Chapter One: Meet Dan

The place is Bonaville orphanage in the heart of whatever state they are in I can’t quite remember. It is one of the toughest homes for children with no parents in the state. For this story it is important to understand some things about the orphanage it is split into to halves. There are the fifteen to eighteen age groups and there are all those before that age.

The reason for this split is because the earlier age group is usually more impressionable and the faculty members don’t want the older children to be a bad example to the younger but this separation doesn’t work very well but it doesn’t mean that the different groups don’t have different rules.

When the children reach the older age group, they are allowed to get a job that is reviewed by the faculty. They also get more job specific skills on top of their regular education at the facility. They also receive monthly urinalysis tests to make sure none of them are getting into things they should not be. Such as illegal drugs.

This is one of those days. During a test all the kids are lined up by their different class groups. Classes are divided evenly so as kids are adopted, run away or go to jail the size of the groups fluctuate. They all line up with a clear plastic bottle and faculty or medical staff watch them pee in their bottle.

One by one each one goes and leaves goes and leaves goes and leaves. The process can sometimes last half the day depending on how many children there are.

Suddenly a scream echoes down the hallway.

“Aaaaaahhhhhh, it’s blue, it’s blue,” yells one of the nurses.

It startles another in the long white hall filled with students who line either side of the wall. The nurse stumbles with a box filled with bottles of urine and trips sending the bottles across the floor. As the bottles of urine roll across the floor girls scream and everyone backs away as the bottles go flying. A custodian runs from a connecting hallway to investigate the girls screams not noticing the bottles of urine sliding across the floor. The custodian in his rush stepped on one of the bottles breaking it sending yellow liquid spraying across the floor.

The custodian slide across the floor eventually slipping and landing in the yellow mass as his arms flailed around wildly to grab hold of something. This hands found the arm of one of the children lining the hall pulling the girl with him. The girl in turn grabbed the person next to her creating a chain reaction as everyone tried to grab onto someone else. Ten students fell onto the floor crushing other bottles and sending bodily fluid all over the hall.

At the front of the line leading into the boys bathroom a dark haired boy steps through the door holding a blue plastic container of liquid, walks across the hallway to a desk where a nurse is sitting with a stunned and shocked expression on her face and places the bottle in the middle of the table.

“Here is my sample,” the boy says.

A split second later the boy is grabbed by an a tall bald gentleman dressed in a plain brown suit. He drags the boy by the back of his jean jacket like a dog might be held by the scruff of his neck and taken into a nearby office.

The boy is Daniel Smyth, pronounced Smith, Aka Damien Dan, Hell Dan, Pain in the Ass, Prank king and Dork. He is a 16 year old resident of the orphanage who has been there since his third birthday after his parents died in a tragic car accident, or plane crash or maybe it cancer. Daniel couldn’t remember, all he knew was that he had been in this place for 13 years and he wanted out.

Dan sat in the brown vinyl covered chair watching the older gentleman take out a folder the size of the dictionary our of a filing cabinet.

The man was Head Master M. K. Hedges or Mr. Michael K. Hedges. He was a veteran of this kind of work. He had been head master for twenty -three years, three months, sixteen days and thirteen hours.

Mr. Hedges walks around to his desk and with a loud thud sends the file crashing on his desk sending his pencils, pens and rolodex jumping an inch in the air before settling down again.

Mr. Hedges was known by many names, douche bag, jackass, baldy and queer but his longest lasting and most widely known nickname was water pail. The reason for the name was because of how he disciplined students.

If a boy or girl did something that merited a trip to his office like skipping class, staying out after curfew or just breaking the rules he would have them stand in the hallway and hold a two gallon bucket of water in each hand for an allotted amount of time.

This doesn’t sound that bad but after a few minutes your shoulder muscles start to burn and ache and your hands get weaker and weaker. Usually by the end of the punishment you have a hard time lifting your arms.

Not only did this discipline the children but it made them stronger.
“This has been the 22nd time you have been in my office this month,” Mr. Hedges said in a booming voice. “ The 22nd time.”

“It’s not my fault you keep bringing me in here,” Daniel answered.

“Don’t talk back to me,” said Hedges. “You’ve become such a problem over the years I think I’m going to have to do something different with you. The normal punishments don’t work on you. I might have to think up something drastic if you don’t straighten up. Your lucky you are here because you could be on the street or in prison. Is that the way you want to end up?”

“Maybe,” said Daniel looking down at the floor.

Mr. Hedges was right the normal punishments did not work with him.

When Daniel started pulling pranks he held the buckets of water like everyone else, but he had gotten in trouble so many times that it had become easy for him. Hedges eventually started giving him five gallon water buckets to hold.

Then he stopped giving him buckets all together and giving him other tasks. This started after Daniel had let a greased up pig loose in the hallways of the school building during a class change. No one could catch it for two hours and in the process it over turned school desks knocked over shelves and preceded to use the entire floor as it’s personal toilet.

After this last incident Mr. Hedges decided he had to change tactics. Instead of holding buckets of water he had him transplant a pile of large rocks that stood about six feet from one end of the field to the other. It took Daniel six hours to get it all done finally ending at about midnight with Mr. Hedges watching the whole time in a lawn chair.

Then there was the time where Daniel but a whole bottle of laxative in the faculty coffee pot. Classes and pretty much everything that day stopped and at the end of the day Daniel had to clean all the bathrooms and clean them again after someone used them. Mr. Hedges than had him dig a four feet deep hole that was a square three feet wide and long for a new flag pole.

No matter how tired, sweaty or dirty Daniel got while he was carrying out his sentence he was always thinking about the next prank and even as he sat there now getting lectured and threatened by water pail he was already thinking of what he was going to do next.