Author's Note:My thanks to RootsOfAHotelWindow for putting this on their alert list. Maybe he/she could leave some feedback sometime? I just love visitors…:D
Anywho, before I get too excited…here's chapter 12, my little droogies. Take care!
Twelve
I wish I could say that this starry judge had dealt with Lydia Walker on one of her famous baddiwad days. I wish I could say that she'd like snapped at the wrong State official, and that he'd decided to give her the same treatment rather than prosecute me one malenky bit. That would have put the little soomka in her place all proper, and doubly so if he'd tolchocked her in the litso whilst he shouted his hatred of her for all to slooshy. That might also have left me and my shaika in the clear, which in turn might have let us return to the hospital in peace, get back to our old strength, and finally itty out again in search of safer streets and bigger rewards to be found there. Alex's absence would have improved everything for us, and had this judge helped us along somehow, the pretty polly and the devotchkas would have been ours all ours.
Unfortunately for me and mine, this same judge had a soft spot for weepy malenky devotchkas, especially them who got pushed around too hard by the bolshy malchicks. All of Lydia's boohoohooing paid off after an hour or so, because not only did they call in that rozz and have him tell everybody else the slovos I'd shared with him, he also said he'd govoreeted to the rest of my shaika and that they'd all more or less confessed. He was as good as some goloss recording machine, because I could hear him like quoting what I'd said back to that judge, as well as how my droogs claimed that they were 'just following my orders'.
Those slovos sent Toby and Charlie packing for the Sanatorium after the judge called us all heartless miscreants and proclaimed us guilty, and then sent me and my other three off to what he called the 'Juvenile Detention Center'. We would have to live there until all of us turned eighteen sooner or later, and then we would itty off to the stripy hole until the time of our twenty-first birthdays. That would be a good four years away for me, provided I didn't catch some bad illness behind those walls and no bezoomny malchicks attempted to snuff me out before I could come home. At least I would have Leo, Joel, and Nick with me until that time decided to arrive…or so I had thought as we limped, winced, and struggled our way to the special Detention Bus that the Court had pointed us towards. They told me and mine that we had a long trip ahead of us, but I didn't care. I counted myself real lucky that they all hadn't been sent off to that Sanatorium and so left me all on my oddy-knocky to face that Center by myself. No, instead, we would take that long trip together, and still viddy each other from time to time before they viddied it fit to split us up into different prisons.
How little I understood. How little we all understood in the end.
Our first stop was some place in Kent a short distance away from home, and there we found a few towering buildings surrounded by chain-link fences topped with barbed wire to stop any malchicks from running away or climbing away, for that matter. It wasn't as though any of us planned to do that any time soon…but then again, I supposed such a big place would need some natural protection from the more rotten of the lewdies that lived there. With that messel on my rasoodock, I was prepared to lead the way down the stairs of that bus, taking Nick, Joel, and Leo along with me through that big big gate of the Center and facing whatever waited for us head-on.
Unfortunately, the driver of that bus stopped me with her rooker before I could even do so much as stand up or reach for my crutches.
"Not you, boy, just your friend there," she said in a falsely cheery goloss. "You wouldn't want to overcrowd the place so quickly, now, would you?"
I noticed that she must have been govoreeting about Joel just now, because I viddied my one droog pull away from her then, his glazzies wide and his gulliver like shaking no no no. Alone? Now? In a big big place like that one? Joel had been the one among us who liked pink as a color the most, and a few skitebirds from skolliwoll had once smecked all about how Joel thought like a malenky ptitsa when it came to the tall, long-haired malchicks hanging around the shops. What chance would he have if there were meaner vecks waiting to hear this, and who wanted some kind of reason to tolchock him senseless?
"Are you sure about that, missus?" I began in a like friendly goloss, but not without wishing for my old switch-blade nozh so that I could at least try to strong-arm her into having our way.
"Oh, yes, it'll be just the one in front of me, and no others," she went on, this time giving me and the others an insisting glance with her glazzies.
"You three have got a special train to catch, I'm afraid. Do you want to be late and in even more trouble than you already are…or are you going to let your best mate go?"
