“How did you do this? Did you cut yourself?”
“Dad, stop!” Hadrian pulls his arm away, runs for the bathroom. Remy chases after him, grabs the door just as Hadrian swings it shut. They struggle over it, but Remy has the power of primal fear on his side, and he pulls the door out of his son’s hands. It bangs against the wall. Remy puts his heel against it.
“Talk,” he shouts.
For a moment it looks like Hadrian will hit him, but then his own fear kicks in. He backs away, a child once more. He looks around wildly for a place to hide, jams himself between the toilet and the wall, knees to his chest.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Seeing him there, cowering, cornered, Remy feels the blood leave his body. The adrenaline that was driving him collapses, and he too goes to his knees, scrambling across the bathroom to reach his son.
“Baby,” he says, “what did you do?”
Then he sees the bloody tissue in the trash can and the broken drinking glass and he understands.
“I’m sorry,” Hadrian says. “It hurt, and I got scared.”
“But why? Why would you?”
Hadrian pulls out his phone, his hands trembling, and holds it up. There in his message app, Remy sees the group chat, a dozen of Hadrian’s friends, text bubble stacked upon text bubble, and each one says the same thing.
A11
Simon
Sheriff Roy’s Holy Detention Center in Reeves County, Texas, was built in a sandy depression between two buttes. To reach the top of the northern butte from the road, you have to pull off at an unmarked gate and drive a winding deer path through a dry wash and low bramble until you can’t drive anymore, then abandon your car and head out on foot, which, on a 104-degree August day, means tying a T-shirt around your head and soaking it with water. It takes Simon and the others just under three hours to reach the crest. Flagg, in his leather duster, is sweating like a waterfall. Tiny lizards scramble in his shadow. Tarantulas creep through the dust, slow-motion-hair hands hungry for meat.
Louise, Duane, and Cyclops have stayed behind with the van, hiding in its growing afternoon shade. Overhead, the sun is swollen, angry, bleaching the bones of the living and the dead. When they reach high ground, Flagg lies on his stomach on the stony ridge. Simon, covered in sticker burrs, lies beside him, his face filthy, fingernails caked with dirt. The Prophet sits cross-legged beside them, his clothes clean, his face sweat free. Picking nettles from his ankles, fingertips stinging, Simon begins to wonder if Paul the Prophet really has been sent by God. He is, as they say, beginning to believe. Maybe, like the Prophet said, he can worship God and reason at the same time. Who says it has to be one or the other? Who says God didn’t create the universe and science, and so disrespecting science is disrespecting God?
Next to him, Flagg peers through a high-powered rifle scope ($129.99) he stole from Walmart.
“Looks like three Quonset huts and a double-wide,” he says. “Ten-foot razor wire all around with a single gated checkpoint. I count two deputies in the booth and four county vehicles.”
“How many prisoners?” asks Simon, squinting south. Sweat runs into his eyes, and he wipes them with the back of his dirty hand.
“Unclear,” says Flagg. “The internet says three fifty, give or take. About half are kids. We know they keep ’em separated.”
“He missed the good old days, I guess,” says Simon. “Sheriff Roy. Kids in cages.”
He wipes the sweat from his face.
“You really think we can do this?” he asks.
“This is not your crack A team,” says Flagg. “Your ICE gestapo slipping down fast ropes. These are local boys in pickup trucks playing soldier.”
“So you can get us in?” says the Prophet.
“Definitely.”
He pulls a kid’s walkie-talkie ($29.99 for a set of four) from his pocket, talks into it.
“Cyclops, put together three action packs, full battle rattle, night-vision goggles, the works. We’re going in after midnight.”
He looks at Katniss.
“Me and one-eye will go in the front. You circle with Simon and the Prophet and cut your way in from the back.”
“Roger Wilco,” she says.
On the walk back to the van, Simon falls in next to her. Katniss is six foot one. A high school volleyball star who dropped out senior year.
“So you’re rich,” she says.
Simon’s stomach turns. He hates conversations about money. They make him feel exposed, guilty.
“Not me personally, no. There’s a credit card I can use with no limit. But mostly things just get paid for.”
“Must be nice,” says Katniss. The left half of her head has been shaved down to stubble. Under the fuzz is a tattoo of a yellow rose.
“Nice?” says Simon, as if that word in this context has never occurred to him. “It’s—confusing. Being rich is the same as thinking everything’s free. No one ever says We can’t afford that, so how am I supposed to know that boats or houses or watches cost money? Or that money is a thing that exists in finite supply? My father has so much hidden away in offshore accounts, I can’t imagine an object or an experience I could want that I couldn’t have without a second thought. That makes everything free. So you grow up defective or, like, handicapped. You look around and see everyone else is fighting, struggling, but you don’t understand why. How can they be hungry when everything is free?”
“I grew up in tract housing, washing dishes by hand after taco shell Monday,” Katniss tells him. “I found an old bike in a barn once, rode it home, singing free bike! Then the kick stand cut my foot, gave me tetanus. So, listen, nothing in this world is ever really free.”
They reach the flats by six. Simon feels dizzy from heat that seems to be mummifying him alive. Back at the campsite, Louise is lying on a flat rock by the van, sunning herself, topless.