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  “You’re the bottom,” he said.

  There were more wolf whistles, but Everett was already moving on, assigning the next cell to the next prisoner.

  “Zebra,” the guy said, and John guessed that was his name.

  “John.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  Zebra smiled. His teeth were black and white, striped like a zebra. “You like it?” he said, pointing to his teeth. “We can do yours that way, too. You want?”

  John shook his head. “My mom would kill me.”

  Zebra laughed; a shocking sound in the concrete building. “Go on and make your bed, Johnny. You like being called Johnny?” he asked. “That what your mommy calls you?”

  “Not really,” John said. Not since he was a baby, anyway.

  “You’ll be all right in here, Johnny,” he said, reaching out and ruffling John’s hair so hard that John had to tilt to the side.

  Zebra gave a private chuckle. “I’ll take care of you, boy.”

  And he did.

  After lights-out, every night like clockwork Zebra was down on the bottom bunk, pressing John’s face into the pillow, raping him so hard that the next day blood came out when he sat on the toilet. Crying did not stop him. Screaming only made him ram harder. By the end of the first week, John could barely stand.

  Zebra was a predator. Everybody in the prison from the warden to the guards to the guys who came in to take off the trash knew that. He kept John to himself for that first week, then he started trading him out to the other men for cigarettes and contraband. Three weeks later, John was in the prison hospital, his asshole shredded, his eyes swollen shut from crying.

  This was the first of two visits Richard Shelley made to visit his son in prison.

  He was led back to the hospital by the guard named Everett, whom John hadn’t seen since his first day in lockup.

  “Here he is,” Everett told Richard, stepping back against the wall to give the man some space. “You got ten minutes.”

  Richard stood at the foot of John’s bed. He just stared, for a long time not saying anything.

  John stared back, feeling relieved and ashamed at the same time. He wanted to reach out to his dad, to tell him he loved him and that he was sorry for all he had done and that Richard was right, John was worthless. He didn’t deserve anything his dad could offer but he wanted it, he needed it so bad that his heart felt like it was on fire.

  Richard spoke with some effort. “Are you in pain?”

  John could only nod.

  “Good,” his father said, sounding as if some justice had been done. “Now you know how Mary Alice felt.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  OCTOBER 25, 2005

  John didn’t want to think about his first night in prison, but it kept coming back to him like a waking nightmare. Someone walked behind him at work and he would flinch. A loud noise from the street sent his heart into his throat. He would bend over to get the sponge out of the bucket, put some shine on the wheels of a truck or a sedan, and it would flood into his brain.

  After Zebra had passed him around, John had spent a full month in the hospital wing at Coastal, learning how to shit again. When he got out, he found that he’d been transferred into the protective ward with all the serious sex offenders. Maybe they had thought Ben Carver would have a field day with John, finish the work that Zebra had started, but the older man had taken one look at the scrawny sixteen-year-old boy and said with great disappointment, “A brunette! I asked for a blonde!”

  John didn’t know who was responsible for transferring him into protective custody, but even if he did, John wouldn’t know how to thank him. Sometimes he thought it was Everett, the guard, but then sometimes he would be lying in his bunk at night and let his mind play out this fantasy story where it was his dad who had rescued him. Richard stormed into the warden’s office. Richard wrote an angry letter to his state senator. Richard demanded fair treatment for his son.

  John laughed at his foolish boyhood dreams as he slid his card into the time clock, waiting for the loud chu-chunk as he signed himself out of the car wash for the day. The weather had been good for several weeks, and holiday shoppers had been out getting their cars washed. John hadn’t had time to go to Ben’s mother’s house and pick up the car until yesterday afternoon. He had been working on his learner’s permit when Mary Alice had died, but that was a long time ago and he had sweated like a whore in church at the prospect of getting behind the wheel. If he got caught in the car, Martha Lam would throw his ass back in jail. Of course, if he didn’t use the car, he might end up back there anyway.

  Over the telephone, Ben’s elderly mother had been open and friendly, “pleased to talk to a friend of Ben’s.” When asked, she assured him that the insurance was paid on the car. Mrs. Carver had further explained to John that her Mr. Propson was taking her to a church social over in Warm Springs on Sunday, but could he please remember to return the car with a full tank of gas. John had agreed to everything, but she had kept him on the phone for another fifteen minutes to tell him about her sciatica. Both sets of John’s grandparents had died while he was in prison, none of them ever bothering to visit. He had listened intently to her woes, making the right noises at the right times until the pedophile from across the hallway had glared at him and demanded to use the phone.

  John had found the dark blue Ford Fairlane parked in the carport as promised. The key was tucked into the visor along with the title and insurance card. What mattered to John most at that moment was that it cranked on the first try. He put the car in gear and rolled into the street, his foot stuttering between the gas and the brake as he practiced up and down the one-lane road running outside Mrs. Carver’s house. Praise Jesus it wasn’t a manual transmission or he would have left the car where he found it. John had spent most of the afternoon figuring out how to drive the Fairlane and by the time he pulled out onto the two-lane highway his hands were hurting from clutching the wheel.

