Counting Backwards

by Laura Lascarso

  The teacher, Mr. Chris, introduces me to the other students while the girls giggle obnoxiously. Brandi seems to be the alpha female. When she stops laughing, the rest quiet down. Of course the only empty seat is the one behind her.

  Mr. Chris says we’ll be assembling our Revolutionary War mobiles and then goes through this long talk about “sharps,” how they’re learning tools and it’s important that we respect them as such, that if anyone misuses “sharps,” they’ll be escorted to the front office, and he’ll be counting “sharps” at the end of class. If there are any missing, there will be “serious consequences.” I remember my razors and wonder if that’s what sharps are, so I lean across the aisle and ask the guy next to me.

  “Scissors,” he says with a smile, and draws one finger across his neck, like he’s slicing his own throat. I face forward, thinking the next time I have a question, I’ll ask the teacher.

  The male safety comes around with a box of scissors—sharps. They’re the old-fashioned metal kind with rounded tips and dull blades. Still, with enough force they could definitely break skin. I glance around the room and wonder if they’re worried about us cutting ourselves or one another. Maybe both.

  I get my worksheet and cut out these strips of paper with facts on them, which are supposed to be ordered on construction paper like a time line. I’m arranging my facts and pasting—with actual paste—and it’s not bad, a little Zen even, when the same kid from before strikes up a conversation.

  “You Mexicana?” he asks with a Spanish accent I didn’t hear before.

  “No.”

  “Puerto Rican?”

  “No.” This could go on all day. “I’m American Indian—Seminole.”

  “You got a boyfriend?”

  I glance over, and he licks his lips suggestively.

  “You don’t want to mess with her, Sulli,” Brandi says. “You don’t know where she’s been.”

  “Jealous, baby?” Sulli says to her with a slimy smile. Brandi shoots him a death stare.

  “Trust me, Trailer. You’re not his type.” With a flip of her ratty hair, Brandi turns back around. I glare at the back of her head and wish I could think of something biting and clever to say, but my comebacks always come too late.

  Mr. Chris calls for us to clean up, and the safety comes around to collect the scissors. I drop mine into the box. At the front of the class Mr. Chris counts them—out loud. Why out loud? Maybe to build suspense.

  “We have one sharp missing,” he announces, shaking his head sorrowfully, like someone has died. Everyone glances around the room. Brandi smiles wickedly at me.

  “Let’s assume this was an accident,” Mr. Chris says. “I’m going to turn my back. If the missing sharp doesn’t appear after one minute, we’ll be forced to search your properties.”

  He might be crazier than the class because he actually turns his back on the psychos and the minute goes by, terrifyingly slow. No one comes forward, so the safety lines us up along the back of the room where there’s a ton of books in stacks—mostly biographies. I scan the titles while the safety goes through our backpacks. He gets to my stuff, and I remember the book of matches I stuffed in there to give back to Margo.

  Crap.

  “Here,” the safety says. He pulls a pair of scissors out of my backpack and holds them up high like a cereal-box prize. “Hidden in her folder.”

  “I didn’t put those there,” I tell Mr. Chris. Meanwhile Brandi and her friends can hardly contain themselves. Could it be any more obvious?

  “Everyone else may go,” Mr. Chris says with his eyes trained on me.

  Sulli winks as he passes by, and Brandi swipes a pair of scissors right out of the box on Mr. Chris’s desk. Nobody sees it but me. Is this selective sight or what? I should tell on her, but she’s already out the door.

  “I swear I didn’t take them,” I say to Mr. Chris. “Someone put them there to make me look bad.”

  “I believe you,” he says, like he’d believe me whether it was true or not. “But it’s very important you leave the sharps here, with me. I wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself accidentally. You don’t want to hurt yourself, do you, Taylor?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “And you don’t want to hurt anyone else, do you?”

  “No,” I say, even though there is someone I wouldn’t mind hurting a little.

  “So, let’s start over,” he says, smiling inanely at me. “And tomorrow you can tear out the rest of your project. It won’t be as neat, but it will be safe.”

