Lockdown by Walter Dean Myers Read Free Book Online

There were red and yellow tables you could sit at and real curtains on the windows. There were cameras in each corner of the room, but I didn’t mind them. A television was tuned to the weather channel.
    I looked around and saw a woman who looked like my mom standing in front of one of the vending machines. She was alone. For some reason I thought for a moment she might not recognize me.
    “Hey.”
    My mother turned and looked at me and smiled. She was looking neat, maybe a little thinner than the last time I saw her.
    “Well, how you doing?” she asked.
    “I’m okay,” I said.
    She kissed me on the cheek. “You’re taller!” she said. “They must be feeding you good.”
    “The food’s okay,” I said.
    We sat at one of the tables. “They said that Icy was with you.”
    “She’s in the bathroom,” Mom said. “So what’s going on?”
    “Ain’t nothing going on,” I said. “I’m in here doing the time.”
    “I tried to get your father to come up,” she said. “He said he was tied up and maybe he would get up the next time.”
    “Yeah.”
    “He’s so far back in his child-support payments I can’t even keep track of them,” she said. “I got a date to take him down to Family Court and he didn’t show. They don’t do anything, so I don’t know why I keep getting dates.”
    Out of the corner of my eye I saw Icy come out of the bathroom. She came over with her hands on her hips doing her movie-star walk.
    “Reesy, darling!”
    “Yo, Icy!” I got up and she threw her arms around me and hugged me harder than I thought she could. “Let me look at you, girl.”
    Icy stepped back and put her hands on her hips and turned around.
    “Yo, you sure you’re nine or you’re nineteen?” I asked.
    “What were you doing?” Icy asked, slipping into a chair at the table. “I bet you were playing video games.”
    “I don’t think they have any video games in here,” I answered. “How long it take you to get up here?”
    “We got the bus at twelve thirty,” Mom said. “But I bet it stopped in every little place that had a convenience store or a gas station. My back is killing me.”
    “You should try riding the van all the way up here,” I said. “When I came up, the scenery was nice, though.”
    “They got a school,” Mom said. “I saw it in the brochure. You learning much?”
    “Learning I don’t want to be up here,” I said.
    “We’re learning how to divide fractions in school,” Icy said.
    “You going to summer school?” I asked.
    “If I go to summer school, then I can get into Harlem Children’s Zone.” Icy squinched her eyes up and wiggled the way she does when she’s pleased with herself.
    “They’re not taking you just because you got a half a dimple,” I said. “You got to have something in here.” I tapped her on the head.
    “I got smarts going on,” she said. “And now that I heard the good news, you know I’m going to study hard.”
    “What’s the good news?”
    “Hillary Clinton is not going to be the president, so that leaves the door open for me to become the first woman president,” Icy said.
    “They giving out GEDs?” Mom asked.
    “You can take the course or you can apply for the tests,” I said.
    “’Cause you know you got to be doing something with your life when you get out of here,” Mom said. “You know that, right?”
    “Yeah, I know it,” I said.
    There were two other families in the room. One was a girl’s family and the other one I recognized as Play’s aunt and cousin.
    “Did you look into any of the family programs they have?” Mom was still talking.
    “Like what?”
    “You’re just going to do your time and then slide on out to the streets again?” she asked.
    “I’m going to school,” I said. “You don’t have any choice. Even if you have a high school diploma or a GED, you got to go to school unless you’re on some kind of medication where you can’t learn anything.”
    “You can learn if you put your mind to