Counting Backwards

by Laura Lascarso

  “I’m Taylor’s peer mentor,” she says, and smiles demonically at me. The woman shakes her head, and Margo giggles. I can’t tell if Margo’s trying to scare me or if she’s sincerely insane.

  “On my floor, you mind your manners,” the woman says to Margo. Then she turns to me. “And you, don’t let this one be a bad influence.”

  I don’t know her, I want to say, but the woman’s already walking away.

  “That’s Tracy,” Margo says. “As far as floor safeties go, you could do a lot worse.”

  “Safeties?”

  “Haven’t you noticed all the beefy men and full-bodied women? Those guys and gals are doing everything they can to keep us safe and secure. But back to the task at hand.” She pivots toward Charlotte’s room, where Charlotte is now camped out on her bed, scribbling furiously in an open book. Margo reaches into her boot and pulls out a pack of twistable crayons, which capture Charlotte’s attention as she fixes her eyes on the package.

  “I’m just going to throw them in, okay?” Margo says.

  Charlotte nods while one fist clenches the blanket on her bed, as though it’s physically hurting her to have someone enter her room. I feel sorry for her. I even know a little how she feels. I don’t like people invading my personal space either.

  Margo approaches slowly, tosses the pack on the corner of Charlotte’s bed, and backs out of her room. “Now, tell Taylor your rule, or else how will she know?”

  Charlotte stares at me with a wild look in her eyes. “No one’s allowed in my room. No one.”

  I nod enthusiastically. That won’t be a problem.

  Margo swipes her hands together as though her job is done, and I hope maybe now she’ll leave. But instead of heading for the stairwell door, she goes toward my room. I follow her inside and stand guard next to my two duffel bags.

  “Do you smoke?” she asks, retrieving a cigarette and matches from her other boot.

  “I’m trying to quit,” I say, even though I’ve never tried smoking. My mother has enough bad habits for the both of us. “Besides, isn’t smoking against the rules?”

  “Not my rules.” She strikes a match and lights her cigarette, taking a long drag. “It’s a real inconvenience that they don’t let me have matches. Though I’ll admit, things did get a little out of control the last time.”

  “The last time?”

  Her answer is a massive cloud of bluish smoke. I hear Tracy’s voice in the hallway, “You smell cigarettes?” followed by her heavy footsteps heading our way fast.

  “At least when I’m on the outside, I might get to finish an entire cigarette,” Margo says, and takes three more quick puffs.

  “Put it out,” I hiss. I’m about to get totally busted, and it’s only my first day here. Margo smiles and throws her lit cigarette into the trash can while I fan the room, trying to disperse the smoke. She tosses me her matches like a hot potato, and I’m about to peg her back when I see one of Tracy’s black boots in the doorway. I make a fist around the matchbook and try to act natural.

  “Who’s smoking in here?” Tracy asks, staring directly at Margo. She knows who’s responsible.

  “Martha Washington told me to do it,” Margo says. “She said if I didn’t, she’d dye my hair brown.”

  Tracy shifts her weight to the other hip; she doesn’t seem too impressed.

  “Empty those boots, Margo. Don’t make me frisk you.”

  Margo huffs, takes off both boots, and turns them over, dumping everything onto the linoleum floor—cigarettes, an empty book of matches, a box of Tic Tacs, loose change, a few dollar bills, and a tube of lip gloss. Tracy pulls a plastic bag out of a little black container on her belt and holds it open while Margo dumps everything inside.

  “Take me away,” Margo says, and holds out her wrists like she’s waiting to be handcuffed. I’ve been handcuffed for real and it wasn’t much fun. Tracy just shakes her head and waits for Margo to pass in front of her. “See you tomorrow,” Margo says to me, “if they let me out.”

  “That’s enough,” Tracy says, and nudges her along. “Peer mentor. I’m going to have to talk to somebody about this.”

  I worry about where Tracy is taking her, maybe to a padded cell. That was pretty dumb of Margo to smoke a cigarette, knowing she’d get caught. But how bad could the punishment be?

