The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek

by Rhett McLaughlin

  Which she finally did. In the Leisure Room.

  The students of Whitewood had two options for spending their limited break time: their dorm room or the Leisure Room. In the latter—which was really just a small library, complete with built-in bookshelves on three of the walls—Candidati were allowed to sit on the worn wooden floor and read from the sparse collection of old books. Alicia hadn’t found anything written after 1960. There was one entire wall of Bibles (all King James Version) along with other religious writings and, randomly, about a dozen primers for learning Latin. The other two walls’ shelves were full of classic literature that Headmaster had apparently deemed acceptable for young, impressionable minds.

  During her first stint in the Leisure Room, Alicia had picked up The Pilgrim’s Progress, having heard her grandfather talk about it before, but three pages in she found it impenetrable. And so she had chosen to spend her remaining time in thought, imagining what her first week of freshman year at Bleak Creek High would have been like. She wondered if Rex and Leif had successfully pulled off their plan to avoid sitting with Mark Hornhat at lunch. Probably not without me, she thought.

  Now, during her second visit to the Leisure Room, she planned to bypass the books altogether and simply sit, letting her mind take her on a journey. But as she entered the room and looked over the twenty or so students who had already found a seat on the floor, she caught a glimpse of those thick eyebrows.

  She didn’t want to make her interest in J too obvious, so instead of facing her, she took a seat about ten feet away and turned ninety degrees, placing her new friend in her periphery.

  Then she waited.

  For a few minutes, J remained motionless, not looking up from her copy of Treasure Island. Alicia started to lose hope, thinking J had changed her mind about continuing their secret connection.

  But then J coughed.

  Alicia turned her head slowly to see that J was looking just above the giant book in her hands, directly at her.

  Alicia then looked over at the helper assigned to the Leisure Room, a skinny guy with Luke Perry sideburns who Alicia had decided must be newer, as he didn’t seem that much older than the students. He was deeply engrossed in a Hardy Boys novel.

  J coughed again. She subtly lifted her chin, as if pointing to something. When Alicia tracked her eyeline, all she saw was the same FOLLOW sign that hung in every room.

  J slowly stood, then walked to the helper and asked if she could go to the bathroom. He nodded without looking up from his book, and J left the room.

  Alicia was confused for a second before she understood.

  FOLLOW.

  “Helper, may I use the restroom?” she asked, getting to her feet.

  “Somebody just went, Candidatus,” the helper said, still not looking up. “You can go when she gets back.”

  “I really have to go,” Alicia said. “Like, really really.”

  The helper looked at her over the pages of his book, skeptical but also clearly wanting to get back to those Hardy boys. They must be on a very exciting case, Alicia thought. “Fine. But make it quick.”

  “Thank you, Helper,” Alicia said, but he was already back with Frank and Joe.

  Alicia headed out into the beige hallway and saw J’s dark hair turning the corner all the way down at the other end of the hall. She’d passed right by the girls’ bathroom. Alicia picked up her pace to try to catch up.

  Her heart beat extra fast, knowing that if she was caught roaming like this, she’d almost definitely end up in the Roll again.

  It was worth it, though.

  When Alicia turned the corner, J was hovering about twenty steps ahead. She nodded at Alicia and then stepped into the wall. Alicia half believed some kind of magic had occurred until she reached the spot where J had been and saw that it wasn’t actually a wall, but a beige curtain that she’d never noticed. She looked around nervously before threading her body past the curtain to find…another hallway.

  J was about halfway down, standing next to an open door, gesturing with her hand like Come on come on come on quickly come on.

  Alicia suddenly worried. Was this a trap? But even if it was, it couldn’t make things worse than they already were. The words of the helper rang in her ears: Make it quick. She speed-walked the remaining distance to J and went through the open door.

  What she saw took her breath away.

  She’d been assuming this was J’s dorm room, but it was immediately clear that she’d been wrong. The room was huge, at least three times as large as the cramped space Alicia shared with her roommate. But the most startling part was the colors. The walls were covered with a pink, blue, and violet floral-patterned wallpaper, while the white four-poster bed was draped with a deep purple comforter and topped with fluffy tasseled pillows of multiple patterns and a worn blue crochet toy frog that looked homemade. Across from the bed stood a teal desk with an orange mug filled with pens and pencils of every shade. Having spent a week seeing little other than beige throughout all of the school, the colors overwhelmed Alicia, seeming to spill into her other senses.

  As she caught her breath, she registered that this was a little girl’s bedroom. But something was a bit off. While the room was clean, as if someone still lived there, the decor had a noticeably dated feel. It reminded Alicia of the girls’ room from The Brady Bunch.

  “Whose room is this?” she whispered once J had come inside and carefully closed the door behind her.

  “Hers,” J answered, pointing at a picture hanging on the wall near the desk. “I think she might have been one of the students who died.”

  Alicia quivered, then took a cautious step toward the picture. She was walking with her hands close to her side as if she were exploring a museum exhibit. In the faded picture sat a young girl, maybe seven or eight years old, holding what appeared to be the same blue frog from the bed. She had blond pigtails, a forced smile, and sad eyes lined with dark circles.

