Kindness for Weakness by Shawn Goodman

Author:Shawn Goodman [Goodman, Shawn]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General Fiction, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
ISBN: 9780385743242
Publisher: Delacorte
Published: 2013-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

33

After group, Samson asks Freddie and me to stay back. “Either of you know what I want to talk to you about?”

We look at each other, shaking our heads.

“We had a treatment team meeting yesterday and scored your behavior checklists. Congratulations. You both got your A-Stage.”

A-Stage, or “Adjustment Stage,” is what you can get after three weeks of good days. To go home, you have to earn Transition Stage. You also need a positive home assessment, which means there’s enough room for you in the apartment, food in the fridge, etc. Honors is the highest stage, but Tony was the only resident in the last two years to earn it.

Samson hands us a folder that’s filled with take-out menus for pizza, Chinese food, and subs. “This Friday is Stage Night,” he says. “If you guys have enough money from chores and want to order out, write it down and I’ll take care of it. And decide what you want to do after. We can watch a movie, go to the gym, whatever. Until someone else gets it together and earns their stage, it’s just the three of us.”

On our way back to the unit, Samson says, “You guys are doing a good job. Keep it up and you’ll be going home soon.”

Freddie and I pore over the menus during free time. We weigh the merits of pizza and wings versus chicken Parmesan subs versus egg rolls and shrimp lo mein. Freddie is obsessed with food and talks forever about the best restaurants in Harlem.

“There’s this one place,” he says, “where they got these things called bento boxes that have little compartments filled with different kinds of Chinese foods, like tempura vegetables, and sushi rolls, and teriyaki chicken and shit. You have to eat it all with chopsticks, which is harder than it looks, but I’m good at it.”

He gets this far-off dreamy look on his face, but he says, “I like Asian food, but it don’t fill you up like plain old pizza and wings.”

“Okay,” I say. “We’ll have that.”

“Cool. You like Hawaiian pizza? I love that shit. We can get a large Hawaiian pizza; that’s four big slices each, and then three or four dozen wings. How many wings you eat?”

“Hawaiian pizza’s disgusting,” I say. “How about sausage and pepperoni?”

“With black olives?”

We shake on the deal, forgetting for a moment that in Morton residents can’t shake hands, bump fists, hug, horseplay, or have any other kind of physical contact with each other. It says so on the first page of the resident handbook and is followed by a list of consequences including a formal write-up and temporary loss of privileges. Maybe we forget because the guards have been preoccupied with the baseball game that is on TV, or maybe it’s because we’re having fun for a minute, feeling like normal kids instead of criminals. But right away Horvath’s voice booms across the unit floor.

“Why are you two touching each other?” he says.

The room gets cold, and I can feel the eyes of the other boys on Freddie and me.

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