by April Henry
fifteen
April 15
Finally, Cassie heard the lock click open. A man with a ruddy face, glasses, close-cropped white hair, and a potbelly came in. A white edge of beard hugged the boundary of his chin, as if he were trying to draw a line to define it from his neck. Sweat gleamed on his forehead and there were blotches under his arms. Because Martha had said she was waiting for Father Gary, Cassie had half expected some guy in a Roman collar. Instead he wore jeans and a white shirt that looked like it had started the day pressed but had quickly given up.
He said nothing, just stared at Cassie intently. As he sat down, his eyes never left her face. They were only twenty-four inches apart. Reflexively, Cassie tried to edge her chair back, but the legs were already against the wall. She didn’t know where to look, so finally she looked at her clasped hands. Her watch was turned so that the face was on the inside of her wrist. Five minutes passed, seven, thirteen. Occasionally, she would look up into his dark blue eyes, but his face remained without expression. He was close enough that she could smell the sweetness of his aftershave. The fake lime-y smell made her empty stomach roil. Except for the drugged lemonade, it had been nearly twenty-four hours since she had last eaten or drunk anything, and that had been a grande mocha.
After seventeen minutes, he broke the silence. Sitting back in his chair, he folded his arms and said, “I can tell by physiological signs in your eyes that you are using crystal meth.”
Cassie reared back. “What are you talking about?”
“Your pupils,” he said calmly. “Drug use affects your pupils.”
“I don’t care what you think you see in my eyes. I have never used drugs. Never.”
His smile looked like someone had propped up each side of his mouth with a stick. “That, young lady, is the kind of attitude Peaceful Cove will change.”
Even though she knew it was useless, Cassie couldn’t keep herself from talking back. “I don’t even know what crystal meth looks like. My stepfather must have put some in my room.”
He leaned forward until his snapping blue eyes were an inch from her own. “Do you want to go into OP first thing? Do you?”
Cassie came to her senses. She didn’t know what OP was, but it couldn’t be good. “No, sir.” She looked down at her lap.
“Good. Peaceful Cove is designed to get you past your denials, your defenses, your lies. To separate you from the crutches which have allowed you to live your life only for yourself, with no thought for others. You’ll find that the rules here are easy to understand—and easy to obey, once you put your mind to it. You will not leave Peaceful Cove until you are judged to be respectful, polite, and obedient enough to rejoin your family.”
The whole thing seemed unreal. “Isn’t this against the law? How can you hold me here against my will? Don’t I have any rights?”
There was a long silence. He sat staring at her, his eyes skewering her. Finally, Father Gary said softly, “I’ll let that go this time, Cassie, because no one has yet explained the rules to you. Ordinarily I’d have you in OP so fast that your head would spin. And no, it’s not against the law. Your parents signed a contract with Peaceful Cove granting us forty-nine percent custody rights. And don’t even think about running away. We’ve got armed guards and barbed wire and a two-hundred-foot drop over a cliff to stop you from doing that. The people who live in the village outside these gates are all Peaceful Cove employees—and they know that anyone who turns in an escapee gets a year’s salary, on the spot. If you truly want to go home, then buckle down, be respectful, and work your way up to Level Six. Once you complete Level Six, you are free to go home.”
“How long will that take?” After a second, Cassie added, “Sir,” because it seemed prudent.
“That’s right.” He nodded approvingly. “You either call me sir or you call me Father Gary. Because we are a family here. As to how long you stay, it’s entirely up to you. That’s the beauty of the system. It’s not determined by us, but by you.”
“Can I call my mom?”
He slowly shook his head to show she was truly stupid. “Cassie, Cassie, Cassie. No, you cannot. You’re here because your mother doesn’t want anything to do with you.”
“That’s not true!”
He just looked at her. She wished she could say or do something to take the fake smile off his face.
“While you are here, you will have no contact with the outside world. Not with your family, not with your friends. There will be no TV, no Internet, no radio, no magazines, no newspapers. We want you to be able to hear us, and to hear yourself, and the only way we can do that is to turn off the noise of the outside world.
