BROKEN ARROW
CHAPTER ONE
Johnstown, NY
1994
The tall, metal gates bang shut with a clank that echoes across the surrounding fields. I look up at the security cameras that stare at me with black eyes, perched over the curling barbed wire.
Tryon. The detention center where I just wasted the past two years of my life.
I turn to the road, where K.C., my best friend, and Alba, his mother, are waiting. I feel bad that they had to make the trip all the way out here to get me. New York is two bus rides and an expensive cab drive away from Tryon, but I’m still a minor, so the state wouldn’t release me without a custodian. And because of my mother’s immigration status, that’s been her best friend, Alba, my whole life and will be for another three weeks until I turn eighteen.
“Come on, baby,” Alba says as she clasps my head briefly.
K.C. punches me playfully in the shoulder, but he’s a little shy. It’s going to take some time for me to get back to my old self. But we’ve literally grown up across the hall from each other. K.C. knows me better than anyone else in the world. He’ll be patient.
It’s over. Two years of being watched by creepy security guards, trying not to get the shit beat out of me by them or other inmates, counting the seconds while I stare at the gray walls of this fuckin’ jail for kids––I don’t care what they call it; that’s what it is. It’s over.
The bus ride to New York is quiet. Alba sits up front, working on her knitting and paging through a magazine. K.C. and I lounge in the back, and he lets me take the window seat after I shove my small backpack into the compartment overhead. I don’t have much. My sketchbook. The clothes I brought with me, which are now too small. Some pictures of my sisters and my brother. My mother, who I haven’t seen in two years.
“How you feelin’, Nico?” K.C. asks after the bus gets under way from Albany, and the dull roar of the pavement can mask our conversation.
I blink, almost not recognizing my own name. How many times have I actually been called Nico in the last two years? I barely spoke to any of the other kids––most of them were either too doped up to talk or else spoiling for a fight. When the guards or teachers talked to me, I was always Nicolas, Soltero, or sometimes Mr. Soltero if the teacher decided to try that day. Every now and then Nick, though I wouldn’t answer. But never Nico. Never my real name. I never gave them that.
There aren’t many people on board. The hum of the tires fills the air, but it’s a good sound. Almost soothing. A different kind of quiet from the tension of Tryon.
I sink into the cushioned seats, scratching at the red sweats covering my knees. I didn’t have pants I could wear out of the center, so they gave me a pair of the uniforms. I fuckin’ hate this color. I will never wear red again for the rest of my life.
It’s been a long time since I sat in a chair with cushions. We had our rock-hard mattresses and lumpy pillows at Tryon, but otherwise, everything in the place was hard plastic and metal. Apparently, criminals don’t deserve soft seats, even if they’re only fifteen.
“I’m good,” I say, edging away from him toward the window. I need a little space. I’ve barely been alone in two years. With someone, whether it was a guard, other inmates, or those assholes they called teachers watching my every move. While I ate. While I brushed my teeth. All day long, right next to someone. My mother’s apartment won’t be too different––there’s five of us that share the tiny one-bedroom––but at least I’ll get to take a piss by myself again.
“You look different,” K.C. remarks. “Went in lookin’ like Chicken Little, come out lookin’ like Rocky. Shit. Nobody’s gonna fuck with you now.”
I shrug. We’ve both changed. K.C. came to see me a few times over the last two years, but only when he could save up the money. He’s about six inches taller than when I left. Still pale with short black hair, but his light mustache has darkened, and now he has a goatee. He doesn’t look like a kid anymore. Now he’s a man.
Which I guess I am too. They gave us disposable razors while the guards stood over us. I didn’t need them when I arrived, but I started using them almost every day over the summer. I’m not as tall as K.C., but I stand at almost five-eleven now, which is still taller than a lot of people in our neighborhood. At Tryon, a lot of the kids played basketball or walked around the track during rec hours, but I did the boxing program, the same one that produced Mike Tyson, and now my chest and shoulders are filled out. I don’t look like the scrawny, scared shitless kid who left Hell’s Kitchen in the back of a secured van. I look like the kind of guy who could beat the shit out of someone. And you know what? I probably could.
But honestly, I just feel tired, like I haven’t slept in two years. I’ve been too scared that someone was going to jump me when I closed my eyes, too worried that I’d wake up with my few things stolen or that one of the guards would unlock the door of my tiny cell in the middle of the night. We all knew what happened to Freddy, the kid from two doors over. We all knew why one kid literally pulled the screws out of the floor and swallowed them. We knew why some kids wanted to kill themselves rather than spend another night in Tryon.
“Get some sleep, mano,” K.C. says, settling back into his seat.
He gets it. No one knows me like K.C., even if I’ve been gone. We’ve known each other our whole lives, since our mothers got pregnant at the same time and raised us together in Alba’s living room. He knew me when I started running with a group of kids who used to knock over the local bodegas on dares while he started spinning records in his cousin’s basement. He knew me when I got caught the last time and ended up here.
I lean against the window and close my eyes. When I wake up, I’ll be back in New York, and it will feel like the last two years were just a bad dream.
~