Stolen

by Elizabeth Gilpin

  “Maybe the Navy?” I shrugged. “Or church?”

  “Those are strong foundations. Explains why you’re so chaste and obedient.”

  I looked up, ready for the next insult, but Lisa only winked. I wondered if she was one of the staffers who’d been on the other side. A former troubled teen, pissed off and aloof, mumbling sarcastic comments as she wandered in search of poplar trees.

  “Okay, time to carve,” she said. “Can I trust you to be careful with my knife?”

  But no, Lisa didn’t fit the bill. Not enough of an asshole.

  “Yep,” I said. “No stabbing or slashing, promise.”

  Lisa handed me her knife and watched as I carved a V-shaped notch into the fireboard. Then I got to work on the spindle, whittling it down to a point on one side. The spindle, I was told, represented the friction in my life. My parents. That one was easy.

  “Now the bow.” Lisa picked up my curved piece of wood. “Maybe the most important piece. This is the driving force behind everything else. What drives you?”

  I shrugged. “Anger?”

  “Hmm. That’s a secondary emotion. Try something else.”

  “I guess I like winning. Being the best at something.”

  Lisa nodded. “What are you the best at?”

  “I’m an athlete,” I said. Was an athlete.

  “Then you should pick this up in no time.”

  Lisa had given me a piece of string. I tied it to each end of the bow, twisted the spindle into the middle of the string, and placed the spindle in the hole of my fireboard. The pointed piece of wood fit nicely inside the notch I’d carved. Really, my bow drill didn’t look half bad.

  “You’re just about there,” Lisa said. “One last thing.”

  She handed me a tangled mass of shredded twigs and dried grass.

  “What is this?”

  “Your nesting. A little bundle of safety and nurturing. I really want you to dig deep for this one, okay?” Lisa smiled. “Think about your own nesting. It can be a person or a place. A time when you felt safe and loved.”

  Instinctively, my mind went back to the beach in South Carolina. I loved it there when I was a kid, before things got bad. When my mom and I would stroll along the shore collecting shark teeth. We’d walk until we couldn’t take another step. And then we’d collapse on the sand and count our teeth like it was a competition.

  Sometimes my dad would wake up really early and take me out to see the sea turtles. The beach rangers would show us nests of unhatched eggs. We’d help them rope off each one and affix signs that banned digging in the area. Since I had trouble falling asleep, my dad came home from work one night with a CD of ocean sounds. I listened to that thing every night for years, letting the whales and the dolphins sing to me as I drifted off.

  “What are you thinking?” Lisa asked.

  I was trying to remember our relationship as it was back then. But all I could see was his face the night I was kidnapped. Those cold eyes and blank expression.

  “The beach in South Carolina,” I said, shrugging off the memories. “I’ve always loved swimming in the ocean.”

  The Atlantic had never been more enticing than it was in that moment. I felt the grime of the woods all over me. Dirt and sweat, bug bites and scrapes. Not to mention all the blisters I was about to acquire from my first attempt at bow drilling.

  Goddammit. This is gonna be impossible.

  I wanted to scream. To build up enough friction for a spark, I’d need to move the bow back and forth dozens, if not hundreds, of times. But I couldn’t get the spindle to stay in place for more than a few seconds at a time. The moment I started to build any momentum at all, I’d lean too far over the board or lose my footing. Inevitably, the spindle would slip out of its groove and I’d have to start all over again. After an hour, I was white-hot with rage and frustration again. I figured I had a better chance of spontaneously combusting and starting a fire that way.

  It was getting close to sunset. I’d already been told I couldn’t eat hot until I busted my first fire, but the staff decided to up the ante. If I couldn’t get an ember going by dinnertime, the entire group would have to eat cold.

  I heard someone groan. It was Isabelle, the Australian girl with alopecia.

  “This is crap,” she said.

  “What did you say, Isabelle?”

  “I said, it’s crap.” She faced the staffer head-on. “It’s completely unfair. And I don’t want to eat cold tonight.”