“You will be assigned a buddy. Rebecca is a Level Five. You can learn a lot from her. You are a Level One, and you will stay a Level One until you can show us that you’ve learned something. Once you’re a Level Three, you will be allowed to call your parents, in a carefully supervised situation, of course.”
“How long will that take?”
“As long as it needs to take. But you must earn your privileges. So the first thing I would work on, if I were you, is your attitude.”
Cassie ground her teeth together and said nothing.
Father Gary looked at her for a long, long moment. This time she met him, eye to eye. But finally, Cassie was the one who blinked.
“We use a point system to reward positive behavior. Reward—and punishment, if that becomes necessary. There are a few simple rules.” Gary held up one blunt finger. “One. No talking out of group.” He held up another finger. “Two. Pay attention. Three. No newcomers talking to newcomers. Four. Do your own work.”
When her chin bumped against her chest, Cassie realized Father Gary had finished talking and that she had nearly fallen asleep. She was hungry, exhausted, and had never felt more alone in her life. It was then that Cassie realized the truth. Peaceful Cove wasn’t a school. It was a prison. And Rick had locked her up and thrown away the key.
sixteen
April 14
“What did your stepfather say?” Thatcher’s eyes were wide. He and Cassie were standing outside West Portland High, next to a handmade poster that read, “Get your legal addictive stimulants at the student store,” and listed prices for various coffee drinks.
“He just said, ‘Are you looking for something?’ And I swear he was smiling.”
“What did you do?”
“It was totally creepy. I felt like a rabbit cornered by a wolf. Like maybe if I just stayed still long enough, he wouldn’t see me. So I didn’t say or do anything.” Cassie shivered when she thought of how Rick had looked at her, how he had pretended to be sleepy when she could tell that he was really full of himself and his power over her. She touched Thatcher’s elbow. “Since the memory card is gone, I’m hoping you made a copy on your hard drive.”
Thatcher shook his head. “No. I’m sorry, I should have thought to do that. But all I did was open up the file. I didn’t save it to the drive.”
“Can’t you recover it?”
He shook his head slowly. “Even if I could find the alias for it, it wouldn’t let me open it without the original file. Which we don’t have anymore.” His sigh was shaky. “What do we do now? We don’t have anything we can give the reporter. I guess I’ll have to call her and cancel.”
“No.” Cassie grabbed his wrist, then dropped it when two girls walked by and stared at them. “No,” she said more quietly. She had been awake for the rest of the night, thinking of what she could do, of what they could do. And of what might happen if they didn’t do anything. “Not having the files and not having the photos doesn’t change the facts. Three kids killed themselves, and all three of them were on Socom. If we can just convince the reporter to start asking questions, she can still find out the truth for herself. All she would have to do is talk to people in Minor—their friends, their families. Someone must know those kids were on Socom.”
seventeen
April 15
Father Gary
brought a girl about Cassie’s own age into the closet, gave her his chair, and introduced her as Cassie’s new “buddy,” Rebecca.
Rebecca had sharp features, high cheekbones, and dirty blond hair pulled back in a French twist. She managed to make her khaki blouse look like something you might actually want to wear. There was a faint white spot right under her lower lip from a healed piercing, and an acid green smiley face was tattooed on her ankle, but aside from that, she could have been a poster child for Peaceful Cove, with a tan and perfectly white teeth.
“You are going to be part of the Respect Family,” she said after Father Gary left. “That means we are sisters.” She gave Cassie a cheerleader’s professional smile. “Our housemother is Mother Nadine. You call the other family’s mothers ‘mother’ as well. For example, the mother for the Dignity Family is Mother Catherine. You can never, ever call the mothers by only their first names.”
The words, the ideas, the strangeness of everything were all starting to blur together, and the heat had sapped Cassie’s last bit of energy. She leaned her head back against the wall, wishing she could sleep, wishing she didn’t have this girl sitting in front of her, talking, talking, talking.
