The Dead Inside

by Cyndy Etler

  All the grown-ups must think so, too, ’cause they’re stupid grinning at the two of them.

  Then killjoy Scott, my used-to-be crush, steps into the middle of the room and says, “Wrap it up, Tara.” So in other words, quit having the best moment of your life, Tara.

  Tara peels herself off her mother, then gallops back to her seat. But wait, I’m confused. I thought she was going home.

  I’m staring at Tara, trying to read her mind, when the lightning bolt strikes.

  “Cinny?”

  He’s here.

  I fold in half at the hips. I don’t know where I think I’m going, but I’m not letting Jacque see my face. Instantly, hands are pulling my shoulders back and forcing my body up. In this mob of staring strangers, I’m standing here, chained in place by demons, exposed to my mother and Jacque.

  He’s talking into the microphone. He’s saying, “Love you, Cinny.”

  The clutch of hands pressing me from behind won’t let me drop and hide.

  Then my mother speaks into the mic.

  “Cyndy, I—I’ve been so scared for you, so scared of you. And now you’ve become a—” She stops to put her head down and cry. Strangers’ hands rise up around her, patting her back and arms. They feel bad for her. Her plan is working. She lifts her face and keeps going. “And now you’re a druggie. I hope you’ll do the program, Cyndy. I love you.”

  Something inside me scorches, hot and high, before it drops into a cinder. It must be my heart. I fall back so hard, so fast, I punch right through the hands.

  “Stand up!” Scott yells—a verbal spanking.

  I stand. In front of me, the blue chair is fascinating.

  Scott says, “Mom, Dad, will you stand back up? Cyndy, tell your parents you love them.”

  The only sound is skin fighting skin as I try to fall back again. But these chicks behind me aren’t letting me sit down. No way.

  My mind reels back to Amanda, thrashing around the floor like an unhooked carp as the brute boys pinned her down. Amanda didn’t win. I won’t, either.

  So I say it. What the fuck else can I do?

  “Love you,” I say.

  Ol’ Scott, he doesn’t even need the mic, this time. We all hear him perfectly.

  “Louder!”

  Drowning in the spotlight, I swallow my hate and yell my first lie.

  “Love you!”

  The hands finally let me collapse into my seat, but the fist at my back makes me sit up. Proper, iron-spined. Straight.

  20

  NO ANIMALS IN THE BUILDING

  In the deep parts of the ocean, I bet there’s no such thing as time. It’s just dark. You swim past rocks and plants in one long, continuous night.

  That’s what the days in Straight are like too. You can’t tell time is moving when you’re trapped in a windowless warehouse all day. The only clock I see is the minivan’s, which says 8:50 when we get to the building in the morning, and 9:30 or 10:00 when we leave it at night. So the average day is twelve, thirteen hours in group. But this day for real feels like infinity.

  We must have sat in that mega-group with all the parents for four hours. Now I’m in a mini-group with, like, fifty girls, while the other kids are off doing their “talks.” At least that’s what Scott yelled out, as they were pulling the wall closed again.

  “Talks, come on. Fifth-phasers, grab a talker.”

  Certain kids were carried by the belt loop to the parent side of the closing wall; then the leftover oldcomers started unlinking chairs, pushing them into the opposite corners. Girls on the left, boys on the right. But these chairs aren’t being put back into rows. They’re in a messy semicircle, so each corner looks like a Shakespearean theater. Us girls in the chairs are facing a barstool where Lucy, the mean blond smiler, sits. That’s her name, Lucy. As in, “I Love.”

  We sit in the same creepy silence as before the parents came, when everybody had their C-hands up. We’re watching Lucy sit with her legs crossed, cutely dangling a shoe and silently reading her little papers. She has a whole stack of them, and they must be good, ’cause some of them make her raise her eyebrows, and a few times she’s gasped, “Oh my gawd.” One time she lifts her head and stares right at the girl behind me. I don’t know what that was all about, but I’m so glad it wasn’t me she was staring at.

  Sitting here, I have nothing to do but rip apart that scene with my mother. Why the fuck was she trying to sound like these other kids’ parents? “Do the program”? She must not know they’re cutting me loose tomorrow. Druggie, my ass! She’s been scared of me?! How ’bout me being scared of Jacque?! Yeah, okay, “Mom.” Once I’m the fuck free, I’ll hitch back to Bridgeport and disappear. She’ll never have to be scared of me again.

