Page 522 - A Little Life: A Novel

other boys were, only that they existed. He was nearly mute in those
sessions, and as he knelt or squatted or lay, he thought of a round clock
face, its second hand gliding impassively around it, counting the revolutions

until it ended. But he never begged, he never pled. He never bargained or
made promises or cried. He didn’t have the energy; he didn’t have the
conviction—not any longer, not anymore.
It was a few months after his weekend with the Learys that he tried to run
away. He had classes at the community college on Mondays, Tuesdays,
Wednesdays, and Fridays, and on those days, one of the counselors would
wait for him in the parking lot and drive him back to the home. He dreaded

the end of classes, he dreaded the ride home: he never knew which
counselor would be waiting for him, and when he reached the parking lot
and saw who it was, his footsteps would sometimes slow, but it was as if he
was a magnet, something controlled by ions, not will, and into the car he
would be drawn.
But one afternoon—this was in March, shortly before he turned fourteen

—he had turned the corner and had seen the counselor, a man named
Rodger who was the cruelest, the most demanding, the most vicious of
them all, and he had stopped. For the first time in a long time, something in
him resisted, and instead of continuing toward Rodger, he had crept
backward down the hallway, and then, once he was certain he was safely
out of sight, he had run.
He hadn’t prepared for this, he had no plan, but some hidden, fiery part

of him had, it seemed, been making observations as the rest of his mind sat
cocooned in its thick, cottony slumber, and he found himself running
toward the science lab, which was being renovated, and then under a curtain
of blue plastic tarp that shielded one exposed side of the building, and then
worming into the eighteen inches of space that separated the decaying
interior wall from the new cement exterior that they were building around

it. There was just enough room for him to wedge himself in, and he
burrowed himself as deep into the space as he could, carefully working
himself into a horizontal position, making sure his feet weren’t visible.
As he lay there, he tried to decide what he could do next. Rodger would
wait for him and then, when he didn’t appear, they would eventually look
for him. But if he could last here for the night, if he could wait until
everything was silent around him, then he could escape. This was as far as

he could think, although he was cognizant enough to realize that his