Keaton School 01: Escape Theory

by Margaux Froley

  Isla rubbed her eyes and glanced around. She wrinkled her brow, as if confused by the fact that she wasn’t in her dorm room. She blinked at the rows of neatly made-up twin beds and fluorescent lights. A faded quilt was folded at the end of each bed: a flimsy effort at making the Center feel more homey. Of course, most Keatonites who used this part of the Health Center were freshman going through a bout of homesickness. A quilt that reminded them of Grandma—and a cup of hot chocolate with Nurse Reilly, whose wrinkled face and gray-haired bob would look equally at home in a nurse’s uniform as it would on a box of cookies … the standard and most effective cure on campus.

  Devon knew. She’d been here herself.

  With marshmallows floating in the mug of cocoa, Nurse Reilly had let four-week freshman Devon babble on and on about everything she missed at home. When she’d finally wrung herself out, Nurse Reilly took Devon’s hand in her own—silky soft and gnarled—and promised that before she knew it, Devon would have all of those things and more at Keaton.

  For better or worse, Nurse Reilly was right. Going home over the summers the past two years felt like a limited stay in a vaguely familiar hotel. Devon often wondered if the boarding school experience was an extended case of Stockholm Syndrome: where the prisoners started to identify and even bond with their captors. Did being a peer counselor mean she had gone to the other side? Was she the prisoner that betrayed her fellow prisoners for a bigger slice of bread: in her case a recommendation to Stanford?

  No. She was here to help. She wanted to help, bigger slice of bread or not.

  Isla crawled out of bed and pulled her black tank top over her head. Her purple padded bra looked wrong, almost too bright and happy on the sad shape her body was in. Devon could see her ribs jutting out over her flatter-than-flat stomach. Hip bones popped out of the top of her jeans. Faded red scratches ran up and down her arms. Devon turned her back while Isla unzipped her jeans.

  “Please, like we’ve never seen each other naked before,” Isla said with a short laugh.

  That was true. But Devon had never seen Isla in this state before, either. Even though they had lived in the same dorms for the last two years, shared the same communal showers, and brushed teeth in their pajamas next to each other countless times, Isla’s inner light always burned brighter than everyone else’s. Her perfection made the guidelines of beauty clear to the rest of the girls: Isla on top, Keaton mortals below. It was one less thing to think about. But now, Isla looked broken, like a phoned-in version of her former self. Devon didn’t want to accept it. If Isla’s standard of beauty could be cracked, what did that mean for the rest of them?

  Of course, if Devon were to work with Isla, she would have to start seeing beyond the glorified image of the Isla Martin. She would have to accept the dark rings under Isla’s eyes and the way she couldn’t hold eye contact. In session, Isla wasn’t superhuman. She was just another sixteen-year-old who needed help.

  “You slept through the afternoon. Probably needed it,” Devon said, pulling a nearby rocking chair next to Isla’s bed. “Nurse Reilly said your pulse was racing. Like you were having a panic attack or something.”

  Isla pulled her long blonde hair out from underneath her sweatshirt and tied it into a knot on the top of her head. Frayed split ends poked out like a warped halo. She pulled the covers over her lap.

  “I didn’t need a trip to the Health Center, you know,” she said after a minute.

  “Sorry about that.” Devon turned away, and instantly regretted it. Bad form. She was losing her footing in this conversation before they got started.

  “Whatever, it’s pretty chill in here,” Isla added. “It’s easier than being out there. Everyone giving me their pity faces, the forced frowns. I’m so over it.”

  “Well, I promise not to give you a forced frown if that helps.” Devon smiled, but Isla rolled her eyes and studied her fingernails. “Mr. Robins said he spoke to you about seeing me.”

  “Yeah, I’m, like, supposed to talk with you about my issues and stuff.”

  “It’s just for a few sessions.” Devon pulled her notebook from her bag and dropped it unopened into her lap, then leaned back. She hoped the gesture was non-threatening.† It felt good to have something to write in, something that made her feel removed from their existing relationship, however thin that was.

  Isla smirked at the pad of paper. “So, what? Are you going to peer into my soul, Devon? Show me the error of my ways?”

