Hours later, Bald Guy whipped the blindfold off. Stepping out of the car into late night, Ava had no idea where they were. Thousands of different types of pine trees stretched their arms out to touch each other, blocking any evidence of a road. A coyote’s high-pitched yelps drowned out the hoots of a distant owl. Judging from the mountains surrounding the place and the time it took to get from her bedroom to hell, Ava guessed the place was in New Hampshire or Vermont.
A guy with a marine haircut, shirt buttons near to bursting, met them at the door to a log cabin.
“Hey, Justice,” Tall Guy said.
In the presence of this man, Tall Guy acted all nice. His voice was tempered, and he kept a good distance from Ava.
With every muscle in her body clenched, Ava took the smallest steps she could toward the cabin, even though what she needed to do was run to a bathroom. Looking around without being obvious, Ava put all her energy into squeezing her butt and thighs. It was no use. She couldn’t hold it any longer.
With hands crossed low in front of her, warm liquid began soaking her jeans and tears took off down her cheeks. Ava bit her lip and prayed the guy was talking about something else when he called her a baby. Then he to pointed at her crotch. Tall Guy and the driver leaned over to look. All three of them burst out laughing when they saw the dampness creeping toward one knee. Ava froze, standing still in that spot, but her body wouldn’t stop shaking.
“Lucky for you I’m your intake counselor,” the guy named Justice said, as the men left, mocking her all the way back to their car. “I know a few here who’d punish you for that. Get a move on.” He grabbed Ava’s arm, shoving her forward, forcing her deeper into the log-cabin shack.
Justice deposited Ava in an empty seat in the row of chairs against the wall. A girl with a nasty black eye and a boy with his head down were parked on either side of her.
Justice reached up to take a pair of hospital gloves from a box on the shelf above Ava’s head. The plastic fingers made snapping sounds, again and again, as he adjusted the fit. “Take out all piercings and give me your rings, necklaces, anything you weren’t born with. Time to hit the showers and change those clothes. McEttrick, listen up. I’m only giving this spiel once.” He cuffed the boy in the head.
Black-Eyed Girl said nothing, but her shoulders shook; even her cries were silent. The boy with bangs like fringe moaned, repeating the words, no shower. The third time Fringe mumbled something under his breath, the counselor got up in his face and started yelling.
“Look, Seed, you know the deal. Shut it till you’re in group. Understand? That’s the place to grumble and gripe about how bad you have it.”
The boy didn’t stop. He kept ripping skin from around his scabby fingernails, repeating, “No shower.”
Justice hit him harder, this time on the other side of his head. Fringe stopped talking, closed his eyes tight, and placed one hand over his ear.
“I don’t care how many times you’ve come through here. Right now, you’re back to the beginning. You’re a Seed. A nobody.” Justice kept pulling things off the shelf. “All the kids here start off at Level One. Do what you’re told, and you’ll move through the ranks, earn more privileges.” He dropped a backpack at Ava’s feet and into her lap, a pile of clothes, khakis, a T-shirt, and matching sweatshirt. After sizing up her feet, he put a pair of hiking boots in front of her on the floor. Then he repeated the same deal for Fringe and Black-Eyed Girl.
Two bolts, wrought-iron and heavy, separated them from freedom. A few hours into captivity and already the counselor had Ava thinking of the other Seeds—his word for detainees—as kids without real names.
“Outside of group, you’re only allowed to talk to another student if your level numbers add up to four. No talking to counselors without permission. Follow the rules!” The counselor screamed in Ava’s face, his bulbous nose less than an inch from her tiny one. “Everything here is about discipline.” His breath reeked of tomatoes and garlic. At first it disgusted her, then it started Ava counting. Was it ten or twelve hours since she’d last had something to eat?
If Ava weren’t so afraid of Justice, she would’ve challenged every one of his ridiculous rules. No water between meals. Bathroom breaks twice a day. Forty-five minutes of writing in workbooks in the morning and again at night. One, two, three, he tossed black and white composition notebooks on top of their piles.