Rebecca snapped her fingers in front of Cassie’s face. She jolted up a level of wakefulness. Forcing her eyes wide open, she shifted in her seat and crossed her legs at the knee.
“You can’t cross your legs here,” Rebecca rapped out.
Cassie crossed them at the ankle, then tucked them demurely under her chair.
“You can’t cross your ankles, either.”
Cassie uncrossed her legs and sat up straight, willing herself to be invisible, willing Rebecca to go away. She didn’t know what she wanted more—to drink or to eat or to sleep. At least if she could sleep, she could dream about being someplace else.
Taking a rubber band from her wrist, Rebecca handed it to her. “And your hair can’t be down—it must be pulled back. As a Level One, you can never raise your eyes. When another person approaches, bow your head. The only exceptions are the teachers and Father Gary.” Cassie couldn’t help but make eye contact with Rebecca when she made this point. She seemed completely serious. “Unless you have permission, you’re not allowed to speak to anyone other than staff or students who are Level Three or higher. And because you’re a Level One, you can’t talk or sit or stand without permission. For example, if you wanted to get up, you would have to say, ‘May I stand?’ If you wanted to go through that doorway, you would have to say, ‘May I cross?’ But you can only ask Level Threes or above.”
“How can I tell who’s a Level Three or whatever?”
“By our shorts.” Rebecca’s fingers caressed the hem of her navy blue shorts. “Level One wears yellow, Level Two green, Level Three red, Level Four brown, Level Five navy blue, and Level Six gets to wear black. Once you’re on Level Three, you have to tell the staff if anyone breaks a rule—or both of you get in trouble for it. At Level Four, you get privileges like snacks”—Rebecca said “snacks” the way other people said “money”—“and being allowed to wear earrings. You also get to issue consequences.”
“What’s a consequence?” Cassie asked, trying to make sense of everything.
“The only way you can get out of here is to earn points. One hundred points means you get to go to the next level. If you get in trouble, not only do they take away points, but you also get consequented. That means anything from having to write a five-hundred-word essay to stuff that’s a lot worse. If you don’t ask permission to go through a doorway, for example, you’ll probably get an essay. Maybe more, depending on the person’s mood.”
“What if I don’t ask anybody and just do something?”
“Then you’ll get to spend time in OP. Trust me, you don’t want to go there.”
Cassie had a feeling this was the only thing she would ever trust about Rebecca. She asked the question she hadn’t asked Father Gary. “What’s OP? And why don’t I want to go there?”
“OP stands for observation placement. Sometimes we just call it ‘lying on your face.’ Because that’s all you do.” Her smile was oddly proud. “I spent sixteen days in a row in OP once.”
Cassie thought of the two boys she had seen lying on the floor, not moving except to blink. “For what?”
“I passed male authority and didn’t say, ‘Excuse me.’ ”
“Who’s male authority?”
“Any man who works in the program, from Father Gary on down to the Mexican cooks. If you don’t say ‘Excuse me’ when you pass, they’ll report you to Mother Nadine, and then you’ll get in trouble. And even though you always should obey male authority, watch out for Mr. Chadwick. He’s one of the two American teachers here. It’s better not to be alone with him, if you know what I mean.”
Tears pricked at the back of Cassie’s eyes, but she had already cried too many times today to cry any more. “How come he’s not Father Chadwick?”
Rebecca shook her head as if Cassie were being deliberately stupid. “Because he’s a teacher. Only the heads of the boy’s families are known as fathers. Them and Father Gary. He founded this whole place.”
“How many other kids are here?”
“More than a hundred boys and about eighty girls. All from the States. But don’t even dare look at the boys. Eye contact is unauthorized nonverbal communication. You might be by a boy at a PGV or in class, but you don’t look at them, you don’t talk to them, and you sure as hell don’t touch them.” She leaned closer. “And listen. Don’t you dare screw up or it reflects back on me, okay? Until you learn the rules, I will be watching everything you do. And I mean everything. And don’t think just because I’m your ’buddy’ that I won’t turn you in if you do something wrong. Because if I don’t, I can get busted, too. And there’s no way I’m going back down to Level One. Not when I can get to Level Six and finally get home.”