  “How about we start with the Oxy. Why’d you give me those pills?”

  Isla chewed a nail.

  Devon smoothed out the empty page of her notebook, shiny Mont Blanc pen poised. But her heart had started to pound again. “Isla?”

  “I didn’t give them to you. I just wanted you to hold onto them for a bit. There’s a difference.”

  “Fair enough. Why did you want me to hold onto them?”

  “I just did, okay? With Hutch and everything.…” Her voice trailed off and she studied her fidgeting hands in her lap. Therapy is what happens when you let the subject fill the silences, Devon reminded herself. Isla’s eyes brimmed with tears. “Maybe I didn’t want to end up like him,” she said in a hoarse voice. “Is that the answer you’re looking for?”

  “Why do you think you would? Are you planning on taking those pills?”

  She stared back down at her hands. “I wasn’t there for him. And now he’s not here. I just worried about, like, what if I got into a bad place like Hutch did and had those pills around.… I just didn’t want them in my room anymore, okay? I thought I was making a good decision.” Her tone hardened. “Why are you grilling me for it?”

  “No one is grilling you. You’re right; it was a good decision.” Devon made sure that her tone was warm, inviting Isla to open up. “I’m glad you asked me to hold onto them for you. Do you think Jenny Martin will miss them, though?”

  Isla’s head snapped up to meet Devon’s gaze. “What?”

  “The pills. I noticed the prescription is made out to Jenny Martin in Portland. Is that someone in your family. Maybe your grandmother?”

  Isla scratched at her arm and stared at the yellow daisies on her quilt. Her pupils flickered. Devon had struck the vital nerve.

  “How about an alias for Isla Martin?” she pressed, even though she knew she was reaching. “Is Jenny Martin a name you use to get prescriptions filled in Portland?”

  “Shut up!” Isla snapped. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Why am I even talking to you? Just give them back.” Her voice was no longer raspy or choked. She held out her trembling hand, palm up to Devon. “Give them back, NOW.”

  Jackpot, Devon thought. But having her suspicions confirmed gave her no pleasure. “I’m sorry, but I can’t. I’ll hold onto them for you though, okay?”

  “You’re not going to rat me out?”

  Devon shook her head and gazed into Isla’s bloodshot eyes. “Part of the deal here is that nothing we talk about gets shared with anyone else. So, as long as we keep talking, and I feel like you’re not a danger to yourself or others, no. I won’t rat you out. That’s the truth.”

  Isla folded her arms. “That’s still a pretty lame reason for not giving back what’s mine.”

  Devon held her hands up in a mock surrender. “Hey, you gave them to me in the first place. I’m just doing what you wanted.”

  “Touché.” Isla leaned against the cold cinderblock wall.

  “You and Hutch have been together since last year. Did you talk to him at all that night? Did he give you any indication of what he might be thinking of doing?”

  “I didn’t see him that night, okay?” Isla said.

  “Okay. Was that for any specific reason or just circumstance?”

  Isla laughed in a hollow breath. “We broke up over the summer. Clearly you didn’t get the memo.”

  Devon swallowed. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” Her mind raced to process. They weren’t together anymore? Hutch was single again? When he asked
to have pancakes with her again he was single? His smile, his question all had new meaning. She shoved the swirl of thoughts away. “Do you want to tell me about that?”

  Isla sighed. “You don’t have a cigarette on you, do you?”

  Devon laughed. “What we say in counseling is confidential, but that’s the only rule I can slightly bend. Smoking in the Health Center is definitely not going to fly.”

  Isla had to laugh, too. “Figured it was worth a shot. If regular rules are suspended in these little sessions, ya never know.”

  “I’ve got gum.” Devon offered her a piece of Winterfresh from the pack in her pocket. “Might be stale, but it’s better than nothing.”

  Isla took the gum and started chewing, opening her mouth wide. Devon tried not to stare at the gum being violently tossed back and forth between her teeth. She really is a wreck. Isla twisted the wrapper into a long wormlike strand and rolled it between her fingers.

