by Sean Black
That part didn’t sound crazy at all. While he’d still been serving he’d not only met FOB (fresh off the boat) recruits who couldn’t made their bed, they didn’t know how to read or write beyond maybe a second grade level, and some didn’t know how to brush their teeth or shower properly.
Neither did anything else Chris had said about boundaries or discipline sound crazy to Ty either. It sounded just the opposite. Leaving aside Chris’s eagerness to impress someone he obviously thought was a bad ass, some of what he was saying made a lot of sense. Kids these days did lack some basic consistency being provided by adults. It wasn’t exactly their fault, but it was true that maybe the pendulum had swung too far the other way; away from the rights of parents and schools to set the rules and towards the rights of teenagers who weren’t yet developed enough to make good choices, or weren’t yet able to know what a good choice was.
As they stood in the middle of the empty classroom, with its single-student corrals, Ty noticed that not one desk looked out. They were all either facing a wall, or where there was a window, a board had been tacked up to obscure the view of the outside.
“We don’t like the students having any possible distractions,” Chris told him, seeming to anticipate Ty, or rather, Mark’s, next question.
“So if they’re staring at the wall, how do they look at the teacher?” In fact , he didn’t see any kind of board or teacher’s desk for that matter either.
Ty hadn’t exactly been an academic star. Hell, back in the day where he grew up in Long Beach, graduating high school was pretty much like getting yourself into an Ivy League college. But he did know enough to realize that students did usually face the teacher rather than a wall or piece of wood.
Chris walked over to a tall metal cabinet. He opened it to reveal a series of metal shelves. He pulled a workbook from one of the middle shelves.
“Study is self-directed. Each student comes in, takes a work book, works through their exercises, a member of staff spot checks that that work has been completed,” said Chris.
That sounded like a whole bunch of horse shit to Ty. Perhaps because in the military, you were shown how to do something, and someone took you through it until they were satisfied. It was labor intensive, but it was pretty much the only way. Handing a grunt an M16 a rifle and a booklet with how to use it, would have been all kinds of bad news. But, thought Ty, maybe algebra was different. It seemed like a half-assed system to him, but maybe it was too early to judge.
“So what happens if they’re not getting something?” he asked Chris.
Chris spread his arms out wide. “Then all they need to do is come ask. If the member of staff monitoring them doesn’t know, or doesn’t know how to explain it, then they’ll find someone who does.”
Ty quickly reminded himself that he didn’t want to come off to critical. That didn’t fit with the role he was playing. He nodded his head. “That’s a relief. Because I’m not sure how much algebra I could remember from high school.”
Chris grinned and punched his shoulder. “Don’t worry. I have you covered on that one. Hey, talking about everyone helping out, I know you haven’t officially started, but I have to take one of the girls’ Phys Ed classes. You mind giving me some help with it?”
Ty smiled right back. “Absolutely not. Tell you the truth,” he said to Chris, leaning in a little, a small sign that they were already buddies. “I’d be happy to get started.”
“See, that right there. That’s what I told Gretchen having a Marine here would give us. Some positive vibes.”
Ty looked at Chris. The guy would have lasted about ten seconds in the Corps. His idea of a Marine was all about the external, of how you came across. Ty knew different. Being a warrior was all about the internal. It was a state of mind: A way of being.
Not that any of that mattered right now. If Ty having served kept Chris happy, and his suspicions at bay then all the better for finding out what kind of place this really was, and whether Donald Price really did have cause to be concerned about his daughter.
25
It was the middle of the afternoon, and it was baking hot. Not the optimal time of the day to be getting a bunch of teenage girls to run outside. But right now, Ty, or Mark, was the FNG (the f’ing new guy), and as such, he wasn’t about to point out to Chris that running in these conditions was just plain dumb. Maybe if you were a fighter on the last stretch of cutting weight before a fight it made sense. Other than that, it was just plain stupid, bordering on dangerous. The human body could cope with a lot, but dehydration could get you into trouble real fast.
The group of teenage girls from Chris’s dorm were already lined up as Chris and Ty rounded the corner. Ty scanned the faces.
BINGO.
In the middle of the line of girls was Ruth Price. He was ninety nine percent certain it was her. Her hair was cut short, but he’d studied the photographs her father had provided long enough to make the positive identification. Unsurprisingly, it turned out that divorced fathers like Donald Price had no shortage of pictures. Lock had also managed to cull some very recent ones from a couple of social media accounts.
So, at least the first part of Ty’s mission was already completed, and he hadn’t even officially started working at Broken Ridge. He had established that Ruth Price was here. His tiny body cam would provide official confirmation. He angled his feet so that the lens would capture her face.
On the walk outside, Ty had excused himself to go use the bathroom. Inside, he had switched out the data card on his cell phone that he was using to archive the body cam footage. He’d also checked that it had been recording. So far, so good.
On the way out, he’d also put on his shades. He was glad that he had. Not only did it shield his eyes from the sun’s brutal glare, it also allowed him to do a quick assessment of Ruth, without it appearing too obvious.
