by Dan Josefson
By the time William had finished, Zach’s eyes were full of tears. He got up and started yelling at Han about how bad things were in juvenile detention. If you think the cells we were in this afternoon were something, he told him, lockup was a million times worse. And that’s where Han was headed if he kept pushing people away. No one there had ever told Zach how much they cared about him, and they wouldn’t do that for Han either. He was angry at Han for making him remember all that, he said. He was angry that Han took what he had at the school for granted.
After him, the other boys in the dorm took turns voicing their anger at Han, even those who had previously claimed not to have any. I didn’t know whether I was supposed to take a turn but was too amazed to ask. I just sat there and watched, and no one bothered about me. When they were finished, Tyler told them how proud he was of them. He asked Han whether he had anything to say before returning to the corner.
Han said only, “I acknowledge everything you had to say. I’ll try to take it in.”
Tyler nodded. “This is my consensus to end this candor meeting.”
“Agreed.”
“Agreed.”
“Agreed.”
“Agreed.”
“Agreed.”
“Agreed.”
“Agreed.”
“Agreed.”
“Agreed.”
Afterward, we had fish sticks for lunch.
5
Ellie found herself wandering around the campus, walking faster and faster. The Incident Report, she saw, was still in her hand. Shaking her head, she marched to the Office and dropped off the form. It sailed into the tray marked INCIDENT REPORTS, immense and anonymous. She hated this place. God, if she had left the school last night, she thought. But she hadn’t. Ellie marched out of the Mansion, blind as a fist.
At the police station they had separated her from the boys, whom they had put in two cells while they figured out who everyone was and called the probation officers of the boys who had them. Ellie was interviewed in a room close enough to hear the boys goofing. The officer taking her statement had paused to listen to Pudding yelling that he was going to make Carlos his bitch, was going to trade him to Zach for a pack of cigarettes. Ellie had stared at her hands, and then, like an idiot, she laughed. Another officer sat in the back of the room, but he didn’t say anything the whole time. The officer who interviewed her, Officer Sotelo, had long gray hair she wore piled on top of her head. She had seemed disinterested and cold, but when she told Ellie that they were charging her with assault and reckless endangerment, the policewoman had suddenly glowed with elegance and wisdom.
Ellie felt a damp chill rise up from the road. She was walking down the school’s driveway toward the teachers’ apartments. A dry brown leaf spiraled down the air and fell by her foot. Ellie wondered why she had wanted the policewoman to understand her, to like her. She knew she should relieve Spencer and Dedrick, but she couldn’t bear being alone with the students right now. She needed to be around people. As she descended the hill she felt a raw wind against her skin. While no one was paying attention, autumn had broken summer’s back.
It was because, Ellie thought, the policewoman had been exactly right. She should be charged for what she did. That was what infuriated her most. She hated the things she had to do at the school, which is exactly why she had been thinking of quitting. Of course that was worse than useless to her now. The policewoman was simply free to say what Ellie could no longer afford to admit.
Ellie was devising a plan as she hurried down the drive. The police were out to make a case against the school. That much everybody knew. When kids ran away, the police brought them back because they had to, but there were always stories of officers telling the kids to run away again after they turned seventeen, when they wouldn’t be brought back. Ellie was sure that if she could help them bring a case against the school, the police or DA or whoever would be willing to drop the charges against her. She could tell them plenty of things that might shut Roaring Orchards down. She just had to figure out how to make a deal with them.
Across the road ahead of her, she could see the lights on in June’s apartment. June was kind and treated everyone fairly, which was an infuriating quality in a friend, Ellie thought. Especially at a place like Roaring Orchards, where you often needed a friend to reassure you that yes, what someone just said was crazy. But it was June’s good sense that Ellie needed right now.
Ellie wondered about the fact that the school had paid her bail. She certainly wouldn’t be able to keep working here once the people found out that she had turned state’s evidence. Is that what it was called? Ellie was beginning to feel a little better. She would just have to come back to Webituck maybe for witness prep and then to testify, she thought.