  I glance across the hall to see a girl in the opposite room, glaring at me with eyes like knives. “FYI, new girl,” she says. “You make friends with Margo Blanchard, you make enemies with us.”

  Us? I glance around her room. She’s the only one in there. Maybe she has split personalities or something. I have no more expectations for normal in this place. I can’t believe my dad left me here. These people are crazy. If my mother knew what this place was really like . . .

  My mother.

  I have to call her. My mom knows me better than anyone else. She knows I’m not crazy.

  I find Kayla’s apartment at the other end of the hallway—the only one with the door closed. I knock, and a moment later she opens it.

  “Hi, Taylor, what do you need?”

  “I’d like to call my mom.”

  Kayla frowns. “I’m sorry, but you haven’t earned that privilege yet.”

  “I really miss her,” I say as a desperate feeling creeps in. “I just need a few minutes.”

  “It takes three days of good decision making to earn a phone call.”

  “Please, Kayla, I really need to talk to her. I never got to say good-bye.”

  Her eyes search mine, and I say a silent prayer she’ll grant me my request. Her face softens, and she looks past me into the empty hallway. “You’ll need to make it quick.”

  Kayla walks me down to the shorter end of the L-shaped hallway to what she calls the common room, which is just a weathered couch and chairs in front of an ancient television set. She points to the phone, the old-fashioned kind with the curly cord so you can’t go too far with it. “Five minutes,” she says, “and I’m going to be monitoring your end of the conversation.”

  I call my mom’s cell phone and wait ring after ring. It takes forever for her to finally pick up.

  “Hello?” she croaks.

  “Mom, it’s me.”

  “Taylor?”

  I glance up at the clock hanging on the wall—it’s four p.m. on a Sunday. “Are you just getting up?”

  “No, no, honey, I was taking a nap. Hold on, give me a second here. . . .”

  I hear some scraping, the fridge door opening, and the sound of liquid pouring into a glass. Hopefully it’s water. I glance back at the clock. Almost a minute gone.

  “Baby,” she says at last, “how are you?”

  “Not good, Mom. I’m at this place—Sunny Meadows—and the people here are . . .” I glance over at Kayla. “Disturbed.”

  “They are?”

  “Yes. Completely. You need to come get me.”

  “Taylor, you just got there. Why don’t you try to make some friends, at least?”

  Is she kidding me? I don’t want to make friends with these people.

  “Mom, please. If you leave right now, we could be back home by tomorrow morning.” I wait, but hear only her breath. “Mom?”

  “I know this is hard for you, Taylor, but your father thinks it’s for the best.”

  Who cares what he thinks? When has she ever done what he’s told her to do?

  “How about you, Mom? What do you think?”

  I hear one long, endless sigh. “I think we should give it a try.”

  I feel my anger rising. There’s nothing wrong with me, and even if there was, my mom’s been through rehab enough times to know it’s a waste of time and money. A waste of life.

  “This isn’t we giving it a try, Mom, it’s me. Alone. Trapped in here with the crazies.”

  “Give it a week, Taylor. And make some friends. Find strength in others.”

  I suppress a groan. I hate it when she gives me her generic rehab slogans. “I don’t want to find strength in others,
Mom. I want to come home.” I can’t make it any plainer. If she really loved me, if she cared about me at all, she’d come up here and bring me home.

  But maybe she doesn’t want me back. She can do anything she wants now. She no longer has to keep up the charade of being somebody’s mother.

  “What about your episodes, Taylor?”

  She’s talking about the feeling in my chest, the times when I can’t catch my breath, which is her fault as far as I’m concerned, hers and my father’s. But I could handle it if they’d just leave me alone. I know I could.

  “There is nothing wrong with me,” I tell her.

  She’s quiet after that, and I feel my whole body go rigid and cold, like a glacier. I’m a mass of impenetrable ice. Nothing can touch me. Not her, not anyone.

  “I know you’re unhappy,” she says at last, “and I want you to come home, but . . . your father’s right. This is the right place for you, for now.”

