The Moon Dwellers

Chapter Seven

Adele

It has all been arranged. The greedy guard has been paid. Tawni has withdrawn all of the money from her account. We have broken three pieces of thin plastic off of a cheap food container that we’ve stolen from the cafeteria. We are ready.

All we have to do is wait.

Sometimes in the Pen waiting is dangerous. Although a lot of the kids are wrongly convicted—screwed by the system, like me, I guess, and probably Tawni and Cole, too—there are plenty of bad kids in here as well. Real bad kids. Kids that will knock an old lady over on the road, steal her walker, and then break it down and sell the parts. Like the giant tattooed guys I’d been dealing with in the last couple days.

There is a lot of violence in the Pen. Kids form gangs, fight over turf that doesn’t belong to anyone, try to control the cigarette and booze trade.

I am no stranger to violence.

I remember my first week in the Pen. I was scared, didn’t know anyone—which didn’t change much in six months—didn’t know what to expect. I was sitting in the yard, trying not to make eye contact with anyone, working on my leave-me-the-hell-alone vibe, when I saw a fight break out. I’m still not sure what it was about—one guy looked at the other guy’s girlfriend maybe. Anyway, all of a sudden the punches started flying. And I don’t mean like a schoolyard fistfight, where one kid gets a bloody nose and it’s over. This was a no-holds-barred, savage, kick-him-when-he’s-down kind of fight. And neither guy would relent. They were both twice as big as me and had clearly fought before. By the end of it they were both covered in blood, staggering around like they were drunk, probably suffering from concussions, or worse. Eventually one of them went down for good, but that didn’t stop the other guy from stomping him into the ground until the guards finally came to break it up. I never saw either of the kids again. For all I know the guy on the ground is dead and the other guy is now an Enforcer for the sun dwellers. Bottom line: the Pen isn’t a friendly place.

Early on, I had a little trouble from a couple of the guys. I can promise you they weren’t bothering me because of my brains. They wanted something else, something I wasn’t about to give them. Their legs are still broken more than four months later.

No one messed with me after that—at least not until that day with Tawni. I’m not sure if it is because of the message I sent with my fighting ability, or simply because my lack of hygiene makes me less and less attractive with each passing day, but whichever it is, I am thankful for it.

I don’t have a problem with violence. I’ve grown up in a violent world, where miners are killed every day by cave-ins, and sun dweller Enforcers roam the streets cracking the knees of anyone unwilling to cooperate with them. My dad taught me to only use violence when provoked.

Today is one of those times.

I am sitting in the yard by myself. We’ve just finished going over the plans one final time and now Cole and Tawni are walking along the perimeter of the fence, doing what Cole likes to call “his zoo thing,” staring at any people passing by on the outside, growling and carrying on like a caged animal. I guess he does it for kicks.

I showered after breakfast for the first time in weeks. I did a way better job than usual, scrubbing all the nooks and cra

No one, besides Tawni and Cole (and a few obnoxious girls in the bathroom), have spoken to me in months, but now a gang guy saunters up, staring at me the whole way. It’s the guy who approached me before, when I first met Tawni, when I first saw Tristan. The tatted-up gang leader with the big muscles and the small brain.

“Hey, beautiful,” he says, in the exact same way he did before. Like I said, no brains. My dad used to say the definition of stupidity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Or maybe that was the definition of crazy. Either way, it sprang to mind when the guy spoke.

“Like I told you before, leave me alone,” I say.

“Not go

I could run from him, try to hide, perhaps avoid him for the rest of the day until we escape, but that’s not how I was raised.

I fight.

I stand up, finally making eye contact with him. His black eyes are vicious and uncaring.

“You ready to play,” he says, licking his lips, eyeing me from top to bottom and back up again. I don’t wait for him to make the first move, which is another thing my father taught me. Especially not when your opponent is bigger than you.

I kick him hard and below the belt. Then I follow it up with a roundhouse kick to his head, which has dropped to waist level as he clutches his groin, groaning in agony.

I hear a yell, which likely comes from one of his mates, who are surely watching the exchange with interest, getting a good laugh up until the point I’d kicked him. Then I hear shoes pounding on the barren rock. Coming toward me. But I’m not worried about the footsteps, because strangely enough the Pen has a code of sorts. With the exception of multiple gang member brawls, fighting is limited to those involved in the fight. There is no jumping in, no ganging up. You can watch, but not intervene. The code won’t protect me the following day or the next week, when, had I been staying in the Pen, I would most definitely have to fight the rest of the gang members in succession, but I am relying on it now.

“Get up, boss,” I hear one of them say. I almost smile. Verbal encouragement is permitted. The guy he refers to as boss is a tough guy, and he would get up despite the brutality of the wounds I have already inflicted on him, but I’m not about to let him, not about to underestimate him like he has me.

So as soon as he pushes up to his knees I kick him in the face again. He spins away from me, lifting slightly off the ground before crashing onto his back. I think his skull hits the rock because blood starts seeping from the back of his head where I didn’t kick him. This time he isn’t getting back up.

And then Cole and Tawni are at my side, grabbing a shoulder each, backing me away from the semi-circle of gawkers who have formed to watch the painfully lopsided fight. It is over before it ever really starts. A fast fight is a good fight, my father always used to remind me during my lessons.

Tawni takes my hand and pulls me over to my stoop. I close my eyes, dip my head into my hands, start trembling. My whole body is shaking, like a virulent flu has attacked my insides all of a sudden, giving me a bad case of the shakes. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the rush of adrenaline that comes with extreme violence. I am no kind of adrenaline junkie, am not addicted to it, don’t crave it. Although I’m prepared to engage in violence when I’m forced to, I don’t particularly like confrontation. Unfortunately, confrontation seems to like me quite a lot.

The last time I fought in the yard—when I victimized those two guys’ legs and sent a message to the rest of the inmates—I’d cried afterwards, in my cell, alone. I’d never wished more to have my parents with me, to comfort me like a child, to hold me and tell me everything was going to be okay.

This time, however, I have Tawni. I’m not crying this time, but I am distraught, exhausted, both mentally and physically. She wraps an arm around me, pulls me close, holds me. Normally it would be a bad idea to show such weakness in front of the rest of the “guests,” but I don’t care. We are leaving and I will never look back.