The Innocence Treatment

by Ari Goelman

  I wasn’t the only one who noticed. Two months after coming to our school, he was one of the most popular kids in my grade. The fact that everyone thought he worked for the Department just seemed to add to his mystique. The drug dealers and the political types stayed away from him, but what did anyone else care? At least you could be pretty sure his recordings wouldn’t end up posted to the Internet.

  Every time we walked home together, three or four kids would stop to offer him a ride. Girls, guys, gay, straight … everyone wanted to be his friend.

  How often did the two of you walk home together?

  Pretty much every day. He was going to follow me anyway, right? And he was a pleasure to hang out with. He has a great sense of humor. Plus, hanging out with him made the Department seem less scary and more like the old—what do you call it? Like in the old movies? The FBI. Keeping people safe.

  I’ve read your journal entries, Lauren. The ones you sent to Dr. Corbin, I mean. Not the ones you’ve apparently posted online. But I’m still not sure I understand why you were sneaking out of your house to meet Sasha in your old friend’s tree house at night.

  What’s your guess, Dr. B.? Why do you think a sixteen-year-old girl and an extremely good-looking seventeen-year-old boy might sneak off at night to meet in a secluded tree house?

  You weren’t really …

  Go on. You can say it.

  You’re saying you were romantically involved with him.

  I don’t know if I’d say “romantically” involved. Neither of us is the most romantic of sorts.

  What word would you choose?

  Sexual. Physical.

  You were sexually involved with the agent assigned to follow you?

  You don’t have to sound so shocked. I used to be prettier.

  I’m not … I’m not shocked that he would choose to be with you. On the contrary, I’m not sure I understand your decision to be with him. Did he … coerce you in some way?

  What? No! Never. Not in any way. Listen—out of everything that’s happened in the last three months, hooking up with Sasha is the one part I don’t regret. Not even a little. So he works for the Department—so what?

  I hope he’s okay, that’s all. Me posting my real journal entries may not have been the best thing in the world for his career.

  JOURNAL OF LAUREN C. FIELDING

  Thursday, October 30, 2031

  Dear Dr. Corbin,

  Got your phone message today. (And yesterday. And the day before yesterday. Are you getting a little impatient with me, Dr. Corbin?)

  It sounds like you really want to hear about when I snuck out to meet Sasha in the tree house. I wish I had never told you about the note Sasha slipped into my pocket. At the time I figured you’d hear about it via his report to the Department, but now I’m not so sure.

  So yeah—last Thursday, when I got home, I found a slip of paper in my jacket pocket. A scrap torn from a lined notebook. The tree house, tonight, 10:30—S. A little presumptuous, if you ask me. Dude didn’t even bother with a question mark.

  He must have had the note written out already and shoved it into my pocket while we were talking, making sure his glasses were pointing somewhere else. Seemed a little melodramatic at the time. Because, like I said, at that point I assumed he was telling the Department everything anyway. Truth is—that still makes more sense than believing that there’s a real emotional connection between me and Sasha.

  But I guess I’m still a little bit naïve, because before sending this journal entry to you, I have every intention of taking out every part of my encounter with Sasha except for the kissing. And maybe a little touching … just to distract you from wondering what we talked about.

  Speaking of my journal entries, I’m typing this on an old laptop that I dug out of the attic. I tore out the network card, so I’m pretty sure there’s no way anyone could read this without physically having the computer in front of them. You’d be kicking yourself if you realized just how good I am at hiding things, right, Dr. Corbin? You did too good a job of fixing me.

  Or … shoot. Here’s a thought: Maybe you wouldn’t be kicking yourself at all. Maybe you’d be totally proud of yourself if you knew. Maybe that was the whole point—to make someone who was really good at detecting bullshit, and at dealing it out themselves. Maybe I came out exactly the way you intended. Let’s file that disturbing little thought away for later …

  Anyway. The note said, The tree house, tonight, 10:30. As it happened, I knew the tree house he meant. Sasha’s living in my friend Mazen’s old house. When we were kids, Mazen’s father built him this huge tree house in their backyard. All the kids in the neighborhood used to hang out there. It’s the biggest tree house I’ve ever seen, built between two trees, a sugar maple and a cypress.

