Chapter Text
“First hole’s the hardest,” Frank’s bunkmate had said with a sly smile.
Frank didn’t trust a word that came out of Leo’s mouth. The guy had an impish, who-me? way about him that was almost cherubic, but his eyes were pure kerosene. He looked too little and goofy to be trouble to anybody, but he seemed as likely to slip a rattlesnake into Frank’s bunk as he was to give him real, helpful advice.
And Leo had been lying, of course. The second was harder. Then the third, when Frank already had aching muscles and blistered hands.
He’d had strong arms before his arrest, and callouses from his archery. But he’d never done hard labor before. A hole in the desert ground, once per day, five by five by five feet, so decreed the court of Texas.
“I can’t believe this shit is legal,” he’d said to Leo, bandaging up his fingers. Leo had asked him how his first day felt, with a knowing grin.
His bunkmate had cackled. “Welcome to the states!”
Frank would have picked differently if he’d known what he was getting into. He had the choice of juvie - where he would turn eighteen in less than a year, and then be transferred to an adult prison - or Wilderness Camp, where he could remain with other teens until the age of twenty.
The research he’d been allowed to conduct in jail had turned up results for Wilderness School, where he would have taken classes and attended bootcamp and therapy. Not Wilderness Camp, which was unaffiliated, and very hard to find information about online.
He’d picked Wilderness Camp, and been delivered to the desert.
Over a year to go.
Leo and Frank had three things in common. They didn’t know it yet.
The first was that they’d both been sentenced to a disciplinary camp for juveniles, located in the Chihuahuan desert. They were both aware of this. It was Frank’s first arrest, but not Leo’s.
The second was that they were both orphans - no fathers, deceased mothers. They would learn this about each other in group therapy, and would not discuss it further.
The third was that they both had great-grandfathers who immigrated to the United States and became suddenly and improbably wealthy.
Frank’s great-grandfather had run a shipping business. What did he ship? Frank had no clue. Leo’s great-grandfather had disappeared off the map for a month and returned with plenty of money and a deep sadness. What had he done? Leo had no clue. He’d been less than a week old the only time he met the guy.
Frank’s family would maintain their wealth, and Leo’s would lose everything.
The consequences of this would span generations.
Leo dug faster than anybody. Frank didn’t understand it - the guy was a shrimp, and barely taller than the hole he dug. But he tossed his shovel out first and climbed out, a good forty-five minutes before the next fastest digger showed his dirt-covered face.
“How are you that fast?” Frank had to ask, after he’d showered and gone back to the tent, over two hours later.
“It’s all mathematical,” Leo said. “Ask Annabeth.”
“Who?”
“You haven’t met Annabeth? She’s a celebrity. Come on, it’s mating hour anyways.”
Frank wasn’t sure why Leo dragged him around anywhere. Maybe he was lonely. He’d made it clear that Frank was not a sufficient replacement for his last bunkmate, Jason, whose fate Frank still didn’t know. Jason didn’t snore, Jason got his jokes, Jason shared his dinner with Leo. Frank was pretty sure Leo was lying about at least one of those, but he couldn’t argue without proof. Their dinner was gross anyway - Frank would have been happy to give it up if he had any other choice, but he knew better than to go out digging on an empty stomach. The only perk was the Fig Newtons given as dessert.
Mating hour meant the social hour after dinner, when it had cooled off enough for it to be bearable to spend time outside. All of the boys went to the fence that divided them from the girl’s camp. No interaction was permitted between the boys and girls that didn’t have chain links between them. The girls had their own half of the mess hall and their own toilets. Their own patch of desert to dig.
Leo took Frank over to the edge, where a pretty girl was waiting, wearing the same orange jumpsuit they were. “Piper, meet Jason’s replacement,” Leo announced.
Piper, at least, was politer than Leo. She waved. “Hi. I’m Piper, like he said. What’s your name?”
“Frank,” he answered.