“Put everything in your pack and let’s get this show on the road. Outdoor showers are down the hill. Your first hike starts in an hour. What are you waiting for?” he screamed at Black-Eyed Girl, sending a shudder like dominoes through the three of them sitting there. “All of you. Move it,” he shouted.
Ava visualized tripping Justice before he could crowd Black-Eyed Girl as she tried to move past him toward the locked door. She screamed, bully!—idiot!—bastard! in her head every time he yelled at the boy with the bangs for moving too slowly or staggering under the weight of his pack.
Not knowing where they were going, the group of three, carrying identical backpacks filled with atomic orange shirts and hiking boots, trekked down a path. They followed Justice, their way lit by searchlights every few feet. Not one of them made a run for it. If Black-Eyed Girl and Fringe came there like Ava did, blindfolded, maybe even handcuffed, what was the point?
“You can’t see it now,” Justice said, “but your parents did you losers a favor.”
Dodging stones and tree roots on the trail made Ava dizzy. Her feet went numb. The drenched jeans were cold against her skin. They walked by a counselor younger than Justice but older than Ava. The woman wore a cap with a Mount Hope logo and clothes of her own choosing, cargo pants and a camouflage jacket. As Ava watched her stoke the logs in the fire pit, she tried to convince herself the sweat on her forehead came from being out of shape and walking too close to the flame. The queasy feeling in her stomach from not having eaten since yesterday. But the word parents kept ringing in her head. Ava couldn’t remember a time when she’d wanted her mother more than she did in that moment.
Stop thinking about her. Don’t have one of your freak-outs here. Not in front of them, she told herself.
The lady counselor with big teeth stared right back at her as the little parade circled the pit following Justice. Ava pictured an imaginary string pulling her nose up, making it impossible for her to cover her chops. Seemed like no one here had a reason to smile.
“By the time I’m through with you,” Justice said, “you might be ready to go home. You might actually turn out to be something.”
Ava followed two sparks as they flew upward and away from the fire, vanishing into the dark sky, their glow replaced by a glittering mass of stars. It was no good looking up, thinking about home and the only parent she had left. Stars didn’t shine like this in Wellesley, where she lived with her father. Toby, the traitor.
THREE
Dad,
I hate it here. And I’ll hate you forever, unless you come right now to take me home. Did you even check this place out? To see what they do to kids? As if being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night by strangers wasn’t scary enough, once I got here they strip-searched me in front of this evil guy named Justice. Every time he looks at me now, my skin crawls. And I have to spend a million hours a day with him because he runs the Learning Center, if you can call it that. Hour after hour we sit in hard plastic chairs without moving, listening to him tell us what losers we are and how we need to own up to what we’ve done to hurt the people who love us. Love? If you loved me you never would’ve dumped me in a place that calls dog food a meal, serving the same thing twice a day—if I’m lucky. They make us sleep with the lights on when we’re in the bunkhouse. All we ever do is hike. Without water! Justice says I better figure out how to make fire with a piece of wood and a stick before our first overnight or I’ll have to sleep on the ground without my sleeping bag. Do you really want me to freeze to death?
What did I do that was so awful? I told you I don’t drink. Or do drugs.
So I stay out late. Why do you care? You’re never home anyway. Unless you want to get rid of me so you can work more. And spend more time with Jill. Why won’t you admit she’s the reason you sent me here? I don’t care what she told you about her stupid daughter. Becky still does drugs.
How many times do I have to say I’m sorry about the train thing? I wasn’t trying to kill myself. And even if I was, this is the last place on earth to send a person thinking of offing themselves.
Toby couldn’t read the rest of his daughter’s tirade. He dialed the extension of his VP of Finance to leave a message. “Jill—when you’re out of your ten o’clock, please stop by my office.”