  My parents are early-to-bed, early-to-rise types, so by 10 p.m. the only light in the house was in Evelyn’s room. I tiptoed down the stairs, carrying my sneakers in my hands, and slipped out the front door.

  I won’t lie to you, Dr. Corbin. (Okay, I will lie to you, and gladly, but I’m not lying right now.) Even as I walked out the door, I was asking myself: What are you doing, Lauren? Sneaking out to meet a guy you know works for the Department? Seriously? Aren’t you supposed to be smart now?

  I didn’t have a good answer then, and I don’t have a good answer now. I can tell you it wasn’t my old naïveté. Maybe the operation really has made me kind of crazy. You know, like a weird mix of paranoid and overconfident. After years of being so dependent on others, being self-sufficient is a little overwhelming. Like, I can walk to school by myself now, so now I can do anything! Sounds stupid, I know, but what can I tell you? That night it felt awesome.

  The whole thing. Sneaking out of the house to meet a guy. A guy I knew I shouldn’t like, but who I kind of did, anyway. Just being outside after dark on my own. You have no idea what that’s like—when you’re sixteen years old and you’ve never been outside after dark on your own. It was a cold night, the kind of fall night where you can’t believe you were wearing a short-sleeved shirt a few hours before. I was wearing my thickest fleece, but I was still cold.

  I jogged to Sasha’s house, partially to warm up, but mostly because it was fun to run through the suburban darkness on my own. I felt like a ninja, slinking through the neighborhood seeing everyone, no one seeing me. I caught little glimpses through our neighbors’ windows, the Jensens watching television, Ms. Amos shuffling around the living room in her pajamas.

  The porch light was on at Sasha’s house, illuminating a recycling bin full of crushed soda cans and empty macaroni and cheese boxes. The tree house was a dark mass in the yard beyond. I didn’t see Sasha anywhere, so I went ahead and climbed up on my own.

  It’s been years since I climbed a tree, and that felt awesome, too. Pulling myself up the maple tree as fast as I could. Climbing more by feel than by sight in the darkness. Mazen’s father had hammered a few additional handholds onto the tree’s trunk, but I didn’t trust them after so many years. Anyway, I didn’t need them.

  Once I climbed through the tree house’s platform, I could see a bit better. There was a half-moon overhead, and I guess I’d adjusted to the darkness.

  “Hey,” Sasha said. I made out his eyes first, gleaming in the dark. Then the slim length of his body. He was lying on his side, long legs stretched out to one side of the entrance, head supported on his hand. As I watched, he sat up and turned to face me, the moonlight through the tree branches streaking his hair silver and black. “I wasn’t sure you would come.”

  “Me neither.” I glanced around the tree house. “Where are your glasses?”

  “In the house. I’m not recording. I wanted a private conversation with you.”

  “Right.” I sat down a few feet from him, trying to get a good look at his face. It was a lot harder to tell if he was lying without being able to see him clearly. “That’s why you wanted us to meet here?”

  He smiled and his teeth glinted in the moonlight. “Yeah. Direction
al mikes need line of sight, which is almost impossible through the trees. Even a satellite listening device would have a hard time fixing on us in the darkness.”

  “Jeez,” I said. “If only the Department had an informant here to just tell them what we say.” I paused and nudged Sasha with the tip of my sneaker. “Oh, wait…”

  He laughed softly. “This isn’t for the Department. Though, I gotta tell you—people like your sister just don’t get it … The only reason they have the freedom to hate the Department is because of the Department. Her life would be so much worse if the Department wasn’t around to protect her. To protect all of this.” He gestured around us.

  “The sky?” I said. “You think the Department protects the sky? Or wait, did you mean the tree? Does the Department protect trees?”

