He walked up beside me, putting his hands between the bars of the gate like he was the one who was locked up. “Why would your mom send us to juvie?”
“I have no idea,” I sighed.
“Well, she must have known something like this might happen, because obviously she had a plan,” Casper looked at me. “And she programmed this address into her navigation system, so this place must be part of it. Didn’t she tell you to ask for somebody?”
“Morgan Montgomery,” I answered. I remembered Mom’s eyes as she told me that; so determined, so fearless, and also, so final. It was the last time I would ever see those eyes. “She said to tell him Ash sent us.”
“Who’s Ash?” Casper pulled his arms from the bars and stuffed his hands into his pockets. He must have been exhausted. I know I was, and I had been unconscious half the day. But he never showed it.
“I couldn’t tell you,” I admitted. “But apparently, she’s the reason we’re here.”
Well, her, my ex crush, a legless wunderkind, and an old woman who seemed to vanish from the face of the earth. But who’s being technical?
“So, do we ring the doorbell or something?” Casper asked, looking around.
“It’s late. I’m sure everybody’s asleep. We should probably come back tomorrow,” I answered.
“First off, it’s juvie. There’s never a time when everybody’s asleep. Secondly, we don’t have any cash. It’s a good thing your mom’s car runs off teen angst, or else we have been pushing it across the state line. And C, what if those douches at your house weren’t alone? What if whoever sent them sends somebody else? I don’t want it to be like Mrs. Goolsby’s basement.”
I tilted my head. “I thought you couldn’t remember Mrs. Goolsby.”
“I don’t,” he admitted. “But whatever it was, it ended with us almost getting blown up. So, you know, let’s not repeat it.”
He turned in a full circle, looking in every direction, before settling his sights behind me. “Ah, here it is.”
He brushed past me to a buzzer on a stand beside the gate.
“No!” I motioned for him to stop, but it was too late. He had already pushed the button.
“May I help you? And let me remind you that we are a government facility and, as such, something like playing pranks on us in the middle of the night is considered a felony.” A gruff voice saidthe instant after Casper’s finger left the buzzer.
He jumped back a little, like he hadn’t actually expected for someone to answer. “Um, right. This isn’t a prank,” he went back to the button. “We’re looking for someone; Morgan Montgomery.”
”There is no Morgan Montgomery here. Have a good night,” the voice answered.
I shuffled. “Remind him about Ash,” I suggested. Seeing as how we’d come this far, there was no point in leaving before we had exhausted our resources.
“Axe sent us,” Casper said.
“Ash!” I corrected.
“Right. Ash, Ash sent us. Sorry. I still don’t know who that is,” he said to me after he let go of the button.
“Nobody does,” I answered.
I spoke to soon. Somebody knew who Ash was, because as soon as the words left my mouth, the huge silver gate swung open.
“Please drive all the way to the main building. Stop nowhere on the grounds,” the voice said.
Two men were there to meet us at the main building. As we slowed to a stop, they opened our doors and pulled us to our feet. I had never seen either of them before. Truth be told, they weren’t anything special. They pretty much looked like cops. They even wore cop uniform, except there was a black ‘Weathersby’ across their chests.
“Watch the shirt! I ordered it from New York” Casper said as his guy pulled him toward the building.
He hadn’t.
“It’s vintage Rush. It’s worth like, a lot of money.”
It wasn’t.
To his credit, my guy was gentler. He barely touched me as he guided me into the building. Though, after the day I’d had, I don’t think I’d have cared if he set my Avengers shirt on fire.
Casper had been right about everyone not being asleep. We had barely made it through the front door before two groups of people passed us. One of them, like our guys were in ‘Weathersby’ issued uniforms. The other group consisted of two men and two woman; all of them in white trench coats. They passed us without much notice and, looking past them, I saw that Weathersby was huge, so huge in fact, that at least three Desoto Highs could fit inside there.
