by M. F. Lorson
I wished I could talk to Robyn, she had a way of distracting me that probably wasn’t great for my study habits but certainly helped take the burden off. I could use a laugh right now but per usual Robyn was nowhere to be found. She had been missing a lot lately. Missing, was starting to be her thing. If she were anyone else, had she not been recently attacked, there is no way Sydney or the admin department would let her wander off so much. These days she was all over the map. Some days morose other days bubbling with energy and ideas. They were giving her leeway to readjust but she had everyone worried, including me. Missing an assembly though? Missing an assembly wasn’t okay. We were all required to attend, especially today’s. Today we got our judging schedules. I would either test Friday or Monday. Some people wanted Monday because it meant you had a whole extra weekend to prepare. I didn’t quite see it that way. A whole extra weekend gave me a ton of time to freak out and second guess myself. I was personally hoping for a Friday slot.
Inside the gym the bleachers were bristling with nervous tension. I took my seat next to Hayden and waited for the Dean to address the crowd. I couldn’t help but remember the last time we were all gathered here. I hadn’t known where Robyn was that day either. I had a sneaking feeling that assemblies were going to become synonymous with anxiety for me. Jordan, Sydney and Luke were each stationed at a different exit. As if the student body would really try and cut on the day they assigned testing. I couldn’t help but notice how nicely Jordan filled out his polo and khakis today. I gave him a small wave. If he noticed he didn’t react. His focus was on the seat next to mine. Things hadn’t exactly returned to normalcy after our not so fun Hayden conversation.
Down at the podium Dean Humphries was having a hell of a time trying to get things going. No matter what button he pushed or how many times he tapped the top of the microphone, no sound travelled up to the bleachers. He was just about to give up when the gym was flooded with the crackling sounds of a sound system that clearly hadn’t been used in a while. Like the rest of the gym my attention was diverted from Dean Humphries to the location of the sound. My eyes and ears led me to the announcer's box. The room was small and poorly lit but if you squinted you could just make out the shape of a woman’s silhouette. Whoever was in there had hijacked the sound system and clearly didn’t intend to give it up. There were hoots and hollers throughout the crowd as the rest of the student body began to realize what was going on. I had to give whoever it was credit, thus far we’d gone two months in a facility designed to rehabilitate juvenile delinquents without a single prank. It took guts to challenge the staff here, and to do it a week before cuts? That took balls of steel. Balls of steel or a strong desire to be immediately expelled. I was yet to determine which.
Over the loudspeaker came a voice I knew all too well. “Hello fellow classmates. It is my distinct pleasure to share with you a bit of information I recently stumbled across. I could be wrong, but I think you will all be VERY interested in what I have to say.” Beside me a freshman boy with terrible hygiene thrust his fist in the air to show approval. Back home he probably got into trouble, here he was quiet as a mouse. I couldn’t have told you his name if you held me at gunpoint, but now that someone was messing with the administration he was suddenly a loud mouth with an authority problem. I guess it was easier to ride on someone else's coattails than it was to start the drama yourself.
There were whispers amongst the crowd, people wondering who the saboteur was and what they wanted. I didn’t have the luxury of wonder. I’d had three months worth of lunch with that voice. I’d plotted and schemed with that voice. I’d stuck my neck out for that voice and yet right now I didn’t have a clue what it would say. Cheers erupted from the bleachers as Robyn continued her address. “We have spent the last two and a half months together, all of us bunk buddies, making pals and sharing good times. It's been a regular summer camp experience BUT the term is coming to a close and I think it's about time we asked ourselves what we really know about our friends.” The kids in the bleachers were beginning to settle down. It was one thing to prank the administration it was another to screw with the entire student body. Realization was dawning on the rest of my peers that Robyn’s “announcements” might not be in their favor. Meanwhile Dean Humphries was booking it to his office in search of a spare set of keys to the sound box. Maybe we didn’t know what was about to happen but at the pace the dean was moving, there was no doubt that whatever Robyn was up to wasn’t far off his radar. I looked toward Sydney. Had she seen this coming? Did she know what was about to happen? If her face were to reveal anything I would never know. She, like Dean Humphries had already swiftly exited the gym.