  “She looks sick,” Alicia observed.

  “Yeah, maybe that’s why they gave her this nice room,” J reasoned.

  Over the desk hung a bulletin board with crayon drawings of flowers, dogs, a dragon, and a family of three. The pictures were signed, in the sloppy fashion of a small child, Ruby.

  “We don’t have much time. Take a seat.” J motioned toward the perfectly made bed. Alicia sat down softly, keeping most of her weight in her feet as if she didn’t trust it to support her.

  “The J is for Josefina,” J said.

  “The A is for Alicia,” Alicia replied.

  “I knew it! You don’t look like an Allison. Or an Amy. And definitely not an Amber.”

  “Thanks, I guess?”

  Josefina was strange. In a good way.

  “I’m Guatemalan,” she said.

  “Oh, okay.”

  “I kinda have a habit of telling people that because they always ask. Anyway. Nice to meet you, Alicia.” She extended her arm.

  “Nice to meet you, Josefina.” Then, still not completely sure what was happening, Alicia grabbed her hand. The simple touch of another human—after days of feeling so isolated—seemed to raise her body temperature. She felt her face flush.

  “So, how did you find this place?” Alicia asked in an effort to hide her embarrassment.

  “Sneaking around is kinda my thing,” Josefina explained. “I know where your dorm room is too.”

  Alicia stared, not sure what to make of that.

  “It’s not creepy,” Josefina said. “Just practical. Anyway, thank you.”

  “Thank you?”

  “Yeah. Before you came, I was starting to lose hope. Lose myself. You snapped me out of it.”

  “Oh,” Alicia said. “Uh, yeah. You’re welcome.”

  “After what you did to Headmaster, you’ve got a bright red bull’s-eye on your back. And you act like i
t’s no big thing. I admire that. Reminded me what it means to fight.”

  Josefina’s words made Alicia feel like her resilience had been worth it. She smiled.

  “We should get back,” Josefina said, rising from her chair. “I’ll go first, then you follow after a minute.”

  “That’s it?” Alicia said. She knew Josefina was right, but she desperately wished they had more time. Even just another minute.

  “For now,” Josefina said. “We’ll meet again soon. Try to keep each other sane. Next time we’re in the Leisure Room together, follow my lead. If that doesn’t happen, get here right after dinner, during those fifteen minutes of study time before lights out.”

  “Are we safe to be in here, though?” Alicia asked, getting to her feet.

  “Doubt it,” Josefina said. “But it’s all we have. We’ll be careful.” She gave Alicia a final nod before opening the door a crack and sliding out into the hallway.

  Alicia silently counted to sixty before following.

  * * *

  —

  OVER THE NEXT twenty-four hours, Alicia replayed her conversation with Josefina again and again. Especially the parts where she’d been told how inspiring she was. She parsed every line, every gesture, every inflection, wondering if Josefina had some larger plan in mind. Whatever it was, Alicia was on board.

  Unfortunately, she didn’t make it to the Leisure Room that day, or even to dinner, as she ended up back in the Roll. She hadn’t even been trying to disobey.

  Alicia had just finished participating in a class activity, a sort of deprogramming during which students would share a hobby or interest and their classmates would list all the ways that particular passion could corrupt them. After she’d mentioned that Cheers was one of her favorite TV shows, the class had somehow managed to make a case that continuing to watch it would set her on a surefire course toward alcoholism.

  This had been immediately followed by a deeply unsettling slideshow of people who’d fallen victim to various worldly vices: mangled bodies in drunk driving accidents, blue-faced overdosers, and half-naked murder victims. Alicia had involuntarily looked away from the stomach-turning images.

  Candidati were not allowed to look away.

  Her experience in the Roll was again horrendous, but a hair less this time, both because she’d been through it before and because it provided her with so many undisturbed hours to think about her new friend. In Josefina, there was hope.

  When Alicia was released from the Roll a day or so later, a new kink in her neck and her beige onesie freshly soiled with urine, she was far from broken. After she was given clean clothes, she was delighted to realize it was already dinnertime, which meant, yes, she could put food in her brutally deprived stomach, but also that she might be able to make it to the bedroom behind the beige curtain to see Josefina.

  That night, once dinner ended, she again walked to the bathroom, hid in a stall for a few minutes, peeked into the hall to make sure no helper was patrolling, and made a beeline for the secret bedroom. She knew what she was doing was reckless, that to be taken back to the Roll now would be devastating, but she had no choice. She needed to see Josefina again.

  And sure enough, Josefina was already there when Alicia walked in. She was sitting in that same desk chair, holding close the blue stuffed frog from the bed.

  “Hey,” Alicia said, feeling buoyant even as she gripped her sore neck.

  “Oh no,” Josefina said, standing up and dropping the frog, maybe a little embarrassed. “They sent you to the Roll again, didn’t they?”

  “Yeah. But it’s okay.”