  “Very encouraging,” the staffer said. “What a great message to send Elizabeth.”

  Isabelle looked at me. I leaned over my kit, determined to make it work. I got maybe three full seconds of friction before the spindle slipped.

  “She’s not gonna get it. No offense. No one busts a fire the first time.”

  So I’d been set up to fail. Knowing that didn’t make me feel any better, nor did it gain me any sympathy from the other girls. I hadn’t even spoken to most of them. Now they’d hate me before I even got a chance. I wanted to snap my drill in half and just give up. But I couldn’t let the staff see me acting out of anger. Not when I felt so close to convincing everyone I’d learned my lesson and was ready to go home.

  So I kept putting the spindle back in the groove and trying one more time. And one more time after that, until my fingers bled and my whole body ached. Eventually I was forced to stop and join the other girls for a dinner of cold, dehydrated ramen.

  I was frustrated that I didn’t have a single spark to show for all my blisters. But for the sake of my image, I was glad I hadn’t given up. I genuinely still thought I’d be going home soon. It was a beautiful delusion, a small balloon of hope tied around my wrist. But it wouldn’t last long. The next afternoon, my precious balloon popped.

  Group therapy was a totally different experience in Fire Phase. As strange as it was to sit outside the circle, forced to watch but not allowed to talk, it sure beat actual participation. For the first two days I tried to stay under the radar. I admitted to feeling sad and confused and gave simple explanations for my emotions. I was sad because I missed home, I was confused because everything felt so unfamiliar. They were obvious answers, impossible to pick apart, so no one tried.

  Everything changed once I had to participate. As soon as the ceremonial stick broke in half, I was asked to start. Greta, my least favorite of the new cycle of staffers, handed me an envelope. It was already opened, and inside was a faxed letter from my parents. The first contact I’d had with them since getting to the woods.

  “Your impact letter came,” Greta said, as if those words made perfect sense.

  “My what?”

  “Letter from home. Explaining the effect your bad behavior had on your family.”

  Great. This should be a nice, light read.

  I nodded and put the faxed letter in my cargo pocket.

  “Hang on,” Greta said. “You’ve got to read it.”

  “Now?”

  “Out loud.”

  I shook my head. No way.

  “Elizabeth, you have to confront the truth. That’s the only way you’re ever gonna change.”

  A knot formed in my throat. Everyone was staring at me. I fought back tears and removed the envelope from my pocket. My hands shook as I unfolded the letter and held it up to my face. Too close, so I wouldn’t be able to look at anyone else.

  “‘Dear Elizabeth,’” I read. “‘First we want to tell you how much we love you. How much we have always loved you even when you’ve tried to fight it. We only want what’s best for you. You may not realize it yet but we’ve put you in this program for your own good. We had to save your life, sweetheart.’”

  “Sweetheart”? I hate when she calls me that.

  “‘Your anger had gotten out of control. It was destroying our family. Your outbursts, the way you’d scream at me, “I HATE YOU.”’”

  I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from crying. I kept my eyes trained on the letter and tried to ignore the circle of faces stari
ng up at me. My voice shook as I continued to read.

  “‘Your father and I, we just want to help you. And all you’ve ever done is push us away. All that rage inside of you. I don’t know where it comes from. But I do know it isn’t healthy. And frankly, it’s upsetting to be around you when you get like that.

  “‘Elizabeth, do you realize your little sister is afraid of you?’”

  Where do you think I got my temper? It’s not like I’m the only problem. And anyway, Emily loves being the favorite child. The good daughter, who’d never even dream of calling her mother a fucking bitch. She is, after all, only ten.

  “‘And then there were the public fits. You had no problem screaming at me in front of other people.’”

  What about all the times my brother yelled at me? Called me a bitch, told me I was a slut. Sure, just skip all that, no biggie.

  “‘And honey, did it occur to you that those older boys were using you? None of them really cared about you, not in the way you deserve to be cared about.’”

