And beyond those kids doing jumping jacks, a big American flag hung half-mast.
“You,” Laurence told his parents, “have got to be kidding.”
They mumbled that he had left them no choice, with his disruptive behavior, and he was just going to try out this school for a few days to see if Coldwater could be an option for him for high school — instead of that science school, where he would only learn more ways to be destructive.
What the hell had Mr. Rose told them, that he was building a bomb?
Laurence’s brain was as hot and oxygen poor as the inside of this car. He felt an acute pain, like the skin of his life breaking as his future was ripped away. His parents were already walking up the dirt path to the cement bunker that said “COMMANDANT” without waiting for him to follow. He ran after them, shouting that they couldn’t do this, and he already had a fucking school lined up, goddamn it.
“The new and improved Coldwater Academy is all about helping the individual reach his full potential,” said Commandant Michael Peterbitter, who sat rigidly behind a fake wood desk with a Windows XP computer on one corner. Laurence couldn’t help snorting. “We see discipline as a means, not an end,” said Peterbitter, who had a lopsided handlebar mustache and a sunburnt nose under his buzz cut. “We believe in the age-old ideal of a sound mind in a healthy body. After a semester here, I bet you’d hardly recognize Larry.”
Blah blah, physical fitness, learning to strip a rifle in under two minutes, self-esteem, blah. Finally, Peterbitter asked if anyone had any questions.
“Just one,” Laurence said. “Who died?”
“That’s a sensitive matter, and we deeply regret—”
“Because that’s what the flag at half-mast means, right? How many kids has your awesome school killed, anyway?”
“Some people don’t take to the rigorous and enriching course of study we offer here.” Peterbitter put on a sober expression, but also glared at Laurence. “When offered a choice between flourishing in a high-powered environment and pointless self-destruction, some people will always choose to self-destruct.”
“We’re leaving now.” Laurence’s mother touched his arm.
“Great,” Laurence said. “I’m ready.”
But they meant a noninclusive “we.” Not for the first time, Laurence thought this was one of the annoyingly incommunicative features in the English language. Much like the inability to distinguish between “x-or” and “and/or,” the lack of delineation between “x-we” and “in-we” was a conspiracy of obfuscation, designed to create awkwardness and exacerbate peer pressure — because people tried to include you in their “we” without your consent, or you thought you were included and then the rug got pulled out from under you. Laurence dwelled on this linguistic injustice as he watched his parents walk back to their car, across the crunchy parking lot, without him.
Peterbitter had a bored smirk. “So, you go by Larry?”
Laurence was acutely aware that too many ginormous bruisers were staring at him already, from the front green with the teetering football goal. “No, I fucking don’t, I don’t go by Larry.”
“That’s right. As of right now, your name is B2725Q, but people will mostly call you Dirt. You don’t earn the right to be called Larry until you reach Level One, and you are currently at Level Zero.” Peterbitter scrutinized the trainees, who were doing push-ups, and waved at one of their instructors, who came jogging over. Peterbitter introduced Dirt to Dickers, one of the Seniors and one of his trusted lieutenants.
“C’mon, Dirt,” Dickers said. “I’ll find you a bunk. Afternoon Colors in an hour.” He had a chunky head covered with pale red fuzz and looked way older than eighteen.
As they walked to the “barracks,” Laurence noticed that one classroom building had boarded-up windows and others had cracks in their walls. Kids in camo fatigues jogged past in no particular formation, and there was a.50-caliber gun lying half-assembled behind a slanty shed. He wouldn’t trust this military organization to defend a candy bar. The only new thing seemed to be a scrim of barbed wire draped over the electric fence around the outside of the campus.
“Yeah, we had some runners,” Dickers said, following Laurence’s gaze toward the perimeter. “The school almost got shut down by the state last summer, but that was before the new management.”
Dickers started telling Laurence that once you reached Level Three, life was pretty sweet: You got an hour of unsupervised computer time per day, and the school had just gotten Commando Squad (a game Laurence had beaten in a single day, two years ago.) At Level Four, officer level, you sometimes got to watch movies in Peterbitter’s apartment after lights-out, but that was a secret that Dickers absolutely had not told Laurence. Most of all, you did not want to get bumped down to Level Minus-One, because Dickers could not swear that they had gotten rid of all the MRSA in the Isolation Hole. Again, Dickers had not told Laurence about the MRSA, any more than he’d told him about the action movies (and microwave popcorn and pizza, delivered from outside) for Level Fours. Laurence said Dickers’s secrets would die with Laurence, which was probably true.
“This here’s Dirt,” Dickers told the dozen or so massive teenagers in various stages of getting changed from athletic gear, toweling off, and changing into fatigues, inside a small white-brick dorm room. “He’s stayin’ here a few days, see how he takes to it. He needs a bunk and some gear. Show him a good time, girls.” Then Dickers was gone.
Laurence drew himself up, kept his shoulders squared. “Hi. I’m Dirt, apparently. It’s not the worst thing I’ve been called this week. So, where am I supposed to sleep? He said you had a spare bunk here?”
The room was maybe three times the size of Laurence’s bedroom at home and had bunks crammed so tight it was like how Laurence imagined a submarine. He couldn’t breathe this methane-nitrogen atmosphere, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to sleep in here. His head spun.
“Nope.” One dude with a DIY chest tattoo and a nose that had been broken multiple times rolled out of his bunk. He towered over Laurence. “No spare bunk here. You’re Dirt? You sleep on the floor.” He gestured at the dark far corner, which had a fresh spiderweb. Laurence looked for a bunk that was unoccupied, but he couldn’t see past the ring of massive kids on all sides.
The part of Laurence’s brain that stood back and analyzed shit told him he was being hazed. This was part of the “breaking you down” program, and also normal social dynamics. Don’t let them get to you, he told himself.
But what came out of Laurence’s mouth was: “What about the kid who just died? Maybe I can have his bunk.”
Probably the wrong thing to say.
“No way dude,” said someone farther back in the room, in a rumble like a forty-year-old truck driver. “You did not just disrespect Murph. You did not just piss on the memory of our fallen comrade. Tell me I didn’t hear that.”
“Now you’ve done it,” said the noseless kid. “Now you’ve done it.”
“I don’t give a shit about your stupid friend,” Laurence shouted as they lifted him over their heads so he could see the stains on the top-bunk mattresses and the deep fissures in the load-bearing beams. “This place got him, but it won’t get me. You hear me? I’m getting out of here.”
His voice cracked. Fluorescent lighting tubes rushed toward his face until he braced himself for a faceful of glass, and then he was spinning as cheers erupted around him. He gave in to panic at last, as the candy shell of anger split open, and let out a hoarse scream as he was cast, headfirst, into space.