I looked over at Joel first, and then over to Nick and Leo, and I viddied no other way out of it. There was no way for us to go together because they'd send three of us away on the spot, and there was no way for none of us to leave that bus because they'd probably drag Joel off and get a good smeck out of it, too. The only way now was that driver's way, and we had no other choice but to follow it.
"All right boys," I finally said, but not without like feeling a sort of tightness in my gorlo. "Let's all shake hands now, and then say no more."
It was an odd sight, us moving all our broken arms to try and grip Joel's, us chumbling our goodbyes when what we really wanted to do was tell that driver how full of vonny cal she was and how we'd razrez her apart if she didn't give us the steering wheel right then and there. We would not have gotten far at all no thanks to those broken arms and legs, of course, and so we could only watch Joel itty down those bus stairs and into the like waiting police car, and then out of that car once he was behind the center's gate, and then through the doors and into the center itself, and finally disappear from view.
We would have to repeat that Fond Farewell two more times that day, because then that driver took us remaining three malchicks straight to the espresso rapido station afterwards and made us all get on board. It was somewhat of a long way between London and Northamptonshire because we had to cross through two other 'Shires to get there, and on the way we had to sit in between three bolshy, hard-edged rozzes who kept their glazzies on us at all times, even when we had to itty off and answer the call of nature and all that cal.
It was well past six o'clock in the Eve when we got there, but none of us had no more than a few bits of kleb and half a cup of milky chai each because all three of us were heartbroke that they were like splitting us up the way they did. At Northamptonshire, Nick had to go with the rozz nearest the center aisle after a second round of farewells and handshakes, and from there that rozz would yeckate him to a second juvenile detention mesto because the first one had only odin cell open for Joel. Nick had always been horrorshow with his fisties long ago, just as long as none of his enemies had any milk-plus before we fought 'em. Would he be as lucky in his new home? I couldn't help but think that veshch over as the espresso rapido pulled away, and long after that auto had taken Nick to wherever that center waited for him.
Now there was only me and Leo left, and just like the beast of his eemya, he kept his gulliver up even though the both of us weren't feeling so horrorshow. For two years and six months running we'd had our shaika, two malchicks over the limit as it was, but for three years before that we'd been in and out of the corrective schools as a pair of good and faithful droogs should be. In fact, if a lewdie wanted to be short and to the point, they could say that we'd just about viddied it all—rivalries between one wing and another, attacks from the official correctives, fights that happened when one old shaika member ran into his enemy from the other, fights that happened when the pishcha was too sour or runny, fights that happened when one malchick didn't like the tone of some other malchick's skin, and lest I forget, that occasional time when a rookerful of bolshy malchicks decided to make some malenky shoot their soomka for the day. It had been all about survival because none of us had their Pees around to point out which was dobby and which was baddiwad, and so we had no other choice but to try things out for ourselves and viddy what happened later. Would the two of us be tough enough to handle a whole lot more of this sort of jeezny, cut off as we would be soon? I didn't want to think about it, but when I saw Leo glancing my way, I knew that he must have been thinking about the same veshch as I was.
We must have gone on thinking about that same veshch until Nottinghamshire, because then the second-to-last rozz on that train with us tapped Leo on the shoulder and then pointed at the aisle, letting him know it was his turn to get up and take that ride in the auto to the detention center gates. It was a bit past seven when that happened, but it didn't make it any easier for either of us Nadsats. In fact, I could have almost sworn I viddied Leo's litso wrinkle up almost as though he wanted to platch to himself how rotten and heartless this big big separation really was. It was the worst sort of punishment any of us could have been given in this jeezny, and those lewdies in the State building hadn't thought twice about carrying it out.
"Well, off you go then," I said, barely keeping my own goloss under control. "Best not keep those OC's waiting, eh?"
"You'll write me once you get to where you're headed, right, Billyboy?" he asked me, bravely ignoring the way that rozz pulled at his arm and tried to privodeet him off.
"Once I get this cast off and track your S-mail down, you'll hear from me every week," I promised. That seemed to satisfy my old droog, because then he stood up as straight as he would go and gave me our special shaika salute before disappearing, a dobby L-shape with his thumb like pointing downward and his forefinger pointing to his right. I was all on my oddy-knocky now, and I would have to stay that way for the rest of the espresso rapido ride to only Bog knew where.