Ellie was almost running now, across Route 294 and down to the teachers’ apartments, which were in the building covered with faded red shingles I had seen beside the Dirt Pile. It was referred to as the Paddock and resembled an old motel. June would help her sort it all out. Ellie banged on the door. But when June opened it, Ellie saw Doris and Brenda behind her, surrounded by piles of papers and oak-tag posters. The teachers had moved their meeting down there. Doris stood anxiously and then sat back down.
“Oh, sorry,” Ellie said. “I didn’t know you guys were still meeting.” Shit, she thought to herself.
“Yeah, but come on in anyway.” June gave Ellie her most sympathetic look.
“No, really, I don’t want to interrupt.”
“It’s no interruption,” Brenda said, leaning back in her chair. “We were worried about you.” Brenda’s long dark hair was messy, and she wore a shapeless red cardigan sweater. Ellie was often struck by how beautiful Brenda was, in her carefully cultivated dishevelment.
“Ellie,” Doris said.
“Yes?”
“Did you happen to seen Dedrick or Spencer? No, it’s just that we sent them a while ago to cover your dorm and, I know you’ve had a rough day but”—she gestured to the sprawl of papers behind her—“we do need them here. This is our day to get things together for the semester.”
The four women nodded in silence for a moment.
“Yeah, well, I was going to head back up there in a minute. I just needed—”
“Of course, whatever you need. But when you see them.”
June rubbed Ellie’s shoulder.
“Sure,” Ellie said. “I’ll send them down.” She smiled at the teachers and let herself out.
As she walked across the flagstones that ran along the front of the Paddock, Ellie thought she would figure out the details of the plan herself. She would think of something to give the cops that would send everyone back home. The kids, the faculty, everyone. She wondered if she should pack up her apartment now and leave, just disappear. She could go straight to the police station to speak with the officer who had interviewed her. Ellie heard a tapping on a window and someone call her name. She stopped, but she didn’t know where it had come from. A lightbulb lit up over one of the doorways, and Roger swung open the screen door to his apartment.
“Hey,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” she said. “Good.”
“Good.” He seemed to be waiting for her to say something else.
“Thanks for before. For bailing me out.”
“Sure,” he said. “You’d have done the same for me.”
“Okay. Well. Thanks again.” Ellie turned to leave. She had only gone halfway up the Paddock’s drive when she stopped and called out, “Hey, Roger?”
His screen door swung open again.
“Can I talk to you about something?” She wasn’t sure this was a good idea. Roger was a true believer in the school. But she felt reckless, like she had made up her mind, like she was already gone.
“Sure,” he said. “Come in.”
Ellie hesitated, but only for a moment. Inside she sat on Roger’s blue sofa and told him about her plan to make a deal with the police. She told him about the policewom
an, too, Officer Sotelo, and how powerful she had seemed simply because she was free to tell the truth. That’s all she wanted to do, Ellie told him, to tell the truth. And if the police might be willing to drop the charges in exchange for that, shouldn’t she at least find out? Hearing herself talk about it, Ellie felt she wasn’t making the best possible case.
Roger laughed nervously. “Do you want something to drink?”
“Okay.”
Ellie watched Roger move through the kitchen. She was surprised to see him pull a bottle of white wine out of his refrigerator. Drinking wasn’t exactly against the rules, but it wasn’t something she expected of him. She studied the one painting in the apartment, of a three-masted sailing ship in gold on black velvet.
Roger returned to the sofa with a couple of glasses of wine and a box of Ritz crackers. He had been trying to think of something to say that would calm her down without seeming like something meant to calm her down.