Compared to the slightly pale, puffy Goth teen last glimpsed on social media, she looked in good shape. Her skin was tanned to a light brown, she had lost about ten to fifteen pounds, and her posture was much improved. Overall, her skin looked clear, and she seemed to be in improved physical health.
On a purely visual assessment he’d be able to tell Lock and their client that Ruth Price seemed to be in good shape. Not just holding up, and uninjured, but better than she had been before.
But that was on a first pass. Watching her stand, hands behind her back, feet spread shoulder wide, there was something else about her appearance that was impossible to miss if you actually looked properly. It lay in her eyes.
Before, in the social media pictures taken just before she’d left for Broken Ridge, she was out of shape and had bad skin and posture. That was all true. But, she had seemed happy as she mugged for the camera and goofed around with her high school friends.
Now, she was tan and trimmed down, but her eyes seemed dead. Liked she’d checked out of human life. The look didn’t even qualify as sullen. Or bored. It was an absence of anything, more than a presence of something.
It was a look that Ty had seen before. It was a deadness that he associated with some kind of trauma. It was a look that gave him immediate cause for concern.
Chris tapped his shoulder. “You want to lead the run?”
Ty half-turned towards his new colleague. “Sure, I can do that. What’s the usual route?”
Chris pointed out towards the eastern horizon. “There’s a dried up river bed about a half mile or so that way. I usually run them down and back. Y’know, just as a warm up.”
Given the group in front of him, it didn’t sound to Ty like a warm up. He reminded himself that he was here to gather intel. And, by leading the group he’d get to set the pace, maybe ensure that everyone made it back warmed up rather than passed out.
Ty walked to the center, ten paces back so everyone could see him. He clapped his two shovel-sized hands together. “Okay, ladies, we’re going to run down towards the dried creek and back. I will lead. Do not get out in front of me. Understood?”
>
“Yes, sir,” they all said in unison.
“Okay, let’s move out,’ he added, feeling slightly ridiculous at talking to a bunch of teenage girls like this.
But, he’d figured, Chris wanted to see a performance, and they’d hired him because of his military background, so if their expectation was a drill sergeant straight out of central casting then that was what they would get.
He turned and set a slow jogging pace. The group of girls fell in behind. Ty didn’t look back, just kept moving. The pace would probably seem slow until the heat set in.
The jog down didn’t take too long. By the time they reached the dried up creek, Ty was sweating from the heat. Run, jog, sprint or just stand, this kind of heat would make you break a sweat. That was why no one but gringos would be crazy enough to go running at this time of day unless someone was chasing them.
Chris caught up with him. “Maybe we could pick it up a little on the way back. They’re barely out of breath.”
“Sure thing,” said Ty. “I heard you say ‘warm up’ was all.”
Ty locked eyes with Chris as he said it. Chris held up open palms. “Totally get that. I should have been clearer.”
This was the male dance. Each of them working out who was the alpha relative to the other. Not that it was ever going to be close. But Ty didn’t want to push it too far.
“Hey, I’m the new guy here. Why don’t you lead, show me the pace you like, and I’ll pick up any stragglers from the rear,” he offered.
“I can do that.”
Chris took off with no further instructions. An older brunette girl with a long ponytail, who looked almost college age, was first to take off after Chris. She practically raced off and rather than falling in behind, ran beside him. Ty was fairly sure this was the same girl who had checked him out earlier. The other teenagers fell in behind.
If Ty’s pace had been a little on the slow side, Chris Fontaine’s wasn’t. He set off like he’d just heard the bell ring for chow. The guy was a foot taller than most of the girls, with the stride to go with it. There was no way they were keeping up.
As promised, Ty brought up the rear. He noticed that Ruth was holding her own. She was near the back, but not last or second last. That honor went to a short, overweight girl with brown hair cut into a bob.
Among the pack of runners, Ty had noted this girl too. She had stood out. Not just because she had the same dead expression in her eyes as Ruth Price and a few of the others. But because of the thin, red scars, some small, but deep, and others long and thin, that ran up and down her arms and legs: a tapestry of mental anguish turned inside out.
Ty had to slow so that he was next to this girl. Her face was flushed from running, and she was sweating heavily. As he jogged alongside her, she stared straight ahead.
“You’re doing good, okay,” Ty said to her.
She snuck a glance at him. “Thank you, sir.”
His immediate reaction was to want to ask her to not call him sir. He already felt old.
She was really struggling now. She looked like she might be about to throw up. But she kept going, albeit with more stumbling than actual running being involved. Finally, she slipped, her left knee giving way under her. Ty caught her just in time, grabbing under her arm, and hauling her back up onto her feet.
“You okay?”
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir. I’ll try harder.”
She broke back into a jog, but she was limping. She must have pulled something when she’d slipped. Or maybe she’d twisted her ankle. The ground was hard and uneven. It was hardly a proper running track that absorbed some of the impact.
“Okay, stop,” Ty told her. She stopped, looking even more terrified than she had a moment ago. At least he knew there was still something there, beyond the abyss. “What’s your name?”
“Harper,” she told him.
“That’s your first name?” Ty asked.
“No, sir, my first name is Mary.”
“Okay, Mary, if you’ve hurt your leg, let’s not make it any worse, okay?”
