Stolen

by Elizabeth Gilpin

  Thankfully, they didn’t do that at Carlbrook, but the similarities of the programs are undeniable. Sometimes the terminology changed and sometimes it kept its original CEDU-rendered form. Here are some examples.

  Request groups: Synanon’s “Game” became CEDU’s “raps” became “request groups” at Carlbrook. The term may sound innocuous, but the structure was exactly the same. We met every Monday and Friday for sessions that typically lasted about two hours. Groups were made up of fifteen to twenty students, grouped together according to “requests.”

  We were expected to call one another out during these sessions, and that meant requesting specific classmates we wanted to address for whatever reason. Maybe they’d broken a rule. Maybe you wanted to check in on their progress. Maybe you were just hoping to keep the spotlight off yourself. That was such a huge aspect of Carlbrook, constantly finding things to call out in other people as a form of self-preservation.

  Lists were posted at lunch. If my name was listed along with several of my friends’, or if it was directly under someone I had conflict with, a knot would form in my stomach and I’d spend all day with a sense of dread, knowing I was going to be called out.

  Running anger: Group therapy was designed to push us to the point of total collapse. In the majority of these sessions, at least one student would experience a complete, almost primal breakdown. Walk into any room at Carlbrook on a Monday or Friday afternoon, and it was likely you’d see a kid with his head between his legs, screaming at the floor while snot and tears flowed and blood vessels threatened to burst.

  The term for this was “running anger.” I dreaded the moment I’d be forced to run my own anger for the first time more than anything else during my early months at Carlbrook.

  Peer class: Here, we were grouped according to the time we arrived at Carlbrook. Peer classes took their names from the Greek alphabet. Each was a cluster of twelve or so kids, bound together by a single letter. Chi, Tau, Xi. It was kind of like being in a fraternity or sorority where every week was Hell Week.

  I was in peer class Pi along with a dozen other students. These were the kids I became closest to as we went through the whole program together. Charlotte, Brittany, and Maya were all in my peer class.

  Teams: If your peer class was your group of friends, your team was like your family. We met once a week, every Wednesday, for another group session lasting two hours. Running anger was a common occurrence on these afternoons as well.

  Each team of ten or so students was led by an adviser. My first team leader was a woman named Catherine. She was the person responsible for my progress and also the one who disciplined me. In addition, she had weekly phone calls to share updates with my parents.

  Standards and agreements: In Carlbrook-speak, this meant the rules. Some of them were normal, like “Students will respect the property of the school and other people.” Some were harsher, like “Students will refrain from sexual or intimate activities with others.” Others were just weird. Like “Students will recognize when a lady or gentleman is present.”

  Honor list: Consider this Carlbrook’s version of a written confession. Before each workshop or program, we were required to make a list of anything and everything we’d done that was out of standard. We also had to list anything we knew someone else had done. Writing an honor list was a lose-lose situation. If you hadn’t done anything wrong, no one believed you—and that in and of itself meant you were out of standard. It meant you were a liar and that you’d be punished accordingly.

  It takes one to know one, though. The Troubled Teen Industry became the billion-dollar enterprise it is today by trading in deception. Every branch of this tough-love business is a twisted limb that somehow winds its way right back to CEDU.

  In 1992, the ex-Synanonite Bill Lane formed a teen transport company to capitalize on the work he was already doing for CEDU. Decades later, escorting is an entire subindustry in its own right. If not for Lane, thousands of kids like me would never have known the joy of being abducted by strangers in the middle of the night.

  Then there’s the field of educational consulting. The domain of Lynn Anne Moore. Ed consultants, often without so much as a degree in matchmaking, charge parents at a premium to find the “right fit” for each problem child. The ties between prominent ed consultants and CEDU offshoots run deep, a network of hidden connections that lead certain advisers to recommend particular schools again and again.