Piper turned to Leo. “Any word?”
“Nah. You know he forgot about us.”
“He wouldn’t do that,” Piper snapped.
Frank wanted to ask, but he felt awkward enough already. Leo clued him in. “Frank. Imagine you get lucky enough to leave this place. Are you bragging about it to the people still there?”
“Um. Maybe?”
Leo rolled his eyes. “Thank you for your insight.”
Down the fence, Frank watched Percy, one of the guys from his tent, and the celebrity, Annabeth, talk. Witnessed a covert flash of a yellow wrapper in Percy’s hand before it was slipped into Annabeth’s sleeve.
Fig Newtons. Their only luxury. Maybe Frank did believe in love?
Frank turned away and caught Leo staring at the couple. There was no twinkle in his eye, no smirk on his lips. He didn’t look wistful either. He just watched with narrowed eyes.
Frank turned from him too. “So. Um. How long was Jason’s sentence?”
“Two years,” Leo said. “But he only did six months here.”
“He got transferred out?”
“In a sense.” Leo grinned. “You know how they only give us plastic silverware?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s because Jason stuck a fork into the outlet in the rec room. Like, all the way in. It blew the power for the whole camp.”
Frank frowned. “To go home?”
“In protest,” Leo said. “It was awesome.”
“He could have died,” Piper said. “You said you thought he was dead for a minute.”
“Nah, I bet he’s fine,” Leo said. “He woke up when they were wheeling him away.”
Frank wondered if it was really in protest, or if it had been a suicide attempt. “What did he do to wind up here?”
Leo whistled. “Illegal possession of a firearm. Serial number was scratched off.”
“Why?” Frank asked.
“Jason’s a mysterious guy.” Leo looked pointedly at Piper. “He still is. He’s gone with the wind.”
Before bed, Frank usually thought about air conditioning, or his bedroom at home with a door he could lock. Fresh food. His mother. His grandmother. The trial. The lawyer who’d promised to help.
Tonight, he wondered about Jason, this guy he’d never met, this guy whose mattress was now Frank’s. Could he get in touch with his old friends if he wanted to?
Frank had received no letters. No phone calls. He didn’t know if anyone else did.
Frank could envision his life before this place every night.
What came after?
There were no weekends at Wilderness Camp. No weather, no rain. Nothing changed.
Another year to go.
It felt like Frank would always be here.
Another day, another hole. Frank had been there for two, three weeks? His hands had calloused over. He was no longer in physical agony from digging. But it felt like his mind had calloused over too - he’d always been up in his own head most of the time, thinking about something - and now that was gone, replaced by sheer exhaustion, and something worse underneath.
Another year to go.
About three and a half feet down, Frank hit something.
He thought it was a rock, but the shape was familiar. It was long and white, protruding from the wall of his hole.
Frank hated to dig outside the boundary of his five foot circumference, but curiosity overcame him. He dug into the wall and pulled out an enormous femur.
It was too big to be human, obviously. It was the size of a club in Frank’s hands.
Frank heard a cry, and his head jerked up. Everyone around him was still digging. Frank looked left and right - it was just their cabin out here, but Frank could hear a woman wailing.
“What’d you find?” Leo called. Frank turned - he hadn’t realized that Leo was watching him.
“Do you hear that?” Frank asked.
“Hear what?” Leo said.
“Someone crying.” The noise faded out, but was replaced in Frank’s ears by a tinny ringing.
Leo huffed. “Not unless it’s you. What is that?” He hopped out of his hole and scuffed over, pointing at the bone. “Oh, cool. You think it was a wooly mammoth?”
“Yeah, right. Maybe a cow?”
Leo nodded. “God, that thing could be a weapon. Want to try to show it to the counselors?”
“Yeah, and get punished for finding this?” Frank pushed it back into the wall of the hole. “Farm animals came through here two hundred years ago. Who cares?”
“Maybe the Oregon Trail,” Leo said.