  “I guess he’s right about a lot of things, huh?” She knows what I’m talking about—all those times my dad tried to take custody away from her and I lied for her. For us. I never told him about all the nights she went out drinking or all the times she was late picking me up from school. How I learned to drive when I was thirteen, just in case she showed up somewhere and couldn’t drive home.

  “Listen, Taylor . . . I just want to say . . . I love you.”

  I say nothing because I feel nothing. Even if I did, I wouldn’t say it, because I know that’s what she wants to hear. Kayla clears her throat and points to the clock. I save my mother the trouble of saying good-bye and hang up the phone. My hands are trembling. I shove them deep into my pockets.

  “It sounds like your mother wants you to get help,” Kayla says.

  I ignore her and walk out of the common room, back down the yellow hallway to the room that’s supposed to be mine. I drag my red duffel bag to the corner of the room where I can’t be seen from the hallway and dig around for the secret pocket I sewed into the inside of the liner. That’s where I keep the birthday money and allowance I don’t want my mom to “borrow.” When my fingers brush against the money—nearly five hundred dollars in all—my chest opens up a little and I take a deep breath. I might be trapped in this place, but I’m not helpless. I’ll make a new plan and leave Sunny Meadows just as I came.

  Alone.

  CHAPTER 3

  That night I have a nightmare. I sit up with a jolt to find myself in a stranger’s room. Then I realize it’s mine—Sunny Meadows. My pulse throbs in my throat; my hair is sweaty and matted to my skin. I kick off the covers and pace the floor to lift the fog of sleep.

  “Shut up!” the girl from across the hall shouts. The night safety pokes her head into my doorway.

  “Bad dream,” I say. She just points me to my bed.

  I climb back in and cover my face with Tatters, my blanket from childhood that is just a square of faded material now. My grandmother sewed it for me when I was little, and I’ve kept it all this time. Its scent of home is swiftly fading, replaced by the institutional nothing smell of Sunny Meadows. I lie there and try to think of a better place, a safe place. I remember my grandmother’s porch in the nighttime, where we slept during the summer because it was too hot indoors. I can almost hear the rise and fall of her voice as she spun tales of our people: Panther—God’s favored one, and the Terrible Twins, Thunder and Lightning, and my favorite character, Rabbit, who used his cunning and wit to outsmart the bigger animals who were always trying to eat him. I want to conjure up the night sounds on the reservation—the hoot of a barred owl, the buzzing of cicadas, yard dogs baying at the moon—but the only sounds here are the air conditioner cutting off and on and the crinkling of the plastic mattress liner beneath me. Even worse is the sad realization that I’ve forgotten more than I can remember.

  Then I hear faint music . . . a guitar. I sit up in bed and glance around the room, trying to figure out where it’s coming from. I slide out of bed and search the room for a speaker or a radio but find none. In the hallway all is quiet, save for the snores of the other girls.

  Back in my room I trace the music to its source, the floor. No, an air vent in the floor. I drop down to my knees and put my ear to the vent, where I can hear it better; the music drifts up through the metal duct like a ghostly lullaby.

  I hear a man’s voice, quick and severe, and the music’s gone, leaving behind only the hum of the air conditioner. I kneel there a moment longer. Maybe I imagined it.

  I pull my pillow off the bed and drop it next to the vent. I lie back and stare up at the moonlight filtering through the foggy window. In a groggy, half-dream state I watch the square of window turn from black to blue to pink and finally the white dawn of a new day. Shortly after there’s a loud, jarring buzzer, and the safety comes by to make sure I’m up and getting ready for breakfast downstairs in thirty minutes.

  Monday morning. My first day at another new school. My mom had this pep talk whenever I’d be getting ready for my first day at a new school: Just think of all the new friends you’re going to make, Taylor. All those people who can’t wait to meet you. . . .