“Look closely at the people beside you. This is the last time you will see them as you do now, blissfully ignorant of their faults. Believing their version of the truth. Have you been honest? Do the people you call friends know the real you? This campus is full of secrets and I for one think that needs to change. If we are all here to change then we’re doing a crap job. We can’t rehabilitate ourselves if we can’t admit why we need rehabilitating. For these reasons I present to you, “The List”. That’s right fellow newbies it's time to play “What are you in for.” Only this time I’ll be doing the answering for you.” The cheering had come to a complete halt. We came here to avoid our past, to walk away from it. Maybe we liked the school, maybe we didn’t but we all had one thing in common. Huntley and Drake was a fresh start, a place where no one knew us as the charges filed against us. We were people again and Robyn was dead set on ruining that. She was about to label everyone in this school a deviant. She was about to define our social norms. Whether we liked it or not once those charges were read they would stick with us. It was one thing to know that someone had broken the law, it was another thing to know exactly what they were capable of. At the end of this speech each of us would decide who we accepted and who we judged. Maybe we should have been ready for this from day one, but we weren’t. We had allowed ourselves to get comfortable, allowed ourselves to be defined by our words and actions not our past. All of that ended now.
“Without further ado I give you our first student, Elladaya Dyer: assault with a deadly weapon.” Was it my imagination or did the space around Ella suddenly get a little wider. Elladaya said nothing but all eyes were fixed in her direction. Robyn moved on to the next name on the list.
“Matthew Rodriguez, drug possession with intention to sell.” Now Matthew was in the spotlight, not that his crime was all that surprising. It was easy to spot a tweaker on campus. Next came a girl named Danika. Danika and I weren’t friends but we sat by eachother in Sociology. She kept her eyes cast on the ground in front of her. Child neglect was easily the most shameful reveal thus far. Robyn continued down the list exposing each student for who they really were.
As I looked at the slack jawed expressions of my fellow classmates I wished to God that I could be as shocked as the rest of them. But if I was being honest with myself I should have seen this coming. All of Jordan’s warnings were running hamster wheel style inside my head. He had tried to warn me but I refused to listen. In a way this was all Chelsea’s fault. If she hadn’t disappeared and screwed up my head so badly I might have understood what real friendship looks like. I came here so desperate for friendship that I overlooked all of Robyn’s faults. I ignored the voice inside my head saying something is off here. The worst part was that I had taken risks to keep her here. I’d shut other people out to ensure that she would stay and right now she was doing the one thing that would absolutely, no doubt about it ensure that she got expelled. My name was on that list. Did our friendship mean she wouldn’t read it? Would she protect me the way I had tried to protect her in the art room? Part of me wondered if she even remembered I existed. Her voice had taken on a menacing tone. The person in that box and the person I had spent the last two months with seemed like polar opposites.
The gym was painfully silent as each new charge hit the microphone. As much as you didn’t want to listen i
t was impossible to tune her out. These were the people you lived with day in and day out. These were your friends but they were also criminals and for the first time since we had arrived here it FELT like we were criminals. You’d look at the person next to you and suddenly you knew more about them than what they chose to share. Suddenly you knew the darkest parts of them. Robyn continued reading from the list, oblivious to the consequences of her actions. If she was capable of this what else was she capable of? What had she been like in the outside world? The thought sent a chill up my spine.
“Kathryn Elliot: Assault and breaking an entry. Kate...Kate..Kate. Old habits die hard eh?” It was as if she were reading my mind. Any last feeling of friendship I had toward her drowned in a puddle of anger. My charge wasn’t going to make anyone like me more or less but it was mine and she had no right to share it.
