just like Daddy? Are you kiddin me? Got to be an antique. But they got some weird shit in the canteen. Including real cigarettes, if you can believe that. All straights, Luckies and Chesterfields and Camels, like in those old flicks on Turner Classic Movies. I’m tempted to try, but man, they take a lot of tokens.”
“Real cigarettes? You don’t mean for kids?”
“Kids be the whole population here. Not that there are many in Front Half just now. Maureen says we may have more coming. I don’t know where she gets her info, but it’s usually good.”
“Cigarettes for kids? What is this? Pleasure Island?” Not that he felt very pleasurable just now.
That cracked her up. “Like in Pinocchio! Good one!” She held up her hand. Luke slapped her five and felt a little better. Hard telling why.
“What’s your name? I can’t just keep calling you white boy. It’s, like, racial profiling.”
“Luke Ellis. What’s yours?”
“Kalisha Benson.” She raised a finger. “Now pay attention, Luke. You can call me Kalisha, or you can call me Sha. Just don’t call me Sport.”
“Why not?” Still trying to get his bearings, still not succeeding. Not even close. He ate the other half of his cigarette, the one with the fake ember on the tip.
“Cause that’s what Hendricks and his fellow dipsticks say when they give you the shots or do their tests. ‘I’m gonna stick a needle in your arm and it’ll hurt, but be a good sport. I’m gonna take a throat culture, which will make you gag like a fuckin maggot, but be a good sport. We’re gonna dip you in the tank, but just hold your breath and be a good sport.’ That’s why you can’t call me Sport.”
Luke hardly paid attention to the stuff about the tests, although he would consider it later. He was back on fuckin. He had heard it from plenty of boys (he and Rolf said it a lot when they were out), and he had heard it from the pretty redhead who might have bricked the SATs, but never from a girl his own age. He supposed that meant he had led a sheltered life.
She put her hand on his knee, which gave him a bit of a tingle, and looked at him earnestly. “But my advice is go on and be a good sport no matter how much it sucks, no matter what they stick down your throat or up your butt. The tank I don’t really know about, I never had that one myself, only heard about it, but I know as long as they’re testing you, you stay in Front Half. I don’t know what goes on in Back Half, and I don’t want to know. All I do know is that Back Half’s like the Roach Motel—kids check in, but they don’t check out. Not back to here, anyway.”
He looked back the way he had come. There were lots of motivational posters, and there were also lots of doors, eight or so on either side. “How many kids are here?”
“Five, counting you and me. Front Half’s never jammed, but right now it’s like a ghost town. Kids come and go.”
“Talking of Michelangelo,” Luke muttered.
“Huh?”
“Nothing. What—”
One of the double doors at the near end of the corridor opened, and a woman in a brown dress appeared, her back to them. She was holding the door with her butt while she struggled with something. Kalisha was up in a flash. “Hey, Maureen, hey, girl, hold on, let us help.”
Since it was us instead of me, Luke got up and went after Kalisha. When he got closer, he saw the brown dress was actually a kind of uniform, like a maid might wear in a swanky hotel—medium swanky, anyway, it wasn’t gussied up with ruffles or anything. She was trying to drag a laundry basket over the metal strip between this hallway and the big room beyond, which looked like a lounge—there were tables and chairs and windows letting in bright sunlight. There was also a TV that looked the size of a movie screen. Kalisha opened the other door to make more room. Luke took hold of the laundry basket (DANDUX printed on the side) and helped the woman pull it into what he was starting to think of as the dormitory corridor. There were sheets and towels inside.
“Thank you, son,” she said. She was pretty old, with a fair amount of gray in her hair, and she looked tired. The tag over her