  He calls on the safety to escort me to my next class, and I know that I’m outnumbered and outmatched. I need help from someone who knows the score.

  Someone like Margo Blanchard.

  By the time lunch rolls around, I have the beginnings of a headache, and the noise in the cafeteria makes it worse. I collect my cardboard tray, which has been prepackaged according to my “dietary needs.” Apparently my needs consist of ambiguous meats and overcooked vegetables.

  I scan the lunchroom for Margo, but she’s still MIA. Charlotte is sitting at a table by herself, so I make my way over. Halfway there something hits my ankle and I lurch forward. I fight to catch my balance, but it’s already too late. My tray falls to the floor at the same time my knees hit the ground.

  My kneecaps hurt like crazy and my left hand is crunched painfully beneath my wrist, but luckily, there’s no gravy on my face. Then I hear them above me, howling like a pack of wolves.

  “Smooth move, Trailer.” I glance up at Brandi and realize she tripped me. I’ve been the new kid enough times to know that if I don’t stand up for myself now, it’ll only continue. I jump to my feet and lunge for her, but someone gets between us—a guy—and I push him instead. But he’s big and solid, so I end up falling back. I glare up at him—where did he even come from?—while the cafeteria falls silent.

  “What the hell?” I shout at him. When he doesn’t respond, I storm away, leaving my tray behind on the floor. Maybe he’s another one of Brandi’s psycho boyfriends. Who knows and who cares?

  I head for the exit door. Thankfully, it’s not locked. Fresh air and sunlight envelop me, and I take a couple of quick steps, about to run. Then my eyes adjust to the light, and I find myself in a concrete courtyard that’s closed off on two sides by the building and the other two sides by another chain-link fence. A fence within a fence. In-credible.

  “Welcome to the pen.” I glance to my left and see Margo. Other than the safety manning the door, she’s the only person out here. The midday sun lights up her lush blond hair so it looks like a halo of white fire surrounding her pale face.

  “Do you know what the worst feeling in the world is?” she asks.

  I know the worst feeling in the world. It’s the fist in my chest that won’t let me breathe.

  She holds up two cigarettes. “Having a cigarette in your hand and no way to light it.”

  She must be asking after her matches. I’m eager to be rid of them, but I don’t want her to get in trouble again—I need some peer mentoring. “What about him?” I ask, nodding at the safety.

  She waves her hand dismissively. “I’ll be discreet.”

  I don’t believe her, but I unhook my backpack from my shoulders, reach in, and toss the book over to her. She catches it in one hand, then holds a cigarette out to me. “You want one?”

  “No thanks.”

  She shrugs and turns away from the safety and the surveillance camera mounted to the building, then lights both cigarettes. “Hang on to these for me,” she says, handing me the matches. “Keep me out of trouble.”

  I glance back toward the safety—he seems to be purposely not looking—and sidle up next to her. She looks like a walrus with both cigarettes dangling from her lips. “That can’t be good for you,” I say.

  “Nothing in moderation.”

  “So, where have you been?” I ask. “Since yesterday?”

  “I spent the evening in a time-out room, which is the closest thing we have to a spa arou
nd here.”

  I think back to the handbook Kayla gave me last night. Time-out rooms. “For when residents need a safe place to reflect on their choices.” I shudder involuntarily. It doesn’t sound like a spa to me.

  “They put you in there just for smoking?”

  “Ever since the incident on the second floor, the dorm safeties have gotten a lot stricter with me about matches—a real bummer when you love smoking as I do.”

  “What was the incident?”

  “A tiny trash fire,” she says. “Not even my fault. Not really.”

  “What’s it like in there?” I ask. “In the time-out rooms?”

  “A stiff cocktail of mind-numbing boredom, sensory deprivation, and isolation.”

  “Sounds bad.”

  She nods. “But effective.”

  She makes an O with her mouth and pushes out smoke rings . . . one, two, three. I watch them float in the air for a few seconds, then drift apart. I hook my fingers around the warm metal of the chain-link fence and stare past the lawn at the wrought-iron gate attached to the even larger chain-link fence. Beyond that, freedom.

