“Then, tomorrow morning,” she said, “we’ll work all this out.”
The cops passed me off to her like I was a piece of lost luggage. Alicia sat beside me in the back of a squad car as a deputy drove us to Short Term 8. When we got there, Alicia’s coworker Martin—a big black man with the widest, whitest smile I’ve ever seen—took over. He took me to a bathroom and waited outside while Alicia went to get me something to change into. I washed the dirt from my face, frowned at the pale stubble that was reappearing on my jawline, and rummaged through the cabinets to see what was inside. I found a half a tube of toothpaste and rubbed some across my teeth with a finger. Martin knocked on the door and handed me a T-shirt and pair of sweatpants that smelled like mothballs and laundry detergent. After I’d changed, he showed me to an empty bed in a room where two other boys were already sleeping.
“You need anything?” he asked. I noted the way he curled his shoulders in, trying to minimize his physical presence. He was that kid everyone assumed was a bully because of his size but would never hurt a fly. Made sense he’d ended up in this line of work.
I shook my head and climbed into the bed. The sheets were worn thin from a thousand washings, but they were cool and soft against my skin. A much better bed than the pavement or some shitty adult homeless shelter, and as long as I kept my mouth shut, I could probably keep it for a couple of weeks.
? ? ?
My eyes flew open. I’d been dreaming about a small, dark space, and then someone was standing above me, their hand on my arm. Before my eyes had even focused enough to make the person out, I had hit their arm away and scrambled back until I hit a wall.
“Whoa, sorry!” A skinny black boy stood beside my bed, rubbing his arm. He shoved his glasses farther up his nose with one knuckle. “I just wanted to tell you breakfast is ready.”
I felt a little bad—I could tell from the sting in my hand how hard I’d hit him—but I couldn’t apologize. And, anyway, he shouldn’t have touched me while I was sleeping.
“Hey, what’s your name, man?” the other kid in the room asked. He had a shaved head and an amateurish tattoo on the side of his neck that looked like it was made with a safety pin and ink in juvie. His eyes were full of evaluation as he looked me up and down, trying to get the size of me. I met his gaze coolly.
“You deaf or something?” he said.
“Hey, guys!” Alicia appeared in the doorway with my clothes, clean and folded, in her hands. “Head on to the dining room, okay? Martin made pancakes.”
Both boys gave me wary looks before leaving the room. Alicia closed the door behind them and sat on the bed closest to me, knitting her fingers together in front of her.
“Hey,” she said. “How you feeling this morning?”
I shrugged.
“Ready to talk?”
I shook my head.
“That’s okay—you don’t have to,” she said. “But can you tell me your name, at least? We’ve got a lot of boys around here, so ‘hey you’ isn’t very effective.”
In response, I swallowed and looked down at the bedspread, worrying it between my fingers.
“Okay, no problem,” she said, “but we’ve got to call you something. We picked you up at the Collingwood Police Station, so how about we call you Collin for now? That’s a pretty good name.”
I shrugged again.
“Okay, I’ll take that as a yes.” She smiled and went to put a hand on my shoulder but wisely reconsidered. Instead, she handed me my clothes. “Get dressed, and then we’ll go get some breakfast. You can meet the other guys.”
Alicia waited outside while I changed into my old jeans, tee, and hoodie, and then she showed me to the dining room at the other end of the building. The room was overflowing with boys and noise and the ambient heat of so many bodies packed in such a small space, and I could feel her watching me, waiting to see if I’d freak out. I probably should have faked it to keep up my traumatized act, go hide myself in the bedroom and refuse to come out, but dammit, I was hungry.
Alicia sat, and I sank into the empty seat beside her. She handed me a platter of pancakes, and I forked three onto my plate while I felt eyes around the table sliding in my direction.
“Guys, this is Collin,” Alicia said. “He’s going to be staying with us for a while. He’s a little on the quiet side, so don’t bug him, okay?”
The other boys, a dozen or so, reacted in a variety of ways. A couple said hi, a couple grunted, a couple didn’t respond at all. After that everyone went back to their pancakes, and that was all it took for me to become one of them.
? ? ?
When I still wouldn’t talk on my third day at Short Term 8—wouldn’t tell the staff or police who I was or where I’d come from so they could return me there—they took me to a government psychologist. I pulled out all the stops for her. The night before the appointment I bit my nails until they bled, because I knew she would notice. I cowered in my chair when she talked to me and rocked back and forth ever so slightly when she started to push. She told them to give me time, that I would open up when I was ready. Just like I knew she would.
I figured she’d bought me at least a week.
“Jason! Tucker!” Martin called from the hallway. This is how we were awoken most mornings. The only thing my two roommates had in common was they hated getting out of bed. “I said, get up!”
Jason moaned, and Tucker rolled over, jamming his pillow over his head.
“What about Collin?” Jason said. He pushed himself into a sitting position and groped for his glasses on the bedside table. “Doesn’t he have to get up?”
“Nope!”
“That’s not fair!”
“I know. Life’s a bitch.” Martin appeared in the open doorway brandishing a water pistol. “Now wake up!”
He shot streams of water at both of the boys. Tucker told him to go fuck himself, and Jason sputtered and protested that he was already up.
“Don’t make me get the hose,” Martin said. “Be in the dining room in five. Collin, come down whenever you’re ready.”
“What the fuck makes him so special?” Tucker demanded, but Martin was already gone. I smiled, rolled over, and went back to sleep.
I liked it at Short Term 8. Three square meals, a bed of my own, and enough noise from fourteen other boys to drown out the voices in my head. Besides Jason, who was a sweet kid who brought me Oreos whenever he raided the pantry behind the staff’s back, and Tucker, who was an asshole, the other boys mostly ignored me. If you don’t speak for long enough, people eventually stop seeing you as an oddity and start seeing you as a piece of furniture, which suited me just fine. I liked to blend in to the chaos they caused until I as good as disappeared. Sometimes Alicia or one of the day staff would remember I existed when the others gave them a break and would take me aside for a kind word and a reassuring hand on the shoulder, which was all I needed.