Page 40 of The Reformatory

“Try me tonight,” Boone warned from the doorway. “Somebody try me just once. I can’t wait to take some of y’all out to the Funhouse with Warden Haddock. Who’s it gon’ be?”

The room was a tomb, no one breathing. Robert’s folded blanket had fallen to the floor beside his bed, but he was afraid to pick it up. Would Boone take him to the Funhouse for dropping it? For reaching for it? The footsteps snapped down the hall, and they all sighed and breathed together. A couple of boys snickered, trying to be tough, but hardly loud enough for anyone to hear but themselves. Robert waited to hear if the footsteps would return, but in time even the echo was gone.

In the dark, Robert couldn’t ignore the heat. His thin sheet clung to his sweaty skin so tightly that he felt like a bug trapped in a giant spider’s web. He flung the sheet away. His house let in breezes in the summer, but this heavy heat was like someone lying on top of him. Was it truly this hot, or was this heat a memory from the fire? The heat sat so hard that Robert was sure his lungs were filling with hot water instead of air.

A mosquito landed on his shoulder, invisible in the dark. He ignored it and glanced right and left at the other boys, who still seemed afraid to move although Boone and Crutcher were gone. When the mosquito bit him, Robert slapped lightly at his slick skin. Every movement made the heat worse, a rippling current. No wonder everyone lay so still.

But despite the heat—or maybe because of it—Robert’s sore, weary bones sank into the thin mattress and made him so drowsy that he didn’t notice the return of the terrible smell for a long time. And when he did notice, he thought he was only remembering the shower room. But then the sharpness seared his nostrils—burned, rancid flesh—and Robert jolted awake.

The banks of windows and beds were not familiar when he first woke, and when he remembered—The judge sent me to the Reformatory, and I’ll be here six months—his heart thudded and then sank with such misery that only the threat hidden in the awful smell kept him from whimpering. He heard someone crying softly in the vast room, smothered against a pillow. An angry “Shhhhhh” and “Damn baby gon’ get us all whipped” silenced the crying.

Robert hoped the smell would fade, but instead it grew stronger. A slow, rough scraping across the floor was much louder than the buzzing flies or soft snoring around him: moving and halting, moving and halting, coming closer to him from the center row where his head lay. The object dragging sounded like… a bum leg, his foot dragging slowly? The smell and the scraping sound were tied together; when one came closer, so did the other.

It definitely wasn’t Mama.

Robert warred with himself: Should he turn his head to look or not? Would it go away if he waited long enough, like the stabbed boy in the kitchen? What had Redbone’s advice been about ghosts? His head swam as he tried to remember.

“Go away,” Robert whispered, staring up at the ceiling’s dark, sleeping light bulbs. “You’re dead. So just stay dead.”

The dragging came closer, the smell so powerful that it brought tears to Robert’s eyes. He locked his throat to keep from vomiting. It was the worst smell he had ever known—worse than the deer carcass bloating in the creek bed he and Papa had found when they were hunting, its body a gross whitish pink from swelling. Papa had pulled him away, tried to cover his eyes. Just like then, everything inside Robert told him to keep his eyes away, but he had to see it. He had to know. (Had it really been a deer? Or had it been a child wrapped in wet clothing?)

Robert’s neck gave a tiny crack as he turned his head toward the insistent scraping. The shadow was the size of a boy not much bigger than he was, the shape so black that it was darker than night, leaching colors from everything it passed. Too-white eyes stared at him from the blackness. The figure moved slowly, so slowly, with the scraping sound: the boy, or whatever the shadow thing was, dragged a lame leg behind.

Robert’s heart tried to fight free of his ribs. He thought he would faint, but he couldn’t stop staring even as the shadowed boy came closer. When the figure was close enough to touch—and when the smell was choking him—Robert saw glimmering on the figure’s face and skin and realized he was burned all over, charred like meat on a grill. The alien eyes stared.

Robert’s teeth chattered. It must be one of the boys who had died in the fire. Maybe he had followed him all the way from the field.

“I’m sorry…,” Robert whispered. “But you’re dead. I can’t help you. Go away.”

For good measure, he closed his eyes tight and counted to ten. One… two… three…

He took his time counting, because counting was his last plan to keep from screaming. His heartbeat rocked him as he counted, as if a part of him knew the shadow would be staring him face-to-face when he opened his eyes. … Eight… nine… TEN.

He held his breath. And peeked.

Nothing but a bare floor and the empty row between the cots. Even the smell was gone. Robert’s relief was so great that he gulped at the air and shuddered when he exhaled. He might not have breathed for two minutes. A mad giggle tickled the back of his throat and almost escaped. He was giddy with the thought of it: ghosts came to him, yes, but he could make them leave. Maybe no ghost could hurt him.

Robert was still smiling when the lights glared on, waking everyone, and Boone yanked him from his bed.

12

“Y’all must be the dumbest bastards ever born,” Boone said.

Robert would have been sure he was having a nightmare, except for the way his shoulder smarted from Boone’s rough handling. He’d been shoved out in the hallway, blinking in the bright lights. He, Redbone, and Blue stood lined up with Boone and Crutcher tall over them. At first he thought he’d been roused for Warden Haddock’s twenty lashes, but why all three of them? Was it for swiping the apple tarts in the kitchen? Playing in the freezer? Arriving a few seconds late for curfew? With each thrum of his heart, Robert thought of a new reason he, Blue, and Redbone might be in trouble.

He dared a quick glance at Redbone and saw how afraid he was too: the hard set of his jaw, and a nervous swaying, like a scarecrow in a storm. Blue was already crying, his silent jaw quivering. Why couldn’t this night, this whole day, this year, just be a dream? Robert felt himself pushing himself back against the wall as if he were a ghost who could vanish through it.

“Mister Boone, we didn’t think we was late, sir,” Redbone said, voice hardly above a whisper. “We ran here fast as we could.”

Redbone braced for the crack across his shoulder from Boone’s ruler. He flinched, but barely. Robert didn’t see even a blink.

“You so dumb,” Boone said, “you don’t even know.”

None of them could say they did. None of them dared to ask.

Crutcher leaned close enough for Robert to smell smoke on his breath. “What were you talking about at dinner, gentlemen?” he said. “Maybe that would ring a bell.”

Dinner! Robert realized he was panting only when he opened his mouth to speak. “I w-was j-just asking questions ’bout this place.”