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against floodlights, and the van pulled in front of a stone building that looked like a medieval castle. The front doors had glass windows, which Dylan thought was odd; in movies, prisons never had any glass, only bars. Two men in dark green uniforms—guards, he guessed—came out of the doors and took him from the van. The guards didn’t have guns, but they had sticks and handcuffs on their belts.
    For a long time he waited in a room with plastic chairs and green walls. The guards stayed with him. Finally Dylan was taken to a room where there was nothing on the walls but a mirror of wavy metal. The one chair was bolted to the floor, and the window had heavy wire mesh over it. There was a tiny eyeball window in the door that led into the hall so people could peek in at him anytime they wanted. Already faces had come and gone.

    A zoo, he thought, and I’m the wild animal.
    A while later a lady, maybe forty—older than his mom—came to the room. He guessed she was a doctor by the way she moved and smiled, like she was so powerful everybody would do what she wanted so she could just relax and enjoy it.
    Dylan was sitting on one of two hospital beds with white covers and metal roll bars. His back was flat against the wall, and his legs stuck out over the edge into the narrow aisle between the beds.
    He would have stood when she came into the room so she wouldn’t think he hadn’t been brought up right, but he was cuffed to the frame.
    The doctor sat on the other bed. She crossed her legs and absently pulled the crease of her trousers straight. Most ladies didn’t wear pants, not at work anyway . Maybe lady doctors were different.
    Her fingernails were short like a man’s. They looked strong. She looked strong all over: iron gray hair and wire-rim glasses, a square face and a chunky body. She wasn’t ugly, just solid.
    “I’m Doctor Olson,” she said. “I work with the boys two days a week. I’m sure you are aware of the difficulties of finding a place for a boy your age. Most of our juvenile offenders are at least fourteen or fifteen. Some of the bigger boys are . . . Oh, Lord.”
    When she said “Lord,” she took off her glasses and put her thumb on one temple and her fingertips on the other and looked into her hand as if God might be there and she wanted to shut out the light to get a better look at his tiny self.
    After she had communed she went on: “I’m one of the on-call psychiatrists. The other, the one you will probably work with, is Dr. Kowalski. You will be housed here for the time being. When you’re ready we’ll move you in with the other boys. Are there any questions you’d like to ask me?”
    Dylan meant to answer, to say no or ask something to be polite, but he didn’t.

    She waited a moment or two then said, “Okay, then. I guess I’ll say goodnight. An orderly will be in to get those cuffs off of you. He’ll bring you a pair of pajamas and so forth. The kitchen is closed but, if you’re hungry, I’ve arranged for you to have a snack.” Again she waited. Dylan chased after sentence fragments, wanting to say something because she wanted him to, but it was as if he’d forgotten how to speak, how to catch a thought and make it into a sound.
    Doctor Olson turned and left. A snick-clunk sound followed—the lock on the door being put into place.
    Dylan was home.

5
    For three days, Dylan stayed in the room with the observation window. Nobody told him but after a while he figured out he was in Drummond’s infirmary. A lot of the time they left the little hatch door on the peep hole open and he could look out. There was a desk with a nurse at it and twice he saw a guard bring a boy there to get bandages or aspirin or something. From what he could see there wasn’t any other room for sick people but the one he was in, and since he wasn’t sick he didn’t know why they were keeping him there. Since he didn’t care why, he never asked.
    A guard took his clothes. That bothered him. Sitting