I had never seen the inside of a juvie before, aside from the occasion ‘Maury’ scared straight episode. In real life, the place was dank. Large, uncarpeted floors stretched out in every direction. The white tiles that covered it were, in its best places, yellowed with age and, in its worst, pulled up completely, revealing the grime, glue , and stone underneath. Rows of cells, which were made of pane glass instead of the dramatic bars I was picturing, lined either of the walls and piled atop each other for three stories.
Apparently, our arrival was big news because, as Casper and I were guided through the main area, we were met with a sea of eyes. Every prisoner (Were they considered prisoners?) was pressed up against their glass cells staring at us, all wearing matching felon type orange jumpsuits.
They weren’t exactly the hard boiled prisoner types I always envisioned would be in juvie. Most of them were just average looking kids. There was a girl about my age with dark skin and dyed blond hair. She bit on her nails as we passed. A boy, probably in his twenties, had shaggy wet looking hair and a copy of Great Expectations dangling from his left hand. There were young kids here too, including a girl who had her red hair tied up in pigtails and couldn’t have been more than ten.
As we entered the middle of the cell area, every light in the place came on. The space was illuminated, revealing a common area in front of us; including a television, a couch, a ping pong table and, a little further ahead, a gym, complete with a treadmill, bench press, and more free weights than I ever imagined would be in one place. Not that I’d spent a lot of time thinking about free weights or anything.
“Where are we going?” Casper asked.
“Be quiet,” his guy told him, and jerked him into a brightly lit hallway that veered off in front of the gym. My guy motioned for me to follow and, though he didn’t touch me, I still felt a little pushed.
At the end of the hall, a door with the name Mr. Echo swung open.
“Is this where Morgan Montgomery is?” I asked as we approached the door.
“There is no Morgan Montgomery here,” my guy answered and ushered me through the door.
I found myself in a messy, if pretty standard office. Boxes full of files and papers were stacked so high along the walls that they looked like cardboard towers. Between the towers, sat a sandalwood desk that was covered in papers, pens, and a framed photo of a middle aged woman with sandy brown hair and a girl with dark bangs and distant eyes.
“Are these my intruders?” A man walked in behind us. As soon as I saw him, I knew we had made a mistake. It was because she was tall, muscular, and as intimidating as a shark with a mouthful of dynamite. It wasn’t the badge that glistened in his palm. No, it was the fact that he was in his pjs.
Hehe, at least I’m not the only one.
“I told you we should have come back in the morning, “I elbowed Casper in the gut. “Look-“
“Sit down,” the man interrupted me. He motioned to the pair of chairs in front of his desk, showed our guides out, and closed the door behind them.
Casper and I sat on the chairs (Well, Casper mostly slouched) as he rounded the desk and sat behind it.
“I’m Mr. Echo,” he cherry picked a few papers from his desk, straightened them, and put them through a shredder beside his chair. The buzz of the shredder made me grimace, though Mr. Echo didn’t seem to mind. “I’m the warden here at Weathersby and you- Well, I’m not quite sure who you are.”
His green eyes were sharp and felt like knives as
they bore into me. His fingers made circles across his dark beard as he sat wordlessly across from us.
“This is the part where you tell me what the hell you’re doing at my detention center,” he said flatly.
Casper’s hands tightened on the arms of his chair. His face took on that pale look it got the time Principal Snyder called us in about the graffiti that had appeared across the gym wall. We hadn’t done it, but that didn’t stop Casper from confessing every bad thing he had done since kindergarten.
Just like that day, Casper started licking his lips anxiously and leaned forward in his seat. He was about to spill everything, to crack like an egg against the kitchen counter. I couldn’t let him do that though. I didn’t know enough about what was going on, and Mom hadn’t said anything about a Mr. Echo. She had said to find one person and one person only. Regardless of the questions floating around in my head, if that was the last request my mother would ever make of me, I was going to make sure I fulfilled it.
“I’ll tell Morgan Montgomery,” I said before Casper had the chance to speak.
Mr. Echo looked irritated as his fingers drummed across the desk. “Where did you hear that name?”