  No, Mom, it did not occur to me. You don’t even know them, so you have no idea what you’re talking about.

  “‘It’s the job of a parent to protect their child. And in your case that means protecting you from yourself. All the sneaking out and the drinking. It was like you were incapable of telling the truth. You even lied about the car accident. What were you thinking? Because you refused to deal with the consequences of that night, the burden fell on your father and me.’”

  Wow. Sounds a lot like being a parent.

  “‘It felt like a cry for help. But you wouldn’t accept our help, or our love. You turned on us again and again until we had no choice but to intervene. For the sake of our family, we couldn’t let you continue to take your anger out on us. Even worse, on yourself. It was like you were dying inside. When Lynn Anne offered us this solution, it was like a lifeline. I only pray that in time you’ll come to see it the same way.’”

  You saw me dying inside and thought the best way to deal with that was to throw me out? What about weekly therapy? Or some after-school program? Instead it was just good-bye, you’re too difficult for us.

  My paralyzing fear had turned to paralyzing outrage. It felt like my family was making me the scapegoat for a lot of our problems: the anger that belonged to my dad and brother just as much as it belonged to me; the drinking that was somehow perfectly fine when my brother did it; the lack of real communication.

  Maybe scapegoating me made it easier for them to deal with the guilt of sending their child away. Or maybe they really did believe I was the root of the problem. Either way, the letter did not go over well with the staff. They had read my life story and found it at odds with my mom’s account. Of course, they were going to believe her version over mine, the one where I was a raging monster, torturing my family and on the verge of self-destruction.

  “So you’re a liar, huh?”

  Greta’s eyes narrowed, her stare burning right through me.

  “I didn’t lie,” I said.

  Not technically, at least.

  “You sugarcoated. Made yourself the victim.”

  “Manipulative, this one,” another staffer piled on. “Had us thinking the worst she did was sneak out a couple times because her parents were too strict.”

  Greta nodded. “Never mentioned that whole psychotic rage part. How convenient, you stopped at blow jobs. You can’t honestly expect us to believe you’ve never had sex with all the drinking you were doing.”

  I had been willing away tears the whole time, but the floodgates wouldn’t hold. I put my head in my hands and cried for the rest of the session. It was so unfair. Instinctively I knew that any attempt to defend myself would only make things much worse. I’d never wanted to leave a place so badly in my life.

  But where would I even go? Back home, to ruin my family’s lives some more? Only to be evicted once again.

  That night felt like the worst one yet. I kept my head down during dinner and did my cleaning in a quiet fog. I got into my sleeping bag, hardly even caring about the dark. I could feel my spirit fading. I was becoming a ghost of myself. I could either embrace it or turn into something much worse. A Polly.

  “Psst.”

  I had just closed my eyes when I heard a whisper outside my shelter. I jumped in my sleeping bag, prepared for the worst. But it was Marissa, sneaking over to me in her Crocs. She put her hand over my mouth. We have to be quiet.

  “Hey,” she whispered. “You okay?”

  I shook my head. “I hate everyone.”

  “Me too,” Marissa said. “Let’s kill them in their sleep.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But we need a plan.”

  “Poison?”

  “Could work.” I was actually smiling. “I say we sneak over to the staff tent, steal their flashlights, and see what we can find.”

  There was a rustle nearby. We both froze and let it pass.

  “I gotta get back,” Marissa said. “But listen. Don’t worry about what happened in group. They do that shit with everyone. It’s another one of their games.”

  She disappeared into the darkness, heading back to her shelter. I felt a little better knowing I hadn’t been singled out, but I was still pissed off. At the staff for manipulating me like that. At my parents for putting all the blame on my shoulders. Even though I thought they were probably coached on exactly what to write, it still made me furious to think about. When the sobbing girl started up her nightly routine I found myself crying silently along with her. Tears soaked my filthy cheeks. I burrowed deeper in my sleeping bag and tried to fall asleep. I just wanted the day to be over.

  “Storm drill! This is a storm drill!”