  “The Roll is the worst,” Josefina said. “I’ve only been there once and that was enough for me.”

  “You’re missing out. It’s so much better the second time,” Alicia said.

  Josefina released a small heh sound, which Alicia echoed. She’d forgotten how good it felt to laugh.

  “So what else have you learned sneaking around here?” asked Alicia.

  “This is gonna blow your mind,” Josefina answered, “but this whole place used to be a resort.”

  “A resort?”

  “Yep. I found some old brochures in a storage closet. People would come to that mineral spring outside so it could, like, heal them. And then some of the water would get pumped to those private bath houses.”

  “The Thinking Sheds.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Hard to believe anyone could have a good time in there,” Alicia said.

  “For real,” said Josefina.

  “So, how long have you been here?”

  “At Whitewood? I don’t even know.” Josefina sat back down in the chair. “It has to be at least six months, but hard to say.”

  Alicia nodded and sat down gently on the bed, suddenly wanting to learn as much as she could as quickly as possible. “Why did your parents send you?”

  “I killed my sister,” Josefina said, staring at Alicia without blinking.

  It wasn’t what Alicia was expecting. She tried to get this new information to add up, to process that her only ally in the building was a murderer. “Wow,” she said. “That’s—”

  “I’m joking,” Josefina said, breaking into a smile. “I don’t even have a sister. Sorry. I’ve always been bad at jokes.”

  Alicia exhaled. “Oh. Well. It would have been okay if you had. Done that.”

  “Really?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe not.”

  Josefina laughed. So did Alicia.

  “Honestly,” Josefina said, “it wasn’t one thing that got me sent here. I mean, I’ve put my mom through a lot.”

  “Yeah?”

  “My dad left when I was little, and she raised me by herself. And we fight. A lot. Like, full-on shouting matches. I think she just needed a break. And she had no idea this place was as nuts as it is.”

  “That sucks,” Alicia said. “I’m sorry.”

  Josefina shrugged. “Thanks, but I’m looking forward to making her feel pretty guilty about it when I get home.”

  Alicia laughed again before getting sad thinking about her own parents and needing to change the subject. “Really, though, what is this room?” She stood up and looked at one of the framed photos on the wall. “Who is this girl? Ruby.”

  “I don’t know, but we should go,” Josefina said. “Lights out is in five minutes.”

  “Yeah,” Alicia said, transfixed by the little girl’s long blond hair and slightly crooked smile, thinking she recognized her from somewhere.

  * * *

  —

  “YOU KNOW, I’M pretty sure a kid escaped from here,” Josefina said the next night at their third meet-up. “Like, from the school, I mean.”

  “What?” Alicia said, propping herself up from the bed with an elbow.

  “Yeah,” Josefina said. “Not even that long ago.”

  “Wait, what do you mean?”

  “I mean, there was this kid who was here. And then one day he was gone.”

  “You keep track of everybody here?” Alicia asked, one eyebrow raised.

  “Well, no, but he was sort of my friend. He was a sneaker like me. I found him in the basement one time and we promised not to tell on each other.”

  “This place has a basement?”

  “Then he told me there was weird stuff going on at the spring behind the school. Like weird ceremonies or something. I’m pretty sure he was just trying to seem cool.”

  “Huh.” Alicia sat up, swinging her legs off the side of the bed. “How do you know he escaped? Maybe he just got to go home. Maybe he was reformed…”

  “No way. The helpers hated him. He was sent to the Roll at least twice, one of those times like a week or so before he disappeared.”

  “But isn’t it possible that he…?”

  “Died?” Josefina said
. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. But then, on my phone call with my mom, she didn’t bring it up.”

  “So what?”

  “Well, if a kid died in school, it would have to be in the news, right? That’s what happened with the kids who died here in the past.”

  “I guess…”

  “But if he escaped,” Josefina said, spinning back and forth on the rolly chair, “they wouldn’t want to put that in the news. They’d probably just be trying to catch him and bring him back before they’d have to tell his parents anything.”

  “And, if he went back to his parents—”

  “They’d have just sent him back here.”

  “So how do you think he escaped?”

  * * *

  —

  ALONE AT THE table as usual, Alicia finished off a bland bowl of grits, slid her tray onto the rack, and left dinner at the same time as everyone else. This after-dinner ritual had become a routine, her favorite part of the day by a long shot, and she tried not to smile as she headed down the hall to the girls’ room.

  Since the night before, she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the idea of escape. She was convinced that if she could just get to her parents, it would be different. In person, she’d be able to convince them that this school was a horrible place where no kid deserved to be sent. Whatever method that boy had used to escape likely wouldn’t work twice. Whitewood and the helpers weren’t idiots. But it meant there was some crack in the school’s defenses, and that alone produced so much hope.

  She waited in the bathroom the customary three minutes, then headed down the hall, past the curtain, and to the Secret Bedroom.

  “I think I have a plan,” she said as she walked through the door.

  “Great. I can’t wait to hear it,” a voice said.

  Wayne Whitewood stood from the rolling desk chair and walked toward her.