“Benson,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder. “It’s good to finally meet you.”
There was shouting somewhere down the hall, from behind the crowd. The tall guy directed me into a room.
“It’s quieter in here,” he said. “We can talk.”
I followed, more out of curiosity than anything else. Where else was I going to go?
Inside the room was a set of bunk beds, two desks, and a small sink and mirror. There were no sheets or blankets on the beds—it looked like no one actually lived here. He offered one of the desk chairs to me, and he took the other.
“My name’s Isaiah,” he said.
The guy who’d run after Ms. Vaughn—Curtis, I think—had said not to listen to Isaiah. I had no reason to trust Curtis, other than the fact that he’d tried to run, and that meant he had his head screwed on at least a little bit straighter than anyone else I’d met. Still, Isaiah seemed harmless.
“Becky told you about the gangs?”
Gangs? I’d never been in a gang—never stayed in one place long enough—but I’d spent my life around them. I thought I’d left them when I flew out of Pittsburgh. Even so, looking at Isaiah, he obviously had a different idea of what gangs were. No one here looked violent or the least bit deviant. They were all clean-shaven, with pin-striped pants and starched shirts. And, from what I could tell, these were their casual clothes—none of them were wearing the uniform.
“She told me a little bit about different groups,” I said. “She didn’t say they were gangs, though.”
“They are gangs,” he said. “They’re dangerous and irresponsible. You’ll find, Benson, that there are a lot of kids who view this school as a free pass to do whatever they want. They love that there are no parents or teachers, and they can behave however they want to.”
“Sounds terrible,” I said sarcastically.
“It is terrible. Have you ever read Lord of the Flies?”
I nodded. Reading was one of the few things I was ever good at in school, probably because I spent so much time by myself.
“Good,” Isaiah said, seeming impressed. “Well, here at Maxfield we have a choice of how we want to live. We can either be like the characters in that book—violent and tribal and savage—or we can try to be civilized. I’ve been here for a long time, Benson, and I can assure you that civilization is the only way to go.”
There was sudden yelling from somewhere in the hallway, and Isaiah motioned for one of his friends to close the door.
I looked around at the six guys in the room. They seemed tense, like they were waiting for something—maybe for me to agree to join them. All I really wanted to do was to get back outside and figure out how I could escape this school. Being in foster care was better than being a prisoner. Besides, I only had nine more months until my eighteenth birthday, and then I could be out on my own. No schools, no foster families.
“So,” I said, “let me get this straight. You’re the nice gang? You follow the rules, just like Becky was talking about. Is she one of you?”
“Yes, Becky is one of us. But we’re not a gang. That’s my point. We’re not like the others. They do nothing but fight and wallow. We recognize that there are problems here—don’t think that we love this situation—but we’ve made a decision. We can be miserable and get ourselves killed, or we can thrive. We have chosen to thrive. We are not a gang. We’re the Society.”
I laughed, which made Isaiah scowl. “Society? Isn’t that just a fancy name for a gang?”
“We don’t behave like a gang,” he said. “We treat one another with respect. We help one another. We—”
He was interrupted by a crash against the door. Two of his friends jumped to their feet and braced it. I could hear muffled voices coming from the other side.
“Listen,” he said to me more urgently. “If you want to be safe, you want to be in the Society. We’re the largest group, and no one dares to cause problems with us.”
Judging by the pounding on the door, I doubted that was true.
“If you want to be happy, you also want to be with us. We don’t get punished like the others, because we hold ourselves to a strict code of conduct. We live right, and we do right.”
The door popped open, but the two guys pushed it closed. A third jumped up and held the knob so it couldn’t turn.
“Don’t you want to escape?” I asked, knowing that our conversation was going to end soon. “Do you always just follow the rules?”
“No good has ever come from breaking them,” he said. “No one escapes, and those who try get punished.”
All five of Isaiah’s Society friends were at the door now, holding it against whoever was on the outside.
“But look at you,” I said. “You’re obviously older than eighteen. You should be out of high school. How long are you going to stay here and wait?”
“I will stay here as long as it takes. I won’t throw myself into danger, knowing it won’t help anything. Things here can be good if you stay out of trouble. You just have to follow the rules.”
As if on cue, the door burst open about ten inches and the room filled with noise. One of Isaiah’s guards kicked at someone in the hall, and another managed to shove the door closed again.
I turned back to Isaiah. “So what is that, if you’re following the rules?”
“Havoc is out there,” Isaiah said, nodding at the door. “We’re protecting you from them.”
There was a thunderous crash in the hall, and the door shook. I couldn’t believe that all of this was happening just because I had to choose a gang.
“Havoc?”
“That’s one of the gangs,” he said. He was speaking quickly now. “Just a bunch of punks. When you meet them you’ll understand why we had to form the Society.”
The door was open a crack now, and the five Society guys couldn’t close it.
Isaiah grabbed my shoulder. “We want you, Benson. We’re the largest group and we have the most contracts—the good jobs. We do security, medical, administration, teaching—”
“Students do security?”
“We do,” he said, his eyes glued on the door. “As directed by the school.”
I shook his hand off my shoulder. “So you’re helping them keep us in here?”
The door flew open, and the five exhausted Society guards fell back.
A kid stormed through, followed by three of his friends. He was tall and skinny, with brown hair that was too long and hung down almost to his eyes. He still wore the uniform pants, but instead of a shirt he had on an oversize black hoodie draped in gold chains. A tattoo of a hawk’s talons encircled his left eye.
“I bet Isaiah told you that you need to play nice, follow the rules. Didn’t he?”
I tried to keep calm, but could feel my muscles tense. Even though this new kid was obviously trying to get me to join his gang, he looked ready for a fight. And I didn’t have a lot of confidence in Isaiah’s guys, either. If five of them couldn’t hold the door against these four, I doubted they’d be useful when fists started flying.
“We’re Havoc,” he said, staring me down. “We take care of our own.” He took a step back.