Page 55 of One Step Sideways

“Cherry,” Blaze muttered warningly, and Cherry glanced at him, exasperation painted all over his face.

“What? He’s one of us. What does it matter?” Cherry turned back and lowered his voice. “I’ve got a good memory, like photographic, but it’s never helped me much. I had no intention of using it at school, because I stood out there enough already.” I nodded in understanding. Cherry was obviously gay. He didn’t need another target painted on him. I also didn’t point out that the chances of the C.O.s not listening to every word we said were less than zero. There was no way they had the technology for the cells and would just leave us tochatout here. In fact, I would bet my last dollar that was the whole point of us beingtechnicallyunsupervised. “I never told them,” Cherry continued, “so once they decided I couldn’t do anything startling they’ve pretty much left me alone. Then I got injured.”

Blaze scoffed. “Like it wasn’t on purpose.”

I glanced at him. “Meaning?”

“They told me to pick up a small hand-held weight, likereallysmall, except the thing was as heavy as fuck and I dropped the damn thing on my foot and broke it. They x-rayed it every day for a week.”

“Because they wanted to see if he had rapid healing,” Blaze said, but yeah, I’d kind of gotten that.

“And strength,” I added.

“They tried all that or similar with me as well,” Mark said. “All three of us, but we didn’t know that until they let us out here. We never saw each other before that.”

“How long have you been here?” The facility had only opened two weeks ago.

“Four weeks,” Cherry and Blaze answered together. Which seemed to contradict the idea of the facility only being open two weeks, but what did I know?

None of this answered the question of why I hadn’t been tested, unless as they had seventeen years of prison records for me, they either thought if I had an advanced ability, I had managed to keep it a secret for seventeen years and their cheap tricks wouldn’t work. Or that because I was considerably older than the teenagers, maybe I wasn’t as gullible.

“They know what I can do,” Blaze said glumly, “and tried to beat it.”

“How do they know?” I asked, which seemed a less invasive question than bluntly asking what it was. And I had zero doubt the C.O.s were listening, so they already knew what these guys could do.

“No secret with thebrothers. I can smell and taste what’s in everyday shit. I used to test purity to see what crap they’d mixed the product with for my brother.” He looked down. “We ran away from a foster dump when I was eleven.”

“That’s messed up,” I said quietly.

“We weren’t always there. And mine wasn’t bad, but I couldn’t leave my brother out there on his own, could I?” He seemed to be looking for some sort of validation, so I just nodded.

“We had a little brother as well once. But he wouldn’t sleep. Drove my dad crazy after Mom died, so my dad started mixing shit like vodka into his juice at bedtime. One time Dad used so much I couldn’t wake him one morning for school. I’d always been good at knowing what was in things, and one night my little brother fell asleep before he’d finished, so I tasted it. I knew it had booze in it, as my nose is pretty good as well. I worked out that it was vodka, so I told my older brother. Karl said he would take the vodka and flush it, but he got into trouble for skipping school and Dad locked us both in the cellar because he knew I would have gotten Karl out if he just shut him in. We could hear him watching TV with some woman, but we couldn’t do shit. Josh was in bed by this time.”

Blaze was silent for a moment. “Next morning, it was the cops that let us out. The woman with Dad had woken up and gone to the bathroom, and peeked in on Josh, just being nosy, and discovered he’d been sick and choked. They told us.” I stayed quiet because I didn’t think anything I could say would help, butI just wished I could stick Blaze’s dad and mine in a box somewhere and blow them up. Drown them, maybe. I didn’t care what.

“She called 911,” Blaze continued, “and we were told family services were coming for us, but we ended up in different homes. Karl’s was shit. Mine was okay, but when Karl ran and came for me, obviously I went as well. He knew someone in the gang that would let us crash with them, and it went from there. Karl boasted about what I could do, so I helped. No drugs affect me either. They could give me something that would take down an elephant, but it wouldn’t do shit to me.” He shrugged. “I guess unless you’re drug running, what I can do doesn’t mean much, so after forcing me to take so-calledvitaminsthat obviously didn’t work, the C.O.s have pretty much left me alone since.”

I looked at Mark, who was staring at the table. “I was born into the wrong family as well.” he remarked. It was a challenge, and I understood. I hadn’t done any sharing, and to be honest, I hadn’t dared risk it. I debated what I could say knowing I would be overheard.

“Well, I don’t have super strength or speed. I’ve been inside since I was seventeen.” I hoped that would distract them, which it did.

“Why?” Cherry asked in utter horror.

“I attacked my father. It was justified, especially as he’d just been whipping me, but you know how it is. They took one look at the scar on my face, and they didn’t listen.”

Mark looked surprised. “Is he dead?”

“Unfortunately, not,” I answered. “When he does go, it’ll probably be his liver that takes him out.” All three nodded in understanding.

“C.O.’s coming,” Mark muttered and the other two sat back from where we’d been huddled together. But it took another full minute before the C.O. opened the big door and beckoned us.

The other three practically jumped to their feet, and it didn’t take a genius to understand Mark had some sort of sensitive hearing. If my theory was correct, and they knew what all the boys’ abilities were, then they must be aware of it. I remembered the keypad on the warden’s desk. How he had pressed the button,and nothing seemed to happen. Could it be some sort of soundproofing? Made sense. Someone had spent a lot of time and money on this place.

I understood rec time was over and I followed them in. Expecting to return to my ‘box’, I was surprised when another of the tworeasonableC.O.s stopped me.

“Prisoner seventy-three, you are due in the clinic. Follow me.” It wasn’t a request, as the zip-ties and shackles immediately appeared, but at least he didn’t walk so quickly that I couldn’t keep up.

“What’s the clinic?” I risked the question. I mean, I knew what the general word meant but was suspicious of how it applied to us, and wondered if it was my turn for the gym.

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