George smiled. “An extremely sophisticated return. Right up there with bite my wiener.”
“Sometimes I can’t wait for you to go to Back Half,” Iris said. “God will probably strike me dead for that, but—”
“Wait,” Luke said. “Just wait. Start from the beginning.”
“This is the beginning, chum,” said a voice from behind them. “Unfortunately, it’s also probably the end.”
2
Luke guessed the newcomer’s age as sixteen, but later found out he was two years high. Nicky Wilholm was tall and blue-eyed, with a head of unkempt hair that was blacker than black and cried out for a double dose of shampoo. He was wearing a wrinkled button-up shirt over a pair of wrinkled shorts, his white athletic socks were at half-mast, and his sneakers were dirty. Luke remembered Maureen saying he was like Pigpen in the Peanuts comic strips.
The others were looking at him with wary respect, and Luke instantly got that. Kalisha, Iris, and George were no more happy to be here than Luke was himself, but they were trying to keep it positive; except for the moment when Iris had wavered, they gave off a slightly goofy making-the-best-of-it vibe. That wasn’t the case with this guy. Nicky didn’t look angry now, but it was clear he had been in the not-too-distant past. There was a healing cut on his swollen lower lip, the fading remains of a black eye, and a fresh bruise on one cheek.
A brawler, then. Luke had seen a few in his time, there were even a couple at the Broderick School. He and Rolf steered clear of them, but if this place was the prison Luke was beginning to suspect it was, there would be no way to steer clear of Nicky Wilholm. But the other three didn’t seem to be afraid of him, and that was a good sign. Nicky might be pissed off at whatever purpose lay behind that bland Institute name, but with his mates he just seemed intense. Focused. Still, those marks on his face suggested unpleasant possibilities, especially if he wasn’t a brawler by nature. Suppose they had been put there by an adult? A schoolteacher doing something like that, not just at the Brod but almost anywhere, would get canned, probably sued, and maybe arrested.
He thought of Kalisha saying Not in Kansas anymore, Toto.
“I’m Luke Ellis.” He held out his hand, not sure what to expect.
Nicky ignored it and opened the green equipment cabinet. “You play chess, Ellis? These other three suck at it. Donna Gibson could give me at least a half-assed game, but she went to Back Half three days ago.”
“And we will see her no more,” George said dolefully.
“I play,” Luke said, “but I don’t feel like it now. I want to know where I am and what goes on here.”
Nick brought out a chess board and a box with the armies inside. He set the pieces up rapidly, peering through the hair that had fallen across his eyes rather than brushing it back. “You’re in the Institute. Somewhere in the wilds of Maine. Not even a town, just map coordinates. TR-110. Sha picked that up from a bunch of people. So did Donna, and so did Pete Littlejohn. He’s another TP that’s gone to Back Half.”
“Seems like Petey’s been gone forever, but it was only last week,” Kalisha said wistfully. “Remember all those zits? And how his glasses kept sliding down?”
Nicky paid no attention. “The zookeepers don’t try to hide it or deny it. Why would they, when they work on TP kids day in and day out? And they don’t worry about the stuff they do want to keep secret, because not even Sha can go deep, and she’s pretty good.”
“I can score ninety per cent on the Rhine cards most days,” Kalisha said. Not boasting, just matter-of-fact. “And I could tell you your grandmother’s name if you put it in the front of your mind, but the front is as far as I can go.”
My grandmother’s name is Rebecca, Luke thought.
“Rebecca,” Kalisha said, and when she saw Luke’s expression of surprise, she burst into a fit of the giggles that made her look like the child she had been not so long ago.
“You’ve got the white guys,” Nicky said. “I always play black.”
“Nick’s our honorary outlaw,” George said.
“With the marks to prove it,” Kalisha said. “Does him no good, but he can’t seem to help it. His room is a mess, another act of childish rebellion that just makes more work for Maureen.”
Nicky turned to the black girl, unsmiling. “If Maureen was really the saint you think she is, she’d get us out of here. Or blow the whistle to the nearest police.”
Kalisha shook her head. “Get real. If you work here, you’re a part of it. Good or bad.”
“Nasty or nice,” George added. He looked solemn.
“Besides, the nearest police force is probably a bunch of Deputy Dogs and Hiram Hoehandles miles from here,” Iris said. “Since you seem to’ve nominated yourself Head Explainer, Nick, why don’t you really fill the kid in? Jeepers, don’t you remember how weird it is to wake up here in what looks like your own room?”
Nick sat back and crossed his arms. Luke happened to see how Kalisha was looking at him, and thought that if she ever kissed Nicky, it wouldn’t be just to pass on a case of the chicken pox.
“Okay, Ellis, I’ll tell you what we know. Or what we think we know. It won’t take long. Ladies, feel free to chime in. George, keep your mouth shut if you feel a bullshit attack coming on.”
“Thanks a lot,” George said. “And after I let you drive my Porsche.”
“Kalisha’s been here the longest,” Nicky said. “Because of the chicken pox. How many kids have you seen during that time, Sha?”
She considered. “Probably twenty-five. Maybe a few more.”
Nicky nodded. “They—we—come from everywhere. Sha’s from Ohio, Iris is from Texas, George is from Glory Hole, Montana—”
“I’m from Billings,” George said. “A perfectly respectable town.”
“First off, they tag us like we were migrating birds or goddam buffalo.” Nicky brushed his hair back and folded his earlobe forward, showing a circlet of bright metal half the size of a dime. “They examine us, they test us, they give us shots for dots, then they examine us again and do more tests. Pinks get more shots and more tests.”
“I got the tank,” Iris said again.
“Whoopee for you,” Nick said. “If we’re pos, they make us do stupid pet tricks. I myself happen to be TK-pos, but George the motormouth there is quite a bit better at it than I am. And there was one kid here, can’t remember his name, who was even better than George.”
“Bobby Washington,” Kalisha said. “Little black kid, maybe nine. He could push your plate right off the table. Been gone… what, Nicky? Two weeks?”
“A little less,” Nicky said. “If it was two weeks, it would have been before I came.”
“He was there one night at dinner,” Kalisha said, “and gone to Back Half the next day. Poof. Now you see him, now you don’t. I’ll probably be next. I think they’re about done with all their tests.”
“Same here,” Nicky said sourly. “They’ll probably be glad to be rid of me.”
“Strike the probably on that one,” George said.
“They give us shots,” Iris said. “Some of them hurt, some of them don’t, some of them do stuff to you, some don’t. I spiked a fever after one of them, and had the most godawful headache. I was thinking maybe I caught Sha’s chicken pox, but it was gone after a day. They keep shooting you up until you see the dots and hear the hum.”
“You got off easy,” Kalisha told her. “A couple of kids… there was that one named Morty… can’t remember his last name…”
“The nose-picker,” Iris said. “The one who used to hang with Bobby Washington. I can’t remember Morty’s last name, either. He went to Back Half like two days after I got here.”