“How long have you been here?” Cassie asked.
“Two years, five months, and eighteen days,” Rebecca answered without even having to think. “I was fourteen when my mom sent me here.”
Cassie felt dizzy. She put one hand against the wall to steady herself. There was no way she herself could be here that long. Years and years and years? “What did you do wrong?”
“I was dating a boy who was nineteen. It was completely inappropriate. My mom was afraid I was going to get in trouble.” She looked at her watch. “It’s dinnertime.” Cassie’s stomach gave an answering growl. “You walk in behind me and you do what I do. And remember—don’t talk and don’t look at anyone.”
Cassie picked up the tattered paper sack Martha had given her for her belongings and followed Rebecca as they walked through the now-empty office and out into the corridor. They went through several hallways and into a large room where dozens of teenagers sat in cheap white plastic patio chairs, eating from mismatched tables painted white. A wide aisle separated the girls from the boys. The only sounds in the room came from cutlery, chewing, and a loud voice issuing from a tape player on a card table next to two guards who stood with their arms crossed.
As she walked in behind Rebecca, Cassie could feel dozens of pairs of eyes flick across her, but no one looked at her directly. Then she remembered that she wasn’t supposed to be looking at the other kids at all, so she looked at Rebecca’s straight back instead.
After putting her belongings down in the corner where Rebecca indicated, Cassie did everything Rebecca did. She took a battered metal tray from a pile, then a piece of bread, a plastic glass filled with something bright orange, a metal spoon, and finally a chipped white china bowl into which a Mexican woman ladled soup. Cassie’s stomach rumbled. Rebecca sat down at a table that had two empty places, and Cassie took the seat opposite her.
The voice on the tape player was talking about self-confidence. “Put a smile on your face and lift your head up, and you’ll soon find that your attitude has adjusted to suit your expression.”
Cassie’s drink was gone in one gulp—it tasted l
ike watery Tang—and only then did she realize that no one was getting up to get more of anything. She picked up the bread and began to eat it. There was no butter, and certainly no olive oil or sea salt, like there was in the restaurants Rick liked to go to. The bread had a strange, almost sandy texture, but she was so hungry, she didn’t care. The other kids ate as eagerly, scraping their spoons against their nearly empty bowls, or running a crust of bread over the bottom to get any lingering juices. Forgetting again that she was to keep her gaze lowered, Cassie glanced around the room. Everyone seemed thin, and if this was an example of a typical meal, it was no wonder.
Her gaze stopped on one girl. Around her neck a grimy cardboard sign hung from a string. In printed black block letters, it read, “I’ve been in this program for three years, and I’m still pulling crap.” Rebecca kicked her in the shin and Cassie looked down at her tray again.
She picked up her spoon and slid it into her bowl. It was some kind of thin soup. White grains of rice and a few slices of carrot in a greasy-looking broth. She took a spoonful, brought it up to her lips. It tasted oily and rank, but she was hungry enough to overlook the flavor. It was warm and it was food. She dipped her spoon back down in the broth. Something floated to the top. A piece of fat, white and gelatinous. She prodded it with her spoon. Lazily, it turned over. Cassie put her hand to her mouth and swallowed, hard. On the back was something short and stiff. Bristles. She felt the corners of her mouth pull down at the same time as her stomach seemed to move up, pressing higher and higher.
“What’s the matter?” Rebecca hissed without looking at Cassie or even seeming to move her lips.
“I’m a vegetarian. I don’t eat anything with eyes.” Cassie started at the small explosions of sound around her. She realized it was muffled laughter. A girl with short strawberry blonde hair and the bluest eyes Cassie had ever seen tipped her a wink. Her expression was kind, and seeing it made Cassie nearly want to cry again.
Rebecca said, “The rule is you have to eat at least fifty percent. You don’t want to end up in OP on your very first day.”