"Lockdown" - читать интересную книгу автора (Myers Walter Dean)

CHAPTER 3

Six o'clock in the morning and everybody was up. I heard Mr. Wilson making the rounds, calling out everybody's name. He thinks it's funny to call people names like the Godfather and stupid stuff like that. When he called out your name, you was supposed to yell out, "Glad to be here, sir!"

"Mr. Robinson the Terrorist!"

"Glad to be here, sir!" Play called back.

"Mr. Sanchez the bank robber!"

"Glad to be here, sir!" Diego called.

"Mr. Anderson the Vampire!"

"Glad to be here, sir!" I called to him.

"Mr. Billy the Kid!"

Toon didn't answer.

"Mr. Deepak the Serial Killer!"

Still no answer.

I heard Wilson go walking down the hall and then heard him on his walkie-talkie. Something had happened to Toon.

Wilson got us out and lined us up. When they took Toon from his room he was really messed up. His eye was all swollen and there was dried blood under his nose. Somebody had fucked him up bad. I guessed he was the youngest dude in the 3-5-7.

Wilson took Toon down to the nurse's station on the first floor. I felt real sorry for the dude, but I figured it was over and nobody else would mess with him. I tried to push it from my mind, but it wasn't that easy. Sometimes, when I get real mad, I can feel my neck swell up a little. I don't know why that happens, but it does. I took some deep breaths and tried to think about Icy's letter. She and her friend were going to enter a double-Dutch contest. She said she didn't think she was going to win but she needed the practice.

Thinking about Icy calmed me down. Some.

We had eggs and two little hard sausage patties for breakfast and the kind of potato thing they serve at McDonald's, but it was almost too hard to eat. Play said he was going to carry it around in his pocket all day and maybe the heat from his body would make it soft.

I was back in my room and checking everything for inspection when Mr. Pugh stuck his big head in.

"You like the breakfast you had this morning?" he asked me.

"It was okay," I said, not wanting to complain.

"Uh-huh. If we find out who beat up the Puerto Rican kid, we're going to have his ass on the menu for lunch," Pugh said.

"He ain't Puerto Rican," I said.

"Shut up."

Yeah.

"Everybody's in lockdown until 8:30 because we got some new equipment coming in," Pugh said.

We were on lockdown whenever there were strangers in the building. Play said that they were afraid that someone would tell us that Lincoln freed the slaves.

I wish I had said that.

Lockdown was cool. In my mind I knew I could deal with being alone. When I first got to Progress, it freaked me out to be locked in a room and unable to get out. But after a while, when you got to thinking about it, you knew nobody could get in, either. That was the cool part about being in Progress. You were in lockdown but you were also shutting the world out.

My cell is 93 inches long and 93 inches wide. The door is 32 inches wide and the window in the door is 22 inches wide. The toilet is at the far end, away from the door but near the front window, which looks out on a highway. If I fold my blanket up, I can stand on it and see cars going by or look down and see the fence with the barbed wire. Sometimes I like to look out at night and see the headlights and the red taillights from trucks as they pass. The window is closed tight and I can't hear them, but I can imagine how they sound.

Nothing moves in the cell except me. The bed comes out from the cinder-block walls, which are painted green. The closet is fastened into the wall at the end of the bed. From the window to the corridor you can't see much, but anybody can look in and see you whenever they want to, even when you're using the toilet.

I sat on the edge of my bed and took out my letter from Icy again. Dear Reese,

How are you? I was thinking about you and I found a letter that Mama had written to you but didn't mail. It was a stupid letter anyway. Sometimes when I'm in bed at night I think about you and what you are doing. If you could think about me every night at exactly 9 o'clock, then we would be thinking about each other at the same time.

Jeni and I are going to enter a double-Dutch contest run by the church day camp. We can't jump that good, but I think if I get enough practice I'll be able to jump really good by next summer.

Everybody around the block is saying that the 4th grade is going to be soooo hard. You have x's in math in the 4th grade and you have to figure out what the x stands for. Mama is still sick. Luther came around and asked Willis if he could borrow $20. Willis said that Luther was the father and he should be loaning out the money.

You remember that old light-skinned woman who was living on the first floor? Her grandson got shot in the stomach. All he was doing was sitting on the stoop drinking some soda and there was some shooting across the street and one bullet came all the way over and got him. He was an innocent boy. He didn't die, but they don't know if he's going to be able to walk again. His name is Ghana.

Can you write back? I would like to get a letter from you. Your sister, Icy