Laneesha wasn’t so easily chided. “Martin said…”
“Martin was trying to scare us. That’s all. We’re the only people on this island right now.”
“So who grabbed Martin?”
“No one grabbed him. He was playing a prank, took it too far, and is now lost in the woods.”
“Like us,” Laneesha whispered.
Sara opened her mouth to dispute it, but stopped herself. Were they actually lost? She resisted the urge to shine the flashlight in all directions, hoping to find the path back to the campfire. But there was no path, and every direction looked exactly the same. She silently cursed Martin for his stupid tricks, and for bringing them all here.
“Camping,” Martin had said, a big grin on his face.
“You want to take a bunch of inner city kids out into the woods?”
“It’ll be good for them. We roast some hot dogs, sing some songs. I know the perfect place. I went there before, with my brother. It’s beautiful Sara. You and the kids will love it.”
“What about Jack?”
“We can bring him with. The fresh air will be good for him.”
“He’s just a baby.”
“He’s a hearty little guy, Sara. And I hardly think we’re the first parents to ever go camping with a baby.”
“You know I’m not good at night time, Martin. And in the woods, in the dark…”
Martin had patted her knee, looked at her like he used to, with love in his eyes. “You’re a psychologist. This is the perfect way to get over that fear, don’t you think? And besides, I’ll be there to protect you. What could possibly go wrong?”
So against her best instincts, Sara agreed. She did it, she knew, out of a need to appease him, make him happy. It had been a while since she’d seen Martin happy. They’d been growing distant for a long time. Sara could even remember the exact moment it began. The precipitating incident was when he lost Joe. Martin took it hard, quitting his private practice to join Sara in social work, coming up with the idea for the Center.
Together—through sheer force of will it seemed—they got the funding and made it happen.
At first, it had been a joy working with her soon-to-be husband. Martin’s loss seemed to stir a passion in him for helping others, and Sara didn’t mind his long hours, and tolerated his mood swings, because they were making a difference. A huge difference, in the lives of our country’s most important people; children.
Then came Chereese.
Chereese Graves was just another confused teenager from a broken family, thrust into their care by the courts. Troubled in the same way so many others had been, before and since. And like others, Chereese preferred to run away rather than deal with Sara and Martin’s rules and regulations.
Runaways weren’t uncommon. While the Center didn’t have the security of even a minimum security prison, it was still a form of incarceration. The windows were shatterproof and didn’t open, the doors all had heavy duty locks. But the kids always found a way. Chereese had apparently stolen a set of keys, then left after lights out.
Martin took it personally. Like he’d failed her. That was ridiculous, of course. Martin had a way of reaching kids, of actually being able to rehabilitate them. The recidivism stats for Center graduates were more than seventy percent lower than kids who went to juvee. They were actually helping kids turn their lives around, and part of that meant trusting them to do the right thing, to serve their time, to better themselves.
Of course, that meant greater opportunities to break the rules. While the Center had a greater success rate than any other state-run program, it also had the highest number of runaways.
Martin seemed to regard every lost child as a personal failure. And when they got word the Center had lost funding, he’d become so withdrawn he was almost like a shell of the man she’d met in school.
But Sara didn’t want to think about any of that right now. She took the Center’s closing as hard as Martin did. It had been his idea, but she’d been there from the beginning, and she felt the loss. Sara hadn’t even begun interviewing for another job. She knew she’d be able to find work, either through the state or in the private sector. But even though she’d been headhunted, practically offered other positions, she chose to remain loyal to the Center until the very day it closed.
Now, possibly lost in the woods and growing increasingly frightened, Sara wondered if she shouldn’t have detached herself much earlier.
“We’re not lost.” Sara took Jack back and regained control over her emotions, assuming the role of responsible adult. “This island is only two thousand acres. That’s about three square miles. If we walk in one direction, we’ll eventually reach the shore. We can follow the shore to the beach where we were dropped off, then follow the orange ribbons back to camp. It might take all night, but we’ll find the others.”
Laneesha seemed to relax a notch. “So which way we goin’?”
Sara wished she had a compass. Martin had been carrying it earlier, and for all she knew he still had it on him. That would make going in a straight line more difficult, but not impossible.
“You pick.”
Laneesha put her hands on her hips, craning her head to and fro, then finally pointed to her right.
“This way. I got a feeling.”
Sara nodded, walking next to the teen. “Okay. Let’s go.”
“What about Martin?
Sara cupped a stinky hand to her face and yelled, “Maaaar-tin!”
They both waited for an answer. Every muscle in Sara’s body clenched, hoping she wouldn’t hear a reply, hoping Martin had the decency to quit this stupid game.
A few seconds passed. Sara unbunched her shoulders, relaxed her jaw. She was just about ready to release the breath she’d been holding when they heard the scream.
High-pitched. Primal. Definitely not Martin. It was one of the girls, and she sounded like she was in excruciating pain. Cindy, or Georgia.
And she sounded less than twenty yards away.
One of the kids was coming toward them. A boy. He looked strong. Fit. Able to fight.
They could fight, too. And they outnumbered the boy.
They crouched down, blending into the woods, and waited.
When Meadow was a little kid, he wanted to be part of a family. He never knew his dad, and his mama did drugs and kept making him live with cousins and second cousins and neighbors and sometimes complete strangers. She didn’t want him, and neither did they. He craved love even more than his little tummy craved food, and he got very little of either.
So when he was thirteen years old, he stood in a circle of Street Disciples—a Folks Nation alliance on Detroit’s East Side—and let eight of the biggest members beat on him for twenty full seconds without fighting back.
Meadow had been scared. Of the pain, of course, even though he’d gotten beat on for most of his life. But mostly he’d been afraid of his own reaction. If he tried to defend himself, even in the slightest way, the initiation wouldn’t count, and he’d have to do it again later in order to be accepted into the gang.
So he put his hands in his pockets, closed his eyes, and let his homies have at him while he concentrated hard as he could not to follow his instinct and cover up, run away, throw a return punch.
They blooded him in good, breaking his nose and two ribs, kicking him in the kidneys so many times he pissed blood for a week afterward. But Meadow took it all, denying every impulse to save himself, staying on his feet for most of it because he knew if he went down the stomping would be even worse than the kicks and punches. And it was.