by April Henry
Cassie wanted nothing more than to give Stephanie a hug, to say “shush” over and over until she quieted. The way Cassie’s mom used to do. Her mom would hold her until Cassie was able to find a quiet place inside herself, and build from that. But that wasn’t how feedback worked.
Finally, Stephanie sat down. Hands went up for feedback. Mother Nadine, who had been looking out the window, turned and pointed at Rebecca.
Rebecca glared at Stephanie. “No one else is thinking about you. Why do you think anyone notices you?”
Mother Nadine nodded and pointed at another girl, Jamie.
“Don’t you get it? The purpose of being here, and getting consequences, is to teach you how to pick yourself up. If you don’t mess up, you go home.” Jamie sounded bored, like a waitress rattling off the lunch specials. It was clear that she’d said this a million times.
“Have you ever thought that maybe you are too fat?” This from Samantha, whose two years at Peaceful Cove had whittled her down to about a size zero. But Stephanie was even skinnier, too thin, in Cassie’s opinion.
Cassie couldn’t stand it anymore. Even though Mother Nadine hadn’t pointed at her, she said, “You’re not too fat. You’re just sad at having to be here. And since being here is out of your control, you control the one thing you can—how much you eat.”
Mother Nadine pointed at Cassie. “Sit down. I didn’t call on you for feedback. That’s a Cat. One offense. You’ll have to do ten—no, fifteen—worksheets tomorrow during PE. And Stephanie will have to do them, too. Because Jamie’s right, Stephanie. The only way things will work for you is to work the program.”
Mother Nadine turned her attention back to Cassie. It was clearly her turn to get picked on. “Right, Cassie, I want to hear something private, right now. Or do you want to go to OP?”
As fast as she could, Cassie went through an inventory in her head. What would hurt the least to say? She had already learned that if you told real secrets, they would be used against you later. Last week a girl had said she was afraid her boyfriend wouldn’t wait for her, and a few days later Mother Nadine had her up in front of the group and was saying, “You don’t think he’s waiting, do you? He’s laughing at you behind your back. How many of your friends do you think he’s sleeping with right now?”
“I think my butt’s too big,” Cassie started.
Mother Nadine cut her off. “I’m not listening to that. That’s not deep. You’ve got to work the program, only you’re not.” She opened the door into the hall and leaned out. “Guard! I need a guard to take someone to OP.” She gave Cassie a smile over her shoulder. And the smile said that Cassie had until the guard got in the room to give Mother Nadine something better.
Like a rat trapped in a maze, Cassie frantically tried to think of a way out. Every idea seemed a dead end. Hector appeared in the doorway. “My stepfather looks at me too long if he sees me coming out of the bathroom after a shower,” she blurted out. It was a lie, but one that she could not get in trouble over.
There was a long silence while Mother Nadine digested this. Finally, she said, “It’s all right, Hector,” and he went away.
Cassie’s feeling of relief was short-lived. Mother Nadine turned back to her with a smile.
“So, what are you wearing when you come out of the bathroom?”
“A towel.” Mother Nadine raised an eyebrow. Cassie went on. “It’s a big towel and it’s my personal bathroom—it’s right next door to my room.”
“So are you trying to cause trouble? Do you think you’re like some cliché out of a bad movie, the teenage girl running around in nothing but a towel? You do that just because you want him to look at you, isn’t that right?”
“No, I don’t,” Cassie said, stung. “I try not to take a shower when he’s even around, but sometimes he just is.”
“You think you’re like that girl Lolita,” Heather said.
Rebecca chimed in, “You’ve got a really bad attitude—and you don’t have the body you think you do.”
“Listen up, girls!” Mother Nadine clapped her hands. “There’s an important lesson here. If you dress and act provocatively, if you put yourself at risk—then you get taken advantage of. No always means no—but you’ve got to look at how you market yourself.”
Everyone nodded in agreement. And so it went, the girls all piling on, until somehow, mysteriously, Mother Nadine judged it had been enough and went on to the next poor victim.