  He could do it, he kept saying, teeth gritted as he drove down I-20 back toward Atlanta. All he needed to do was make sure he looked like he knew what he was doing. Not too slow, not too fast, confidence high, arm out the window. That’s all the cops ever looked for: somebody who looked guilty. Their little cop radar went up and they could feel indecision coming off you like a pulse.

  John had told himself that he was getting in some more practice when he got into the Fairlane around midnight last night. He couldn’t fool himself for long when the car ended up parked across the street from the liquor store on Cheshire Bridge Road. He waited for thirty minutes, but Robin obviously wasn’t working. Driving back home, he figured if he’d had a tail it would’ve been hanging between his legs.

  Since gas was another luxury he couldn’t afford, John left the car wash on foot, walking up Piedmont, crossing the intersection to Cheshire Bridge. He pretended he was going for a stroll at first, but then decided self-delusion was as stupid as what he had planned for later that night. Ben had finally come through. John had gotten two postcards in the mail this week—the only mail he’d ever gotten at the boardinghouse. The first one was postmarked in Alabama and listed a series of numbers: 185430032. The second card was from Florida and read, On our way to Piney Grove. See you when we get back!!!

  John hated puzzles, but he knew enough to go to the library and sit down with the atlas again. After a couple of hours of staring aimlessly out the window, he got it. 30032 was the zip code for Avondale Estates. 1854 Piney Grove Circle bordered Memorial Drive on the edge of Decatur.

  “Hey, baby!”

  The hookers were out at the liquor store, including the older woman John had rescued at the car wash. He should probably learn her name, but he knew it would only make him sad if he did. Giving her a name meant she had a family somewhere. She had been a kid at some point, gone to school, had hopes and dreams. And now … nothing.

  One of the women asked, “You wanna date?”

  He shook his head, k
eeping his distance. “I’m looking for Robin.”

  “She’s at the theater,” the hooker said, jerking her chin toward the road. “Star Wars is playing. She figures the last time any’a them guys saw a pussy was when they was being born out of one.”

  The girls laughed good-naturedly at the joke.

  “Thanks,” John said, tossing them a wave before they could offer him more of their wares.

  The theater was a pretty good distance from the liquor store, but John had time. He let himself concentrate on breathing the air, even the exhaust from the cars. You couldn’t do this in prison. You had to find other ways to get lung cancer.

  His hamstrings were aching by the time he reached the movie theater. Star Wars. He had seen that when he was a kid, probably six or seven times. Every weekend his mother had driven him and his friends to the theater, dropping them off and coming back a few hours later. This was before the drugs, before John was cool. He had loved that movie, relished the escape.

  In prison, Ben had been in charge of everything they did and even as he grew older, John had kept it that way because it was easy. The bad part was that all of John’s cultural knowledge was that of a man over thirty years his senior. He didn’t know many movies or television shows from the last two decades. No one on his wing visited the main hall on movie night because they weren’t stupid enough to mix with the general population. Doris Day, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin—these were the singers always playing on the small transistor radio Emily had brought John his first Christmas inside. Music had been so important to him as a kid, the sound track to his disaffected life. Now, he couldn’t have named a current popular song if someone had put a gun to his head.

  John had already convinced himself that Robin wouldn’t be at the theater so he was surprised when he nearly bumped into her turning the corner.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, looking pleased, he thought, then nervous.

  “The girls told me you were here,” he explained. He could see a line of young men snaking around the building. “Busy night?”

  “Nah.” She waved it off. “Stupid fuckers want to see the movie first. I guess I’ll come back later.”

  “How long’s the movie?”

  “Jesus, I don’t know.” She started walking back toward the liquor store and he followed her. She turned around, demanding, “What are you doing?”

  “I thought I’d walk you back.”

  “Lookit,” she said. “This ain’t no Pretty Woman.” She added, “And you sure as shit ain’t Richard Gere.”

  John had no idea what she was talking about. The only Richard Gere movie they’d watched in prison was Sommersby, and that was only because it had a kid in it.

  She clarified, “We’re not going to fall in love and get married and have babies, okay?”

  John hadn’t thought about it, but maybe that had been his plan.

  He told her, “I just wanted to let you know that I’m not going to see you anymore.”

  “You’ve only seen me once, you stupid fuck.”

  “I know,” he said. When she started to walk away again, he followed her. “Please stop,” he said. “Listen to me.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “All right. Go.”

  “I’ve just …” God, now that she was listening, he didn’t know what to say. “I’ve been thinking about you,” he said. “Not in a sexual way.” His face must have shown otherwise because she rolled her eyes. “Okay, maybe sex,” he admitted.

  “Unless you’re here to pay me for your happy junior-jerk, I gotta get back to my drag.”

  “It’s not like that,” he said. “Please.”

  She started walking again and John got in front of her, walking backward because he knew she wouldn’t stop.

  “I’m mixed up in something,” he said.

  “Color me shocked.”

  “I was in prison.”

