by M. F. Lorson
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize there was a no talking during meal time policy. I was simply trying to get to know….”
“Get to know her where I don’t have to hear it.” Touted Jordan. He didn’t so much as look at me before striding angrily out of the room. The deep silence of before was gone. Now all of the tables were chattering and I got the feeling that whether I liked it or not I was front and center in their conversations.
Jordan returned moments later with Mr. Livingston, the Dean of Social Services. His presentation was short and sweet which was good because I spent the entire thing with my eyes glued to his mundane Powerpoint. I wanted nothing more than to get out of the Petri dish. When I finally did look up it was obvious that trouble for me was just starting at Huntley and Drake. Across the table the boy Jordan called Mr. Erickson held a napkin between two fingers. In loosely scrawled cursive it read “Nice to meet you Miss. Elliot. It’s Hayden, not Mr. Erickson.”
Chapter 2
The remainder of orientation was uneventful. We were given course schedules, campus maps and planners with the Huntley and Drake emblem embossed on the cover. It was funny to me how the school could seem so ivy league and so bootcamp at the same time. We were able to eat in the cafeteria for dinner but it was no more boisterous than lunch. For the most part no one had had any time to make friends. It was a shame really, because I was pretty sure everyone wanted someone to commiserate with. If I were better with words and people I would use this opportunity to meet some. But after my experience at lunch I wasn’t so sure I was on anyone’s list of people they wanted to get to know. I certainly didn’t expect acne boy or the girl sitting next to me to reach out for companionship.
Campus was unusually quiet because aside from our leads all of the upperclassmen were on summer vacation. I wasn’t loving my experience so far but I wasn’t eager to visit home either. I wondered how many of the upperclassman students actually returned home for the summer and how many managed to pool together resources and rent a place nearby. I made a mental note to find out. If I made it through this summer and the school year that followed I would need a place to stay next summer. My parents weren’t replacing me with a foreign exchange student or some yappy new puppy, but there life and mine had been on separate courses for a long time. Realistically they weren’t crossing their fingers that I would come back a shadow of my former debaucherous self. If anything they were probably hoping I didn’t come back at all. They would miss having a daughter sure, but if we were all really honest they had been missing that for a long time now. I pushed the thought of them aside. I didn’t like thinking about them, all it did was make me angry and when I was angry I did stupid things. I had to remind myself that they weren’t the parents I thought they were when I was a kid. When you’re very young you think your parents can do it all, and do no wrong, all with limited effort. I learned early that they weren’t superheroes and the events of last year only solidified that understanding. In court they said nothing. Two hundred dollars an hour for a lawyer that said plead no contest and they hadn’t so much as batted an eye in my defense. No one asked me why, no one listened when I begged to tell them. There wasn’t a soul in San Jose who wanted to believe my story. Not even the ones who needed to hear it the most. There was only one reason to go back, and it wasn’t to make nice with my parents. When I returned to San Jose I would be older, credible and LOUD. This time I was going to find what I was looking for. This time I was going to do the catching.
That first night in the barracks Sydney had the foresight to draft a shower schedule. Some of us were hardened criminals, all of us were teenage girls, the combination of which could be deadly if not contained. There had to be a bathroom schedule because it was very very unlikely that the twenty of us were going to sit down and divide the time equally amongst ourselves. I got my showers in the evening as did nine other girls. There was a lot of snickering amongst the girls with PM shower times but none of it came from me. Whether I showered in the morning or at night really made no difference. Showering to start the day was no different than showering to end it, in the end you were clean so what did it matter? There were no blow dryers allowed, and that was a good thing because in a bathroom designed for two but made to accommodate twenty there was no counter space for luxuries. Grooming here was meant to be a quick and simple process. For the most part the girls who had problems with their shower times bemoaned their fate quietly. Wanda, however was not the silent type. She was loud and brash and if she gave a shit about something you knew about it. She just about had a fit when the list went up.
“You expect us to go to bed with wet hair? Lie on it all night and then go out in public? That’s completely unsatisfactory! My family would never approve.” Sydney was quick to intervene.