  I must have smoke coming out my ears, ’cause Lucy’s watching me. I look up and there she is, staring. And smiling.

  All the talkers are being brought back to our side of the room, bawling and snorting up their snots. This girls’ corner of chairs is filling up. Shit, some of these talker chicks are motivating even before they’re sat down, while they’re still hooked to their oldcomer leash. So I start motivating too, because I’m not getting in any more trouble tonight.

  And then they’re all back, and they’re pissed. I can feel their hard energy crackling through my arms; I’m picking it up like antennae. They’re—we’re motivating at Lucy, who’s cleaning under her nail with a folded slip of paper. She’s ignoring us, so the fury is ramping up higher. Girls are using serious muscle, snapping their arms for attention. And it’s contagious. The harder one girl motivates, the harder everyone else tries to out-motivate her.

  On the boys’ side, they’re beating us all. The clank of metal on metal comes from their corner. I twist to look through the flesh forest, and it’s like a demolition derby over there. The boys are tearing it up, motivating so hard their chairs are bashing into one another. Jesus, their fists are cracking each other’s heads, and they don’t even seem to—

  “Cyndy Etler!”

  My heart slams down to my seat.

  At the sound of my name, the arm forest drops, just like that. The girls’ side of the room is staring at me as I touch my right hand to my heart like, “Who? Me?”

  The scariest part of The Wall is when Pink Floyd has a whole symphony playing backup. The instruments start deep and dark, then switch to a screaming high. You know the part I’m talking about, right after the piano’s playing tears and the voice begs to know what he did wrong, to go home… Then comes the key in the lock. The door creaks in; the bad guy is right there. And then the steps start. It’s a bassoon pounding left-right, left-right. The judger is coming, heavy. The shriek of the violin goes up, up, tearing you open from your z-z to your throat.

  And the judging starts.

  Lucy’s using her good-times voice.

  “C’mon, Cyndy! Stand up! We want to get to know you!”

  The violin is telling me to run, run somehow, run somewhere. Just, disappear. But I can’t. I’m hemmed into place by a sea of blue chairs, by the girls packed into them. By the side standers, circling the blue. Girls and girls and girls, their flaming eyes fixed on me, me with my bruised-up spine. Locked in position in my chair, my left fist still up by my ear. But I’m—I’m motivating! I’m doing what they want!

  “Stand up!”

  The words rip out of Lucy, jerking me up from my seat. I’m in the spotlight again as hands fill the air, grasping and clawing after me. My head feels like it weighs a hundred pounds, way too heavy for my neck, so I face the floor, like maybe the answer is written on the cold hard tile. What did I do?

  There is one thing I know: these people hate me. The force of that fact hits me like a falling piano. I stumble under its weight, and my weakness feeds the beast. A clawing hand rips at my arm; a fist pops my head. Girls’ bodies convulse in their chairs; they’re spitting through
clenched teeth. It’s a feeding frenzy. The beast is starving. I’m the meat.

  Lucy whip-cracks a name—“Karen S.!”—and I don’t move. I can’t get in trouble if I don’t do anything, right?

  Some girl springs up out of her seat. M-maybe she’s gonna be laughing. Maybe this is a joke they play on the new kid. Maybe this Karen S. is gonna say, “Ha! We gotcha! Just kidding.” So I look up.

  I’ve never seen this Karen girl before, but her hand is in the shape of a gun. A gun pointed at my face.

  “Cyndy Etler! You need to get honest with this group! Why do you think you’re here?” Karen’s getting madder as she goes. My eyes are burning from looking at her hate, so instead, I look down at her feet. Which are scrambling to get closer to me. She’s so close she could choke me. She keeps going.

  “You’re a druggie, just like me! You—”

  “Siddown, Karen,” Lucy says. She’s disgusted, like Karen did something wrong too. What’d she do? What’d I do?

  Karen sits, fwump. I snatch a look at her and see a shaking, dull-eyed girl. My God, she’s as scared as I am.

  “Someone else!” Lucy yells.