  For Lynn Anne, that school was Carlbrook. Technically, her consulting firm catered to parents seeking various forms of alternative education for their children. While I’m sure some of her work did involve matching gifted or artistic kids with traditional boarding schools, her specialty had always been troubled teens. Worried parents passed her name around when they didn’t know what to do about their kids, and a lot of them ended up in Halifax, Virginia.

  Her association with my alma mater wasn’t exactly a well-hidden secret. She was personally acquainted with its founder. Knew him rather well, in fact. Randall Moore, the Cascade graduate who dreamed of creating a more humane version of a therapeutic boarding school, was Lynn Anne’s son.

  I learned this bit of information a few weeks into my time in Virginia. I’m sure I would have connected the dots eventually, but I didn’t need to—my adviser, Catherine, blurted it right out. I’d begun that week’s meeting by listing all the reasons why I didn’t need to be at Carlbrook, another futile attempt at convincing someone to let me go home. She let me go on for a minute or two, indulging me, before she cut me off.

  “Elizabeth, you’re lucky to be here.”

  “It doesn’t feel like that.”

  “Well, it should,” she said. “If I were you, I’d be grateful for Lynn Anne Moore. She could have sent you somewhere so much worse than Carlbrook. It’s your good fortune she saw you as a candidate for her son’s school.”

  Her son’s school? What the fuck? How is that legal?

  It was shocking enough to stop me in my tracks, but only for a moment. The pieces fell into place pretty quickly. It suddenly made sense why there were so many students from South Carolina. It wasn’t a coincidence that the first girl to graduate from Carlbrook came from my hometown. Nor was it merely by chance that I’d recognized the name of a kid in the peer class ahead of mine.

  We all were there for one reason: Our parents had taken us to see a prominent ed consultant who worked nearby. She showed us inkblots and had us answer invasive questions. Then Lynn Anne Moore sent us straight down the Troubled Teen pipeline, where we landed on the quaint, manicured doorstep of her son’s expensive school.

  Chapter 16

  MY FIRST REQUEST group was on a Monday afternoon. During lunch, Maggie directed me to the list of names posted in the commons. I was assigned to a group run by a guy named David and instantly began to dread whatever was coming next.

  I walked into the room to find fifteen or so chairs arranged in a circle. About half of them were already taken, mostly by kids I was seeing for the first time. I did recognize one person from my dorm, a tiny, sweet-faced girl named Maya. I thought about taking the seat next to her, but I wasn’t sure if that was allowed, as we were both on pre-Integritas bans.

  I hovered awkwardly outside the circle, wishing I could sprint away or make myself disappear. I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up to see floppy hair and a big, goofy grin.

  “Hey, I’m Trevor,” the boy said. “This your first group?”

  I nodded.

  “Come on, you can sit next to me.”

  We took two empty seats and waited for the rest of the students to file in. Once everyone was seated, a man strolled into the room. I figured this must be David. He seemed to be in his midforties. With his wispy goatee, combed-back hair, and khaki pants, he was basically another Alan-in-training.

  He took the remaining chair and started speaking: “Who wants to start?”

  A girl I’d never seen before raised her hand.

  “Levi,” she said, “I request
ed you because I know you had a hard phone call this week. Do you want to talk about that?”

  “It was my brother’s birthday.” Levi shrugged. “And it just sucked I couldn’t be there.”

  “Talk more about that,” David said.

  “He had a big party. And I’m stuck here, you know? It isn’t fair. I just don’t want to be here.”

  “You’re still settling in,” David said. “You’re about to go through your first workshop. Let’s check after you do Integritas.”

  Levi nodded.

  “Who’s next?”

  Trevor raised his hand. He turned to face Kyle.

  “Hey, Kyle. How’s your program going? I wanted to check in because I miss you, man.”

  Kyle shrugged. “It’s fine.”

  “Fine?” David said. “All you have to say is it’s fine?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, it’s a program.”

  “Come on.” David’s voice was getting louder. “How are you still so apathetic?”

  The kid looked down at the floor.