Dinner was a bun and cheese, one of Cassie’s favorite meals. She nibbled on it slowly, saving every bite, while she listened to the last audiotape: Lessons in Obtaining Serenity Through Effective Problem Solving. The dinner tape was always the longest and hardest to listen to. It went on forever, repeating its stilted and ungrammatical lessons. Cassie was tired and she just wanted to finish eating and go to bed.
Finally, the tape was over and they walked single file back into the classrooms for reflections. There, they wrote down what they had memorized from the tapes they had heard and watched that day and turned the papers in to the guard. He would give them to Martha in the morning. She would review Cassie’s work and write down in her book, “Student is making significant progress.”
During reflections you could also write to your parents. You could even write the truth, if you wanted. But because your parents had already been given the parent handbook and warned that you would lie, it was hard to think of what to write.
Tonight, Cassie tried again to think of a way to let her mom know how bad it really was. Something that would cause her to realize the truth, something that would touch her mom so deeply that she wouldn’t turn to Rick, but would instead get on a plane and fly down to get Cassie.
“I really miss you, Mom. I’m sorry if I haven’t been the daughter you wanted me to be. I hope I can be home in time to help with the baby.” It wasn’t enough, she knew, but it was the best she could do. Maybe her mom would think about pulling her out to help with her new brother.
“Oh, I almost forgot, Cassie,” Mother Nadine said. “You got a letter.” As a Level Two, Cassie was allowed to get letters, as long as they passed Martha’s scrutiny. It was rumored that she kept at least seventy-five percent.
Dear Cassie—
I miss you so much! The house seems so quiet without you here. The doctor has put me on bed rest. I won’t be able to live a normal life until I’m 38 weeks pregnant, at which point the baby is officially ready. It’s like I’m a supermarket turkey and everyone is waiting for one of those little red thermometer things to pop out to show that I’m done. I’m only allowed to get up to go to the bathroom, can you believe that? Other than that, I have to be lying down, although I can prop my head and shoulders up. I read, watch TV, or use Rick’s laptop, but time just crawls. I’m going to ask Rick to see if he can talk them into making an exception and letting me call you when the baby is born.
I really miss you. Remember back in our old house how we would stay up late on Friday watching movies and eating popcorn and ice cream? Those were some good times, weren’t they? I hope you can be home soon. Rick says it shouldn’t be much longer until you are ready. Maybe you’ll be home by Christmas.
I’m going to put this in the envelope before Rick comes home, but I’m sure he would send his love, as I do.
Love,
Mom
Cassie couldn’t breathe. Her tears were stuck inside her, and she refused to let them out. Not in front of Mother Nadine. It felt like she had swallowed something sharp that was now lodged below her collarbone. How long would Rick keep lying to her mom? And how long would her mom keep believing him? After Christmas he would probably tell her that the Stateside rep said Cassie might be home for her birthday. And then her birthday would come and go and he would make up another excuse. And by that time, her mom would be busy with the new baby. It might be years before Jackie saw through his lies.
It was clear that the only person who was going to get Cassie out of Peaceful Cove was Cassie.
twenty-five
June 4
The next day, they stood in the courtyard, waiting for the guards to finish their evening head count. Mother Nadine stood next to Cassie, rooting in her purse, looking for her cigarettes. Sometimes Cassie thought she delighted in smoking in front of the girls, often only minutes after they had listened to a taped lecture about how smoking would turn their lungs black.
With the purse pouched open, Cassie saw something amid the jumble of pens and tampons and makeup. Something as small as a calculator. But it was a cell phone.
A phone! She quickly looked away, so that Mother Nadine wouldn’t catch her staring and read her mind. If she had a phone, Cassie could call her dad and he would come for her. She knew he would.
Their relationship had always been weighed down by his guilt at leaving, his guilt at starting a new family. When she was thirteen, he had missed her birthday, hadn’t even called her until three days later, when his new wife was visiting her sister with his new kids. He sounded like he was drunk. He also sounded like he was crying.