  Someone needs to do a better job of killing my soul. Lucy has spoken; the fists and claws are spinning again. Karen is motivating the hardest of them all. She wants her second chance.

  I’m standing still in the middle of this hell storm. I’m standing extra, extra still.

  In that judging section of The Wall, when everyone tells the prisoner how much they hate him, something important happens: he realizes he’s crazy. And all the angels sing the word, right alongside his crackly, beaten voice, like that was God’s message all along. You’re crazy, and it’s all been your own fault.

  You’d think everyone would love the prisoner then. For being such a good boy, for realizing it’s him. But they don’t. The prisoner confesses; the crowd gets crueler. The guitar rips through the judge’s rumbling, sneering voice. The way he spits his words, you can tell the judge loves this: brutalizing innocents. He’s tickled pink.

  And the judge does the cruelest thing possible: he throws Crazy to his peers. He tells the bloodthirsty pack of them to tear Crazy down. There’s hundreds of them. Millions. Cheering, ripping, trumpets laughing. They’re drunk on the thrill of tearing the sad Crazy to shreds.

  Lucy swivels back and forth on her barstool, pushing off the footrest with her toes. She’s like, the cutest girl at the birthday party, with a pinafore on and a balloon in her hand. Lucy’s the friggin’ devil.

  “Who’s next?” she calls.

  The girls go even harder. A drop of someone’s sweat pings me on the nose.

  But Lucy ignores them. She’s playing with her slips again, smoothing the edges and pulling them tight, blind to the riot scene in front of her. She stays that way, I swear, for five whole minutes. Ignoring them. Ignoring me as I hang there, a body on a noose. Finally Lucy looks at me, a blond eyebrow pushed up by the thought that just came to her.

  “Sandy?” Lucy says her name like it’s a question, the same way you’d answer the phone.

  Up lunges my oldcomer, Sandy. Her Cream of Wheat skin is pulled tight, and it’s purple with rage. She’s crackling and snarling, a brand-new Sandy.

  “You!” The word burns up from her throat, and the boys’ side is suddenly quiet. “You think you’re so special!”

  My stare is off the floor now. I’m looking right at her, because I’m scared what will happen if I don’t. Her fingers, curled around the chair-back in front of her, are shaking so hard the chair’s rattling. With the fat girl sitting in it. Jesus.

  “You think you’re so young and cute, Mommy’s going to swoop in and save you!” she yells.

  “Cute? M-mommy? No, that’s not—”

  “SHUT! UP! Shut up with your druggie fantasies! Your own mother is scared of you! We all heard her say it! She knows you’re a druggie! We know you’re a druggie! You’re the only one with your head still up your ass!”

  Some laughter sails over from the boys’ side. To my right, a girl starts motivating. Her breath goes CHUKKA-CHUKKA.

  Lucy cuts them off with a high-pitched, “’Ey!” The CHUKKAer puts her hands down; the boys’ side shuts up. Lucy smiles at Sandy. “Go on,” she says.

  If you can believe it, Sandy gets louder. “My parents,” she yells, “have welcomed you into their home!”

  She’s pushing past the knees and rows of girls between us. My God, she’s coming to get me.

  “And you—you disrespect them!”

  She’s one chair-back away from me. She’s right here. With the same instinct that taught me to hide from Jacque, I take two stumble-steps back. And I’m arm-cuffed by a demon. It’s the same one who squeezed up next to me, earlier, to take notes on her pad.

  That’s what Lucy’s been reading up there. The notes from when people were making Cs with their hands.

  The demon locks my arms behind me, then forces me back toward Sandy. Sandy, whose hand will be gripping the back of my pants later tonight. Sandy, who’s yelling in my face as the whole girls’ and boys’ sides watch.

  “You shit on your parents in your druggie past, little girl. But not now, not my parents! Druggie words in their car?! Druggie friends’ names?! Saying you’ll be leaving after three days?! Ha! Dream on!”

  She cleared her throat with that ha, which hurled some gunk up onto my cheek. My arms are strapped to my sides, so Sandy’s throat-snot stays where it is.

  Then Lucy pops the balloon.

  “Okaaaaaay, Sandy! Thank you!”

  The boys start motivating across the room, and Sandy’s face pulls away from me.