  “It was the first week of summer. We were supposed to go on some boat trip with his parents, but we were arguing all the time. Hutch said he wasn’t happy anymore. I thought he meant he wasn’t happy with us. But now maybe he meant.… He wouldn’t have done it if I was there for him. He should have let me be there for him.” Her voice caught.

  “Isla, what happened to Hutch is nobody’s fault, okay? This isn’t your fault.” Devon leaned forward, forcing eye contact. It was important that Isla knew this. If she took the blame, then she was at risk. The girl was using an alias to feed an addiction; she was more than capable of hurting herself. She already had hurt herself.

  “How do you know?” Isla sounded as if she were talking more to herself than Devon. “You didn’t know him like I did. I mean, we kind of pissed each other off from time to time, but there was a while there we were really in love. Like, I didn’t think it was possible to love someone that much, kind of love. It sounds like a stupid movie when I say it out loud but it’s true. And he all of a sudden says he didn’t want to see me? Thought we’d grown apart. It was so cliché, but it was my life.” She laughed bitterly. “That sounds like a stupid movie, too.”

  “How did you grow apart? What happened?” Devon wasn’t sure this was actually relevant to counseling Isla, but she couldn’t help herself.‡ Their coupledom had turned them into Isla-And-Hutch, a unit, a thing; how could that relationship fall apart?

  Isla shrugged. “I don’t know. He wanted me to lay off the pills, and I thought he was being controlling. I refused to change for him. I thought I was proving to him that I could be strong. And once I was home in Portland it was easy to get whatever I wanted. So I didn’t have to change. I think I kept using just because he didn’t want me to. But, I don’t know. The way he did it, looking down on me, he was so fucking smug about it. It pissed me off.”

  “What about now? Do you still think it was him, being controlling and smug?” The words just popped out of her mouth. Devon gritted her teeth. She was starting to sound like her mom. Don’t judge; be supportive. On the other hand, the non-counselor voice in her head couldn’t believe that Isla had essentially chosen pills over Hutch. Epic mistake. Any girlfriend would have talked Isla out of it, gotten her to kick the pills—whatever it took to stay with someone like Hutch. But maybe Isla with all her magic spells couldn’t conjure up any real friends to step in before her addiction took hold.

  Can I? Devon wondered. That’s what she’d signed up for with this peer counseling stuff. She had to try, to finish what Hutch would have wanted for Isla. She could help Isla see the error in her ways, without being pushy of course, and Isla could stop blaming herself for Hutch’s suicide—

  “I saw him earlier that day, you know?” Isla began, almost as if reading Devon’s thoughts. “The day he … his last day. He was making a sandwich in the Dining Hall before going into Monte Vista. And you know what he did? Typical Hutch. He wouldn’t talk to me. He said I hadn’t changed at all. He knew I was still using. Condescending prick.” Isla twisted a handful of quilt into her clenched fist.

  “And then he committed suicide that night with pills,” Devon murmured.

  Isla snorted in disgust. “Hypocrite. Typical Hutch working his magic: Look at my right hand, so you don’t see what my left hand is doing. And I fell for it. We all did.”

  Devon nodded but her head was spinning. “Was Hutch always against the Oxy? He never took it with you?” If Isla was using a drug like that, he had to know. Maybe that’s why Hutch had inexplicably reached out to Devon again a few days ago, across the parking lot and all that time. Her chest squeezed tighter. He’d wanted to get pancakes. Like that night, their night. Like he’d been in an Isla haze, and had finally emerged to see that Devon was there the whole time.

  “At first, maybe a few times,” Isla said. “But then he wouldn’t touch the stuff. Talked about not wanting to pollute his body and other crap like that.” She chewed another nail and spat it onto the floor. She squinted at Devon. “You really didn’t get the memo, did you?”

  “About what?”

  “Look, I can say this because he’s gone. Otherwise I wouldn’t be telling you shit. But, Hutch was supplying pills to like half the school. Nothing like Oxy, he wouldn’t go that far, but Adderall, Ritalin, Wellbutrin, Xanax, Prozac, Valium. If you wanted to go up, down, or sideways, Hutch was your guy.” Isla’s mouth curled into a half-smile.