“I know just what you mean about this place.” He sat at the other end of the sofa and passed her a brown tube of crackers. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to sue this place for workman’s comp. My elbows are all kinds of messed up from six years of putting kids in restraints.” He pulled his sleeves up to show Ellie, but they just looked like elbows to her. “Every time I’ve spoken to Aubrey about it he puts me off. He tells me that if the kids respected me more they wouldn’t get violent in front of me. That they don’t get violent in front of him. Talk about blaming the victim.”
Ellie ran her finger around the rim of her wineglass. Her hair hung down in front of her face. For a moment Roger lost the thread of his argument.
“My point,” he said, “is I’m glad I never sued because the times I feel that angry are few, far, and in between. The school has great lawyers. Aubrey’s got these really expensive guys from the city who, like, come up for a day and totally outclass the local yokels they’re arguing against.”
“Well, right,” Ellie said, “I mean, it’d be great if they could get the school off. If the prosecutor drops the charges against me, and I testify, and still nothing happens to the school. Then everyone wins.”
Roger sighed. “Your plan sounds like a movie. I know you want to get this resolved all at once, but I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t tell you I thought it was a bad idea. If you go against the school you’ll be out of a job, and you’ll get stuck paying for your own lawyer. You’ll be all on your own.”
Ellie wasn’t responding, and Roger felt he might have gone the wrong way, but he found he couldn’t stop. “I think you’ve just got to stick this one out. Trust Aubrey. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened.” Roger had no idea why he was nervous. “The school never loses. They’ll drag the whole thing out until it’s just not worth it for the town to continue. You’ll be fine. You’ll see.”
Roger leaned over and brushed Ellie’s hair out of her face. Her cheeks were wet with tears, and she trembled slightly. Roger felt himself grow hard so suddenly that he had to shift his position. He slid closer to her. Roger couldn’t tell whether she had noticed. He rested his hand on hers for a time, and she didn’t pull away. When Ellie felt his fingers at her waist she covered his hands with hers to stop him, but she didn’t follow through. She felt his beard against her cheek. It was softer than she would have thought. Then he was kissing her neck, and Ellie laid her head back on the armrest of the sofa. She felt for the first time all day that she could really think. And this is what she thought:
She had left her real life behind somewhere. And she was being carried farther and farther away from it. It didn’t distress her. She felt lighter being rid of it. Her real life was a heavy glass box with nothing inside. This was what she needed, she decided—to get as far from that as she could and toward a life she cared about less. Roger was running his hands over her T-shirt, squeezing her breasts. She almost laughed. She was excited to see how it would feel to live a life other than her real life. It was like leaving the house with no money in her pockets.
Roger kept hesitating, as if to give her the chance to change her mind. But for a time she let him continue. She kissed him until her jaws ached, then sat up slowly and said good night. Ellie left, and she promised herself that she would stop thinking of things as being either good or bad. She would only think of what would carry her into a world cheaper and more free, toward a life that would burn like paper.
That night, Tidbit lay in bed talking with her roommates. They were reminiscing about Anna and Aurora Li, twins from Texas who had left the school long ago. There had always been some confusion about why they were there, something about an abusive cousin who may or may not have died, the girls’ stories changed constantly. One or the other of the twins claimed she dreamed of him regularly.
“But remember Aurora,” Tidbit said, “the frail one who always walked around with one eye open and one eye shut? Was that Anna or Aurora? After she left, I heard from her therapist that if she opened that eye, all she could see out of it was a church.”
As they spoke, Tidbit opened the window beside her bed to retrieve her stuffed animal. On cool nights she used to wedge him between the metal screen and the windowpane to get him cold so she could warm him back up before falling asleep. He was once a teddy bear, but Tidbit had loved all the fur off of him. She covered him in white felt with two holes cut out for his eyes. When his felt cover got dirty Tidbit would add another layer of white felt on top. She had done this so many times that his arms had turned to poorly defined nubs and his belly stretched down to his feet. Even with the new coats of felt there was always a gray spot on the back of his head where she drooled on him in her sleep. As a bear his name had been Bear, but now she called him Burn Victim.
