Page 108 of The Reformatory

Redbone slapped his forehead with his palm. “Oh, damn. I get it now.”

“Get what?”

“Boone’s been grinning at me, telling me, ‘Have fun!’ I thought he’d been switched with a robot or something, he’s been so nice—” He stopped himself short, his eyes filled with new, scary realizations. “Haddock wants us to be friends.”

“Why?”

“So you’ll think twice about messing up,” Redbone said. “Or running. Trust me, if you get in trouble, I’ll be the one who pays first. You sure you don’t see another haint here? ’Cuz Haddock’s gonna want his ashes, Robert. Remember, they’re already dead.”

The boy in the bleachers was wearing a gray baseball jersey with the number 13 in white.

Robert tried not to look at his face, but he couldn’t help seeing his hair matted to his forehead, his missing jaw glistening red in the sun. Dogs had gotten to him. He was half-eaten. Robert looked away, feeling his throat fighting vomit.

“Blue said I can’t,” Robert said. “He’ll hurt my mama, Bone.”

“Tell your mama to go away,” Redbone said. “She’ll go if you say so.”

“How do you know?”

“Blue told me she has to fight to be here,” Redbone said. “Most times haints can’t go to places they’ve never been—unless there’s an object, like something they owned. That’s you, I guess. But if you tell her to go away, I bet Blue can’t hurt her.”

“Won’t matter. Boone’s haint dust is good for three days. That’s what he said.”

“Boone can’t hardly count to three.”

“Well, he got it from his grandmama, and I bet she can count to a million.”

Redbone stared around him, trying to spot a haint on his own. “Then you better cry your eyes out when you tell Warden Haddock you’re trying your best,” Redbone said.

“Would you tell on me?” Robert almost wanted to say it would be okay to tell if Haddock was hurting him enough, but he was afraid to. He was afraid to ask what the Box was. Or what Boone and Blue had meant when they said the Funhouse wasn’t the worst.

Redbone shrugged. “You never told about Blue, so I’m not gonna tell anything about you, then,” Redbone said. “But if I see any haints, I’m telling where they are—except Blue. And if they punish me too bad…” He didn’t finish. Maybe they were both realizing at the same time that he would tell on Blue if he had no choice. “I’ll do what I have to do. Then maybe I’ll be the new haint catcher. Since maybe your luck ran out.”

Even standing side by side with Redbone, Robert felt miles away from him. He had never felt that way about a friend. And wasn’t Redbone Blue’s friend too? This new, harder kind of friendship cut through his skin like Haddock’s whip.

“What if Blue hurts my mama’s spirit ’cuz of you?” Robert said. “What if he lets Haddock trap her? You should’ve heard the things he said, Bone.”

“I’m not trying to hurt nobody,” Redbone said. “I won’t tell on you—not ever—but I wanna remember who I am when I leave this place. Some boys, they get this look in their eyes and you know they’ll be old men still in this place ’til the day they die. I might go to the Funhouse or stay in the Box a night or two, but I won’t go to the shed, so that’s that. You should be ready to give Blue up too if you have to. Your mama would want you to do it no matter what. She wouldn’t want Haddock to touch you. No mama would want that. We just gotta get by day-to-day.”

Robert knew he could ask about the most terrible places and punishments, but he didn’t want to know. He had vague shapes and outlines in his mind, but he didn’t want to see the pictures hidden in Haddock’s desk even in his head.

“Until Christmas,” Robert said.

“Yeah,” Redbone said, cheerless. “ ’Til Christmas.”

Was Blue’s spirit hovering somewhere near them, invisible? Was that what Redbone had meant when he said Blue knew everything? The next time Robert checked the bleacher, the haint and his mangled face were gone. He had only wanted Robert to see his injury. To be a witness.

“You need to call out for Blue,” Redbone said. “Call him by his real name: Kendall. That’s how you know he’ll come for sure. He told me they love having their names called. He said for them it’s a feeling like we don’t even know about. Like a new life, almost. It’s like hearing it from outer space if someone calls them.”

“Why should I?” Was Redbone already laying a trap for Blue?

“Tell him you’re ready to hear his plan for getting in Haddock’s drawer—a good plan. You have to do what he says, Robert. It’s the only way he’ll let us go.”

Tuesday night, Redbone and Robert were still wrapped in their bath towels, straight from the shower, when they found Boone waiting in the hall, beckoning for them. They looked at each other—Redbone was as clueless and wary as Robert—and then followed him, dripping down the hall toward the lobby. Robert’s bare foot slipped slightly on the floor as he tried to catch up to him. Boone hadn’t hollered at them with threats about the Funhouse, so maybe it wasn’t that, but Robert thought about how the whip would hurt against wet skin.

In the hall, three boys from the teenage wing stared from a distance in a huddle.

Boone hesitated by the front door as if he were about to walk outside. “Y’all didn’t see no other haints?”