Lockdown by Walter Dean Myers Read Free Book Online Page B

you go to jail?”
    “Not while you’re in jail,” I said. “I don’t know, really.”
    “How do you think Mom and I look?” Icy asked.
    “You look fine,” I said.
    Mom came back and said they had to go. “I don’twant to mess this job up,” she said. “I figure if I’m making money and can help Willis, he won’t be stealing or anything.”
    They weren’t there but a minute and then they were gone. If they hadn’t come at all, it would have been cool, but just to blow in like that and then blow out was hard.
    “You headed back to the dayroom?” Wilson asked.
    “Can I sit here a minute?” I asked him.
    “Yeah.”
    I sat for a while trying to think why I was feeling so bad. I was in the facility and I couldn’t go home and I was feeling lonely, but there was more to it. It was like I wasn’t connected with nothing in the friggin’ world. Nothing.
    Play’s people were hugging him and I saw them leave. Then I watched some more people come in. Indian people. A man and a woman. They were kind of heavy and they sat in a corner. After a while Wilson came in with Toon. He went over and sat with the Indian people and they started in on him. Toon had his head down.
    “Look at what you are doing! This is a disgrace!”the woman was saying. “Look at where you are!”
    I knew Toon felt bad. I felt bad for him. Parents were supposed to be loving us, not telling us about how we were disgracing them.
    I looked up, saw Wilson near the door, and went over to him.
    “Can I hang in the dayroom awhile?”
    “Sure, man.”
    We went out of the visitors’ room. I took my clothes off and he searched me for contraband. Then I dressed and went back to the dayroom. They were watching Cops on television.

CHAPTER 9
    Her name tag read Karen Williams, but all the guys were checking out the short skirt the woman was wearing. On the blackboard behind her she had written “Exit Strategy” in big letters.
    “So, who knows what an exit strategy is?” she asked.
    “That’s how to get out of here,” Play said.
    “It’s how to get out of here in a way that means you won’t be coming back,” Miss Williams said. “Or does anybody here want to come back?”
    Nobody answered the lame question.
    “One of the things you want to have in hand is either a GED or a head start in taking the GED exam,” she went on. “Employers want to see whatyou have accomplished in life, and one way of showing them is to have your GED.”
    “What they know most from that is that you didn’t finish regular high school,” Diego said. “That puts you on a whole different level than kids who finish high school with a regular diploma.”
    “I think it shows initiative and a willingness to work,” Miss Williams said.
    “But they know you ain’t in the top set,” Play said. “If I was going for a job, I wouldn’t be waving my GED in front of anybody unless they asked me for it. And what they mostly ask you is if you’ve been arrested or anything.”
    “Which is illegal,” Miss Williams said. “They can’t ask you if you’ve been arrested, and if they did ask, you don’t have to answer. Did you know that?”
    “Did you know that if you don’t answer, they won’t hire you?” Play said. “And if you go and make a complaint, all they got to say is that they were thinking about hiring you in a job that handles money and you had to be bonded. Then they can ask you anything they want.”
    “A lot of what you’re saying is true, but that’s why we have courts, to fight abuses,” Miss Williams said.She had her legs crossed and we all took a look. Not bad.
    “So you got your GED,” Diego said. “Then they’re going to want to know what you’ve been doing for the last year. You tell them that you’ve been in church, see—”
    “Redecorating the confession box,” Leon said. “Putting in a tile floor like they do on television.”
    “Yeah, yeah,” Diego went on. “Then your probation officer gives them a call to see how you