He made his way over to the grinding table with his soon-to-be-very-useful tools hidden in the toolbox. He helped Zac unpack his kit, keeping half an eye on Blainey. The teacher had his open-mouthed-snore-thing going on. Pretty soon he’d have a stream of spit connecting his lip to his shirt collar.
Luke quickly shaped his rake, sparks flaring briefly from the screaming hot metal as he pressed it against the grinder.
The reshaping took just a couple of minutes. He studied his new tool, still hot from the grinder. He felt Zac watching him and gave him a quick grin before slipping the rake into his sock, next to the nail.
He straightened, studied Blainey: dead flesh, or as good as, anyway. He turned to Zac, who had deftly begun the first stage of his toolbox, his beetle-black hair a glossy hardhat.
‘You get used to it. The neglect, I mean. You know, I could be here welding your thumb to your ankle, and Blainey would snooze on regardless. What happens is that they send us all the teachers who have been kicked out of the education system. But you look like you’ve done this before, anyway.’
‘Well, it’s not that hard to read instructions,’ said Zac.
‘It is for ninety per cent of the kids in here,’ said Luke. ‘Most of them can’t read the exit sign over there.’
Zac continued to work with the tin in front of him.
‘But doesn’t everyone steal all this stuff?’ he said after a moment. ‘I mean, what with Blainey sleeping?’
‘We get searched,’ said Luke. ‘Well, we’re supposed to. He wakes up when the bell goes and does a basic search. But this is why I love Blainey. He’s never very dedicated at doing anything, if you know what I mean.’
Zac nodded.
Luke watched him, and decided to try his special guessing game – figuring people out. Understanding why people did things had kept him alive more than once. Let’s see, what would little Zac Nguyen be locked up in here for? Stealing a car? Hmm, maybe.
‘How long is your sentence, Zac?’ he asked.
Zac kept his eyes on his work. ‘That’s usually the second question people ask in here. Aren’t you supposed to ask me what I’m in for?’
‘Aren’t you innocent anyway? Everyone else in here seems to be.’
‘Yeah, right.’ Zac laughed. ‘Well, I got twelve months.’
Luke whistled. Okay, all right, so it’s either a repeat offence or maybe he screwed up a suspended committal – he got charged again when he was on a bond for something else.
‘Ever been in before?’ he asked.
‘Nope.’
Something pretty serious, then.
‘How many times had you been to court before this one?’ he asked.
‘Never,’ said Zac.
So… maybe he stole a car and someone got hurt?
‘Did you steal a car and kill someone?’ said Luke.
‘Ah… No. Not lately.’ Zac stared at him. ‘Why don’t you just ask me what I’m in for?’
‘What are you in for?’
‘Assault.’
‘Right. That makes sense. With the whole ninja thing you did last night. Thanks for doing that, by the way.’
‘I hate bullies.’
‘Well, you’re gonna love it in here then, Nguyen,’ said Luke, beginning to pack up. ‘Because that’s exactly how the screws control us. They’ve got their own little private army. They’re the generals, Toad and his buddies are the soldiers, and we’re the enemy. Oh, and you do know that Taylor, Toad and Holt are now gonna make it their life’s mission to make you sorry you were born?’
Zac shrugged.
‘Come on,’ Luke said. ‘We gotta get off this machine. Watson’s waiting for his turn.’
Back at their bench, Luke shaped a handle for Zac’s toolbox using a spare piece of tin. ‘That must have been a pretty bad assault,’ he said, positioning the handle. He knew that first-offence assault charges usually didn’t involve a custodial sentence, let alone twelve months.
Zac’s mouth turned down a little. ‘He was a bad guy. I taught him a lesson.’
‘You must have done, to get twelve months.’
‘He had people around him with a lot of money and a good lawyer, that’s all.’
‘So what did you do to him?’
Luke always asked for the war stories. It was worth a shot to see whether something could shock him, make his heart race a little like he heard people talk about. It hadn’t happened yet. But Nguyen seemed different to everyone else.
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ said Zac, turning to face him. Luke was only average height, but Zac had to tilt his head back to eyeball him. ‘I’m here,’ he said. ‘Who cares how I got here?’
‘All right, all right. Don’t get all emotional, Princess.’
‘Why are you in here?’ said Zac. ‘Why don’t you tell me something about yourself for once?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ said Luke.
He laughed when he saw Zac’s face. This guy has anger issues. I like him. I’d like to have some anger issues. They sound like fun.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘We’ll bond later. The bell’s about to go.’
In the dining hall, Luke took a seat in the Section Six area. He thought that maybe he was hungry now, but he wasn’t sure how well he was going to be able to chew with his mouth hurting this bad. He prodded gingerly at his jaw. He had a terrible headache radiating right from that spot.
A wrapped sandwich and an apple sat on his plate; two big plastic jugs of water waited in the middle of the table. Mmm, yum. Not.
Although they weren’t allowed to begin eating until instructed, Luke flipped the sandwich over to see what their lunch would be today.
Please don’t be tuna, please don’t be tuna, he told the sandwich. The smell gave it away. Tuna. He took a closer look. Tuna and mayonnaise. Ick. The bread was sodden; he could feel it limp and oozing through the clingwrap. Despite his still-healing lip, he smiled widely: Toad was on permanent kitchen duty and would be watching for his reaction. If he grimaced, he’d be eating tuna every day until he got out of here.
It was moments like these that he hated Zecko Sevic the most. He wouldn’t be in here if it wasn’t for him.
He’d dealt just fine with the welfare department until Zecko had been hired and appointed his case manager. For his first twelve years, Welfare didn’t make much of a fuss of Luke at all. And that had been fine by him. The only time they made contact was when he’d stuffed up another foster care arrangement. They’d give him a new case manager who would go about doing their best to find him another family. And that was that. Until case manager Zecko Sevic came on the scene. After Dick and Frances.
Although Luke had made certain that Dick knew he’d done the fiery redecoration of their kitchen, he’d also ensured that no one could actually prove it, so nobody came right out and accused him. But Zecko seemed to have it sussed and he made it his mission to take Luke under his wing. Maybe that could have been a good thing for a kid in the welfare system who actually wanted an adult to help them. But it wasn’t the fact that Luke didn’t need or want any help that made Zecko the biggest pain in the butt. The problem with Zecko was that every time he took Luke ‘under his wing’, Luke came close to being taken off the welfare books. Permanently. As in dead.
Like the time Zecko had arranged for him to clean the second-floor windows at the rec centre. And then pushed the scaffolding out from under him. Luke had managed to grab hold of a ledge at the last minute, yelling and shouting until help arrived; Zecko was well gone by then.
And then there was that weekend when Zecko arranged a camping trip for twenty under-privileged kids. Zecko had been in a great mood on the bus all the way to the river campsite. He’d been smiling fit to burst when he taught them all to make damper. And when he got a rifle out of the back of the bus and told them he was going to teach them all to shoot, he’d been positively beaming. Luke dodged two stray bullets that weekend and slept under the bus with one eye open.