  “I’m just saying that most people in the world would give their right arm to live in the United States under the protection of the Department, instead of under the heel of some—”

  “You and Evelyn can have a heart-to-heart about that someday. Except you can’t, because I don’t want you going anywhere near her. Is that why you asked me here, to tell me how great the Department is?” I wondered again why I had bothered coming. Just because he was good-looking? Was I that stupid?

  “No. Like I said, I wanted a private conversation with you.”

  “Why?”

  He abruptly stopped smiling. “Honestly, I’m curious. I’ve never been asked to follow someone like you before.”

  “What do you mean, ‘someone like me’? Who does the Department usually have you following?”

  “Some druggie. I go to high schools, hang out with the druggies until I get a line on the dealer. That kind of thing.” He yawned. “It’s okay. The worst is the conversation. No one is more boring to talk to than a seventeen-year-old doing acid.”

  I hesitated. His tone had become a bit too smooth. “You’re lying. What do they really have you doing?”

  He cursed under his breath. “Shoot. That human-polygraph thing you do is so annoying. No offense.”

  “Tell me the truth or I’m leaving right now.”

  Sasha nodded but he didn’t say anything. Not immediately. Instead he stared into the darkness, maybe wondering how much of a lie he could get away with.

  I waited, too, enjoying the piney smell of the cypress tree and thinking of the bit in Aladdin when Princess Jasmine demands, “Tell me the truth, Aladdin!” I hoped Sasha would tell me the truth. I didn’t feel like leaving.

  Finally Sasha sighed. His eyes flicked back to me. “You really want to know?”

  “Yep.”

  “The Department generally has me befriend people so I can gather evidence against their parents.”

  “You bastard.” I couldn’t help myself. “If I see you so much as looking at Evelyn or my parents—”

  “Hey!” he hissed. “You asked. And I was telling the truth when I said that this thing with you is something new. I’m just supposed to follow you. That’s all. They would have told me if I was meant to be gathering evidence about Evelyn or your parents, and they haven’t.” He grimaced. “Though, if I were you, I’d do my best to keep Evelyn away from that dude Connelly. If ever there was a guy who’s begging to roll over on his friends—”

  “Say it again,” I said, inching closer to him so I could get a better view of his face. Our legs almost—but not quite—touching. “Put your face in the moonlight where I can see it, and promise me you are not gathering evidence against my sister or my parents.”

  He tilted his face toward me so the moonlight fell full on it, turning his face silver and his eyes dark. I think I’ve mentioned how good-looking he is. Being out at night was delicious enough, but the thrill of danger and, okay, the thrill of being near a very good-looking guy who I sort of wanted to kill. Those lips in the moonlight. Almost—but not quite—smiling. It was all a little overwhelming. I almost, but not quite, forgot to pay attention when he spoke.

  “I promise you, I’m not gathering evidence against Evelyn or your parents.” He met my eyes and grinned. “I come to you in peace.”

  I was inches away from him by then. So close I swear I could feel the heat of him radiating through the cool night air. And that’s when I kissed him.

  He froze for a moment, still leaning back to keep his face in the moonlight. His lips warm and still beneath mine. Then he turned to face me more fully, his arms coming around me.

  “Wait, wait,” he said a few minutes later. “Just to be clear. You know that I’m following you for the Department, right?”

  “I didn’t forget.” I pulled him back to me.

  Neither of us said anything for a while. We did various things that should have made us colder, what with exposing skin and so on. Speaking for myself, I didn’t notice the chill.

  Eventually, though, I realized the moon was in a different place than it had been when I arrived. I reluctantly rolled away from Sasha and sat up. “For the record,” I said. “That doesn’t mean I trust you. I just felt like kissing you.”

  He sat up, too. “For the record, I—um—I didn’t ask you here because I wanted to get together with you.”

  I ran my hands over my stupid crew cut, suddenly feeling self-conscious. “Right. Well. Thanks for clearing that up.”

