Dangerous
Prologue
Ten Years Earlier
For the third night in a row, the boy woke to the sound of screaming. He leaped up, tangled in the sweat-soaked sheets, heart pounding so hard he gasped for breath. As he hovered between nightmare and waking, he thought he could hear the others, their grunts and growls and soft snarls as they slept.
More like puppies than little boys, the night nurse would say. She always smiled when she said it, but the boy saw only her bared teeth, and the snap in her voice said she didn’t find it funny at all. She found it strange, unnatural, wrong. Like when she got angry and called them brats and savages and, her favorite insult, hissed in their ears . . .
Little beasts.
As the nightmare slid away, so did the sounds of the others. The boy looked over, squinting in the dark, windowless room, only a sliver of light coming from under the door.
He turned toward the other three beds and knew what he’d see. Empty, as they’d been for four nights now, the covers pulled tight, the boys gone, never to return, leaving him behind, alone.
He didn’t mind that so much. Being alone meant there was no one to corner him in the play-yard, snap at him, claw him, bite him.
The doctors and nurses never interfered. They only watched, whispering among themselves, saying words like outcastand omega, packand hierarchy, words he didn’t understand, words they jotted furiously into their notebooks.
So he wasn’t sad to see the others gone. What bothered him was how they left.
The Incident, the doctors and nurses called it. Another word he didn’t understand, but he shivered each time he heard it.
It had started with a new nurse. A pretty, young nurse who’d gotten mad when the older one called them little beasts, who’d snuck them candies and chocolate bars and soda pop. He’d liked her. To the others, though, her kindness smelled like weakness, and they’d used it, always smiling and sitting with her and asking for more treats.
When the other nurse found out, she’d put a stop to the gifts. The other boys hadn’t liked that. They’d wheedled and begged, but the young nurse said no, she wasn’t allowed to bring them anything.
Then, one night, she snuck in to see them. Just to see them—tuck them in, kiss them goodnight. Only the other boys thought she’d brought them treats, and when they found out she hadn’t—
The boy squeezed his eyes shut, but he still remembered it. He still saw them backing her into the corner, then pouncing. He still heard her screams. Still smelled the blood that had flecked the walls.
He might be the biggest, but he was no match for all three of them. So he’d run to the door and banged and shouted, making more noise than he ever had in his life.
The guards had rescued the nurse. Then they’d put him in the schoolroom, given him milk and cookies, and told him he’d done the right thing and they were proud of him.
But they hadn’t sounded proud. They’d sounded scared.
It had been nearly morning when the old nurse had taken him back to the bedroom, where he could still smell blood under the stink of disinfectant. The other boys had been gone. And they never came back.
He never thought to ask what had happened to them. Nothing in his young life led him to believe that question—or any other—would be answered.
He’d been born here, with the other three. Lived here all his five years. He’d never been outside the front doors. He didn’t even know where they were. He only went out the back ones and only into the play yard.
As for what was beyond the garden walls, he wasn’t really sure. He had books, and he was a good reader, but the world depicted within those pages might have well been the moon for all the resemblance it bore to his life.
He read about things like mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers, but he didn’t really understand the concepts. There was another child who came here sometimes. Simon lived outside the building with a man he called Dad, but the boy didn’t really understand what that meant.
Simon was almost always smiling, always happy. The boy didn’t understand that either. He just knew that he felt happier himself when Simon was around.
The other three boys hadn’t liked Simon. They’d tripped him and pushed him and said he wasn’t one of them, and got mad when the boy played with him. But he had anyway. They played board games, and even when Simon lost, he never flew into a rage or snarled and snapped like the others, but only grinned and said he’d win the next time.
As the boy tried to fall back asleep, he thought about Simon and not about the others. Not where they’d gone. Not how things had changed since they’d left.
Now when the boy was in the playroom, he heard voices coming through the vent, where the doctors watched him through the camera. He knew about the camera, but he ignored it, and built his cars and bridges and skyscrapers and all the other things he saw in his books. He built and he listened.
He didn’t hear everything they said—just a few words that made him shiver like he did when they said “The Incident.” Words like problemand mistakeand miscalculation. And the worst word of all, the one they said over and over as they whispered among themselves. Dangerous.
He knew they were talking about him. But he wasn’t dangerous. He’d never done more than shove the other boys and only when they came after him or Simon. He’d never gotten in trouble for that, no matter how much the other boys fake-cried and pretended to be hurt. And he’d never hurt any of the grown-ups. Never even yelled or snarled or growled at them. He was a good boy—everyone said so.
But now, every time they glanced his way, he saw fear in their faces. He heard it in their voices. He saw it when they skittered out of the room. They thought he was dangerous. He knew too, that whatever they’d done with the other boys, they were now thinking of doing the same to him, just to be sure. Just to be safe.
The next morning, the boy was in the schoolroom, doing his math. He liked math. He liked that there were always answers if you knew how to find them.