Rikers High Read online

  He owed me plenty, and I didn’t want to be cheated out of a thing.

  We both got put on the wall.

  I couldn’t tell the tears from the sweat pouring off his face.

  And I felt like I’d collected enough from him to let it go.

  CHAPTER

  40

  The COs sent me back to the pen alone. I don’t know where they put the kid with that spiderweb tattoo, or what they did to him. Those guys who knew each other had gone in different directions inside the pen. There was a blade on the floor and none of them wanted to be connected to it.

  I stood at the bars like a rock, harder and cleaner than I’d ever been before. My eyes searched for the dude who’d stood up for his cousin. He was in the back sitting on a bench with his head to the floor.

  I stayed on him until he finally looked up and saw me standing there.

  He looked more scared than angry now.

  “You owe me, too,” I blurted out.

  I had just picked us both up and stepped around one deep hole. The kind that’s so dark you might never find your way out.

  A CO called my name and opened the door for me.

  An officer cuffed my hands, but I wasn’t going to sweat that now. Whatever had me so tight about being shackled before was either gone or I had it beat down to nothing.

  We crisscrossed the hallways through the courthouse. I was praying we weren’t going to one of the conference rooms. I didn’t want to hear any more bad news about my case from Miss Thompson. But we rounded the last corner and walked out into the front of a courtroom. I stepped around the flag and saw the rows of benches in the back. Mom was sitting in the first one. And she raised herself up off the bench a little when she saw me walk through that door.

  Miss Thompson was waiting at the lawyers’ desk. I hadn’t seen her since before I’d got cut. She looked as uncomfortable as could be, watching me.

  When the officer took off the cuffs, she stood up and shook my hand.

  “I’m sorry about what happened to you,” she said, looking at my face.

  “Just get me home,” I said.

  I looked over at the DA. He was a skinny black dude in a suit and tie. He probably wouldn’t last two minutes on the Island. But that was the dude who had every kid on Rikers shook. That’s because he had the power, and held a good part of your life in his hands.

  The DA could drop the charges against you or push all the way for the max. He could threaten you with serious time over bullshit, and might get you to cop out to something you didn’t even do.

  And before you could decide anything, you had to figure out if your legal aid lawyer needed a Seeing Eye dog or not.

  The judge came in and everyone stood up.

  He was wearing a black robe and looked old and tired climbing up to his high desk. He cleaned his glasses while an officer read out my case number, name, and the charge against me.

  “Counselors?” the judge asked.

  There was a meeting up at the judge’s desk with the DA and Miss Thompson. They talked for a while, and I kept looking over my shoulder to see if Mom was all right.

  Miss Thompson came back and said we were all straight.

  “When they ask you, just plead guilty,” she said.

  So I did.

  I felt bad about myself when the word “guilty” came out of my mouth.

  And I felt even worse for Mom.

  The judge said that a year of probation and a drug program on Saturday mornings would make the state square with me. But I didn’t know that anything was ever going to make me even with the system again.

  “Did you learn anything from this, young man?” asked the judge.

  I nodded my head and said, “Yes, sir.”

  But I knew that he didn’t understand anything about what I’d picked up. Maybe he knew all those law books cold, but he probably didn’t know shit about how it really worked. He couldn’t know, sitting way up there. It was too clean and safe, like out of some storybook. A book where you only lose the time a judge gives you, and nothing else.

  He didn’t understand what happens to kids on Rikers Island. He didn’t see them get cut or beat up. He didn’t hear the COs threaten to whip their asses. And he didn’t see Sanchez hang himself around the neck with a bedsheet.

  The system wouldn’t let him see any of that, or they might not be able to keep him walking on their leash.

  I wondered if that judge kept count of how many black and Spanish kids he’d sent away. Did he ever study up on why all the white dudes with paid lawyers never spend a day on Rikers Island? Or maybe the system picked him for a judge because he was color-blind.

  I know a lot of kids do dumb shit and deserve to be locked up.

  I just couldn’t figure out how so many kids from the same neighborhoods got screwed up and turned bad all at the same time.

  I signed some legal papers.

  And by the time I put down the pen, Mom was holding me. We were hugging each other so tight I don’t know how we made it out of the courtroom. But we did. We made it out to the street, down into the subway, and home.

  To find out what happens to Martin after Rikers High ends,

  visit www.paulvolponibooks.com.