“But if I stop running. . .”
Her eyes were fixed on the rest of the group who were almost back to their starting point by now.
“I ordered you to stop and I’m a member of staff. You’d be in more trouble if you disobeyed a member of staff, correct?”
“I guess so.”
“Okay, then you stopping is on me. Now, what hurts?” It seemed a strange question given all the scar tissue.
“I think it’s my ankle.”
Ty bent down. “Okay, let me take a look. Take your weight off.”
He took her injured foot and got her to rotate it as best she could. From the way she reacted he was fairly sure it was a minor sprain. Nothing that a little rest, and maybe an ice pack couldn’t cure.
“Okay, Mary, you lean on me, and we’ll finish this up. Keep as much weight off that foot as you can. If you need me to carry you, you just holla.”
Something approaching a smile flitted across her face. It was a little lop-sided, like she’d somehow forgotten to use that expression.
With her arm around Ty’s waist, they walked back towards the others. Chris stood next to the girl with the long ponytail. Neither of them looked happy, which, as far as Ty was concerned was too bad. Chris had a pained expression while ponytail girl looked seriously pissed. Ruth was studying the ground, moving around a stone with the toe of her sneaker.
“Mary here twisted her ankle,” Ty said. “We’re gonna go find her some ice before it starts to swell up.”
Chris walked over to them. “Mark, can I speak with you for a moment in private?”
“Sure.”
The two men stepped away from the group of girls. “You recall what I said to you before about how manipulative the girls here can get?” Chris asked.
Ty already knew where this was going, but he’d play along. It wasn’t every day he had someone call him out as being naïve. It was kind of entertaining. Ty had grown up in the ghetto. You didn’t do that, survive and thrive, by being easily taken in.
“Sure, I remember,” said Ty.
“Great,” said Chris, giving Ty an ‘attaboy’ pat on the shoulder that under different circumstances might have garnered a different reaction. “So Mary here, is, lemme see, how do I say this? She’s kind of an attention seeker. She doesn’t like to do the PT stuff, so she fakes being injured to get out of it.”
Now the question was just how far Ty would let this go. He’d seen her trip and pull up. He knew she hadn’t been faking. And, as for being an attention seeker, that was kind of an interesting way of phrasing it. There was the usual teenage girl attention seeking behavior that revolved around clothes, make up and taking selfies and then there was carving up your limbs with a razor blade so you could feel something. Ty wasn’t a psychiatrist. But he was fairly confident that the latter was a little more serious than attention-seeking, and should be treated as such.
Lock had talked to Ty a lot over the years about ‘offering the victory.’ What it came down to was allowing, when it suited your agenda, an asshole to be an asshole. Allow them to think they had the advantage over you.
If Ty argued the point it could quickly go south. And, to figure out what was going on here, he needed to have Chris on his side. Chris was a talker; unlike the boss lady, Gretchen. He could learn a lot about what was really going on at Broken Ridge from Chris.
“I get it,” said Ty. “Guess I have some learning still to do. I’m kind of used to people being straight up.”
“Which is great,” said Chris, giving Ty another pat on the shoulder. “But here it can be a weakness.” He took a step back from Ty. “So are we good?”
“Yeah. Thanks for the advice.”
“Terrific.” Chris marched back over towards the group of girls. Ruth was standing next to Mary, who was doubled over, rubbing at her twisted ankle.
“Okay, Harper, you can go run it again,” Chris shouted at Mary. He turned towards Ruth. “Price, yo
u can go with her, seeing as how you’re so concerned.”
Ruth started to object, but quickly shut up. Chris and ponytail girl glared at her. The others did their best to fade back into the background.
Out of instinct, more than anything, Ty started to move forward. He checked himself. If he intervened now he was pretty sure that it would end with his employment, which had barely started, being terminated. You didn’t cut across your manager. Not on the first day.
Ty stood, arms folded, and watched as Mary and Ruth set back out towards the dried up creek a half mile away. Chris walked behind them. Mary could barely move past a jog. She half walked, and half limped.
At one point, Ruth went to help her. Chris barked for her to mind her own business. She stepped away.
Behind his sunglasses, Ty took everything in. On his chest, the body cam recorded the scene.
There was discipline. There was holding kids to account. There was building character through asking people to face adversity.
What Ty was watching unfold in front of his very eyes was none of these. Not least because he could tell that Chris was getting off on the power trip. Ty could imagine someone with good intentions doing this. This wasn’t that either. This was a grown man proving what a tough guy he was by humiliating a couple of teenage girls.
By the time the two girls had made it back, Ty could see the pain of every step etched onto Mary’s face. Ruth Price was back to being checked out. She had shown compassion for her friend and paid the price.
There followed a series of exercises. Crunches, push ups, planks. The group worked through them, Chris screaming at the slower ones or those who struggled. Ty moved among them, correcting bad form and trying to encourage them on. All the while thinking this was a bunch of horse shit. If you wanted to make sure that a person grew up to hate physical exercise, and completely avoid it as an adult then this was the best way to do that.
Chris meanwhile seemed happy to be proving his point. “See what you can do when you put your mind to it, Harper,” he said to Mary, her face now streaked with tears.