“Bring me to him, and I’ll tell you.” I folded my arms. What followed was a tense stare off. This Echo dude didn’t know who he was dealing with though. Back in Chicago, I once spent three hours with my feet in a tub of ice just to win Bears tickets. He was not beating me.
“Morgan Montgomery hasn’t worked here for over fifteen years,” he said, leaning back in his chair.
My whole body deflated. We had come so far, been through so much, all to get stuck at some juvie in Florida.
“The other name you gave; Ash. “ Mr. Echo tensed a little, bending a pen so far between his fingers that I was sure it was going to pop. “That’s a unique name. How-Who is that?”
“I have no idea,” I answered. “Look, if you can just tell me where to find Morgan Montgomery, we’ll be on our way.”
There was another stare off, but this time Mr. Echo leaned forward in his chair. He got so close to me; his green eyes connected with mine, that I could feel his breath on my cheek.
He jerked back quickly and threw his pen against desk hard. “She’s telling the truth,” he spit out angrily.
“Who are you talking to?” I asked. There was no one in the room except the three of us. Was there a camera? Where we being watched, and if so, by who?
“What?” he asked calmly, his back pressed leisurely against the chair; the pen once again between his fingers. “I was talking to you.”
“No you weren’t,” I scoffed.
I looked over at Casper. The look on his face, concerned and confused, reminded me of earlier today, of the way he looked at me over the whole ‘Mrs. Goolsby’ thing.
“He wasn’t,” I told him. “He said I was telling the truth. There’s no way he was talking to us.”
I looked back at Mr. Echo but, this time, everything was different. The cluttered normal office had changed. It was still cluttered, but instead of stacks of boxes, the walls were lined with weapons. Swords, axes, those balls on chains with the spikes sticking out of ‘em; they were behind glass all around us. It was like I had suddenly found myself in a medieval torture chamber. The walls that, just a second ago, were plain and painted gray, were now jagged stone. They looked old, and not just worn old, but ancient; like what I always imagined the inside of a castle would look like. Hanging at the four corners of the room were lit lanterns. So, the fluorescent light that had been illuminating the room was now replaced with a softer orange glow.
Mr. Echo, for his part, looked the same; same lumberjack PJs, same scruffy beard. But behind him, where once were stacks of boxes, now two people stood. They were burly, like the people who brought us in here. They wore dark formfitting clothes and had red ‘W’s drawn in red over every inch of exposed skin. They were staring silently at Casper and me and, just to put the cherry on top of an already killer day, they had twin crossbows loaded and pointed at our heads.
I turned to Casper, terror rising in my chest. His eyes were still on me, still concerned, still much calmer than he had any right to be. Oh God. He didn’t see it. He didn’t see any of it.
“You heard me,” Mr. Echo murmured. “You can hear me now, can’t you?”
His eyes flickered up to the man and his right shoulder and then back to me. As though he was realizing for the first time that I could see them, he lifted his hands submissively.
“They won’t hurt you,” he said. “They won’t do anything I don’t tell them to.”
“Dude, what are you talking about?” Casper looked back and forth between us. “This is another one of those things I’m not gonna remember, isn’t it?”
Mr. Echo ignored Casper. “If you can see them, it means you can see all of it. And if you can see all of it, it means you’re not what you think you are.”
His voice was calm; soothing even. It was obvious he was trying to keep things under control. It wasn’t working though. What I was? What did that mean? I didn’t know a lot of things; what was going on, what Owen, my mom, or Jiqui and Ezra were up to, what the hell a fiscal cliff was. But I knew what I was.
I was me.
I stood up slowly and starting backing toward the door. Casper followed me. My eyes were still on Mr. Echo, still on the archers behind him.
“I need you to stay calm.” Mr. Echo stood now too; his voice still soothing, his hands still splayed in front of him. “I know this is a lot to take in, and I imagine this is a confusing time for you. I want you to know that I’ve been where you are now. We all have.”
