Stolen

by Elizabeth Gilpin

  At Carlbrook, everything, including high school, came second to the all-important therapeutic work. Our schedules were set up to allow for those long group sessions every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoon.

  It wasn’t like we totally bypassed traditional education. We had report cards and transcripts like every other high school. (Although they were often inflated with AP class credits we most definitely didn’t earn.) The bigger issue was that Carlbrook tended to deprioritize thinking in general, especially when it was an obstacle to the miracle that was feeling.

  For every hour of history class spent on the Constitution, another one was dedicated to playing the social deduction game Mafia. A science lesson might involve chemical equations, just as it might involve an episode of CSI. There were some teachers who seemed to have been hired simply because they happened to have a teaching degree and lived in Halifax, Virginia. There were others who became genuine allies to us. Some of these teachers stayed on at the school just to make sure we were okay.

  As for the books we read, they certainly weren’t the same standards my friends were reading back at home. I don’t remember reading Of Mice and Men or The Great Gatsby. But we were assigned self-help books from time to time, like The Four Agreements, Love Is Letting Go of Fear, and, on the more literary side, The Alchemist. But it wasn’t like we had a whole lot of downtime for reading.

  The real joke, though, was study hall. We spent Tuesday and Thursday afternoons sitting in the dining mod with our standard-issue laptop, which had a word-processing program on it and very little else. We were expected to write the occasional paper, but we didn’t have any internet access. So we were usually handed the exact research we needed to type up in a slightly different arrangement. As much as that might sound like a lazy high schooler’s dream, it’s one of my biggest grievances. My academic learning basically stopped after my freshman year of high school, which has been a pretty big handicap and something I’ve had to overcome on my own.

  When I did have extra time during study hall, I found myself using this time to write letters to my parents. I wanted to recount every horrible thing I’d experienced since arriving at Carlbrook, but I knew that would be a waste of time. The staff read through every single letter with a black Sharpie, ready to censor anything that exposed the reality of life inside the snow globe.

  I bet I can’t even tell my father those tennis courts he was so excited about don’t exist.

  The need to be positive left me with very little material. I could write about the ducks. Or dinner, when it was pizza. Or I could tell them more about the school store.

  The store was one of the only true Carlbrook highlights. Every Tuesday and Thursday those of us not on disciplinary programs took a trip to the school store. There, we could each select one piece of candy and a single can of soda—unless, of course, we were Beatrice or a member of her little army. The school flag raisers were rewarded for their rah-rah attitude with entire cases of soda and armfuls of snacks.

  Nevertheless, I cherished my weekly rations. Not because I desperately craved soda and candy, but because I finally had something I could barter with. Some people love M&M’s. Some people hate cleaning the sink. Whenever I could, I traded my snacks for the privilege of staying far, far away from other people’s toothpaste.

  Dinner came right after group / study hall. It was more of the same—tasteless, greasy food I didn’t want to eat. Once a week, we’d get breakfast for supper—scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, toast—but no chocolate chip pancakes, sadly. Nevertheless, that was my favorite meal of the week.

  After dinner we had something called “appointments.” This meant an hour of sitting with another student, checking in. We were supposed to share our “life stories” with each other, the most forced way I can think of to get to know another person. The only way to get out of appointments was by getting put onto a crew, a form of peer-on-peer punishment that combined manual labor with pointless humiliation. When faced with a choice between running across campus while holding a twenty-pound jug of water and sharing the same prerehearsed speech about my life with yet another person, honestly, I’d have to say it was a toss-up.

  Appointments usually went the exact same way.

  “So, how do you like it here?”

  “I don’t. My parents are forcing me to stay.”

  “Oh. Okay. So anyway, tell me your life story.”

  At this point I’d launch into my speech, recounting it with zero emotion.

  “I was born in South Carolina. A few months later we moved to California. My dad was in the Navy and we lived in San Diego first, then moved to Oakland. I ran away for the first time when I was five. I loved sports and GI Joe and I wanted to be a fighter pilot. Someone brave who might save the world. You know, when I wasn’t too busy playing with all my American Girl dolls.”

  “That’s fucked-up.”

  I looked up, startled. My appointment that night was with Kristen. Even though she was my roommate, I hardly knew her. Most of our time together was spent asleep.

  “What?”

  “American Girl is just creepy.” A moment later, Kristen added, “I had Molly. It was a Christmas present I didn’t want.”

  “Did she order the outfits?”

  “Yeah. All those plaid dresses and shit.”

  “She would have fit in perfectly here,” I said.

  Kristen laughed. When it was her turn to talk, two things from her story stuck out. The first was that she came from an aristocratic family, which I never would have guessed from her rebellious, earth-child persona.

  The second was that Kristen was turning eighteen soon. She was two months away from becoming a legal adult. Two months from being able to walk off the Carlbrook campus and never look back. The staff could follow her—and they probably would—but they couldn’t force her to return.

  Kristen was counting down the days.

  Chapter 18

  MOST OF MY life I believed that turning sixteen was supposed to bring me freedom. I figured I’d get my driver’s license and maybe even a car to go along with it. I’d have more independence from my parents, a later curfew, and fewer rules. But there has never been a time I’ve felt less free than on my sixteenth birthday.

