The Talisman

were on the staircase to the upper floors. These stairs were covered with a shabby rose-patterned carpet. Only the principal downstairs rooms of the Sunlight Scripture Home had been decorated, dressed up – the rest of it looked rundown and ill cared for. ‘You’re gonna be sorry, I promise you that – in this place, nobody makes Sonny Singer into a jackass. I practically run this place, you two idiots. Christ!’ He pushed his burning narrow face into Jack’s. ‘That was a great stunt back there, the dummy and his fuckin stones. It’ll be a long time before you get over that one.’
    ‘I didn’t know he had anything in his pockets,’ Jack said.
    A step ahead of Jack and Wolf, Singer abruptly stopped moving. His eyes narrowed; his entire face seemed to contract. Jack understood what was going to happen a second before Singer’s hand slapped stingingly over the side of his face.
    ‘Jack?’ Wolf whispered.
    ‘I’m okay,’ he said.
    ‘When you hurt me, I’ll hurt you back twice as bad,’ Singer said to Jack. ‘When you hurt me in front of Reverend Gardener, I’ll hurt you four times as bad, you got that?’
    ‘Yeah,’ Jack said. ‘I think I got it. Aren’t we supposed to get some clothes?’
    Singer whirled around and marched upward, and for a second Jack stood still and watched the other boy’s thin intense back go up the stairs. You, too , he said to himself. You and Osmond. Someday . Then he followed, and Wolf trudged after.
    In a long room stacked with boxes Singer fidgeted at the door while a tall boy with a passionless bland face and the demeanor of a sleepwalker researched the shelves for their clothes.
    ‘Shoes, too. You get him into regulation shoes or you’re gonna be holding a shovel all day,’ Singer said from the doorway, conspicuously not looking at the clerk. Weary disgust – it would have been another of Sunlight Gardener’s lessons.
    The boy finally located a size thirteen pair of the heavy square black lace-ups in a corner of the storeroom, and Jack got them on Wolf’s feet. Then Singer took them up another flight to the dormitory floor. Here there was no attempt to disguise the real nature of the Sunlight Home. A narrow corridor ran the entire length of the top of the house – it might have been fifty feet long. Rows of narrow doors with inset eye-level windows marched down either side of the long corridor. To Jack, the so-called dormitory looked like a prison.
    Singer took them a short way up the narrow hall and paused before one of the doors. ‘On their first day, nobody works. You start the full schedule tomorrow. So get in here for now and look at your Bibles or something until five. I’ll come back and let you out in time for the confession period. And change into the Sunlight clothes, hey?’
    ‘You mean you’re going to lock us in there for the next three hours?’ Jack asked.
    ‘You want me to hold your hand?’ Singer exploded, his face reddening again. ‘Look. If you were a voluntary, I could let you walk around, get a look at the place. But since you’re a ward of the state on a referral from a local police department, you’re one step up from being a convicted criminal. Maybe in thirty days you’ll be voluntaries, if you’re lucky. In the meantime, get in your room and start acting like a human being made in God’s image instead of like an animal.’ He impatiently fitted a key into the lock, swung the door open, and stood beside it. ‘Get in there. I got work to do.’
    ‘What happens to all our stuff?’
    Singer theatrically sighed. ‘You little creep, do you think we’d be interested in stealing anything you could have?’
    Jack kept himself from responding.
    Singer sighed again. ‘Okay. We keep it all for you, in a folder with your name on it. In Reverend Gardener’s office downstairs – that’s where we keep your money, too, right up until the time you get released. Okay? Get in there now before I report you for disobedience. I mean it.’
    Wolf and Jack went into the little room. When Singer slammed the door, the overhead light automatically went on, revealing a windowless cubicle with a metal bunkbed, a small corner sink, and a metal chair. Nothing more. On the white Sheetrock walls yellowing tape marks showed where pictures had been put up by the room’s previous inhabitants. The lock clicked shut. Jack and Wolf turned to see Singer’s driven face in the small rectangular window. ‘Be good, now,’ he said, grinning, and