Turning his gaze out the bank of windows, taking in the Boston skyline, Toby replayed the program director’s warning. The first letter will be a rant against you for forcing your daughter to accept that she’s out of control. Don’t believe any accusations of abuse. These manipulations are all too common among our students.
Though he’d been told to expect a letter like this one, that didn’t make it any easier to read. Sixty days, Toby told himself. He’d only enrolled Ava for the two-month program.
The waistline of his slacks was tight. With one hand he tugged at his belt and with the other he swept the last piece of cinnamon roll into the wastebasket, revealing the glossy brochure he kept on his desk, the tangible reminder that he’d done the right thing.
Toby fiddled with his wedding band; it wouldn’t budge. One look at the gleaming gold and he was flooded with thoughts of Lorraine. A mother was supposed to be there to ask the difficult questions so a father wouldn’t have to resort to buying the tough love Mount Hope was selling. Pulling out the contract he’d signed giving the escort service permission to transport Ava, and the school the power to treat her, he felt awful about how it went down. Ava had looked completely blindsided, because she had been. Toby had been told it would be safer not to tell her ahead of time so she wouldn’t run before they got there.
In one of their early phone conversations, the program director led him to believe that counselors would be the ones to come and take Ava to the school, a therapeutic community with an Ivy League tuition price tag. When the escorts got there that night, Toby questioned them downstairs—wondering out loud if maybe he had changed his mind. They said all kids put up resistance in the beginning. This was the way it had to be. They knew what they were doing and they promised Ava would be fine.
Still, he’d nearly stopped breathing when his daughter cried out for her mother. Another piece of him died when she’d stretched her splayed hand out to Toby.
But what else could he do? He’d done his best, raising Ava alone, tiptoeing around anything that might call up memories of her mother and sister. True, Toby tended to spoil Ava. At some point, he was sure someone from Mount Hope would tell him that he was part of the problem. It wasn’t like he hadn’t heard it before. More than once, Lorraine had accused him of indulging both Ava and Poppy.
Toby looked around his office on the forty-seventh floor of the luxury office complex he owned. The Arne Jacobsen furniture and Dan Christensen artwork—all things unchanged from another time—were evidence he was good at making investments. He took pride in his job to decide which humanitarian organizations could most benefit from his family foundation’s money. Toby had worked tirelessly and effectively to grow the endowment, to pay his good fortune forward to those less fortunate. What he had no trouble admitting was how inept he felt as a father. How little he knew about teenagers.
“Hope I’m not interrupting.”
Toby hadn’t heard Jill knock. He hadn’t noticed her standing between his office and the reception area, but there she was, poking her head in, looking as concerned about him as ever.
“No, of course not. I called you. Come in.” Toby got up from his desk and moved toward the sitting area of his office, gesturing for Jill to join him.
Everything about her appearance was unremarkable. Jill was neither too tall nor too thin. Her mid-length brown hair was neither stylish nor mousy. Her clothes were well-tailored though nondescript. When Toby interviewed her for the VP chief counsel job, she hadn’t done much to make an impression until she started talking about her experiences in law school, her work with other foundations. Jill appealed to Toby’s intellect. Now, after years working with her, he couldn’t imagine running the Sedgwick Foundation without her.
“You rang?” she asked.
“I did. Close the door. It’s personal.”
“You have questions about Mount Hope, am I right? I wondered how long it would take you to reach out to me. I didn’t want to push.” Jill sat down, relaxing her posture, taking on more of an after-hours pose. Toby could almost picture her with a glass of Merlot in hand. While Jill was a terrific gal and he did enjoy her company at work-related dinners and the like, peel away her education and work experience, replace her tailored clothes with jeans and a flannel shirt, and she reminded Toby a little too much of Lorraine’s best friend, Biddie Purcell. Which meant no matter what Ava thought, Toby would never date her.
