Page 16 of My Family

Miles is already dressed. I didn't see him get up. I never do. He exists like a shadow, his dark hair falling across his forehead. He sits on the edge of his bunk, lacing his sneakers. He catches my eye and nods. Once. The entire conversation.

And then there's Liam.

He wakes up like a cat. First the stretch, arms reaching above his head, back arching, his shirt riding up past his navel and exposing the ridge of his hip bone, the pale stretch of his stomach. My jaw tightens. My cock too. I look at the wall. Look back. He yawns, wide and unselfconscious, and rubs his face with both hands, his black hair a wreck, his blue eyes still glazed with sleep. The tattoos on his neck shift as he turns his head, and he looks like something out of a painting.

He catches me watching. One corner of his mouth lifts.

I smile back and wink at him. He looks embarrassed but can't help smiling. My little puppy. I check my watch. 6:07. Right on schedule.

"Move it," I say to the room. The leader voice. "Roll call in eight minutes."

Jack salutes with the wrong hand. Harry groans elaborately. Miles is already standing by the door. Liam swings his legs over his bunk and lands with a quiet thud. Happy, our basil plant, named by Jack, sits in its small clay pot, leaves a little thin from the winter light but stubbornly alive. Like us.

The common area is already filling when we arrive. Bodies in gray and black shuffling.

Griff is there. Of course he is. Standing at the front with his clipboard pressed against his thigh, his posture so perfect it makes my own spine straighten by reflex. His green eyes sweep the room.

"Sound off," he says. And like a small miracle, everybody shuts up. I wish I could do that.

Names are called. Names are answered. Some morning announcements, and the moment of silence so we can pray and think grateful thoughts. We're dismissed to use the bathroom and finish getting ready before breakfast.

I help Liam shave. I love doing that. Neither of us ever goes more than a day without shaving, and I love how he stays completely still, face full of shaving cream, while I use the razor, his neck stretched as he looks up, his Adam's apple bobbing. He looks so vulnerable like that and completely mine.

Breakfast. I take my tray. Sit where I always sit, the table near the south wall with a sightline to both exits. Jack drops beside me, already eating, talking through a mouthful of toast about the dream pancakes again. Harry doesn't sit with us, he has other friends or clients to charm. Miles is at the end, reading something he's got balanced on his knee under the table.

And Liam sits next to me, our bodies touching. Even when we're quiet, I love feeling the warmth of him along my right side.

He eats.

I try not to stare. I fail, but quietly. My eyes track the fork, the food, the motions. Eggs. Toast. A spoonful of oatmeal. Another. He eats with a lot of focus, like he's decided to do this rather than fallen into it. There are mornings when the food moves around the plate but never reaches his mouth. Mornings where he takes one bite and his face goes tight, and his hand drops to his lap and I feel something helpless and furious twist behind my ribs. But he's been doing much better since the start of treatment, and that makes me so proud.

Today is not one of those mornings. Today, he finishes the eggs. Takes a second piece of toast. Opens the canned fruit and eats three peach slices, then a fourth. I can breathe easily.

He's eating. He's here. The morning is ordinary and great.

Then, everything goes bad.

The phone room is the saddest place in Aspire Academy, and I don't say that lightly for a facility that includes solitary confinement. Six payphones bolted to a cinder block wall, each mounted at a height that assumes the caller is average, which means the shorter kids stretch and the taller ones hunch, and nobody is ever comfortable. The receivers are that heavy institutional plastic, the color of old teeth, connected by coiled metal cords that have been yanked and twisted and slammed down too many times. The room smells like disinfectant layered over the particular scent of anxious boys, sweat and cheap deodorant. The awful space between wanting to call home and dreading what home will say.

I sit at the desk by the door. Clipboard on the surface, pen in hand, watch on my left wrist. The system is simple: each resident gets ten minutes, once a week, one call per session, names checked off in order. If you're bad, you get this privilege revoked. I time them. I don't listen. I hear everything, but I don't listen. Every argument, every silence, every cracked voice asking a parent who stopped caring to please, please, just this once. It breaks my heart. Worst admin task they assign to me.

A kid with a shaved head, Jorge, dials a number and hangs up before it rings. Dials again. Hangs up again. The third time, he lets it ring, and when no one answers, he places the receiver gently back in its cradle and walks out without looking at me. I check his name off the list. Next.

Another boy, Ashton, talks to someone who is either his mother or his girlfriend, and the conversation goes from "I miss you" to "That's bullshit" in under ninety seconds. He slams the phone hard enough that the kid at the next station flinches. I give him a look. He leaves.

Then it's Jack.

He bounds up like he always does, energy barely contained. His brown eyes are bright. He's been waiting for this all week, his sister's number is practically one of his tattoos, and he dials it without looking, the Batman tattoo on his neck shifting as he tilts his head to cradle the receiver against his shoulder.

"Yo, sis!" he says, and the grin is so wide it's really wholesome. "What's up? How's the shop? How's the little monster?"

I look down at my clipboard. Write down the time. Start the timer. Ten minutes.

The cadence of Jack's voice changes, drops half an octave, loses the bouncing rhythm. "Wait, what? What do you mean?" A pause. "He's... since when?"

I glance up.

His smile is gone. Not fading, gone. His free hand, which was resting on the wall beside the phone, has moved to his neck, fingers pressing into the skin around his tattoo. He's gripping himself.