beasts. But as someone who has lived in both, I can honestly say that they are not too dissimilar.

  In this world, it is a crime to be alone. If a child is unlucky enough to be alone from the outset, the world will already view them as having committed a crime by merely existing, long before they are old enough to realize that they have done nothing wrong.

  Standing up to dump out my own porridge, I wonder if Scarlett has always felt the way that I do now, in this prison. I wonder if she will ever feel differently. I hope things are pleasant for her in Mr. Bishop’s home, and that Levi is treating her well. Swallowing, I feel a bit of j
ealousy surge in my body, and I somehow know that he isn’t behaving himself. He never behaves.

  Chapter Eighteen

  After receiving a disturbing letter from Cole, I am sitting in bed with Levi’s laptop and examining the personal emails of Judge McFarlane. I find nothing suspicious, and after scanning hundreds of emails, my tired eyelids begin to droop. Sleepily, I drag them open, and push my glasses closer to my face as I examine some of the personal accounts of the prison administration, starting with the warden. Finding nothing, I decide to go a little higher. It turns out that Cole’s prison is privately owned, and makes a lot of money from federal contracts. A lot of these private juvenile detention centers are reputed to have atrocious conditions for the kids, especially ones operated by this company.

  Chewing on my lip, I find a small list of people who stand to benefit most from attracting more inmates to Cole’s prison. It’s a long shot, and it could take a while to find anything. I am growing disheartened and tired of searching, and my eyelids are closing again. But when I finally come across a certain email offering a payout for “bodies to fill the beds” I sit up straight. Rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, I begin searching in earnest, and I soon find exactly what I’m looking for.

  “Yes,” I whisper, in utter disbelief. “Yes! Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!”

  I am so pumped I have trouble sitting still, and I want to get up from bed and do a happy dance, but Levi chooses that moment to burst into my room. “I knew it!” he says, pointing at me with conviction. “You weren’t fooling anyone with this good girl act, Scarlett Smith. I’ll take my laptop back now, if you’re done watching porn!”

  Rolling my eyes, I swing my legs over the side of the bed and rush to Levi’s side. “Look. Can you believe this? We need to show your dad!”

  Levi blinks. “Damn. I thought I was going to walk in and find you naked and masturbating furiously, but now you’re making me read…”