“All due respect Wanda, and this goes for the rest of you as well. As long as you are under my supervision. What your parents would or would not approve of is irrelevant. In regards to your shower time you are welcome to trade with anyone on the AM list. But a trade requires a volunteer and I don’t know how likely you are to find one here.”
“And what if I object?” Asked Wanda.
“The thing is” said Sydney, “You don’t.” Wanda held her tongue. We were all too new here to know whether or not smarting off to your lead had consequences. Not that it mattered because Sydney didn’t wait around for a response. Where she went when she wasn’t with us was anybody’s guess. She wasn’t so warm and friendly as to offer any of us conversation for the sake of conversation. Red faced and irritable Wanda turned to face the rest of us. I hadn’t paid all that much attention to the girls around me but the barracks were small and Wanda was loud. She was a self-proclaimed bully. She got into fist fights with girls who wore the same shade of nail polish as her, she pushed a crippled girl down the stairs because the sound her crutches made scraping across the linoleum irritated her. She had been in and out of Juvie fifteen times in five years, her first stay was at the tender age of ten. All of these things everyone already knew because she made damn sure we did. She was also arguably beautiful with long dark hair and the sort of body that got you into trouble. But, she was a bitch and that uglied her down. Wanda circled the barrack, she had all the markings of a predator scouting for easy prey. She didn’t waste one second looking at me. No matter how pitiful I may have looked standing next to girls with revolver tattoos peeking out from their mid-drift, I was still useless because my shower time said PM next to it. It didn’t take her long to single someone out. She settled on a girl in the back corner quietly packing her trunk. Each girl was given a mid-sized trunk to store her possessions. A bit of a joke considering how few things we were actually allowed to keep. The girl’s name was Robyn and unlike Wanda she’d kept her mouth shut since the moment we arrived. She was tall and pretty, from Rhode Island if the plates on her parents BMW were accurate. She wore her hair in a very smart cut, nothing spikey or too punk, a perfect straight bob, bangs tucked neatly behind a Burberry headband. Wanda hovered over her, one foot tapping relentlessly on the cement floor. If Robyn was intimidated it didn’t show. She continued to unpack as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening, as if she were at home, Rhode Island license plates tucked neatly in the garage. “Hello” cooed Wanda, a heavy mix of sweet and false filling her voice. Her hello hung in the air for thirty seconds, a small eternity it seemed before Wanda got sick of playing nice. “HELLO” she shouted, “Are you deaf?” But Robyn did not look up from the handkerchief she was folding. Inpatient and possibly a little afraid of losing her newfound bully status Wanda snapped her fingers directly in Robyn’s face. Finally she had Robyn’s attention.
“No” she said cooly.
“No what?”replied Wanda.
“No, you may not have my shower.”
“Is that so?” Said Wanda, clearly taken aback. This girl wasn’t afraid of her and that didn’t bode well for her newly minted tough as nails reputation. The two stood eye to eye with Wanda shooting daggers and Robyn indifferent,
packing as if nothing was happening. All I could think was that this was the part where the expected happened. This was the part where the unruly girls at the school for unruly children beat each other to a bloody pulp over the smallest, insignificant things. I was wrong. Instead a girl called Liv intervened nabbing her opportunity to make friends with the bully before she could become a target. Liv agreed to trade Wanda showers and a collective sigh of relief filled the barrack. We all went back to our business. Making what little we had feel like home. Some girls taped pictures to their trunks. Family members and boyfriends mostly. Robyn had a lot of those, friends, boyfriends, happy smiling groups of people that led me to believe the reason she was in here had a much longer back story than Wanda’s supposed juvenile record. She had just finished assembling her trunk when the proverbial other shoe dropped. Quickly and with purpose Wanda whipped across the barrack flipping Robyn’s trunk end over tea kettle. Wiith a single push, she managed to undo all of the delicate arranging Robyn had spent the last hour creating. “Whoopsie!” said Wanda, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “I can be clumsy sometimes.” Liv giggled, already becoming a tiny clone. I liked her less than Wanda. Wanda had a spine. That was admirable even if she used it for all the wrong things. Robyn was already on her knees gathering her things. If she was irritated in the least bit she was doing her best to disguise it. But Wanda wasn’t finished. She wanted to get at Robyn and she wasn’t going to stop until she did. “Here let me help you with that” Said Wanda, kneeling in front of her. Robyn sighed,
“I don’t need your h..” Wanda saw her opening grasping the pendant that hung around Robyn’s neck. Try as she might to conceal it a tiny gasp escaped, a touch of fear, enough to put Wanda in the driver’s seat. Nobody moved, save for Wanda. She was in complete control now. She took her time, examining the blue and gold pendant, pulling Robyn closer like a stray dog on its first leash. Robyn attempted to pull back but her positioning was awkward. All Wanda had to do was give one good yank and the thin gold chain that held the necklace in place would snap. I didn’t have many treasures but if I were Robyn I’d of let the damn necklace break before I’d let the whole barrack identify me as Wanda’s first victim.