  It worked when I was young, but by middle school, I got tired of making friends and having to leave them behind every time we moved because we couldn’t pay the rent or my mom decided it was time to move on. If you don’t get attached in the first place, there’s no one to say good-bye to. My freshman year of high school I started hanging out with this group of guys who were already out of school. They were in a band—Choleric Kindness. I was kind of like their kid sister or groupie, showing up at the warehouse where they practiced. They never seemed to mind me being there, and the music and the constant stream of people coming in and out made it so I never had to talk too much about myself.

  They’re probably wondering what happened to me. I haven’t seen them since before I tried to run away.

  I open my closet, bypassing the pleated navy skirts and going straight for the pants. The starched fabric is itchy against my skin and smells like industrial laundry detergent. The shirt collar feels too tight around my throat, so I undo the top two buttons—it’s a little better. I run a comb through my frazzled hair and try weaving it into a French braid, but it comes out loose and lopsided, so I unravel it and throw it into a regular old braid, then line up along the hallway with the other girls. The safety calls roll, and I learn that Brandi is the name of the girl in the room across from mine. She gives me a dirty look when my name is called.

  Down in the dining room there’s a continental breakfast waiting. The food looks washed out—the fruit not quite ripe, the breads dry and stiff as cardboard. I grab a bagel and an individually packaged strawberry jelly, then notice the Sunny Meadows guys for the first time. They’re in their own dining room, separated from ours by the kitchen, doing the same morning shuffle. I glance around the room for Margo, but don’t see her anywhere. She can’t still be locked up. Meanwhile most of the other girls have all settled into their table groupings. There’s an empty table across the room, and I head for it.

  A few minutes later Charlotte comes over and sits down across from me. I’m a little nervous that she might start screaming at me, but I tell her good morning anyway. She nods without looking up from what she’s doing, which is cutting her toast into tiny bits and then delicately placing them into her mouth one piece at a time. Like the knocking, there’s a pattern to it. After two bites, she takes a sip of water, then wipes her mouth with the napkin. And each time she wipes her mouth, she folds the napkin over so that her lips never touch the same spot twice.

  I’m so fascinated by her curious behavior that I don’t realize Brandi and her friends are at the table next to ours until they start launching bread crusts our way, aiming for Charlotte. A piece gets stuck in her hair, and they practically scream with laughter. I glare at Brandi while Charlotte stares at her toast, trying to ignore them, but her face is red and splotchy and I’m afraid she’s going to start crying at any moment. I tear off a piece of
my bagel and throw it back at them. It hits Brandi’s shirtfront, then drips to the ground, leaving behind a pink jammy smear.

  “You little bitch,” Brandi snarls. She stands and takes a step toward me. I lay my hands flat on the table. My muscles tense, and I estimate it will take about two seconds for her to reach me. Do I fight her or do I run?

  “Clean up this mess,” a safety says. She gets between me and them, blocking them from my view. Never take your eyes off your assailant. The echoes of Andy—one of my mom’s ex-boyfriends, a security guard—plays in my head.

  Charlotte sits there tensely, like she’s afraid to move, while I pick the crusts off the floor. The other girls shoot me scathing looks as they pass by, and I notice they’re all wearing the same large, gold hoop earrings.

  “Sorry about that,” Charlotte whispers to me in a tiny voice.

  “Don’t be. They’re the jerks, not you.” I throw the bundle in the trash, then take my place at the end of the line, where I can keep an eye on the girls. During walkover the safeties lead us in a herd to the school and I see the guys again, coming from the opposite direction, being driven across the lawn like cattle.

  The school building is just one story and looks much newer than the dorms, with one carpeted hallway down the center and classrooms on either side. The safeties take up positions against the wall and keep a close watch, calling out whenever someone makes physical contact or gets too loud.

  I go to the office to get my pack of ballpoint pens—our approved writing utensils—along with some folders, a backpack, and a class schedule. They put me in all average classes, probably based on my poor performance at the end of tenth grade. My two weeks in juvie probably set me back even more. I used to care about things like perfect attendance and GPA. I used to make really good grades, but not anymore.

  I find my way to first period, American history, where there are about twenty or so kids already there. My stomach drops as I see Brandi and her friends among them. This is not how I want to start the day.