“I didn’t remember that your daughter went to Mount Hope until Ava reminded me. In her letter,” Toby said.
“Oh God, you already got the first letter. And you survived?”
“Barely. Talk about twisting the knife.”
“Becky went to Mount Hope two and a half years ago. Stayed for six months. But I remember the experience like it was yesterday. That girl was so lost after my divorce.”
“I apologize for not really registering the details at the time. I get it now, how worried you must’ve been. You probably took me for a heartless boss back then.”
“Not at all. I don’t think anyone can really know what it’s like until they go through it. That’s why places like Mount Hope exist. It’s for the parents as much as the kids. It really helps knowing you’re not the only one struggling.”
“At first I thought Ava was working through typical teenage stuff and then suddenly things were so far south I wondered how in the hell I could’ve missed that she was in trouble.”
“My situation was different. Becky was difficult from day one. Colicky baby, a kid who never slept. All through grade school she had trouble making friends. Then high school was a monumental disaster. Drinking. Drugs. My ex and I fought constantly about how to parent her. Both of us absolutely clueless. We didn’t need Mount Hope to tell us we were part of the problem.”
Toby took a deep breath.
“No, no,” Jill said. “I’m not saying you are in Ava’s case. I’m saying they helped us. They showed us the error of our ways. I can’t say it was easy, but Becky is better for it.”
“So she’s all right now?”
“It took time to reconcile the damage we’d inflicted on each other. But we did—we’re still working things through. Becky started Massasoit Community College this semester. She’s living on her own in an apartment in Brockton, with her boyfriend.”
Something in Toby tensed infinitesimally. Jill was telling him more than he wanted to know.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like you to take the dinner meeting with Bob Verde,” he said getting up, brushing out the creases in his slacks, digging inside his pocket for keys. “I’m going bend the rules a little. Head up to see Ava, take her out for coffee or something. I think it’ll help us both to feel better about the way we left things. If I leave now, before rush hour, I’ll be in upstate New York by nightfall. I’ll be back in the office tomorrow by noon.”
“You really didn’t survive the first letter, did you?”
As Toby and Jill looked at each other, he got the distinct impression she wanted to hug him.
“I guess not.” Toby backed up, loosening his tie, jingling his keys.
“Look, there are no contact rules for a reason,” Jill said. “You owe it to Ava to let her get used to the place. To learn the rules. Don’t interfere. She needs time to build a solid relationship with her counselor. Trust me. I know how hard it is to let go, but let go
you must.”
“I need to explain to her why I sent her there. Maybe all she needed was a wakeup call and now she’s ready to talk to me, to tell me what’s going on with her.”
“At Mount Hope Ava has the right people to talk to. Counselors who know how to get her through whatever it is she needs to figure out. By the end of the program, you’ll see, she’ll be a different kid. On a better path. Leaving the crooked one she’s on behind.”
Jill had given Mount Hope a glowing endorsement, and still Toby couldn’t let go of his urge to see his daughter. To get in his car and speed north.
All he wanted was one ten minute visit with Ava. Hell, a two minute phone call would do. He needed to make sure she’d forgiven him for their middle of the night fiasco, for everything. But if Ava already was in a better place, he’d be screwing that up too. God, it was impossible to trust his instincts given the mess he’d made of parenting thus far.
As impossible as this was, Jill was right. The situation called for Toby to put his daughter’s well-being above his own desires. So he would. Toby shoved his keys back into his pocket. He’d do anything for Ava.
FOUR
Thirty seconds after Ava woke up, the best part of her day was over. Squeaky bedsprings above reminded her that the overweight girl who smelled like vinegar and cheese was still there. A vague memory of a dream came to Ava in which the bunk came crashing down on her in the middle of the night, metal coils trapping her, feathers and sheets clogging her mouth, making it impossible to breathe. In the seconds before Ava realized it was another freak-out, she remembered feeling grateful to the girl for putting her out of her misery.
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