  “Do you just not care about anything?” David said. “Jesus, Kyle. You’re sucking all the goddamn air out of the room. If you don’t want to be alive, then you don’t deserve to be. Why don’t you just go through with it next time?”

  “Fuck you,” Kyle said.

  “What was that?”

  “Fuck you. FUCK YOU. I CARE, OKAY?”

  “Do you really?” David crossed his arms. “That’s not the kind of message a razor blade sends.”

  “I DO. I FUCKING CARE AND I WANT TO LIVE.”

  “There we go,” David said. “Let it all out.”

  This was my introduction to running anger. Kyle cracked open completely. He put his head between his legs and began screaming at the floor. Soon his face was a fountain of tears. The sheer volume of the bodily fluids flowing from his face seemed impossible, like he was pumping them out from some deep reserve. Snot poured from his nose and wadded-up tissues piled up on the floor like a stack of origami ghosts.

  “I hate myself. I fucking hate myself so much.”

  Trevor switched chairs so he was sitting next to Kyle. He leaned over his friend and tried to comfort him, rubbing his back as he spoke softly into Kyle’s ear.

  “I didn’t deserve it.” Kyle was wailing. “I was just a kid and I didn’t deserve it.”

  It was excruciating to watch. This boy appeared to be in so much pain, the opposite of someone screaming life-affirming statements. Whatever was happening seemed far too personal, too intimate, for me to sit there watching.

  His face reminded me of another face. Three faces, actually. They were a family, a group of strangers at the beach. I was just a little kid, but I remember those anguished expressions as clearly as if they were in front of me. It was a level of pain, so raw and acute, that I’d never encountered before. And I didn’t see anything like it again until the day I saw Kyle run anger.

  The family had just lost a young boy. Had actually lost him. Their son and brother. The kid had been swimming in the ocean when the riptide came out of nowhere. It sucked him away and, just like that, he was stolen by the sea.

  The Coast Guard was there. A medic, too, and a big group of people trying to help. The Guards held on to a rope as they waded into the water, trying to feel around for a body, but they never found one. Not that day, at least.

  I have always been a really strong swimmer. Even back then, I was able to swim the mile at meets. Swimming in the ocean was never quite the same for me after that day. Every time I got into the water the riptide was in the back of my mind.

  What would you do? If it took you away? Would you even bother to try to find a way out?

  My father saw me watching the family on the beach. He came over and sat down on the sand beside me.

  “If it ever happens,” he said, “don’t fight it. Just let it take you out. You’ll know the moment you get free of it. And then you can come up for air.”

  Kyle ran anger for half an hour, screaming incomprehensible things about wanting to live.

  “You’re doing great,” David said. “Really great. Get it all out.”

  His voice had gotten softer. He seemed almost pleased, or at least satisfied. He walked over to Kyle and placed his hand on the boy’s head. “Good job, Kyle.”

  It was the moment my dad had told me about. When the riptide relents and it’s safe to swim out. David had decided the ordeal was over, that Kyle had done enough emotional work for the day. And Kyle began to pull himself back together because he knew exactly how the whole experience was supposed to play out.

  That first afternoon shocked me completely. It’s frightening to realize just how quickly I’d come to see what happened with Kyle as run-of-the-mill. The anger, the abuse, the cascade of tears—all of it was real. But at the same time, running anger was a sort of a ritual. An exorcism, even, and everyone had their part to play.

  I have no doubt that the demon Kyle was fighting was very much alive. I also know now that he didn’t really have a choice when it came to casting it out. David knew exactly what he wanted to see, and Kyle knew enough to give it to him.

  But it was an unfinished exorcism, that much I know. Kyle didn’t win the fight against his demon—not that day or any other. But for now, he could stop fighting so hard. He could enjoy the rush of euphoria that comes with the release of so much emotion.

