Chapter Five
Chocolate Crayons
But he wasn’t done with trouble, because no matter how many times he reminded himself not to get involved, his body had become disconnected from his brain.
Whenever he’d catch people hanging around Eli’s bed or shower stall, he’d find reasons later to trip them, shove them, and whisper not-so-soft threats in their ears.
Once he went too far and wrenched a man’s arm out of its socket.
That earned him a night in solitary. He didn’t usually mind that.
In fact, for a night or two, he found it therapeutic.
It was like his closet, but better, since there wasn’t any threat of other prisoners walking in. But not this time.
“Hey asshole!” someone shouted from a few cells down, “Some of us are trying to sleep here!”
He’d been kicking at the door without realizing, his frustration spilling over. “Come here and I’ll help you sleep forever!”
His mind was full of who might be trying to make a move on Eli while he was gone.
He came up with a list. Racer, Ned, Trenches, Leroy, Rod and One-Ball.
Those were the ones he hadn’t scared enough.
People had forgotten that “Ice Queen” had once been “Mad Dog.” Maybe he’d forgotten it too or he would have gone to Racer that first night and torn his ear off just as he’d done to Chunker with his teeth.
The memory put a vicious smile on his face.
He remembered the tearing sound and all that slippery blood in his mouth.
Even now, with just the memory, he could feel the bile rising in his throat, but he would do it again.
He’d do all of it and more “If they’d just let me out of this goddamn shoebox!
” and slammed his body against the cell door.
He did it hard enough to recoil backwards and bounce off the wall.
“Hey!” It was CO Bordez, or Stick, as he was called, because of the truncheon that never left his hand. He used it to hammer at the other side of Samuel’s cell. “Knock it off, Fuller, or you’re getting sedated.”
He wanted to fight. The frustration demanded it. But he couldn’t touch the COs. That would put more time on his sentence, and Jenny would kill him. Would likely already kill him when she found out about solitary. He was on a bad path. A very bad path.
The moment they let him out he was already on the move. Eli . But he didn’t need to put much effort into hide-and-seek. The man found him first.
“Samuel,” he said and clamped down on his arm.
The touch, after all the nothing of solitary, was even more dangerous than usual. Overnight his skin had grown more sensitized, and now all his hair—including the stuff on his legs and the back of his neck—was standing at attention.
He didn’t try to pull away, but he wanted to. Was going to. But then he caught sight of the fury in Eli’s eyes, and he didn’t.
“Who was it? Racer, right? Or Trenches. He gave me an obnoxious look when they were dragging me off. I didn’t think he could do anything with his arm messed up, but then I remembered it’s pretty easy to pop those back into—”
Eli slammed him up against the wall. “ Enough .”
And the man didn’t need to say anything else. Every word in Samuel’s body dried up into nothing all at once. Danger dangerdangerdanger . The klaxon was going off in his head like a fire alarm.
“You need to stop this protection racket you’ve got going, and I mean right now.
Do you think I appreciate this? That I could want you throwing yourself in harm’s way for my sake?
You are so close to extra time it’s not funny.
The warden told me herself when I asked.
So I don’t care what kind of complex you have, you’re going to bow your head and go back to being a model prisoner or I swear to God, I’ll tie you to your bed myself. ”
“Let go.” He somehow managed to form the words and push them out of his mouth.
“Not until you promise to stop this. Do you know you gave Nathaniel a panic attack? He thinks going to solitary was his fault. It took me over an hour to calm him down, and I thought I’d get shanked for hogging the phone for so long.”
He knew that if he shoved at Eli’s shoulders he’d lose. That the man was serious about not letting him go. But what else could he do?
“Promise me,” Eli said. “Promise you’ll stop.
I appreciate the sentiment, I really do, but you’re going to give me an ulcer.
Listen, no matter what Nathaniel might have told you, I can protect myself.
I’ve done it before, and I’ll do it again.
I’ve been in foster homes nearly as bad as this, and I was a hell of a lot smaller back then.
So whatever other vengeance you have planned— don’t. ”
The truth felt like a present, unearned and unwanted. He wanted to give the words back and tell Eli not to share any other parts of himself.
“I can’t promise.” He was almost glad of Eli’s grip because the floor didn’t feel steady.