“Wanda Elizabeth Bell” I held my breath. Wanda had been trouble since day one but I had been wrong about Robyn. What were the odds I was wrong about Wanda too? I hated to admit it but it had been a long time since I wished her any ill will. If Robyn said what I was afraid she was going to, Wanda would be in a world of hurt. “ Harassment: This one intrigued me so I did a little research. For those of you shaking in your boots when Wanda walks down the hall, consider yourself out of the woods. Our friend here isn’t even court mandated! That’s right folks she opted in. Maybe you should be asking yourself who at home made her scared enough to leave?” From across the room Wanda let out the breath she’d been holding for half of this assembly. Only she and I knew how much that charge hurt her, how what she had done and the consequences that resulted were so much worse than half of the crimes on that list. But “Harassment?” that could mean anything. For now Wanda’s secret was still a secret. Relief flooded over me, until Robyn read her name I had no idea that how Wanda felt mattered to me. I didn’t want her to have to face her past. I wanted her to be able to move on, keep going with the counseling, forgive herself, all of those things. I wanted those things for her the way I would want them for a friend. Maybe, I was wrong about everyone here. Maybe, friendship wasn’t about the obvious choice, maybe you had to find the right fit despite how the package looked from the outside. In the end it was Wanda, not Robyn who told me the hurtful truth of her past. Wanda who looked out for me when I was too much of a mess to pull myself out of that bathroom.
As Robyn continued down the list, we all sat paralyzed, too afraid to listen and too afraid not to. Not all of the reveals were surprising. Some of them were even kinda funny. Ariel was a klepto, no shock there. Liz had been part of an identity thief ring. One girl was a bonafide celebrity stalker! Half the girls in barrack A were in on drug related charges and the other half ranged somewhere between assault and battery and prostitution. The boys weren’t much different. A couple of poorly executed armed robberies, mixed with an assault and drug charge here and there. The lower Robyn got on the list the more I began to relax. It would all be over soon. How bad had it really been anyway? We came into this knowing no one was innocent. The specifics weren’t that important when you really thought about it.
There was only one name left on the newbies docket. Next to me I felt Hayden tense. Whatever she was about to say, he really, really didn’t want to hear it. He squirmed in his seat beside me, clearly uncomfortable with what was about to happen. It was strange to see him like this. Void of all confidence, nervous, antsy. Come to think of it I had never seen him uncomfortable before. He was rocking back and forth on his heels, his right hand jingling the keys in his pocket while the left fidgeted hopelessly at his side. There were only five people who knew why he was here. Sydney, Luke, Jordan, the Dean and Mrs. Lewis. The rest of us had been as much in the dark about Hayden as we had the rest of the student body. I put my hand in his and gave a squeeze. Whatever he had done couldn’t be as bad as he thought it was.
“Hayden Erickson: Attempted rape and battery.” There was a long pause. A collective gasp spread throughout the gym. Quickly the color drained from Hayden’s face. I turned to beg him for an explanation but he had already slipped out of my grasp and was quickly making a break for the gym door. Sixty sets of eyes glued to his exit. “I guess we’ve solved the mystery of who our campus creeper is.”
My heart. My heart was pounding like a hippie drum circle. “Attempted rape.” This would kill him. No one would believe he was innocent, not after everything that had happened on campus thus far. He would be a rapist in their eyes even if there was no proof that he had anything to do with Robyn and Wanda’s attacks. I made eye contact with Jordan from across the room. Is this why he hated Hayden? Had he always known why Hayden was here? I wasn’t ready to give up on Hayden yet. Before these last couple of months I would have been just like them. I would have believed every word on that list without giving anyone a chance to explain. But if I had learned anything at Huntley and Drake it was that no truth could be boiled down to just one sentence, or one accusation.
My own charge sounded awful, but if you knew the backstory how could you judge? I had to give Hayden a chance to tell me what happened. Robyn would be expelled and outside of her I only really had two friends, Hayden and Jordan. I couldn’t afford to lose one of them unless I absolutely had no other choice. I had trusted Robyn because I so desperately needed someone to fill that Chelsea sized hole in my heart and that had been a mistake. Hayden had never hurt me, never tried to talk me into something I wasn’t comfortable with. He was the sole reason I was passing most of my classes. I had to talk to him. I owed him that much. But if it was true? If he had attacked a woman like that? Both Wanda and Robyn had been knocked out using a chemical formula. Everyone knew that Hayden was the guy you went to when you needed help in chemistry. Could he have really done it? Could he have mixed up something to knock them out? He was the only who knew that Robyn would be in front of the art room. I stopped myself from thinking about the details. It couldn’t be true. I didn’t want it to be true. But how well did we really know each other? I had to talk to him. I’d go crazy until I talked to him. There was a scuffle over the intercom as Dean Humphries finally made his way into the announcer's box. In the background you could hear a protesting Robyn, refusing to be coaxed out of the room by Mrs. Lewis. Dean Humphries was at the mic now.