“This is a nice piece of jewelry you have here.” cooed Wanda. “If I were you,” with her free hand she motioned to the rest of the room “ in a place like this. I wouldn’t ever take it off.” Robyn’s face was bright red, either from the shortage of oxygen or an extreme effort to keep from losing her temper. Whatever she was thinking. Whatever she was afraid of, she kept it to herself. With a trembling hand Robyn loosed Wanda’s grip on her necklace. Wanda didn’t contest, she didn’t need to. As far as power struggles went she clearly had the upper hand. I didn’t meet Robyn’s eyes that first night, no one did. I felt guilty. If we were better people we would have at least attempted to intervene. But the last thing anyone wanted was a slot on Wanda’s hit list.
I in particular didn’t want anything to do with her. Which is why it sucked so enormously when she chose the cot directly beside mine. She was going to be sleeping two feet away from me for an absolute minimum of three months, most likely longer. I could be quiet as a mouse, saying nothing, doing nothing notable and this girl was likely to find a reason to pick a fight. My vicinity alone could be reason enough for her. The question was would I fight back? A sizeable heap of verbal dung would have little or no effect on this girl. You have to be intelligent to understand an intelligent insult. Any battle with this girl would have to be physical and that was a problem for several reasons. A. I had never actually been in a fight in which the other party had reciprocated and B. I would have to kick her ass so severely that she would be petrified to attempt a rematch. Given reason A. it was very unlikely that option B was viable. I only had one course of action. I would lay low for as long as possible and pray to God that she didn’t make cuts. After a long day of new faces, places and rules I was exhausted. I made sure to face the opposite wall as Wanda before pulling my blanket up to my chin and checking out for the evening.
Chapter 3
It was a dream. I knew that. It was the same dream as always but knowing that didn’t stop my heart from pounding as if it were all happening in real time. I ran as fast as I could, as hard as I could, through the woods behind Chelsea’s house. I could hear his footsteps crushing leaves and twigs on the path but the man in the big blue house was still at least 100 feet behind me. I burst through the clearing taking the stairs of my porch three steps at a time. Relief flooded over me. I beat him! He didn’t get me. I was safe. I would call my parents and they would rush home from work. We’d all go down to the station, just like in the movies, they’d give me cocoa and I’d tell the whole story, every last detail and when we were through they would take him away forever. He could never hurt Chelsea or I again… And then, like always, I heard her scream.
I used to wake up, that scream still echoing in my head. I’d kick the covers off and quietly shuffle over to my second story window where I could stare unblinkingly into the clearing. The spot where I came tearing out of the woods was exactly the same as the day it had happened, exactly the same as in the dream. I used to think that if I stared long enough I’d see Chelsea again. I wanted her to sprint across the lawn. I wanted her to smile because she was safe, because we were safe but of course that never happened. I couldn’t even imagine the happy ending because the real one was like a giant cloud over my head, blocking everything but the bad memories from coming through. Here there was nothing to do by lie in bed, push the thoughts from my head, stare at the ceiling. It wasn’t so bad. In a way it was far less haunting than my bedroom. At home I had to look at those woods every morning.
