Broken Arrow: Bad Idea, #0.5

By Nicole French

They call me every name in the book, and every one is true.

Violent. Criminal. Bad news.

And if they're lucky, I'll take my anger out on a punching bag instead their faces. If  they're lucky.

Then I meet her.

Sophisticated.

Successful.

More culture in her finger than I have in my entire body.

She says I have more to offer the world than my fists. She says I can pick my own direction instead of taking the one I'm given.

But tell me, beautiful,  how do you do that, when you don't know where to go?

How do you find the right path when your compass is broken?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raglan
• Release date: Dec 19, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386922902

Book preview

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 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.

TWO

It’s funny the things you notice when you’ve been gone a while. The old building where I grew up is the same and somehow different. There are new graffiti tags on the foundation, but the sandy red color of the brick is just like it ever was. The creaky stairs going up to the third floor are just as dingy, but one of the knobs at the bottom of the railing has been broken clean off. One of the apartments has a wire hanging directly through the top of the door–someone bootlegging electricity so they don’t have to pay a utility bill.

I pull the keys from my backpack, which feel strange in my hand after two years. On the other side of the door, I can already hear the noise. My sisters, Selena and Maggie, are arguing about something. There’s the blare of the TV, some kind of cartoon—I’m guessing that Gabe, my baby brother, is watching Looney Tunes. Every now and then, there’s a bark, my mother’s low voice coming from the kitchen.

I put the keys in the lock and turn the knob.

Everyone’s a couple years older, but just like our building, still pretty much the same, I realize with relief. Selena and Maggie are on the faded orange couch going over some magazine, their shifting weights making the plastic cover crackle every now and then. Gabe is on the floor working on some kind of homework in front of the TV. Yeah, I’m going to have to break that habit now. My brother is smart—always was. If any of us can go to college, it’s him.

The door shuts behind me with a loud creak, and almost immediately, the bustle of the room stops. Selena and Maggie are actually quiet for once in their lives, and Gabe pops up, his eyes big in his thin, horsey little face. His gaze alights on me, and a second later he’s up and off the floor, launching his skinny body across the room.

Nico! he shouts as he throws himself at me.

And I laugh. For the first time in two years, I laugh out loud as my sisters also clamber off the couch to squeeze the life out of me. I am covered by my siblings, with the first touch in a long time that’s not angry. I am overcome by the smells of home: the rice floating out of the tiny kitchen, the flowery scent of Selena’s cheap perfume, the dusty musk of bodies that sleep too close together. But I squeeze them all, because fuck if it doesn’t feel good to see them. People who don’t hate me. People who aren’t indifferent to me. My family.

When did you get back?

Did you see how big I grew? I’m almost as tall as Selena now!

You got huge!

Did you know Maggie’s got a boyfriend?

Suddenly they’re all throwing questions and comments at me as we push and laugh, my sisters looking me up and down like a piece of meat, Gabe flexing his tiny muscles while he prods at mine. I’m happy for the first time in years. I’ve seen them all a few times, when Alba took them up to visit. Selena and Maggie came for my birthday last year; Gabe always wanted to visit at Christmas. But the trip to Tryon is costly and long. It’s been months, almost a year. It feels so good to see them, no matter how annoying they used to be. God damn it feels fuckin’ good to laugh.

Nico?

Her voice, that voice I’ve only heard over a scratchy phone connection every Sunday, cuts through the room like a knife. Everyone goes silent, and my brother and sisters fall off me like the skin of