  Devon adjusted her notebook in her lap, anything to hide her face. “Yeah, I heard something like that,” she managed as nonchalantly as she could.

  “It wasn’t a big deal or anything. Just a little Adderall to help kids study or Valium to help them take the edge off the Adderall. Whatever they needed. But Hutch made sure they actually needed it. He knew how much everyone was taking, kept the doses low.” Isla shrugged. “I guess he was still kind of looking out for people, in his own twisted way.”

  Devon’s chest constricted again. Images of Hutch—smiling at Devon, leaning against that dirt-covered car … toasting her with a Nutter Butter … they popped and were gone. Her mouth was dry and she had to lick her lips to speak. “So why’d he do it all? If he wasn’t taking anything himself?”

  “I guess because he could. He had access. Most of the campus is taking this stuff anyways, so might as well bring a little quality control to the situation. He said it’s like that in Europe. At the bigger raves out there they have people who will test your ecstasy to see what it’s cut with. At least someone could make sure they’re taking stuff that doesn’t kill ’em. Ironic, huh?”

  “Yeah. Definitely.” Devon picked at a loose piece of rubber on her flip-flops. Her head was swimming in a million questions, new shades of Hutch rising to the surface like bubbles.

  “But at the end of last year he quit it all,” Isla continued. “Stopped dealing. Even stopped drinking coffee. Didn’t want to be controlled by it anymore. That’s why he wanted me to stop using too.”

  Devon couldn’t think of an appropriate response. This version of Hutch wasn’t new to Isla. But to Devon he’d always been a faraway buoy in the choppy ocean of Keaton. Now, in death, the closer she swam to him, the further away he seemed.

  “I don’t know what he got into this summer. But something changed. If we were still together this wouldn’t have happened. It just wouldn’t.” Isla sighed heavily. “What are we supposed to do now? How come he gets to check out and leave the rest of us to pick up the pieces? It just doesn’t seem fair. What about me? How could he do this to me?”

  “I don’t know,” Devon said. I really don’t know. But I have to keep swimming.

  DEVON WAS WRITING ABOUT Isla’s deteriorating physical condition. It would be good to keep track of if she got better or worse: The red scratches, the low weight—

  Her door flew open.

  She straightened her back against the wall. Sitting cross-legged on her bed was always a more comfortable place to study, as long as she remembered to stand up every now and then.

  “Yo, bitch, did you steal my Origins mask again?” Presley demanded, bar
ging into the room. She started rooting through the bottles of lotions on the bedside table. “It’s made of volcanic ash and you know that doesn’t come cheap.”

  Devon tucked the session notes under her pillow. “So the ‘Quiet, studying’ note on the door wasn’t clear enough, I see. Good to know.”

  “Please, you know that doesn’t apply to me,” Presley was already opening and smelling different bottles. “Whore-ella Deville, cough it up, where’s my volcanic ash?”

  “Bitch, please, I have my own volcanic ash. Why would I need yours?” Devon smiled. As much as she loved quiet privacy, Presley’s reliable interruptions insured that Devon would laugh her ass off every once in a while, like a normal human being.

  Presley rubbed a glob of lotion into her palms. “You don’t have any like Pepto or something do you? My stomach’s been kicking my ass. I totally barfed up dinner.”

  “Eww. That might have just ruined taco night for me.”

  Presley threw the hand lotion bottle at Devon. “If the mystery meat hasn’t ruined taco night for you yet, then I just did you a favor.”

  “Good point.” Devon sighed. “But, I don’t have anything for your stomach.”

  Presley checked herself out in Devon’s mirror. She was wearing her typical dorm uniform, flannel pajama pants and a sweatshirt, and her curly blonde hair in a loose knot on the top of her head. “I hope I’m not like sick, sick. That would totally blow. Oh, speaking of blowing, b-t-dubs, what’s up with you and Gaa-raant! Roar. Someone worked out over the suuuh-mmer.” Presley liked to sing words for emphasis. She reveled in her terrible voice, an invisible karaoke mic on at all times.

  Devon stretched out on her bed. “Pres, this whole Hutch thing.…”

  “What?

  “I just—I don’t know. I don’t want to gossip about how hot Grant is.”