  “Am I supposed to be surprised?”

  “Please,” John said. He stopped walking and she did, too. “I don’t want to be mixed up in this, but I am. I have to do something about it. I don’t want to go back to prison.”

  “Somebody blackmailing you?”

  He thought about it. “Maybe,” he said. “I don’t know.”

  “Go to the cops.”

  He knew she wasn’t being serious. “I just wanted to see you again, to let you know that I couldn’t see you anymore. After this, I mean.” He paused, trying to make sense. “I don’t want you mixed up in it, is what I’m saying. This guy, he’s bad. He’s really bad, and I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “You’re scaring me here,” she said, her bored tone belying the statement. “Who’s trying to hurt me?”

  “Nobody,” John said. “He doesn’t even know you exist.” He rubbed his face with his hands, letting out something like a groan. “This doesn’t mean anything to you,” he said. “I’m sorry I bothered you with this. I just wanted to see you one last time.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of what you told me about your first kiss. I just …” He tried a smile. “I was a real loser in school. Girls didn’t really want to have anything to do with me.”

  “I got a news flash, junior. They still don’t.” Her words were sharp but her tone told him she was teasing.

  He said, “I went to jail real early. I was up for twenty years.”

  “Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?”

  He shook his head. He had stopped expecting people to feel sorry for him a long time ago. “I want to thank you for telling me that story about Stewie and all. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and it’s a really nice story.”

  She chewed her bottom lip, her eyes searching his. “All right. You told me.”

  “And I …” His voice trailed off. He’d rehearsed this a hundred times at work, but now nothing was coming to him.

  “You what?” she prompted. “You wanna fuck me?”

  “Yeah.” He couldn’t lie. “Yeah, I really do.”

  “Well, shit, you could’ve saved me some fucking time just saying that to begin with.” She started back up the road, saying, “It’s ten for the room, thirty for a half-and-half. No Greek, no hitting or I’ll rip your fucking cock off.”

  She was about ten feet away before she realized he wasn’t following her. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  “Thank you,” he repeated. Then, “Good-bye.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “Look at me,” his mother had said, leaning over the table in the visitors’ room. It was her first time seeing him since he’d gotten to Coastal, and neither one of them said anything about Zebra, the hospital, the fact that John was having to sit on an inflatable cushion just to talk to her.

  “You will not waste away in here,” she told him. “You will do something with your life.”

  He sat there crying, big tears rolling down his cheeks, his chest shaking as he tried to keep in the sobs.

  “You aren’t a boy anymore, John. You are a strong man. You will survive this. You will get out of here eventually.”

  Emily still had hope for the appeals. She believed in the justice system, didn’t think the founding fathers had designed this sort of treatment for a sixteen-year-old boy.

  “I got you these,” she said, indicating the textbooks she’d brought in with her. Math and science, his two favorite subjects back when he actually enjoyed school.

  She told him, “You can still get your GED.”

  John stared blankly. He was wearing a diaper to catch the pus coming out of his ass and his mother was worried about him graduating from high school.

  She said, “You’ll need it to get into college when you get out.”

  Education. Emily had always insisted that education was the only thing that truly enriched your life. As far back as he could remember, his mother had always had a book she was reading, some article she’d clipped from the paper or a magazine that she found interesting and wanted to remember.

  “Are you listeni
ng to me, Jonathan?”

  He couldn’t even nod.

  “You’ll get your GED, and then you’ll go to college, okay?” She took his hand in hers. His wrists were still bruised where the men had held him down. One of the guards stepped forward, but didn’t break them apart.

  “You will not give up in here,” she told John, her grip tight, as if she could force some of her strength into him, take the pain away and carry it herself. She had always said that she would rather suffer herself than see her children hurt, and John saw for the first time that it was true. If Emily could, she would trade places with him right now. And he would let her.

  “Do you understand me, Jonathan? You will not give up in here.”

  He hadn’t spoken to anyone in four and a half weeks. The taste of his own shit and other men’s come was still stuck to the back of his throat like molasses. He was scared to open his mouth, scared his mother would smell it on him and know what he had done.

  “Tell me, John,” she had said. “Tell me you will do this for me.”

  His lips were stuck together, chapped, bleeding. He kept his teeth clamped tight, stared at his hands. “Yes.”

  Two weeks later, she asked him if he had been studying. He lied to her, said he had. John was celled up with Ben by then, not sleeping at night because he was terrified the older man was biding his time, playing out some game as he waited for the right moment to make his move.

  “Sweetheart,” Ben had finally said. “You flatter yourself if you think you’re my type.”

  In retrospect, John was his type: young, dark hair, slim build, straight. Ben had never crossed that line, though, and there were only two times that John had seen him truly angry. The most recent was when the planes had been crashed into the Pentagon and World Trade towers. For days after, Ben had been too livid to speak. The first time he showed his anger was years before, when he had caught John with drugs.

  “You will not do this, boy,” Ben had ordered, his hand gripped so tightly around John’s wrist that the bones felt ready to break. “You hear me?”