Lockdown by Walter Dean Myers

nodded slowly. She looked around the room and then held out her hand toward King Kong.
    “Mr. Sanders?”
    “I ain’t afraid of nothing,” King Kong said. “Ican handle my business and everybody knows that. Anybody even act like they want to mess with me, I’ll go to work on their ass.”
    “So you’re afraid that people might mess with you?” Miss Rossetti said.
    “No, I ain’t.”
    “Ladies?”
    “I’m afraid of losing my child,” Eileen said. “When I come up here, my case manager was talking about how she didn’t know if I could be a good mother and then she was talking about how my baby could be put with a responsible family. I had a girl friend who went away for eighteen months and…”
    Eileen started crying and turned her head away. We waited a few minutes for her to get herself together, but she didn’t say anything else. Miss Rossetti looked at me and gave me a little smile.
    “I don’t know what I’m afraid of,” I said. “You know, like you say, everybody’s afraid of something and I guess I’m afraid of something too, but I don’t know what it is. Maybe getting old and dying. That don’t look cool.”
    “I’m a little afraid of that myself,” Miss Rossetti said. “My mother lost her memory when she got upin years and, quite frankly, that frightened me a lot. I even dreamed that I was losing my memory.”
    “So they put her baby with this couple—they were like black middle class”—Eileen had started again—“and then when my friend came home they didn’t want to give the baby up. She said that Family Services put pressure on her too.”
    “Was she working when she came home?” Miss Rossetti asked.
    “No, she was having some trouble. She was using again, but all she needed was some time,” Eileen said. “I don’t want to lose my little girl. She’s all I got.”
    “I can understand that,” Miss Rossetti said.
    “You got kids?” Eileen asked.
    “No, I don’t,” Miss Rossetti answered. “But I can imagine how it must be to have someone in your life you love and then have them taken away.”
    “Another thing I’m afraid of,” Eileen said, “is being in a fire. I’d rather be in a drive-by than in a fire.”
    “Have you ever seen anyone who was injured in a fire?” Miss Rossetti asked.
    “No. I don’t want to see it either,” Eileen said.
    “How about you, Miss Bauer?”
    “I’m not afraid of anything,” Kat said. “The onlything you have to be afraid of is people, and I’m not afraid of people because I don’t care about dying.”
    “I think everyone has a secret fear of dying,” Miss Rossetti said. “We imagine—”
    “I’m not afraid of dying!” Kat cut Miss Rossetti off. “The guy that got me in here thought he could threaten me and tell me what he was going to do to me, but where is he?”
    “I think we need to take a deep breath, Miss Bauer,” Miss Rossetti said.
    “He’s dead because he tried to use me like he wanted to use me, and that wasn’t going to happen!” Kat was looking fierce with her mouth all tight and going pale. “If you’re not afraid of dying, then you’re not afraid of anything! And I don’t need to take no deep breaths because I’m not afraid of restraints, either.”
    That was the end of group because everybody saw that Kat was going off big-time. Miss Rossetti broke us down and she went with the boys back to our dorm, and Mr. Wilson and the lady guard went with Kat and Eileen back to the girls’ wing.

CHAPTER 17
    Our cook, Griffin, gave us broiled franks, sauerkraut, mashed potatoes, peas, juice, ice cream, cookies, and fruit for lunch. Broiled franks are like a hundred percent better than boiled franks. It was like we were at a ballpark or something and having real life instead of prison life.
    “Griffin must have hit the lottery or something!” Diego said.
    “Maybe they’re going to execute us this afternoon and this is our last meal,” Leon said.
    I wished I had said that.
    Play said when he