They went back to the dorm in silence.
The corridor on the third floor was quiet. Somewhere below them a door closed, and a set of footsteps faded down a stairwell. Alex slid the keycard Kelly had given them through the lock, and the door clicked open.
The room was the same as they had left it. Thin light came through the window and lay across the floor in a pale strip. Q
Jerry stepped in first and looked at the bunk bed against the wall.
"Dibs on the top," he said.
Alex stopped halfway through the door.
"What?"
"The top bunk. I call it." Jerry was already climbing the little ladder, his textbook clamped under one arm. "If that’s ok."
’Huh.’
Alex blinked. Only a few hours ago the boy had been pressed against his shoulder on a bus, trembling, sure he was going to die. He had cried in the dark of the cell. He had whispered that he was going to run. And now he was scrambling up a ladder to claim a bed like someone who had already made up his mind about where he belonged.
"Sure," Alex said slowly. "Go ahead."
Jerry dropped onto the top bunk with a soft thump and settled in.
Alex closed the door and stood looking up at him.
"What’s with you?"
Jerry leaned over the edge of the bunk. "What do you mean?"
"Nothing." Alex shook his head. "Never mind."
Jerry’s eyes lingered for a moment, and then he shrugged and disappeared back over the edge.
Alex sat down on the lower bunk and rubbed his face.
The question was still there, sitting on his tongue. He had almost said it. How come you’re able to move about now? You were terrified this morning. Now you’re confident, proactive, calling dibs on beds. What happened to you?
It was a simple question. Any friend would have asked it. But the words stuck for a very simple reason.
’Because he’s a criminal,’ Alex thought. ’And I’m not.’
It was a strange fact to hold onto. He had been holding it since the moment he woke up in prison. He was not the man in the file. He had not done any of the things written there. But Jerry had. Jerry had told him so himself.
A robbery that went wrong. A man who was not supposed to be there. It did not matter how young he was or how scared he sounded. Somebody was dead because of him.
’He might be just a kid. But he’s still a bad person. An actual one.’
Alex looked at his hands. He knew he was not one. But he had no idea what to make of the boy sleeping ten inches above his head, who had held onto his sleeve in a moving bus and called him a friend.
’I don’t know what to think of him.’
So he did not ask. He put the question away for later and lay back on the bed.
Above him, the sound of a page turning drifted down. Then another. Jerry had opened his textbook and gone right back to it.
Alex listened to it for a while. Flip. Pause. Flip. It was a steady rhythm, patient and calm.
’Right. I should be doing that too.’
He reached for his own book and dragged it onto his chest. He opened it to the marked page and started reading.
It was boring. It was truly, deeply boring. Every line felt like it had been written by someone who wanted the reader to fall asleep. He read a paragraph and could not remember the first half by the time he reached the end. He yawned so wide his jaw cracked.
’It’s not even late.’
He glanced at the window. The light outside was still pale. It could not have been later than early evening. But his eyelids felt like they were weighted with coins, and a warm heaviness had begun to spread through his arms and legs.
’Maybe it’s because of how I got here,’ he thought, blinking slowly. ’That has to take something out of a person.’
He could feel it now. The sleep, creeping over him like a tide. His eyes closed for a moment, and the words on the page swam. His head sank a little deeper into the thin pillow.
Just as the darkness began to pull him under, his eyes snapped open.
’I can’t sleep.’
He sat bolt upright, and the textbook slid off his chest onto the floor.
’I can’t sleep.’
It was not because he did not want to sleep. He wanted to. His whole body was begging for it. It was not because he had finally realized he did not have time for it either, though that was true. He had one month until the evaluation, and every hour spent sleeping was an hour he was not reading.
That was not the reason.
The reason was above him.
’I have a roommate,’ Alex thought. ’And he’s an actual criminal.’
The thought settled in and grew teeth.
’What if he kills me in my sleep?’
It was a stupid thing to think of considering they were going to be roommates if they hadn’t transferred them but Alex was paranoid. Even though he had already slept at least a day with him back in prison this was different for some reason maybe it was the comfortable environment or the Collar. Something disturbed him.
He looked up at the underside of the top bunk. He could hear Jerry breathing, and the small sounds of pages turning. It was a ridiculous thought. The kid could barely stop shaking on the bus. But Alex could not shake the images that began to surface, one after another, each one clearer than the last.
A pillow pressed over his face while he slept.
A cord looped around his neck from behind. A shoe from the closet, a heavy one, brought down on his skull in the dark.
A blanket pulled tight.
A hand over his mouth.
’Ok, stop.’
He shook his head hard, but the pictures did not go away.
’He’s a kid. He’s scared. He’s not going to...’
But he had said he did not mean it. That was what they all said, was it not? It was an accident. He did not mean to. Alex did not know what the truth was. He only knew that the person over his head was not innocent.
He stood up. Sitting had not helped. The sleep still hung around his shoulders like a heavy coat, so he began to walk. Three steps to the window. Three steps back. He paced the narrow floor between the bed and the door, in silence, and rolled his shoulders to shake the fog loose.
Three steps to the window. Three steps back.
’Come on. Wake up.’
He walked for what felt like ten minutes. Slowly the heaviness began to lift. His eyes felt cooler. His head felt clearer. He rubbed the back of his neck and smiled to himself.
’There. Conquered it.’
He crossed to the bunk, bent, and picked up the textbook from the floor. He lowered himself onto the bed, opened the book on his knees, and found his page.
’Ok. Now I can read.’
He read a line. Then another. The words slid by, and the room grew warm, and the sound of Jerry turning pages faded into a soft, distant hush.
Two minutes later, the book slipped from his fingers.
His head fell to one side, and he was asleep.
He dreamed of nothing. It was a deep, dark, empty sleep, and it went on for what felt like a long time.
Then something jolted him. He did not know what. A sound, a movement, a shift in the air.
Alex’s eyes flew open, and he jerked upright, wild eyed, gasping.
"I’m awake!"
His voice rang off the walls of the tiny dorm.