and eat with them in the dining hall. Given that he shouldn’t feel happy or good anymore he felt guilty for being glad to be out of the nut ward. There wasn’t enough snow in Minnesota to numb him clear past boredom. It was so bad he was actually excited about going to the school they had for the inmates. He still spent nights with the crazies and had to shower and use the bathroom there.
Being crazy—Dylan supposed he was and it wouldn’t have mattered if he was as sane as apple pie, crazy was like cooties, highly contagious, and he was living at cootie central—got him picked on by the sane boys. They didn’t beat the crap out of him—not like he’d wanted Rich to that time—but they were always poking and pinching and shoving, making him drop his tray in the dining hall, pushing him so he fell down.
It was still better than doing nothing with the loonies. Being left alone with only his brain to play with was too weird. He’d think about the other kids and what they’d done and he’d think about himself and what he’d done, and then he’d think that they were humans and he wasn’t, that he was this other thing, this monster thing, and if he kept on like that he knew he’d be screaming about invisible spiders before long.
At first Draco was the worst. Then, after a while, he got tired of it and decided to be Dylan’s friend. “Don’t go thinking I like you,” he warned. “But, man, you’re like Wyatt Earp or Doc Holiday, Jesse James. These sad fucks think they gun you down, they’re hot shit. More laughs fucking with them than fucking with you. So you’re this big axe murderer. Big deal. My bet is you did them in their sleep. Or somebody else did them and you took the rap. No way a little fart like you could get it
up for forty whacks. You know about ‘forty whacks?’ Lizzy Whatsername slicing and dicing her folks? Worse kids than you been through Drummond. Me for one.”
Draco was always going on like that, like they were all big criminals. Except for Dylan, nobody much was. The other guys were in for stealing cars, or running away from home too many times, or shoplifting. One kid knifed another kid and a couple of older boys were in for armed robbery.
Draco was in for selling marijuana and then stealing the police car when they tried to arrest him. At least that’s what he said. Dylan suspected maybe the police car part was just something he liked to think he did.
After he started hanging around with Draco things got better.
Class was good too. Dylan liked school now. Looked forward to it. He pretended not to because crazy cooties got him in enough trouble. If he started doing teacher’s pet he’d get the crap beat out of him, Draco or no Draco.
English and history weren’t all that great—people could twist them and Dylan was scared of twisty. He’d gotten twisted and twisted and ended up in a psych ward in a jail and didn’t remember doing anything wrong. That meant he didn’t know when he might do it again. That’s why they wouldn’t let him sleep in Ward C. Nobody else knew when he was going to start hacking people up again either. Drummond slept better when Dylan was locked down for the night.
What he really liked was math. Outside, he’d hated it. Now he loved the order of it and that it was always the same. Nobody could twist it. A number stayed the same and if it was added to another number it always, always came out the same way.
Phil was the math teacher—he told the boys to call him Phil, not Mr. Maris—and he was part of why Dylan liked math best. For one thing Phil was young. Everybody but the inmates was old at Drummond, old and musty like the walls. Draco said Drummond was an elephant graveyard
where old prison staffers came to die. Most of them didn’t want to be there any more than the boys they guarded did.
Phil wasn’t more than twenty-three or -four. He wore his hair long. It was light brown and curled on his collar and over his ears. Draco called him
Being crazy—Dylan supposed he was and it wouldn’t have mattered if he was as sane as apple pie, crazy was like cooties, highly contagious, and he was living at cootie central—got him picked on by the sane boys. They didn’t beat the crap out of him—not like he’d wanted Rich to that time—but they were always poking and pinching and shoving, making him drop his tray in the dining hall, pushing him so he fell down.
It was still better than doing nothing with the loonies. Being left alone with only his brain to play with was too weird. He’d think about the other kids and what they’d done and he’d think about himself and what he’d done, and then he’d think that they were humans and he wasn’t, that he was this other thing, this monster thing, and if he kept on like that he knew he’d be screaming about invisible spiders before long.
At first Draco was the worst. Then, after a while, he got tired of it and decided to be Dylan’s friend. “Don’t go thinking I like you,” he warned. “But, man, you’re like Wyatt Earp or Doc Holiday, Jesse James. These sad fucks think they gun you down, they’re hot shit. More laughs fucking with them than fucking with you. So you’re this big axe murderer. Big deal. My bet is you did them in their sleep. Or somebody else did them and you took the rap. No way a little fart like you could get it
up for forty whacks. You know about ‘forty whacks?’ Lizzy Whatsername slicing and dicing her folks? Worse kids than you been through Drummond. Me for one.”
Draco was always going on like that, like they were all big criminals. Except for Dylan, nobody much was. The other guys were in for stealing cars, or running away from home too many times, or shoplifting. One kid knifed another kid and a couple of older boys were in for armed robbery.
Draco was in for selling marijuana and then stealing the police car when they tried to arrest him. At least that’s what he said. Dylan suspected maybe the police car part was just something he liked to think he did.
After he started hanging around with Draco things got better.
Class was good too. Dylan liked school now. Looked forward to it. He pretended not to because crazy cooties got him in enough trouble. If he started doing teacher’s pet he’d get the crap beat out of him, Draco or no Draco.
English and history weren’t all that great—people could twist them and Dylan was scared of twisty. He’d gotten twisted and twisted and ended up in a psych ward in a jail and didn’t remember doing anything wrong. That meant he didn’t know when he might do it again. That’s why they wouldn’t let him sleep in Ward C. Nobody else knew when he was going to start hacking people up again either. Drummond slept better when Dylan was locked down for the night.
What he really liked was math. Outside, he’d hated it. Now he loved the order of it and that it was always the same. Nobody could twist it. A number stayed the same and if it was added to another number it always, always came out the same way.
Phil was the math teacher—he told the boys to call him Phil, not Mr. Maris—and he was part of why Dylan liked math best. For one thing Phil was young. Everybody but the inmates was old at Drummond, old and musty like the walls. Draco said Drummond was an elephant graveyard
where old prison staffers came to die. Most of them didn’t want to be there any more than the boys they guarded did.
Phil wasn’t more than twenty-three or -four. He wore his hair long. It was light brown and curled on his collar and over his ears. Draco called him
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