  “So, Taylor, what brings you to Sunny Meadows?”

  Something I’d rather not talk about, I think. “I got into some trouble at home.”

  “Obviously.” We’re quiet for a moment. Then she asks, “So, what’d you do?”

  I shrug without answering.

  “It’s my job to know these things,” she says. “I am your peer mentor.”

  “I stole a car,” I say, hoping that will be enough.

  “What kind of car was it?”

  “Not a very nice one.”

  “First-time offender?”

  “More or less.”

  Technically I stole two cars before the last one. The first time I chickened out and came back, returned the keys to where my mom’s barfly friend had left them on the kitchen counter. The second time didn’t really count because it was my mom’s car. She went out drinking one night and there was no food in our apartment, so I drove over to the warehouse where Choleric Kindness was practicing. Trey—he’s their drummer—asked me to come back with him to his apartment, and I had nothing better to do, so I went. At his place, he tried to hook up with me, but I told him I had a boyfriend. I think he knew I was lying, but he backed off and we spent the rest of the night watching TV and eating Totino’s pizzas. I didn’t want to go home that night. I knew what would be waiting for me—my mom, drunk, or with a guy, maybe both, or else still at the bar—so when Trey offered to let me stay the night on his couch, I said yes.

  But my dad tracked me down the next morning, totally furious. It was such a scene, with Trey doing everything he could to convince my father that nothing happened, which I told my dad again later, but did he believe me?

  “Did you get arrested?” Margo asks, bringing me back to the conversation.

  “Yeah. At a gas station.”

  “Were you robbing it?”

  “No, I was getting some gas. I guess I stole that, too.”

  “Where were you going?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, and it’s the truth. I had no idea where I was going. I just had to get away.

  “Sounds like a half-assed plan to me.”

  I chuckle at that because she’s absolutely right. “Yeah, I guess it was.”

  The double doors to the cafeteria open, and more kids and safeties begin to file out. Margo drops her lit cigarettes on the ground and crushes them with her shoe, then tosses them into the trash can. I glance inside it to make sure they’re not still burning. When I look up, Brandi and three of her friends are making their way across the pen. My hands ball up into fists as Brandi smiles and waves at me. Margo blows her a kiss.

  “Are you friends with them?” I ask.

  Margo laughs. “Who? The Latina Queens? Not quite.”

  “Latina Queens? They don’t look Hispanic.”

  “The girl who started it was—is. She got released over the summer, but the tradition lives on. The rest of them are sweet Georgia peaches. Aren’t they darling with their trashy little accessories?”

  She can only mean their gold hoop earrings. And no, they’re not darling in any way. I watch as they thread themselves through a group of guys who appear too old to be in high school—Sulli among them. The guys wear their shirts with the top few buttons undone and their sleeves rolled up, showing off their tattoos. Their style complements the Latina Queens’ hiked-up skirts and too-small shirts. I’ve never been to a boarding school before—therapeutic or not—but it amazes me how subjective the dress code is, even with uniforms.

  “They’re probably going to jump you,” Margo says while inspecting her fingernails.

  “What? Why?”

  “Because that’s what they do.”

  I’m a little surprised by her honesty. And her lack of concern for my well-being. Is this what a peer mentor is supposed to do?

  “Thanks for the heads-up,” I say sarcastically.

  “No problem. I’m sure you could convince them to jump me instead.”

  I remember yesterday when Brandi warned me not to make friends with Margo. “Why is that?” I ask her.

  She sighs. “A while back they wanted me to join their silly gang, but I declined—politely, of course. They’ve hated me ever since. It’s seriously killing my popularity. Girls only talk to me when they’re not around.”

  I remember how frightened Charlotte seemed this morning when they were picking on her. Stupid bullies. I decide then that I’m on Margo’s side, which is against the Latina Queens. “I guess I shouldn’t be talking to you then,” I say to her.

  “No, you shouldn’t. But doesn’t it feel forbidden and a little bit dangerous?”