  I blinked against the darkness.

  “Everybody up, grab your packs!” The voice was so, so loud. “Hurry. Lightning doesn’t strike on your timetable.”

  I scrambled out of my sleeping bag in a panic. Someone threw my shoes, hitting me square in the back. I threw on my pack and traced the beam of a staffer’s flashlight.

  What the hell is happening? Are we being attacked?

  I ran outside, surging with fear and adrenaline. A moment later, I spotted the other girls walking away from camp. They were moving quickly but with little urgency. Whatever the disaster was, it hardly seemed to faze them.

  I followed the others to an open clearing, a gap between two sections of tall trees. They spread out in a line, calculating distance with robotic precision. Marissa noticed my confusion and grabbed my arm.

  “Take fifteen steps and stop.”

  “What the fuck is happening?” I said.

  “Ugh, storm drill…it’s the worst,” she said. “Just watch what I do.”

  Storm drill. The words hadn’t registered at first, but now they seemed pretty self-explanatory. Like everything else, this was an amusement. They’d managed to gamify a safety drill.

  I counted out fifteen paces and stopped. I mimicked Marissa’s movements, widening my stance and lowering my body into a crouch. For the next hour, we were forced to remain like that, yelling our numbers over and over.

  I’m so sick of being Unlucky Thirteen.

  Chapter 9

  I WOKE UP exhausted and deflated. I was sore from crouching all night, and my head pounded like I had some kind of emotional hangover. To make matters worse, I was told to prepare for a full day of hiking. We packed up our stuff and cleaned the campsite.

  “Remember,” the staff kept saying, “leave no trace.”

  Once again, we were out of there before the sun was up. It was especially hot out, and my cargo pants didn’t stay pants for long. Sweat pooled and soaked my T-shirt, and I could feel my throat going dry. But I didn’t want to drink too much water. If I finished my bottle now, I’d have nothing for later. So I trudged forward in a dehydrated daze, just putting one foot in front of the other. I tried not to think about how tired I was. Or how thirsty I was, or how upset. Basically, I was trying not to think about anything at all.

  The scream
ing began like a domino effect. One girl after another, shrieking in order, all the way down the row. I barely had time to register what was happening before I felt the pain all over.

  “Fuck! Get it away! Get them away!”

  We were all hopping around and trying to escape. Bees swarmed like a buzzing black cloud. I’d never seen so many goddamn bees in my life.

  “They’re gonna kill us,” someone said.

  “Just keep moving. Go!”

  Half of us were still screaming as we ran. The other half had switched over to crying. We kept on running long after we were out of immediate danger, convinced the bees were following us like tiny drones. Finally, we collapsed to the ground to catch our breath and assess the situation.

  Apparently we had stepped on a “ground nest,” which is something I hadn’t even known existed. As long as they aren’t disturbed, ground nests are usually pretty harmless. Unfortunately, being stomped on by thick-soled hiking boots counts as a disturbance.

  The staff, impossibly, was completely fine. None of them suffered even a single bee sting. It was insane enough that for a moment I felt like a conspiracy theorist.

  The bees were an inside job.

  The rest of us all had multiple wounds. I counted five right away. Three of them were on my legs and I cursed myself for having unzipped my cargo pants. My blisters had just started to pop and now I had to deal with bee stings. Isabelle had it worst of all. She’d been near the front of the group and the stings were swelling up all over her pale, hairless skin. Polly, who still had her pants zipped at the knee, was stung only once.

  Still, a bee sting is a bee sting. One, five, or however many were on poor Isabelle, we were all in a lot of pain. But that didn’t mean we could stop hiking. The staff checked in with us one by one, not to actually help but to make sure we weren’t allergic, and remarkably, none of us were. Not even Allison, a dramatic girl from Tennessee, who was playing up her reaction so intensely I thought she was going to faint.

  Hmmm. More evidence for my conspiracy theory.

  “Okay, girls,” Nicole said. “Let’s walk it off.”