Fragile; that was how Mick Daniels finally chose to describe the boy that he escorted past the rows of dark cells. The teen shuffled, tripping occasionally on his leg irons. Daniels gripped the boy's arm so tight that he could feel the heat of a forming bruise, the over-caffeinated officer stricken with paranoia that the prisoner would slip his handcuffs; it wouldn't be another two days until the pair from the Juvenile Detention Center would arrive. They'd had to special order them and a uniform after the 18-year-old was convicted of killing a family of four while drunk driving on prom night. He'd needed to stand on a phone book at the murder trial. Cute little Noah Blanche wouldn't be up for parole until he was in his 50's.
"You know where you're going?" Daniels taunted, digging deeper into the boy's arm. He could practically touch his thumb to the second knuckle, there was so little of the kid to grip.
Noah shook his head, eyes unfocused and bloodshot. He'd been crying when the guard had unlocked his cell and plucked him from his bed. He stumbled beside the man on shaky, fawnish little legs. His pants sagged and fell, pooling around knees, which bent in awkward desperation to keep them from falling any further as he was dragged.
Mick smiled, his mouth full of tiny, sharp teeth.
"For such a pretty little thing, you ain't too sharp." Noah sure was pretty; petite, girlish, with smooth pale skin. He's been wearing eyeliner and a band t-shirt in the mug shot. His hair was slightly longer than it'd been in the picture, dyed black to cover where there'd one been purple stripes, bangs over one eye. Underneath he was baby-faced except for his sunken-in eyes, surrounded by eyelashes so long that Mick wondered for a second if the kid had mascara on. The grey was a fitting color for the fear and despair in them, but Mick would have liked him for him to be blue-eyed. Still, the kid was hypnotizing. He dragged him in silence to the laundry room, where a diverse group of inmates was seated around a table.
Cards.
Poker Chips.
Noah understood now. Mick smiled, amused by the change in the boy's expression, the way his body language switched from docile to tense. His eyes opened to perfect circles, counting the chips in the white and pink checkerboard linoleum of the laundry room floor.
"I'll raise you the top bunk in this little punk's room, all in." Mick's voice echoed off the appliances. The lights flickered, bathing everything in a dirty yellow, swinging slightly with the hum of the industrial washer. Noah felt a cold rush over him, entranced by the buzzing machines. He tried to find rhythm in it, to distract himself from the conversation. In his mind, everybody's words were out of synch like in an old, badly-dubbed Godzilla movie. Lewd questions fired at him from directions that he refused to try and follow.