What happens when Ricky, doing two years for car theft, locks horns with Sean Keene, the shift manager? 

I stood by the kid’s door when Sean Keene went into his room. Said he needed to talk to him alone. Told me to stay put and he’d be out in a minute. I thought nothing of it. Sean was a good shift manager and treated all the counselors with respect. He had a light touch with the kids, too. So I figured he was going to give the kid—Ricky Vaughn, doing two years for car theft—a lecture and be done with it. Ricky had been acting up for a week, starting fights with dudes a lot bigger than him, mouthing off to staff, and generally carrying on like the little thug that he was.

Still, I kind of liked Ricky, despite everything. He was a tiny runt of a guy with big blue eyes, who looked like a twelve-year-old even though he was fifteen. And he wasn’t just any car thief. Over the course of a year or so, he’d stolen some twenty cars. He had a racket going on with his older brothers and cousins. He got caught one evening after stealing a Cadillac and being spotted on the highway by a patrolman, who must have shit himself when he saw this apparent child behind the steering wheel. Ricky had already served six months with us at the Peninsula Youth Centre without issue, except for the mouthing off, which was also part of his charm.

I heard Sean talking and Ricky responding. This went on calmly for a few minutes then something changed. Sean yelled at Ricky. I couldn’t make out about what. I had the feeling Ricky was mouthing off and Sean was having none of it. Then Sean really got loud. I was tempted to go in and see what was up, but not wanting to step on Sean’s toes or question his approach, I held back. Sean had been doing this a long time. I stood there with my shoulders tensed. Finally, it went quiet. I relaxed a little. I looked around and no one else was on the unit. It was recreation time, so the other youth and staff were in the gym or in the games room.

When I heard Ricky shouting and Sean shouting back, my shoulders tensed up again. Sounds of scuffling ensued. I listened for a few seconds and decided to go in and check things out but then I heard a heavy thud issue from the room and Ricky cry out in pain. Before I could open the door, a flushed Sean shoved his way out. I glimpsed Ricky slumped on the floor by his bed, the right side of his face streaked with blood.

“Sean, what the fuck.”

“He attacked me, man.”

“Looks like you attacked him.”

Sean looked at me gravely. “I’m calling the police,” he said.

“You mean an ambulance, right?”

He ignored this and stomped off the unit.

I went in to Ricky’s room. He shook with sobs. I helped him to his feet. His head oozed blood from under the right side of his scalp. I couldn’t tell the extent of his injury, but he needed medical attention. I grabbed the T-shirt draped over his desk chair and pressed it to his head. I asked him if he was okay.

“Do I look okay?” he said between sobs. “He didn’t have to dump me like that. I was just talking. And he dumps me. I didn’t do nothing to deserve it.”

“He said you attacked him.”

Ricky looked at me with his bloodshot blue eyes as though we both knew Sean was full of shit. Sean had wrestled in college and still pumped iron. Ricky weighed as much as a small jockey.

I called for an ambulance and found a First-Aid kit. A nurse used to be staffed there twenty-four seven, but government cutbacks ended that luxury. Everyone else must’ve still been in the gym or the games room. I don’t know where Sean was. The prick had left me in the lurch. The fuck was I supposed to do now? I cleaned Ricky’s wound and bloodied hair with cotton balls and alcohol and then folded up some gauze and pressed it on his scalp over the wound. I instructed him to keep pressure on it until the ambulance came.

“I wanna file a report,” he said, rubbing away blood and tears.

“I think Sean called the cops.”

“Good, them too. But I want you to file this. You were here. You know what happened.”

By law, I did have to report this. I didn’t directly witness what went down, but I had a good idea. Ricky was a minor. Sean had no business ‘gooning’ him up. That wasn’t our job. We were called counselors and not guards or custodians for a reason. By law, the punitive model was out, and therapeutic approaches were encouraged, implemented, and enforced. A report would likely endanger or even end Sean’s career. I knew he had a wife and two kids, up to his ears in mortgage and car payments, and caught in the usual grind of working folk.

“Are you gonna do it?” Ricky asked.

“You know what that means.”  

“What, dude? That Sean’s gonna get some heat for this? Let me tell you something, sir, they’ve told me over and over again that I have to take responsibility for my actions. Isn’t that what I’m doing here? For two fucking years. I’m fifteen, bro. Do the math.”      

The police arrived before the ambulance. The two blocky officers conferred with Sean—popping up out of nowhere holding an icepack to his head—before they spoke to Ricky. He spun them up. So, they were pretty rough with the kid. Wouldn’t let him get a word in edgewise, and despite his injury they were seriously thinking of charging him with assault. I kept my mouth shut for the time being. When Ricky started weeping uncontrollably, the officers backed off but said they weren’t done with him yet.

Eventually, the ambulance came and the paramedics cleaned up Ricky’s oozing wound. They determined that a visit to hospital was unnecessary. They shaved some of his hair away, gave him five stitches, and bandaged him up. They asked a lot of questions that Ricky was happy to answer. They looked concerned.

“The cops were already here,” Sean told them. “It’s being handled.”

“You sure about that?” asked one of the paramedics, a serious dude with a square jaw.

“That’s all I can tell you,” Sean said.

The paramedics packed up their gear. Square-jaw shot me a look as they departed that I understood too well.

Ricky was confined to his room for the rest of the day. His meals would be brought to him. No other staff was to talk to him about the incident or ask any questions. I had a report to file. Before I could get to it, Sean called me into his office. He was still holding the icepack to his head. A framed photograph of his wife and daughters on his desk faced away from him, as if to show me what was at stake.

“I need that report,” he said.

“Yeah, I was just getting to it.”

“Want me to refresh your memory a little?”

“My memory’s fine, boss.”

“You didn’t actually see what happened.”

“That’s true.”

Sean smiled uneasily. He had no idea what I planned to write down. But it could change his life, and probably change mine, too. Loyalty ran deep in these circles. Snitching was almost never acceptable, under any circumstances. I understood that too well. Did I want to fuck up his life? Or mine? Three years at the job, he’d never treated me unfairly or less than professionally. Save on this occasion. What was the right thing to do? He’d harmed a youth in our custody. Kids were doing three-year stints for assaults like this.

“Dude,” Sean said, his tone edging toward entreaty. He lowered the icepack from his head. “You gotta do me a solid this one time.”

I said nothing for a moment, weighing all this shit in my head. I hated being put in this position. I liked Sean. I liked working with him. And I believed in loyalty. Loyalty was everything in this life. Thing is, he’d made a big mistake.

“Sean,” I said. “You were prepared to have that kid charged for assaulting you.”

“Well, he disrespected me, the little prick. He always gets away with it. I’d had enough.”

“If they charge him, he’ll get more time. He’s going to spend a fifth of his life in here.”

“What’s your point, man?”

“You’d really rather see this kid locked up for more time than go easy on him, or maybe admit your own fucking culpability.”      

“What are you saying?”

“He needed five stitches, Sean.”

He looked down at his hands. His eyes filled with tears. I didn’t have to say anything else.