But no matter what he said or did, Cassie always knew her dad would be there for her if she really needed him. She didn’t know where Jackie had told him Cassie had gone, but she was sure it was a lie. And she was also sure that if she could just talk to her dad for five minutes, he would be on the next plane down.
The first problem would be to get her hands on the phone. Mother Nadine was never too far from her purse. But Cassie and Hayley were a team. If one of them could create a distraction, the other could get the phone.
The next morning Cassie snatched a moment to talk as they hung up their towels after showering. To Cassie’s surprise, Hayley balked.
“But how do you know he’ll come?”
“He’s my dad.”
Hidden by the line of towels, Hayley snorted and shrugged. “So?”
“So! He’s my dad. Of course he’ll come for me once he realizes what’s going on here.”
“You think he doesn’t already know? You think the parents don’t know what’s going on? Of course they do. It’s just more convenient for them if they pretend that Peaceful Cove is just as good as they say in their brochures.”
“Girls!” the guard, Tania, barked. She blew her whistle before Cassie could ask if Hayley would still help her even if she didn’t believe it would work. Even if she thought it was a lost cause.
But Cassie should have known. Two days later during reflections, when everyone was exhausted and looking forward to bed, Hayley began waving her hand over her head.
“What is it, Hayley?” Mother Nadine’s voice held a note of surprise. Hayley wasn’t the kind of girl to ask for help or permission.
“Can you come look at my letter to my mom, tell me if you think it’s okay?”
As Mother Nadine got to her feet, Hayley shot Cassie a look.
The brown purse was on the floor, right next to Cassie’s thigh. And unzipped. As Mother Nadine stood up, and while everyone was still looking at Hayley, marveling at her request, Cassie mimed a yawn. She stretched and let her hand drop into the purse. Like a miracle, she felt her fingers close around the slim plastic case. She leaned forward, faking a stretch, and tucked the phone into the top of her panties, underneath her shorts. Cassie just prayed the elastic would hold.
Now she had to find a way to make a call. And soon, before Mother Nadine noticed her phone was gone. In the best possible scenario, Cassie would be able to make the call and return the phone before its absence was discovered.
She had planned on calling from the bathroom, since it was the only time she could count on being alone. But now she thought about how much the small room echoed. And the door didn’t lock. And Hector was working tonight. He was always looking for an excuse to open the door and catch sight of a girl peeing.
Mother Nadine was still leaning over Hayley, happily engaged in a lecture about all the things Hayley had done wrong. Before she could think better of it, Cassie bent forward and thrust her fingers down her throat. Dinner that night had been rancid-tasting pork. Her stomach had been sour ever since. Vomit poured out of her mouth almost instantly, splattering her legs and feet and the floor. The other girls around her squealed and scattered.
“You’re going to have to clean that up yourself, Cassie,” Mother Nadine rapped out. “Go down to the laundry and get some rags.” Cassie was already on her feet when she added, “And take Rebecca with you.”
Cassie should have realized that there was no way Mother Nadine would let her go anyplace by herself. Still, there was no turning back.
It was strange and more than a little eerie to walk down the empty, darkened corridors, taking care to skirt around the buckets that had been set out to catch the drips from the leaking roof. Two hundred people lived here, but all you saw was a spill of light from under each family’s closed door. No sound, aside from a few murmurs.
The laundry room was next to the kitchen. Most of the cupboard doors were locked, but one stood ajar, the lock dangling. Rebecca went to close it. For a moment she stood mesmerized by the sight of a cardboard box filled with the little cracker-and-cheese packets that were sometimes doled out to upper-level students.
“I love these things,” she said slowly. Moving as slowly as a sleepwalker, she picked up one of the packets.
“Maybe I’ll just go along and get those rags,” Cassie said, feeling the lump of the phone pressing against her stomach.