The school bus drove parallel to the woods for two miles, before rounding in to the nearest neighborhood. We stopped two doors from his house. Every morning I would pray that no one would be at that bus stop, that the whole block would be stricken with measles or mumps or whatever was horribly contagious, and the bus would just round the corner, never pausing. When the bus did stop I was victim to my own punishments. I could never just not look. Instead I found myself peering through all the windows, desperately searching for movement. Sometimes he was at the table with coffee and the paper, sometimes he was a shadow on the staircase and sometimes, the worst times, he was standing in the front yard, waving at the school bus, waving at me. It was those times that it hurt to sit still. I wanted to tear his eyes from their sockets with the whole world watching. If no one was ever gonna believe me it didn’t hardly matter what they thought of me. I wanted there to be an audience when I hurt him. It wouldn’t make up for what he did to her with no one watching, but it would be a start. I must have fallen asleep at some point because before I knew it sun was pouring through the back windows as girls scrambled to get ready for the first day of school. For most kids the first day of school is an event. You get to wear new clothes, make new impressions, change your social status, whatever floats your boat. For me the first day of school was just a time constraint. The end of summer freedoms. Not this year though, there had been no summer freedoms. It was straight from Juvie to the school for the damned. This year was going to be different in every way. This year I was going to gasp, apply myself! As the rest of the girls primped for their first day of classes I began drafting a letter to her, the woman in the big blue house. I had written her a letter every week I was in Juvie. She hadn’t written back then and I doubted she would write back now. I didn’t write to change her mind. I wrote to remind her that I wasn’t going away. They could lock me up, they could send me away, but nothing was going to stop me from proving him guilty. She couldn’t keep ignoring his guilt. She didn’t get to forget anymore than I did.
I had five classes. Each class was seventy minutes long with an hour for lunch squeezed between 2nd and 3rd period. My schedule was easier than I had anticipated. English for breakfast, followed by World History, Biology, Algebra and Sociology: The study of people. Sociology seemed like a bit of a joke all things conside
red. Half the course focused on social norms. Of all of the people with a firm understanding of social norms, the students here were experts in the subjects. You have to have a firm understanding of something in order to completely ignore it. The way they spoke at orientation I thought my schedule would be more like physics, calculus, rocket science. In general, things that sounded painful and impossible. Instead my subjects were familiar and that was a good sign because I had every intention of turning my life around this semester, academically anyway. Unfortunately, my GPA hadn’t crossed the 2.0 mark in the entirety of my middle school career. It seemed unlikely that high school would be somehow easier. I was going to try though. That part would be different. I was lazy, not stupid. Grade school and middle school don’t count for anything. Those records don’t follow you to high school, they don’t prevent you from entering college. The most damage a failed middle schooler does is make the school district look bad by dragging down standardized test scores. That wasn’t exactly motivating enough to get me to excel. My parents tried. They tried punishments and long speeches about disappointment and unfulfilled potential. It all fell on deaf ears. I was completely unpunishable in that I had few friends, few interests and absolutely no sense of pride in myself. And as for disappointment, how was I supposed to feel that when my parents and I practically lived in different hemispheres? I felt no obligation to do well for them. I was not your TV movie teenager. I did not act out to gain attention. I didn’t get poor grades because I wanted my parents to spend more time with me. If anything I wanted them to spend much much less time with me.
I just didn’t see the point in doing homework or passing tests. If I knew something I knew it and spared no energy trying to prove that. The stuff I didn’t understand remained just that, stuff I didn’t understand. Now, unfortunately I needed to get good grades and I had essentially zero skills to build on. English would be fine, sociology might even be entertaining, but biology, world history and algebra were going to make me cry. I needed to not only pass but stand out as better than the other newbies. I had three months to go from academic loser to super genius academic mastermind, oh yes and find and develop a skill AND make a friend because quite frankly when it came time to kick Wanda’s ass, I was gonna need someone to hold her arms behind her back.