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“You know you’re not doing him any favors if you’re lying,” said Mr. Sir. “He can’t survive out there for more than a day or two.”
“I don’t know where he is.”
All three stared at Stanley as if they were trying to figure out if he was telling the truth. Mr. Pendanski’s face was so swollen, he could barely open his eyes. They were just slits.
“You sure he has no family?” the Warden asked Mr. Pendanski.
“He’s a ward of the state,” Mr. Pendanski told her. “He was living on the streets when he was arrested.”
“Is there anyone who might ask questions? Some social worker who took an interest in him?”
“He had nobody,” said Mr. Pendanski. “He was nobody.”
The Warden thought a moment. “Okay, I want you to destroy all of his records.”
Mr. Pendanski nodded.
“He was never here,” said the Warden.
Mr. Sir nodded.
“Can you get into the state files from our computer?” she asked Mr. Pendanski. “I don’t want anyone in the A.G.’s office to know he was here.”
“I don’t think I can erase him completely from all the state files,” said Mr. Pendanski. “Too many cross-references. But I can make it so it would be very difficult for anyone to ever find a record of him. Like I said, though, no one will ever look. No one cares about Hector Zeroni.”
“Good,” said the Warden.
32
Two days later a new kid was assigned to Group D. His name was Brian, but X-Ray called him Twitch because he was always fidgeting. Twitch was assigned Zero’s bed, and Zero’s crate.
Vacancies don’t last long at Camp Green Lake.
Twitch had been arrested for stealing a car. He claimed he could break into a car, disconnect the alarm, and hot-wire the engine, all in less than a minute.
“I never plan to, you know, steal one,” he told them. “But sometimes, you know, I’ll be walking past a real nice car, parked in a deserted area, and, you know, I’ll just start twitching. If you think I twitch now, you should see me when I’m around a car. The next thing I know, I’m behind the wheel.”
> Stanley lay on his scratchy sheets. It occurred to him that his cot no longer smelled bad. He wondered if the smell had gone away, or if he had just gotten used to it.
“Hey, Caveman,” said Twitch. “Do we really have to get up at 4:30?”
“You get used to it,” Stanley told him. “It’s the coolest part of the day.”
He tried not to think about Zero. It was too late. Either he’d made it to Big Thumb, or …
What worried him the most, however, wasn’t that it was too late. What worried him the most, what really ate at his insides, was the fear that it wasn’t too late.
What if Zero was still alive, desperately crawling across the dirt searching for water?
He tried to force the image out of his mind.
The next morning, out on the lake, Stanley listened as Mr. Sir told Twitch the requirements for his hole: “… as wide and as deep as your shovel.”
Twitch fidgeted. His fingers drummed against the wooden shaft of his shovel, and his neck moved from side to side.
“You won’t be twitching so much after digging all day,” Mr. Sir told him. “You won’t have the strength to wiggle your pinkie.” He popped some sunflower seeds in his mouth, deftly chewed them, and spat out the shells. “This isn’t a Girl Scout camp.”
The water truck came shortly after sunrise. Stanley got in line behind Magnet, ahead of Twitch.