“Okay,” Rebecca said absently. Cassie scurried into the laundry room, pulled out the phone, and turned it on. Since she was in Mexico, did she have to dial a series of numbers to reach the United States? Cassie didn’t know, and she didn’t know what those numbers would be, anyway. She had gathered that Peaceful Cove wasn’t that far from the border, though, and how would the cell phone know where it was? She pressed the number 1, then the 503 area code, then her dad’s home number.
After five rings, a man’s voice, sounding distracted, said, “Hello?”
At the sound of his voice, Cassie’s throat choked with tears.
“Daddy,” she managed to gasp out, but she couldn’t make anything else squeeze past.
His tone sharpened. “Cassie? Cassie—is that you? Where are you? Are you home?”
She swallowed hard, forcing down her tears, forcing herself to speak softly when she wanted to scream. “I’m in Mexico. Daddy, Daddy, please come get me. It’s called Peaceful Cove.” Her words were running into each other, but she couldn’t make herself slow down. The connection crackled and her own words echoed back to her through the earpiece.
“But honey, I don’t have formal custody over you. I can’t do anything if your mom decides to send you to a different school.”
“A school!” Unconsciously, she had raised her voice. It echoed in the small room. She quickly lowered it again. “Daddy, it’s a prison here. They beat us.”
“Beat you—do you mean somebody hits you? Your mom and I may have our differences, but she would never send you anyplace like that.”
“But it is like that, Daddy. There’s kids here with missing teeth. If you love me, please believe me. You have to help. They hurt us every day. Why do you think it’s in Mexico? There aren’t any rules here—”
Cassie’s ponytail was yanked back so hard that her teeth closed on her tongue. The phone fell from her hand. Rebecca snatched it up and pressed the off button.
“What are you doing?” She began to scream and slap Cassie with open hands, a flurry of blows that landed on her head, neck, breasts. “I have to get out of here, do you hear me? I have to get out of here! You stupid girl! Do you know how much trouble I could get into? I can’t go back to being a Level One! I can’t!” Her hands were closed now, fists raining down. Cassie backed up against the dryer. She stumbled and fell to her knees, then curled into a ball, her hands cupping the back of her neck, bent arms shielding her head. Being down on the floor was worse. Rebecca was kicking her now, and her legs were stronger than her arms. Her foot connected with Cassie’s cheek, and Cassie fe
lt teeth move in her jaw.
Then suddenly, everything stopped.
Cassie rolled her eyes up, trying to see what was happening without exposing any more of her face.
It was Father Gary, his face cherry red. He was shaking Rebecca like a rag doll. “Who did she call?”
“Her dad,” Rebecca mumbled sullenly.
“Are you twice as much a fool! If one of her family flies here and sees her covered with bruises, then what do you think will happen? I don’t need another parent going to the State Department. Take her to OP, but you tell the guards there is not going to be a mark on her. I don’t want to see as much as a rash. I’ll start doing damage control.”
twenty-six
June 7
“What is Peaceful Cove about, people? It’s about learning self-discipline and respect. Learning to be respectful of ourselves, respectful of others, respectful of the gifts we have so generously been given. And yet what do I see when I look around? I see cobwebs, I see weeds, I see dirt and disorder.”
The rows of teens stood silent in the courtyard, heads bowed, unmoving, as Father Gary paced back and forth in front of him. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the drumming raindrops that hit the hard-packed earth and bounced back up again. His white shirt was soaked through, revealing the outline of his belly, the hairs on his chest. His face was red, his gestures quick and abrupt.
“You have allowed this beautiful spot to mirror your own interior disorder. Any visitor would immediately jump to the wrong conclusions about the hard and worthy work we are doing here. So for the next few days we will be working to make our external world harmonious with what we are learning inside ourselves. This is for our own benefit, as much as it might be for any visitors. But if we do end up having visitors, and if any one of you finds occasion to lie to them—well, know this, your lies will be rewarded with weeks in OP. If not months.”