“Yeah. I live around here, see? And when I was little, this is where they put crazy people.”
I didn’t point out that in fact he was still little. At least comparatively.
“Crazy people?” Cassie asked.
“Yeah. Nowadays they do them mood-adjusts,” the Kid said, not knowing that the three of us all had firsthand knowledge of that. “But back then they just locked crazy people up. People who talked bad about the cell and all. There was a guy who was crazy, and they put him in here, and he dug his way out.”
“Wait… what?” I asked. Guess I was right—it really is a crazy house.
“He dug hisself a tunnel,” the Kid said, glancing over his shoulder to make sure no one was around. “From in here to out there.” The Kid pointed to the scrubby pines about fifty yards outside the prison fence.
“You’re… almost making sense,” Nate said, frowning.
“So what happened?” I asked.
“He got out, didn’t he?” said the Kid, shrugging.
“He escaped?” Cassie said.
“Well, nah, not really,” the Kid amended. “Like, he got out, but they caught him. And then the tunnel sort of fell in, at least partly.”
“What happened to the guy?” I couldn’t help asking.
“Oh, they shot ’im,” the Kid said, and snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”
“How do you even know this?” Nate asked.
“’Cause it was my dad,” the Kid said.
79
SO WE DECIDED TO FIND this tunnel, and to make sure the four of us got out. As a plan it wasn’t exactly a three-season, cell-wide, crop-rotation schematic, but it was all we had.
From memory we drew lines in the dirt to represent various halls, the ring, the mess hall, the classrooms. Of course, we each remembered things differently, and in the end our drawing looked like a chicken had been trying to scratch a worm out of the ground. We smudged it with our feet and tried to come up with ways to explore.
After about fourteen seconds we felt crushed by how hard that would be and how long it might take us. We might not have that much time. I wanted to cry.
“Look,” Becca said urgently. “This could take forever. I say we just commit! Let’s say we’re going to bust out of this hellhole tonight, no matter what!”
“Tonight? How are we going to do that?” I demanded.
My sister smacked her hand against the dirt. “We’re just going to break out! The bars on our cell are about rusted through. We’ll break them! Or we’ll knock our guard out, steal his keys!”
I gritted my teeth. This was sounding a whole lot like Ridiculous Rebecca, Queen of Fantasyland.
“It’s not that easy,” I said tightly. “There are other guards, other doors, alarms. And clearly we have no idea of how the hell to get out of here!” I pointed to the rubbed-out failure of a map.
Becca’s eyes narrowed. “Okay, Careful Cassie. How do you think we should do it? Or should we just stay in here like good kids until they kill us?”
“Of course not!” I snapped. “We need to get out of here as soon as possible, but—” A sudden burst of static made me wince as the loudspeakers in the yard crackled to life.
“‘The best-laid plans of mice and men…’” said Strepp, and as the words sank in I looked at Becca and Nate in surprise.
“Is the yard bugged?” Nate asked in an almost silent whisper. Eyes wide and heart starting to pound, I raised my shoulders in a “don’t know” gesture.
“Prisoners!” said Strepp. “Report to the ring!”
“Man!” said the Kid as we started to move toward the doors like a herd of milkers at sundown. “We better not be seein’ some other kid get offed. I hate this shit.”
“Me, too,” I said fervently as we passed beneath the hated PHYSICAL HEALTH LEADS TO MENTAL HEALTH AT THE UNITED! sign. “I do indeed hate this shit.”
Usually I paid attention to faces, low conversations, the discomfort of my jumpsuit, my hunger. This time I scanned every ceiling, every door, every crack everywhere, searching for a hint of the tunnel’s location.
At the door to the ring, a guard stepped forward and grabbed Nate’s arm.
“You!” he said. “Come with me!”
I grabbed at his jumpsuit, but he was hauled away. Nate gave me a last, freaked-out look, but I was helpless as he was dragged to the edge of the ring.
Becca and I stared at each other in horror.
“What’s happenin’?” the Kid demanded. “They gonna off ’im?”
“No,” I said in dismay as we filed into a row of the bleachers. “They’re going to make him fight.”
80
“HE CAN TAKE CARE OF hisself,” the Kid said confidently.
I let out a deep breath. “Not like this.” Nate hadn’t had time to be trained. He’d never seen a fight, to pick up tricks and moves. I remembered how bad my fight had been, and what Becca had told me of her first fight, and felt kind of sick.
I met Becca’s eyes over the Kid’s head. “Will it be better or worse if it’s Tim?” I asked her, and she shook her head, looking upset.
They clapped armor on Nate; he’d chosen not to wear his jumpsuit, which was good. His farmer’s tan showed beneath the armor, his arms and legs browned by the sun, and the rest of him milk-white.
It was all so surreal, so unbelievable. I closed my eyes, pointlessly praying that I could open them and it would be 6:00 a.m. and I would hear the hiss of the coffeemaker brewing downstairs. But when I opened them, Nate was standing on the canvas floor of the ring and someone I’d never seen before was climbing through the ropes.
He was huge. He wasn’t a kid—he must be one of the grown-up guards. Nate was tall; his opponent was at least six eight. Nate wasn’t skinny; he had the muscles of a kid from a farming cell, despite his father’s job—but this guy outweighed him by at least sixty pounds.
“Why would they do this?” I whispered to Becca. “Why not just let him fight another prisoner?”
Her eyes were full of sympathy, and she reached behind the Kid to pat my shoulder.
“Oh, no,” the Kid murmured, his black eyes wide. He reached up and covered his face with his hands, not wanting to watch.
“Kid?” I murmured unhappily. “You should watch. And learn. You’ll need to know how to win when it’s your turn to fight.”
Slowly the Kid uncovered his eyes. He was such a tough little guy, but prison was starting to break him down in a way that even a hard life in a mining cell hadn’t. Becca was right. We needed to leave—tonight.
Nate’s face was pale beneath the bright lights. He clenched his jaw as the huge guy started to circle him.
Suddenly Nate shot forward with a harsh cry of rage and walloped the guy in the jaw. If it had been anyone else, they’d have been out cold. As it was, the giant staggered but rallied immediately. He was enormous and powerful, but Nate was nimbler. The big guy had a longer reach, but Nate was faster.