The Journey Back by Priscilla Cummings Page A

night.” So did Dontaye, only he talked to me some, too. He was sixteen, which is two years older than me, and hadn’t been to school in over a year. We were both at the same math level so sometimes we worked together on homework. I never talked about my family, or my crime, or nothing, but Dontaye spilled out stuff about his life back in Baltimore that made me seriously wonder who had it worse—him or me. He said prison saved him, although I’m sure that didn’t mean he liked being there at Cliffside. It seemed like he was way too young to be a dad, but I know he missed his little boy back home. He kept a bent-up picture of his baby son taped inside his locker door and kissed it with his finger every night.
    At least Abdul and Dontaye could sleep. In no time, I’d hear ’em both snoring away. Not me. I’d lay there for hours, my hands behind my head, still thinking and worrying about stuff long after the radio got turned off. Even after lights-out the place was never dark ’cause they kept that one blue lightbulb on overhead all the time. Drove me nuts that blue light ’cause it was like somebody staring at me all the time, so I could never really sleep. Boy, do you know what that does to a person?
    It was never totally quiet in there either and not just because there was a mouse scratching away in the wall near Abdul’s bed. We had this guard, a guy named Joey, in the room with us the entire night, sitting behind his big desk. He wore his leather jacket all the time and he had a vicious case of Dunlap’s disease—you know, his stomach
done lapped
over his belt. An old stupid joke, I know, but that was him. He was like an old, stupid joke. A big, fat kid who never grew up. I could hear him fold and unfold the newspaper, but my guess is he only read the comics, if he could read at all. I could hear him clipping his fingernails. I could hear him shuffle and snap cards in place during a game of solitaire. I could hear him rip open his junk food and crunch away on all that stuff he got from the vending machine. Heck, I could even
smell
the guy—like I knew when he got Fritos and when he started in on a pack of them cheese crackers, all of which he washed down with cans of Red Bull. He always left the cans on his desk for us to see in the morning. Like I wondered if he wanted to rub it in our faces that he could use the vending machine and we couldn’t.
    So, I didn’t miss sleeping in that dorm. No way. But here’s the weird thing. I was out in the woods, alone. No blue light in my face. No fat guard named Joey keeping an eye out. Still, I had this eerie feeling that someone was watching me.
    The next day, I found out who it was.
    I hobbled down to the river to get a drink and was throwing sticks for Buddy when I spotted some little fish darting around in the water. Man, I was so hungry I was tempted to reach in and grab a few of them fish to chow down on, but I knew I couldn’t catch ’em just like that. So I rigged up a spearlike thing by wrapping the jackknife onto a stick with some vine. I didn’t know if it would work—or if I could actually eat raw fish, but I had to try. When this big catfish come along, I stood up and sent that spear flying into the water. Trouble is that I threw it so hard that the knife came off the stick
and
I lost my balance and fell in.
    Big splash. Naturally, the fish got away. I was left soaking wet and feeling like a fool. I pulled the knife out of the sand and was wiping it off with my shirt when I heard someone laugh.
    I opened up the big blade on my knife and positioned it tight in my hand. I also picked up a stick from the rock beside me. Slowly, I stood up in the water.
    The laughing stopped.
    â€œWho’s there?” I demanded.
    Buddy barked at the bushes.
    â€œI know you’re in there!” I called out.
    Unbelievable. But out steps this skinny little kid who was about the same size as my little