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“Yeah.” Casey shrugs again. “Maybe.”
But it’s not different.
The guards come for Elliot two bread deliveries later. Him and another young boy Carter hadn’t noticed before. Elliot screams and sobs, reaching out for Carter and Casey as he’s dragged away. “Don’t let ‘em take me! Don’t let ‘em take me!”
Casey turns to face the wall, pressing his forehead against it, his entire body trembling. Carter tries to fight. He shoves guys out of the way, pushing forward, hands outstretched, desperately trying to get to Elliot before they take him away. He manages to get his fingers to brush Elliot’s. Then a guard hits him in the temple with a baton, and everything goes fuzzy.
Suddenly, Carter feels like he’s suffocating. Trapped. Bodies are pressing in, his vision not working properly, his lungs full of water instead of air, his feet and hands not obeying their orders to fucking move.
Someone grabs Carter from behind. He gasps, trying to remember how to fight. All he can think is that this is it. This is when he’s going to die.
But then his eyes focus, and his lungs recognize the air they’re getting, and the world tilts back to where it belongs, and Carter sees that it’s Casey who has him. The young man is running his hands over Carter’s skin, calming him. When Carter starts to sob, Casey pulls him in and holds him close. He lets Carter sob uncontrollably until he has nothing left inside himself. When they pull apart, he sees tears on Casey’s face as well. He thought maybe he’d feel better knowing Casey isn’t as unaffected as he pretends to be, but it feels even worse.
Carter goes to sleep a while later, the thought in his mind that maybe it’d be nice if he doesn’t wake up again.
But Carter does wake up.
He keeps waking up.
He watches more Elliots come and go, never mastering the art of unattachment. He feels each loss like they belong to him. In a way, they feel like they do.
The one constant is Casey. Through all of the coming and going, the playroom visits, the stale bread, the shit bucket dumps, the needle-like washes from the power hose, Casey is there. Brave. Steady. Wise. Always giving part of his bread to whoever had been taken by the guards most recently, their bodies usually needing the extra boost to heal.
Casey is always reminding the boys not to be idiots and try to fight the guards – Carter being one of them, more than once. Carter learns that Casey’s father is a police officer, something that immediately makes things about the young man clear. He would make his father proud. When Carter tells him that, Casey looks away and locks his jaw. It’s the second time since meeting him that Carter sees Casey cry.
Casey’s biggest lesson for anyone willing to listen is four phrases.
Keep calm.
Breathe.
Pay attention.
Wait for your moment.
They’re his tips for survival. Carter uses the mantra often, usually when the guards are pulling boys from the cell as they scream and cry for help.Keep calm. Breathe. Pay attention. Wait for your moment.
Carter keeps playing his game, imagining future scenarios, but one thing has changed since Casey. When Carter plays now, he’s in it to win.
When Carter plays now, he’s playing for freedom.
???
The guards come for Casey.
Carter is in the middle of helping a little boy calm down from a panic attack, rubbing circles on his back as he promises things that he knows are lies. Casey is slumped in the corner nearest to them, half-asleep as he tries to heal from his last round of playroom torture. He had just finished coughing up blood.
It’s Scarface who opens the heavy metal door. Two others are behind him. One grabs a man in his late twenties, yanking him into the hallway. The other points at Casey.
Casey, who hasn’t even been back in the cell long enough for bread or water.
Casey, who is still bleeding between his legs.
Casey, who can barely stand on his feet when Scarface summons him.
“No!” Carter yells, panic rising in his chest. He steps in front of Casey, ignoring his friend when he tells Carter it’s not worth it. “Take me. Just – just use me. He can’t take any more.”
Scarface sneers at Carter. “Get out of the fucking way, Beckett.”