Bev was watching Tidbit from the top bunk on the other side of the room. She tugged at strands of her hair and laughed at Burn Victim returning from the cold. Bev’s laugh was an exclusively verbal gesture; she didn’t smile and she didn’t shake. She simply said, “Huh-huh-huh,” like a laugh in a book.
“Are you laughing at Burn Victim?” Tidbit asked, hugging the doll to her chest. She turned it around, looked at it. The doll’s black plastic eyes were scratched and dull. “Why would anyone laugh at Burn Victim? He’s my silent witness.” Hugging him to her again beneath her covers, Tidbit felt the cold dissipate in her arms. “Yes, you are my little silent witness, aren’t you? Yes you are.”
Bev laughed again, “Huh-huh-huh.”
Upstairs in his rooms Aubrey slept curled beneath his covers, his thick gray hair mussed as it always was. He dreamed that his ex-wife lay beside him. Aubrey was a short man, and she had stood a full head taller than he. When they slept she had held him in her arms, her large square hands holding his shoulders or spread across his chest. But in Aubrey’s simple dream he was taller than she, and it was he who held her in his arms and in his strong, square hands.
As for me, my first night at the school passed without incident. I was exhausted and glad that my dorm mates kept their distance, whether because I was an unknown quantity or simply from lack of interest. I don’t remember now exactly who else was in that room—those sorts of arrangements never lasted long at Roaring Orchards, with students getting shunted from one dorm to another so often. But I do remember the plastic mattress on the floor, cool through the thin sheets, and the smell of the dusty wool carpet inches from my face. And when I try to re-create that first night I have a strange sense, a feeling that I could not have possibly had then: that despite the terrors of that unfathomable new place, lying in a room with four other kids, hearing them breathing and shifting as they slept, I seem to remember feeling somehow protected.
The chairs in the Campus Community Room were made of carved cherrywood and had cushions of green-and-blue-striped silk. There were enough to run along the entire perimeter of the room. After my first breakfast at the school—cold eggs, soy bacon—I followed the available faculty and those students not cleaning the Cafetorium as they walked in for the dai
ly Campus Community meeting. Upon entering I saw that Zbigniew, whom I had not yet met, had taken his shoes off to climb on the chairs so he could water the plants that hung above them. He was in his fifties. He had short white hair that he clipped himself and deep wrinkles that radiated from his dark eyes. The plants were in plastic pots or crocheted baskets, and they hung from the aluminum grid that held up the ceiling’s acoustic tiles. Stuck into the dirt of one pot was a plastic hummingbird on a wire. Zbigniew took care not to spill water on the seats.
Everyone found seats around the room: faculty in the chairs, the students on the floor near their dorm parents. It was Monday morning, and it seemed to me that everyone was mildly excited. I soon learned that there was a giddy energy at the beginning of every Campus Community meeting, since you never knew what was going to happen or to whom. I followed Alternative Boys and sat next to Pudding at Ellie’s feet. The only armchair, at the end of the room, was reserved for Aubrey. He came in last, flanked by the Regular Kids, who sat in chairs on either side. Aubrey wore a blue suit, the jacket of which had a banded collar. A yellow scarf hung loosely over his shoulders.
Zbigniew hurried to finish with his watering before the seats beneath the last plants were filled, climbing up onto chairs and hopping down again in his socks around the last corner of the room. He was in charge of maintenance and would leave before the meeting began. Campus Community meetings could last five minutes, or they could go on for hours. But by simply pulling on his boots and waving his watering can in a simple gesture of goodbye, Zbyszek, as he liked to be called, could momentarily suspend everyone’s fractiousness and anxiety.
“Zbyszek likes when we see him working early in the morning,” Aubrey said, catching Zbigniew by the wrist as he was crossing toward the door. Aubrey held him gently, his dry thumb against Zbigniew’s pulse. “He likes it,” Aubrey continued, “because then he can take the rest of the day off, and as far as we know he’s been very busy.”