Frank had replaced the cow bone, but Leo took a minute before drifting off. Frank wondered why. For all that Leo talked, he never said much.
Thinking too hard about his bunkmate was a bad idea anyway. Frank realized this when Leo caught him staring in line for the portable sink they all used to brush their teeth. Leo smirked. Frank immediately glowered at him, trying to cover up how red his face felt. Leo always found a way to remind Frank that he was doing the wrong thing at the wrong time.
And wasn’t that why he was here?
That night, Frank dreamed of a cowboy, creeping into a town from the scrub bushes. Either Frank was a giant in the dream, or the cowboy was tiny. Tiny, and wrapped in bulky layers, covered with a face kerchief and ten-gallon hat, and with an oversized rifle strapped on their back.
They walked through a little western town, Frank trailing behind - he couldn’t believe how seedy the place was, all falling wood planks and tin siding. Men gathered on porches and around fires, drinking and laughing hoarsely. The cowboy walked briskly. They were a bit bowlegged, which made Frank chuckle.
He was trying to think why he was having cowboy dreams - well, he was in the desert. But he’d never been a big follower of the genre, and he’d never seen a western starring a five-foot-nothing black man. Then he realized that he’d never stopped in a dream to ponder why he was dreaming. He was never that lucid.
Frank trailed the pint-size cowboy into a dim saloon. They marched straight through to the counter, had a brief exchange with the barkeep, and put down some change. Frank looked around - others were observing the newcomer. They weren’t the only black man inside, but they were the only person so covered up.
The cowboy’s eyes were their only clearly visible feature, and they caught on a man’s back in the corner.
They stared for too long. Another man signaled the object of their attention, and he turned around.
Frank and the cowboy both gasped.
The man was Leo.
Dressed like an old-timey labor worker, in those photographs where men built train tracks or sawed down trees, but unmistakably Leo.
Before Frank could begin to analyze why he was dreaming about his bunkmate in a Clint Eastwood movie, a man who’d clearly been overserved left the group of men and approached the diminutive cowboy, who quickly looked away. “Who the hell are you?” he shouted. The cowboy tried to evade, but the drunk was faster and grabbed at their face kerchief.
The second that it came off, it was obvious why it had been on. The cowboy was a young woman, the only one in the bar.
The woman looked horrified. Leo looked stunned. Heads had turned in anticipation of a fight, but laughter broke out when her face was revealed.
Frank would have withered in embarrassment, but she chose a different tack: sprinting out the door.
Old-timey Leo ran out after her.
Frank left the bar too, but the second he burst through the doors he was jolting awake in bed.
He’d been asleep. It was just a dream.
The most realistic, immersive dream he’d ever had in his life, but just a dream.
“You good?”
Hearing Leo’s whisper made Frank jump even harder. “God!”
Frank heard a hushed laugh. “Bad dreams?” In the dark, Frank could still make out Leo’s eyes. See his teeth as he smiled. Frank’s pulse was racing. “You sound like you’re seeing ghosts.”
For an insane second, Frank wanted to say ‘I dreamt about you.’
Of course he didn’t. “Don’t worry about it.”
And of course Leo smelled blood. “C’mon, man. Spill.”
How could Frank explain? He already didn’t fit into this place. He’d never even gotten a detention before he got arrested. He wasn’t even from the United States. But the only way to make things easier was to keep his mouth shut.
He couldn’t show weakness here. Ever. “Shut up,” he grunted at Leo.
Leo blinked, then that same nasty smile spread over his face. “Hey, we’re all friends here.”
Frank thought of every kid who needled him in school. It was always just a joke. Always nothing. And his reaction, his humiliation, was always the punchline.
He put up with it at school because he hadn’t seen another path. At school, you went home for the day. Here, was forever as far as Frank was concerned. He could be cowed by Leo or tell him off, and either way he’d have a shovel in his hands in the morning.
“Who’s we?” Frank said. “You don’t have any friends.”