  In the movie of The Wall, you know the prisoner’s cooked at the end of his trial. He’s no longer a person. He’s a floppy rag doll, stitched empty circles for eyes. He leans broken on the wall, no life in him to fight off whatever’s coming next.

  I’d lie broken on the floor if not for the demon note-taker holding me up. I wonder if she smells Sandy’s snot on my face. I wonder if she smells what happened in my pants. I wonder, but I don’t care. I have nothing left to care with.

  “Love ya, Sandy!” the group screams.

  Everything’s back to normal. The boys are still motivating in their corner; the girls start motivating in ours. Everyone’s pretending this face-rape never happened. Everyone but me and Lucy.

  “Are you going to be good, Cyndy?” Lucy asks. “Can my fifth-phaser let go of you?”

  My eyes are dried out blisters underneath my clipped-back bangs. I drag my head up to look at her, and Lucy smiles.

  “Oh, yes,” she says. “You’ll be good. Go ahead and drop her, Samantha. But stand at the end of her row.”

  “Looooooove ya, Cyndy!” the group tells me.

  When the trial ends in The Wall, your speakers explode with the thunder of bricks blasting open. Then it’s almost silent. The chanting and cheering are over; all you hear is the sharp trickle of brick bits raining to the ground. And there’s a kiddie instrument, a recorder or a kazoo. It plays the saddest, slowest song.

  Hands rise as I sit down and bring my chest to my knees. Fists whip through the air. Girls plunge up and down in their chairs. The tsch-tsch of heaving breath surrounds me in stereo, and the demon Samantha is back behind me, reminding me what to do. She clamps my wrists and lifts them, and I’m motivating. I’m asking Lucy to call on me again. Please, Lucy, let it be me.

  Lucy studies her C notes. She flips the top one to the back, and scans the next page. She gets a huge grin on her face and looks at that first girl who screamed at me.

  “Karen S.!” Lucy shouts.

  The girls’ side goes nuts.

  21

  NO RADIO, TV, OR READING ON FIRST OR SECOND PHASE, EXCEPT FOR BIBLE ON SECOND PHASE

  Today is Saturday. It’s day three of my evaluation, which I obviously failed. It’s the d
ay my mother was supposed to be coming for me, because I’m so not a druggie, no matter what these freaks think.

  Last night, after that crushed-in-the-corner torture rap, Sandy came over and grabbed me by the belt loop, like nothing had happened between us. She brought me to the pyramid of jackets, and that’s when I saw the bags. Thirty paper grocery bags with folded-over tops, all lined up on the floor, with names written on them in Magic Marker. One had been kicked to the side. It had my name on it. It knocked the wind outta me.

  Cyndy Etler

  It was my mother’s handwriting. No doubt. Plus, nobody else spells my name right, with two Ys. So…when my mother came for that giant meeting, she brought me a brown paper bag. If she was going to pull me out of here today, why did I need a paper bag?

  That bag means—it means I’m not—I’m not getting taken out of here. I’m gonna be here for this whole never-ending day. And the next one, and the next and the next. Because it’s totally my mother’s choice, if I’m in here or not. You can’t escape when there are hands in your pants and alarms on the windows and goons at the doors.

  My mother knows I don’t belong here. She knows I ran away because of her husband. But she won’t say that. She’ll say I’m a bad girl, a violent druggie, because this setup is perfect for her. She gets to be Poor Nadine, whose daughter is a terror. Poor Nadine, whose kid made her life a living hell.

  She’s not signing me out of Straight, Inc. She’s leaving me here. Instead of bringing me home, she’s giving me this bag.

  I looked at the green digital clock when I climbed in the minivan last night, after the parent meeting and the torture show in the corner. It was 1:49 a.m. We were in group for seventeen hours.

  Here at Straight, feel great! Nine to one forty-nine, feel fine!

  I asked Sandy’s permission to open my bag, but of course she had to open it for me. To “search the contents,” to make sure my mother hadn’t sent me a joint or a bra with knife hooks or something. Instead of drugs, Sandy pulled out these clothes that were unreal. Seriously, they looked like they were made for a cartoon character. There’s nowhere on earth you can buy shit that looks like this, but somewhere, somehow, my mother made it happen.