Page 89 of Good Half Gone

I lower my voice. “Arthur. You’re not like them. I can tell. You look mean but you’re not mean, right?”

“I have to tie your hands.” His voice is soft…and he has a lisp. He looks embarrassed. I hold out my wrists for him. He looks at me out of the corner of his eye, then slowly takes my wrists like he’s afraid he’ll break them.

“Did you live in D?”

He focuses on his knot, but I catch the quick bob of his chin. Things are pulling together in my head. I’d read about Arthur Barton. I read about all of them. Arthur killed his mother. I watched an interview his distraught father gave to the press. He said that Arthur and his mother had a loving relationship. She was a mother who cried herself to sleep out of concern for her son.

After the attack, he called 911. He was found in the house when police arrived, cradling her bludgeoned head.

“You didn’t like being in that room, did you?”

He shook his head. “They said, ‘You live out here and be the security guard…’”

Despite looking upset, he’s quick on his feet. He backs out of the tent and zips me in. There’s a sleeping bag rolled in the back corner, but with my hands tied, I can’t unroll it. I sit cross-legged in the center of the tent, urgently alert and deeply tired.

They start drinking ten minutes later. They’re celebrating,dancing around the fire like the Lost Boys. I hear someone else join them. “I locked them in. Should be good for tonight.”

Who is lucky number four?

Whoever he is, he barks at Marshal to “shut the fuck up,” and Marshal listens.

Here is the boss. The alpha dog. The brain?The bomb maker!I think suddenly. They’re afraid of him. I know who he is. He didn’t just kill his ex and her new boyfriend, he was in some skinhead cult. They wanted to blow people up. They bought explosives from an undercover cop. The other four guys got twenty years each. Dalton, who was only sixteen when it all went down, got sent to juvie. Instead of getting better, he got worse. He had a taste for violence.

After getting into a fight and killing some kid in juvie, he was tried for murder. His lawyer came in strong. He was a product of systemic abuse. The boys who raised him were serving twenty years, because they deserved it. Dalton, he said, needed rehabilitation. The jury agreed, and he moved into HOTI. He’d pretty much been here most of his life.

Dalton tells them he’s keeping watch. They get in their tents and zip up.

A sheet of green vinyl separates me from one of the most violent men in Washington state. A genius, violent man who spent his teens building bombs.

I’m not afraid. I don’t feel anything at all, other than a little cold. For some reason I find this insanely funny. All I am is cold. The laughter fills me with air like a balloon. I can’t stop. I can see Dalton’s shape through the tent. A hulking man. The top half of his body rotates to look at the tent. I wish I could see his face. I…sound…scary—which makes me laugh harder. I don’t sound human. I haven’t been human since Piper left me. The laughter cuts off in my throat. I lie on my side, propping my head on the sleeping bag.

George—or Arthur—sat behind the guard window for months.I saw him every week. I’d never questioned or wondered why it was always and only him. No, I was wrong, there had been another guard once, a mean one. I never saw him again. Was he a patient too? I’d been too busy with my own problems. My God, what else have I missed?

I drift in and out of a light sleep, jolting awake anytime one of them laughs.

I’m running. Gunshots echo behind me. I’m falling face-first off a cliff. I bolt upright. A dream. I am still in the nightmare. Another one of those loud pops. Someone is shooting a gun in the air.

“Cut it out,” Dalton barks.

They grow quieter as the hours tick by. I know from listening to them that Dalton is taking the first shift. The cut on my hand throbs like it’s infected. It probably doesn’t matter because the ropes on my wrists are so tight, I’ll need both arms amputated. Restless and emboldened by my small nap, I kick at the side of the tent.

“Hey! Hey hello, I have to take a piss.”

It’s a stranger’s face I see when the zipper opens. A human meerkat in a concert tee stares at me from behind thick glasses. He looks like a geek on steroids.

“Hello, Dalton.”

I clock the surprise on his face, and then he looks embarrassed. He doesn’t try to touch me like the others did. He stands back, the gun hanging limply at his side.

“Come out.” I do as I’m told. He’s even shorter than Marshal but a lot smarter. He calculates me, tilting his head to the side like he’s trying to work out my wires.

Such a fucking geek. He gestures to the woods with his gun hand.

Dalton stops at a giant rock and looks at me.

I show him my wrists. “I can’t with these on.” He unties my hands. I walk around the rock.

“I’ll shoot you if you do anything stupid.”

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