Carter resolved not to let her interfere with Oscar. The new admit gobbled chips while he chewed the last bite of his sandwich. Carter wondered if he had the munchies. Other kids had come over from Juvenile stoned, but Oscar didn’t have that distracted air. Carter figured he probably was simply reacting to real food after a week of jail slop. He had yet to meet a teenage boy who wasn’t perpetually hungry. The urine test would show whether Carter’s hunch was correct.
“So, what’s it going to be?”
Oscar dug into the pudding with the spoon. Carter noticed the stump below the knuckle of his right middle finger. It looked more like a scar than a birth defect.
“Well?”
Oscar raised his eyes slowly, pained. “What’s what going to be, dude?
“You going to stay or not?”
Oscar slammed the pudding down on the tray. “You ruin my fucking appetite.”
“Does that mean you won’t be staying?”
A tense moment passed before he finally shrugged.
“What’s that mean?”
“What the fuck you think it means?”
Stay calm, Carter told himself. Just another angry kid. “Not sure. I don’t read shoulders.”
“Then read my lips, fuckhead. I’ll stay.”
Carter couldn’t help grinning to himself. Guess I walked into that one. But at least he committed. “Carter.”
“What?”
“Carter. That’s my name. Carter Kirchner. See, up on the wall.” He pointed to the Chemical Dependency Practitioner certificate in the cheap, black metal frame hanging on the wall. Oscar’s eyes didn’t budge. “That’s what you call me. Try it.”
“Carter. Carter Kirchner,” he said in a mocking tone. Then added under his breath, “Faggot.”
Carter let it pass. “You’ll get used to it. Let’s get down to business.” He pulled out one of the forms Judy had given him. He hated these forms, the endless piles of mundane paperwork, but sometimes they served as useful props, giving him an excuse to pry. “I need to get some background information. Full name?”
“Peter F. Pan.”
Carter looked up. Oscar glared back.
“How do you spell your last name, Oscar?”
He spoke in the tone that adults use with small children, “D. U. R. A. N.”
That’s the way they got through much of the rest of the biographical data: Mother’s maiden name? “Eve.” The last time you saw your father? “The day he left home.” Which was? “The last time I saw him.” Oscar begrudgingly provided the most basic information. Until Carter asked, “How did you get arrested?”
A wave of sadness flickered in his eyes. He quickly averted them, but not before Carter glimpsed it.
Oscar pulled a pack of Marlboros from his jean jacket pocket, slid out a cigarette, tamped it against the meaty part of his palm, then clenched it between his lips. He didn’t take his flat eyes off Carter. He slipped a pack of matches from his pocket, pried one match loose, and closed the book, slowly turning it in his hand.
“You can’t smoke in my office.”
Oscar spread his hands apart in surprise. “I can’t?” He set the match against the book to strike it. “Watch me.”
Carter hated this part, having to be the enforcer. “Part of the program. One of the rules. Without them, it wouldn’t work. We’ve all got to live by them.”
He struck the match and raised it to his cigarette. “And if I don’t?”
“You forfeit smoking privileges for a full day, twenty-four hours.”
He shrugged his eyebrows, amused, and moved the lit match toward the tip of his cigarette.
Carter snapped. “Don’t you understand? You’re here on a prayer. This is your last chance. You fuck up here, that’s it, you’re in jail, ten months minimum. You think you don’t like me telling you not to smoke, believe me, it’s a lot better than some fat fuck bending you over a toilet.”
Carter paused to catch his breath. “Give yourself a chance.”
Oscar glowered at him. Carter met his eyes evenly. The lit match still beside his cigarette, Oscar let it burn down to the stump of his middle finger. He did not flinch when the flame extinguished against his flesh. Slowly he spread his fingers and let the match drop to the floor. He kept the unlit cigarette clamped between his lips.
“So, tell me how you got arrested.”
“Ask Officer Handcuffs.”
“I’m asking you.”
Oscar began the story of the night a week earlier. It was late, past midnight, when he found his way back to the mission downtown. The doors were locked, so he went halfway round the block to a doorway in the alley. He had slept there before when he’d shown up too late at the mission. Often. Others knew it as his place. Called it “Oscar’s crib.” But that night he found an old man crouched in the doorway, asleep. Oscar nudged him in the ribs with the toe of his boot, but the man was out. He didn’t budge. So Oscar grabbed him to his feet and shook him. The guy was all coat and bones, nothing more. Finally he came to, but could barely stand on his own. Oscar told him to beat it. The man mumbled he was too exhausted and bent back down to sleep. Oscar seized him by the collar and gave him a shove, but the old man couldn’t keep his feet and hit the pavement face first. The blood leaked out of his head into a swelling puddle.
So far, his story matched the police report. Oscar recited the details of the murder with the same matter-of-fact callousness.
“He was bleeding all over the place. I freaked and ran.”
“How’d they arrest you?”
“Later that night, I cruised into White Castle, drunk off my ass. There must’ve been an unmarked out front because two pigs in a booth watched me stagger in. I tried to be cool, knew I couldn’t ditch right off. But they got up, and I ducked for the door. I tripped off the curb, and they nailed me. I never should’ve gone into that Castle. Stupid.”
Carter scribbled notes on the form. Oscar stared out the window streaked by the wet snow. “When can I smoke, dude?”
Carter checked his watch. Mickey’s big hand rested on the eight, his little hand between the three and four. The other kids would still be in group, so they couldn’t use the lounge. Carter might have let him smoke in his office, but Judy would be all over the telltale smell. He glanced out the window at the snow. “You want a cigarette badly enough to smoke one outside?
“What’s wrong with here?”
“The rules, you know. Technically, the entire hospital, building and grounds, is smoke-free—except for one lounge currently in use—but I think today, because of the, ah, circumstances of your arrival, we can make an exception if we go outside.”
Oscar eyed Carter suspiciously, sizing up what might be expected in return. “Whatever.”
They couldn’t sneak out without Judy noticing. Carter told her he was giving Oscar a tour and marched out quickly before she could ask questions. Carter knew he could be in trouble like the time when he brought the kids back late from their A.A. meeting and Judy detected the Dairy Queen coffee cup that one of the kids still carried. She had asked Sister Mary Xavier if caffeine had recently been approved for the kids without the nurses knowing it. Sister X had put Carter on a week’s probation for taking the kids to a location that the director hadn’t approved in advance.
Carter led Oscar downstairs past Medical Records and out a back door behind the cafeteria. He sometimes used that door