  I smile and glance up to see a tall, lanky guy approaching. He flashes Margo a lazy half smile as his longish hair falls over one eye like a carefully executed accident. Then I see someone else following him over, the guy from the lunchroom, the one who got in the middle of my spat with Brandi.

  “Mon ange,” the pretty boy says to Margo while I check out his friend. He’s got military short hair, gray eyes, and long, curling lashes. His nose is slightly crooked, like maybe it’s been broken, and there’s a scar on his upper lip in the shape of a sickle moon. Maybe he’s some kind of junior safety, like the ROTC at my last high school.

  “Hey, babe,” Margo says with a smile. “Taylor Truwell, this is Victor DeMatais and A.J. Guttering. Guys, Taylor.”

  “Enchanté, ma chèrie,” Victor says to me. Margo reminds him that he’s not taking orders right now, so could he please speak English?

  “I apologize. A pleasure to meet you, Taylor. Any friend of Margo’s is a friend of mine.”

  “Thanks,” I say, and glance over at his friend, but he says nothing.

  “There’s a soccer game this afternoon,” Victor says. “You girls coming?”

  “I don’t know, Vic,” Margo says. “I really need to wash my hair.”

  Victor plucks up a lock of her golden hair, twines it in his fingers, and kisses it, all without drawing any attention from the safeties. “I always play better with you there,” he croons, and slips something into her palm. A.J. shifts to block them from the safety’s line of sight. I notice a thin silver chain around A.J.’s neck that disappears underneath his uniform. He catches me staring and adjusts his collar so that it’s hidden completely.

  “Until next time, Taylor,” Victor says, tipping an imaginary hat in my direction. “See you two lovely ladies later.”

  A.J. says nothing, only holds my gaze a moment longer and walks off with Victor.

  “That’s our connection,” Margo says after they’ve left. “If you ever need anything, Victor and A.J. will get it for you.”

  Anything?

  “Is Victor your boyfriend?”

  “‘Relationships between the sexes are to remain platonic,’” Margo says, reciting from the Sunny Meadows handbook.

  “What’d he give you?”

  She opens he
r hand to reveal . . . a box of orange Tic Tacs?

  “That’s it? I was expecting a hand grenade or a pocket knife, at least.”

  She smiles. “They’re my favorite. The perfect combination of citrus and sunshine and only one and a half calories each.”

  I look after the pair of them, talking with some guys on the other side of the pen. “What’s up with Victor’s friend?”

  “Who? A.J.?”

  “Yeah. He got between me and Brandi in the lunchroom. Right before I came out here, she tripped me and I went to push her, but he got in the way.”

  “Did he say anything to you?”

  “No—just . . . looked at me.”

  “How very curious.” She taps her chin with one slender finger. “Maybe he likes you.”

  “What? He doesn’t even know me.”

  “Why else would he keep you from getting in trouble?”

  “He wasn’t. He was just—protecting Brandi.”

  “A.J. hates Brandi.”

  “He does?”

  “Yeah, we all do.”

  It must have been an accident, then. But he sure did get there fast, and when he looked at me, it was like he was telling me to back off. Maybe it was for my own good, but why? I study A.J.’s broad back and try to guess at his intentions. Victor’s at his side, handing off something to another kid while A.J. blocks them with his body. “Fighter” is the word that comes to mind. It’s in his posture, the way he keeps his head low, arms at his sides, ready. He turns then and catches my eye. I look away to find Margo watching us.

  “He’s so totally into you,” she says, and clasps her hands over her heart in a faux swoon.

  “No, he’s not. He just glared at me.”

  “That was not a glare, my friend. That was hot. That look was saturated with primal lust and longing.”

  I laugh. “Whatever you say, Margo.”

  She offers me her box of Tic Tacs, and I drop a couple on my tongue—sweet, citrusy sunshine. “A.J.’s a good guy,” she says, taking a few Tic Tacs for herself. “But he’s not always a nice guy.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Nice guys do what you tell them to. Good guys do what’s right.”

  Important to know, I guess. But I’m not looking for a guy, nice or not. I’m looking for a way out.