He motioned to the archers. Rounding the desk, he continued. “You’ve been seeing crazy things, things that others don’t. You feel like someone’s been messing with you, like there’s a stranger in your head pulling at your memory. That’s because there is.”
I kept backing up until I could see from the corner of my eye that the door was in striking distance.
“I can help you,” Mr. Echo said. “It’s what I do, what this place is for. I just need to know who sent you here. I-“
I turned and bolted for the door. Casper followed, huffing behind me. As I twisted the handle and ran through the doorway, I heard Mr. Echo over my shoulder.
“Wait! Who’s Ash?! Where did you hear that name?! Where did you hear it?!”
Like Mr. Echo’s office, the rest of the detention center had twisted and changed. What once was a worn down but generally ordinary facility, had become something entirely different. Gone were the rotted floors with their missing tiles. There was plush carpet covering the floor now. Where cells once stood; glass boxes stacked three stories high, doors of every color lined the walls. The shape didn’t even make sense. This place, this new place, seemed to stretch on forever. It had to be twice as big as it looked when we first walked through it. The gym and ping pong tables had transformed into an indoor archery range and the hugest pool I had ever seen. The space broke off into at least a dozen halls that weren’t there before. There was a piano and a harp sitting on a stage to the left, and the prisoners- Well, they weren’t prisoners at all.
All the kids who had watched us walk through were still there. They were still looking at us, but there were no cells to hold them. There were no orange jumpsuits to identify them. Instead, they wore all different sorts of outfits. Some were in the tight leather attire of our guides. Others were in plain old street clothes. Some of them were even stylish. The only thing, it seemed, that had stayed the same, was the copy of Great Expectations in the wet haired boy’s hand.
I guess it turned out, in any iteration, you couldn’t change Dickens.
“Cresta!” Casper yelled.
I turned to find him running repeatedly into the baby grand. He couldn’t see it. He could only see the detention center. I ran back and grabbed his hand. Mr. Echo’s voice boomed through the loudspeakers.
“Stop them!”
I pulled Casper behind me like he was bl
indfolded.
“I can’t see everything, can I?” He asked. He sounded scared and helpless, not that I blamed him.
“Just close your eyes. I’ve got you,” I told him.
‘W’s were etched along the walls. Sometimes they were carved crudely into the wood. In other places they were weaved decoratively into the designs. Regardless of their nature though, I couldn’t look two feet in any direction without being met with the letter.
The onetime prisoners advanced on us. There were more than I previously thought. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get away from them, seeing as how, in seconds, they had already blocked the door, but I was going to give it my best. My joints were popping and aching as I ran faster. I could already feel my throat closing up. Realistically, there was no hope for us; an asthmatic girl and a boy who was basically blind. Still, I wouldn’t stop; not until I found Morgan Montgomery, not until I did what my mother asked.
I was almost at the door; at the sea of people who were blocking it anyway, when I felt my legs go out from under me. I knew this feeling. It was the same one I had in Mrs. Goolsby’s basement, before Owen made the world go dark.
To my left, I saw a woman. She was blond and refined looking; 35 maybe 40. Her hands were contorted in ways similar to how Owen’s were last night. The last thing I saw before everything blacked away, was the refined woman kneeling over me; her hair brushed into a tight bun.
She sighed. “I knew you’d be trouble.”
I half expected to wake in my bed, in my house, with my Mother downstairs talking to Casper about planting cucumbers or something random like that. Like the whole thing was a dream, like I could go back to being normal; whatever that was.
The room I did wake in was nothing like my bedroom. To start, it was gigantic. The floor was covered in thick red carpet, and the bed, softer than what I imagined a cloud would feel like, had a lace trimmed canopy; the sort you’d expect to see in a fairy tale. As I pulled myself up, my body still aching, I was acutely away that I was no Cinderella.
My flannel pajamas and Avengers tee had been replaced by a soft lavender gown. As I swung off the bed, I found a pair of slippers at my feet. Slipping them on, I got up to investigate my surroundings. Before I could though, the door swung open. A thin woman with brown lifeless hair and a gaunt face greeted me.
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