“Do you really think I’d just stand by and let one of these bastards—”
“It’s not about you!” The words practically exploded from him, leaving in their wake a strange moment of silence. Eli looked at him, the anger broken.
“No?”
He could understand the man’s confusion. He could hardly understand it himself and didn’t want to share. But the silence stretched, Eli’s hold remained, and he knew there was no way he’d be making that promise.
It meant telling the truth.
“They’re the same ones. The predators. The same ones…”
It was harder than he thought, speaking. He hadn’t spoken to anyone but Jenny in years and years. Maybe ever.
“The same ones who came after you?”
He nodded.
Eli’s hold relaxed a little, or maybe it was more accurate to say that it changed.
The grip on his shoulders was no longer restraint.
“Like I said, I won’t let anything happen.
Not to me, and not to you either. So stop it.
Okay? I promise we’ll figure it out, but not like this.
You’ll kill me a lot faster than any of these bastards will. ”
And then he pulled him into a hug.
But Samuel didn’t want a hug. His overtired, overstimulated, and over-stressed body couldn’t handle a hug from a man like Eli. He broke free. “None of them touched you while I was gone?”
“No.”
He searched that face, and Eli crossed his arms and waited for him to be satisfied. Samuel wasn’t satisfied, but neither could he find a lie. “What time is it? Did I miss breakfast? ”
“Yes. But I put a tray aside for you. Well, two trays. I figure they can’t get pissed at me for taking one even if I can’t eat it.”
“Then why take one?”
“Because you’re the size of a barn. Also, Rat told me you like those cardboard disks they call pancakes. I can’t imagine why. Whenever I see you eating this stuff, I want to dash it out of your hands.”
Eli had started walking, and he found himself following for no better reason than that there seemed to be an invisible string connecting the two of them together.
Eli led them back to the barracks, and the trays were sitting on Eli’s bunk.
Rookie move, or so he thought, but then he saw Rat leaning against the bed, watching them.
“Thanks, Michael,” Eli said and flashed him a smile.
He had to tamp down on the urge to punch his bunkmate. He didn’t like those smiles being handed about so freely. “Stop calling him that. It’s weird.”
“How is it weird to call someone by their name? Now sit and eat. You look like you’re about to start gnawing on the bed.”
He was pushed down onto the bunk and then the tray was pushed into his hands.
“Can’t eat in front of others? Nathaniel used to be the same way.”
But Eli’s eyes weren’t the problem. He was staring at the tray. He couldn’t believe his eyes.
“They served this at breakfast?”
The words left his mouth, but he didn’t believe them.
No way had the kitchen ever served anything so good.
He saw the pancakes—and hardly recognized them.
They’d been turned into what looked like ice cream sandwiches.
He picked one up and bit into it. Not ice cream, but whipped cream.
And something else. He peeled the top pancake off and found bits of broken up Reese’s cups staring up at him.
It was the best thing he’d tasted in five years.
“Of course not,” Rat said. Why was he still around? “Gordan Ramsey here pulled some real magic out of his ass. I never heard of someone making cream out of milk and butter, but he managed it. He must have whipped that shit for half an hour at least. I thought his arm was going to fall off before—”
“Never mind that,” Eli said and made a little shooing motion to send Rat away. “Just eat.”
But he couldn’t eat. There was a lump in his throat. He stared down at his tray. It wasn’t just the pancakes. His canned peaches had also been mixed with the cream, and what looked like dried strawberries had been thrown in as well.
“He picked them out of those boxes of Special K they have in commissary,” Rat said when he saw him looking. Because, of course, he hadn’t gone anywhere. He was enjoying the show too much. “And he made the chocolate milk by melting down a Hershey bar.”
“Do you always give his meals a blow-by-blow?” Eli asked. He sounded exasperated. Or maybe it was embarrassment. Samuel wasn’t paying much attention. His eggs looked different too. Fuller, somehow. He tasted a forkful and tilted his head.
“For the eggs, he—”
Eli actually shoved at Rat’s shoulder. “Let him eat already. Go.”
So Rat went, but he shot Samuel a look full of waggling eyebrows and insinuation first. He barely noticed.
His appetite had roared to life like a California forest fire, and it was taking all his control not to wolf the food down in savage tasteless bites.
Maybe the regular cafeteria food deserved that, but this needed to be savored. He wished he wasn’t so hungry.
He set the tray aside and stood .
“What? No good?”