Mencken and the Lost Boys by Jeff Elkins

Author:Jeff Elkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jeff Elkins
Published: 2018-04-04T20:54:58+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

MALIK

Malik watched the door with anticipation. He knew it was going to happen any minute now. Mr. Stockton had promised. He listened closely to the world outside his box. There was nothing yet.

After being locked in the small room for what felt like years, Malik had given up. Lost in time, hopelessness, and exhaustion, he’d stopped the screaming, and punching, and kicking, and wailing. Something he’d never felt before, a sense of complete defeat, filled his chest. The last thing he remembered was curling into a ball on the hard concrete floor and falling asleep.

When he awoke, Mr. Stockton was in the room, sitting on the bed, dressed in all black, watching him. He waited for Malik to sit up, and then he said, “You are a gifted young man. You have tools that are going to allow you to lead. I’m offering you something you’ve never had before, a family. You will need to be loyal to us over everything else, and we will be loyal to you. We take care of one another, die for one another if necessary. And we work toward a common goal.”

“What’s that?” Malik asked. His throat was dry and scratchy.

Mr. Stockton passed him a water bottle and Malik took a long drink. The cool liquid stung the back of his throat. He wondered how long he’d been asleep.

“We’re rebuilding the city that failed us,” Mr. Stockton said. “We were all abused and beaten down by the streets. We’ll create a place where no child has to grow up like we did. Not in Baltimore. Not in our city.”

Malik wanted nothing more than to go to sleep again. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. “What if I don’t want to join?” he said.

“Then I’ll kill you,” Mr. Stockton said. There was no humor in his voice. “And no one will miss you. No one will mourn you. No one will even know you are gone, because you’re a Lost Boy, just like I was. Just like we all were.” Those were the last words Malik heard before falling back to sleep.

For the next five days, Malik received two visits a day. The first was from Mr. Stockton. During those visits, the father explained to Malik how the family worked. He explained the rigorous academic expectations, the physical training that would be required, who the Lost Boys worked for, what kind of work they did, and the code they lived by. At the end of each session, Mr. Stockton again expressed the family credo: “Loyalty to the family above all else, and if you try to leave, we’ll kill you.”

The second visit each day was from one of the other Lost Boys: Dominic came first, then Kamal, then Quincy. Each of the teens explained their story in plain terms without ego or grandstanding. They talked about the horrors they’d experienced as children with little to no emotion. They then asked about Malik. Each time he tried to explain his story in the same way.

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