  I was too overwhelmed to get up and walk to dinner. So I lingered in my seat, pretending to tie my shoe while everyone else filed out of the room. When I looked up I saw that Maya, the girl from my dorm, was lingering by the door. She smiled and I realized she was waiting for me. I was cautious as I walked over, remembering that we were on bans, but Maya threw her arms around me.

  “Hugging’s allowed,” she said, “after tough groups.”

  I didn’t cringe this time, like I had with Beatrice. Instead, I hugged Maya back.

  Later that night, when Maggie was brushing her teeth, Brittany broke bans to talk about Kyle.

  “He tried to kill himself,” she said.

  “Here?”

  “Yeah. Like a month ago. He ran off into the woods with a razor blade.”

  “What happened?”

  “His friends saw him take off,” Brittany said. “They chased after him and convinced him to come back.”

  “Does that David guy know?”

  It seemed impossible that David could have said what he said, knowing what Kyle had gone through.

  “Of course.”

  I must have looked queasy because Brittany laughed.

  “That’s kind of the thing here,” she said. “They like to tear you down to build you back up.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  It was all I could muster. I had Kyle’s tormented screams playing on a loop in my mind.

  It didn’t seem like they did a whole lot of building him back up.

  Chapter 17

  AT CARLBROOK, THERE was a rigid schedule in place to facilitate our “emotional growth.” In fact, the promise of structure was the very reason a lot of parents sent their kids to the school. Every weekday began at 6:00 a.m., on the dot, with inspections at 6:15. Since we showered at night, that gave me fifteen minutes to make my bed, straighten my row of shoes, and make sure the hangers in my little closet were spaced evenly apart. For the first few weeks I had to fight the impulse to stand at attention while Maggie bounced a quarter off my bed.

  Ma’am, yes, ma’am!

  After inspections, we had another fifteen minutes to “complete our modular chores”—a fancy way of saying it was time to clean the trailer. We rotated assignments, including vacuuming the floors, cleaning the toilets, and washing down the sinks. Vacuum duty was everyone’s favorite, including mine. For most of my peers, scrubbing shit stains from a communal toilet was the worst possible way to start off the day.

  For me, sink duty was actually the worst fate. Even now, I have a hard time looking at globs of other people’s dried toothpaste without gagging. I shudder
when I recall the experience of reaching my hand into a clogged drain to pull out a hairball made up of multiple textures and colors. Luckily there was a bartering system I would learn about soon enough, and that made chores much more tolerable.

  Sink: spotless. Closet: hangers spaced two fingers apart. Acceptable clothing: to be determined.

  Before I could leave the double-wide, Maggie had to sign off on my outfit. It was a total bore getting dressed in the same conservative J.Crew stuff every day, and as time went on my options only got more limited. Everyone gained weight at Carlbrook. It was so common it fueled a rumor that the kitchen staff added starch to the food just to mess with us. We all had the same experience of waking up one day to find that half of our limited wardrobe was suddenly too tight. But someone, somewhere along the line, had come up with a brilliant solution.

  We’d gather pillows and stuffed animals and shove them down the waistline of our pants. Then we’d proceed to do squat after squat until the fabric loosened enough that it no longer cupped our butts. On any given morning you could walk down the hall and see at least one girl with a stuffed animal petting zoo hanging out of her pants. Never Charlotte, though.

  “Fuck that,” she said once. “I hate what I’m wearing anyways. Who cares if I buy my clothes a size bigger?”

  With our clothing checked off, we’d head to the dining modular for a breakfast of Frosted Flakes, cold buffet food, or a sad-looking banana. As a breakfast lover, these options bummed me out so much that I’d try to finish eating as quickly as possible. Unless, of course, Luke happened to be there. I’d developed a full-blown crush on the boy I’d locked eyes with during that first night of smooshing, and catching a glimpse of him was one of the few highlights of my day.

  Next on the agenda was a long walk across campus. We’d leave one set of trailers, stroll past the pond and the mansion, and all those beautiful snow globe things, only to arrive at another cluster of double-wides. This was where our classes were held, if you want to call them that.