“All students are to return to their barracks immediately. Today’s classes have been cancelled. ” And just like that the mic that had betrayed half of the student body, clicked off. Slowly the front rows began to pack their things and file out of the gym. The room was eerily silent considering what had just happened. I wanted to talk to Hayden but the dean was clear about where we were to go and right now I wasn’t keen on taking any risks. The last thing I needed was for it to look like Robyn and I were in cahoots on this thing.
An overwhelming sense of loneliness was beginning to form in the pit of my stomach. The closest thing I had left as a friend in Barrack A was Sydney and she certainly wasn’t going to be talking. The twenty of us sludged our way back to Barrack A. There were a few whispers in the back of the line but no one really seemed to know what to say or do about our new found information. All I wanted was a nap but as soon as we reached the barracks I realized that wasn’t going to be possible. Sydney’s cot had been stripped of all its bedding, her trunk lay empty at its foot. Before what that meant had time to sink in a happy whistled tune came out of the bathroom. I wasn’t a genius but it was pretty clearly that Sydney was gone and whoever took her place was far closer to Snow White than she was GI Jane. The term was suddenly turning full circle.
Out from the bathroom came Luke’s girlfriend. The perky redhead, the first person I met on this campus. If she was our new Sydney where had the real Sydney gone? After what Jordan had told me about her past it didn’t seem like there were too many options left for her. Luke’s girlfriend, who asked that we all call her Kat, short for Katerina would not entertain any questions about Sydney. “What’s done is done.” she said, “I’m here now and you still have to pass cuts, so the less time
you spend worrying about other people and the more time you spend preparing for next week the better.” With that she began unpacking her things. I remembered how badly I wanted to know her at first. That megawatt smile and peppy personality had been appealing to me on day one. Now, however, all I wanted was surly Sydney, parked on the front steps with an illicit cigarette and a bad attitude.
I walked over to my cot, the idea of a nap still weighing heavily on my mind. Upon my pillow however, was a note, my name scrawled across it in extra loopy pen strokes that I recognized immediately as belonging to Sydney. I looked around at the cots surrounding me. Had anyone else received a note? If they had, they had already quickly disposed of it. I was desperate to know how this had all happened. How Robyn got that list and why Sydney was to blame for that. I took the letter with me to the bathroom stall where I could read it without anyone peeking over my shoulder. The thick envelope seemed to rip open in the loudest way possible, but I knew I was being paranoid. No one was waiting outside the bathroom stall to catch me reading a letter.
Kate,
I wish we could have talked before I left but Dean Humphries was very firm about my immediate departure. If you are reading this it means that you have been to the morning assembly and that Robyn was successful in her endeavor to reveal the contents of the enrollment list to the entirety of the student body. Each guide is responsible for keeping their copy of the list safe. We are not allowed to use it to judge students and we certainly aren’t allowed to share what’s in it. The list exists to warn the guides of previous behavior, so that we can help you. The list is supposed to help you! That's obviously NOT the reason Robyn wanted it. I’ve given it a lot of thought and she must have found it the day she destroyed the barracks. I kept the list in my trunk. It never went missing but I pretended it had. Remember when Dean Humphries questioned me about the barracks being a disaster? I told him I had trashed it, looking for something important that had gone missing. My list was fully intact then but I knew that if I said that he would think I meant the list and stop questioning Robyn. I had no idea that she had seen the list or that she would use it. No one has ever done that before Kate, no one. I couldn’t have predicted it. But then again, I’ve learned over and over again that you can’t trust people just because you want to. I gave that girl a second chance that she didn’t deserve and she used it to burn me. I’ll never really understand why. You have probably noticed by now that Robyn’s own name was not on the list. That is because she was an emergency last minute placement. All of the guides know why she is here but it isn’t anywhere on paper. The irony is, had she told people when she first got here no one would have dared to pick on her.