  He frowned and reached for my hand. I pulled it away. “Whoa,” he said. “That came out wrong. I didn’t mean I didn’t want to … I totally wanted … I just didn’t think you’d be interested.”

  I didn’t look at his face, not wanting to see that he was lying. “Uh-huh. And now you’ll tell me again how much you like my hair.”

  “Okay. Slow down. We both know I’m not telling you everything. But listen … look at me again. Come on.”

  I turned to him and found him putting his face into the moonlight again. It was darker now, though, and harder to make out his expression. I put out my hand and touched his face, laying my palm across his cheek. His cheek was cold with the night air and rough with stubble.

  “I think your hair looks great,” he said, his face still and his voice sincere. As far as I could tell, he was being totally honest. Either that or he’s a much better liar than anyone else I’ve encountered since your operation. “Not just your hair. I’m totally into your whole package.” He turned his face, bringing his lips to my palm, and kissed my hand. “The hair, the face, the dark humor, the thinly restrained violence, the cynicism shading toward out-and-out paranoia. I like it all.”

  “You make it sound really appealing.”

  “Like calls out to like,” he said. He took my hand off his face and held it between his hands.

  We were both silent for a few minutes. I’m still not sure if I was staring into his eyes romantically or searching his face for some giveaway tell. Maybe both.

  “So if that’s not why you invited me here tonight, tell me again. Why did you invite me?” I finally said. “Just because you were curious about why you were following me?”

  “Look. Everyone knows the Emergency Act expires in a little over two months. Even if it’s extended, I’m getting too old to work the school scene. If I lose my job, the Department will make damn sure I’m on the first flight back to the Ukrainian refugee camp where they found me.”

  “Ukrainian refugee camp?”

  “You heard me. I lose this job, and I’m back in a camp where I have no friends and where an American accent is like a sign on my chest saying ‘Please murder me.’” Beneath Sasha’s glibness, I heard real fear. “One way or the other, I need a new job soon. That’s why I wanted to talk to you privately. Someone very powerful is interested in you and I want to know why.”

  “That makes two of us. What’s your best guess?”

  He shook his head, half shrugged. “Something to do with the way you used to be. Or maybe with the treatment that fixed you. I got assigned to follow you just after your treatment—that can’t be a coincidence.”

  “Who assigned you to follow me?” I asked. “Didn’t they tell you anyt
hing about what you were looking for?”

  He shook his head. “It doesn’t work like that. I don’t think even my handler knows why I’m following you. He just got the word and passed it on. ‘Follow Lauren Fielding. Befriend if possible.’” He paused like he was unsure about continuing. “‘Protect,’” he finished.

  “That’s why you followed me into the woods with Jimmy.”

  He frowned a little uncomfortably. “I’d like to think I would have followed you anyway, but yeah.”

  I studied his face as he stared at the thick foliage surrounding us. I was sure he wasn’t telling me the whole truth, but I couldn’t pinpoint the specific lie. Sasha is so coiled in on himself that it’s hard for me to get a good read on him. Except when he talks about finding me attractive. That I believe 100 percent. Am I an idiot or what?

  “So. You’re just following orders, huh?” I said.

  He half smiled. “Well, I did arrange an illicit meeting with the person I’m meant to be following. That wasn’t exactly an order. Actually, if this whole thing”—he waved his arm at the tree house and me—“got back to my supervisor, I’d be lucky to avoid an immediate suspension.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. I tucked my shirt back into my pants and zipped my fleece up. “Let’s assume you’re telling the truth. You really wanna know why you’re following me?”

  “Yeah.” He pulled his own sweatshirt back on, looking intrigued.

  “Why don’t we find out together? Are you any good with computers?”

  “Pretty good. I’ve gone through a bunch of the Department’s computer trainings and taught myself a bit more on my own. I’m not saying I’m the world’s best—”

  “You know your way around the Department’s databases, right?” I’ve started interrupting people a lot since your treatment, Dr. Corbin. I have no patience for people finishing sentences when I already know how they’re going to end.