  There was a “party,” I guess, but the only people there were my adviser, Catherine, and other members of her team. I hadn’t been at Carlbrook long enough to make any real friends, and I was still on pre-Integritas bans with Brittany and Charlotte. I did receive a sweet handmade card from Maya, though. She couldn’t say happy birthday to my face, but she placed the card down on the table in front of me.

  There was one good thing about that day. Everyone got a cake on their birthday, made by the Carlbrook Cake Committee. It wasn’t the cake itself that was so great. Those were all the same: a confetti base from a box and vanilla frosting. The committee itself, which I joined not long after that day, was something special.

  Mostly this was because of Nelly. If anyone at Carlbrook came close to being a “fill-in mom,” it wasn’t Catherine, it was Nelly. She was a warm mama bear of a woman who ran the kitchen and headed the cake-baking group. She looked after us in a way that was so rare for Carlbrook. She would sneak me snacks and treats and tell me to have a good day. If I seemed down, she would always try to cheer me up. Nelly had no interest in my therapeutic growth or calling me out “for my own good.” She was a rare example of someone normal, and she made life at Carlbrook a little bit easier.

  My other “present” was a five-minute phone call home. It would be my second one since arriving at Carlbrook. My first hadn’t gone very well at all.

  I started asking about phone rights pretty much as soon as I arrived. The first time I met with Catherine, we sat on the couches upstairs in the commons and she explained the ins and outs of my new life. I kept getting distracted by the strange scene across the way, inside a room with one wall made entirely of windows.

  There were a few dozen desks, but only five or six of the seats were occup
ied. There didn’t seem to be a teacher present, and it certainly wasn’t a group. In fact, the kids were all completely silent. They didn’t even look at each other. I half expected to see a casket and a photograph of some smiling dead person at the front of the room.

  “What’s that room for?”

  Catherine followed my gaze.

  “That’s the program room. If you see someone carrying a red binder it means they’re on a program. The entire school is on bans with anyone on a program.”

  “How do you get on a program?”

  “It’s a punishment. Just do your emotional work and follow all the rules, and you’ll be fine.”

  So just do everything they want, no matter how stupid, all of the time. Sounds great.

  I looked at the program room again and shuddered. It would make anyone think twice about this place, including, I realized, my parents.

  They must not have seen it. Right?

  “Hey, Catherine? When can I talk to my parents?”

  “Every two weeks you get a twenty-minute phone call home. It’s a privilege, which means you can lose it.”

  “Two weeks? What if I need to talk to them now?”

  “If you have a message, I’m happy to pass it along,” Catherine said. “I speak with them once a week to update them on your progress.”

  I did eventually get that first phone call home, and I had every intention of putting my best foot forward. I would use my sweetest voice and show them how much I’d changed, asking them to please bring me home. But when I realized that the calls took place in a tiny room with cubicles and a staff member monitoring my every word, my heartbeat started to surge.

  The nice act lasted approximately three seconds.

  “Hi, Mom. Dad.”

  “Hey, sweetheart,” my mother said. “We miss you.”

  Bullshit.

  I hadn’t heard their voices in almost four months, and it triggered the hell out of me. All the anger I was trying to contain rushed up like a tidal wave. It was completely unstoppable, and within a minute I was sobbing and telling them how much I hated everyone and everything.

  “I didn’t want to be at this fucking school. It’s like fucking prison. Everyone who works here is insane and you’re the worst parents in the fucking world if you make me stay.”

  Usually, the guy monitoring the call will give you a tap on the shoulder just before the twenty-minute mark. Then you can say your good-byes before hanging up. Sometimes, though, he’ll hang up for you. That happens when you get too aggressive or start making accusations about the school. But neither of those things happened to me on that first call because I was the one who hung up with ten minutes still to go.

  The next time I saw Catherine, she told me I had lost my phone privileges. The monitor must have reported back to her. The next call on the schedule had been canceled.

  “Spend the next few weeks working on yourself,” she said. “And we can try again.”

  My birthday came before I could prove myself one way or the other. This call was different; we got only five minutes, but it went much more smoothly. Basically, I said nothing.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Happy birthday, Elizabeth.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I can’t believe you’re sixteen.”

  “Yep,” I said. “Neither can I.”

  What I meant was, I can’t believe I’m spending my sixteenth birthday like a prisoner. Permitted a single phone call and a birthday cake baked by a committee.

  Loneliness hit me hard that night. Lying awake in my tiny bunk bed, I actually started thinking about home. There was a time when my mom and I used to talk about making a quilt from all of my old tournament T-shirts. Between soccer and swimming I had entire drawers full of them, so many more than had been packed for Carlbrook. They were from tournaments held all over, where I often did quite well. Each shirt was like a snapshot, a piece of evidence that a life had been lived. Sewn together, they would make a full portrait.

  We were subject to hourly bed checks by the “Securitas,” the locals Carlbrook hired to watch over us at night. When I heard footsteps in the hall, I shut my eyes and waited for the swoop of light to cut across my bed. When the room went dark again I knew I’d have a bit of time before the next check. I wanted to run away or make a desperate phone call to Melanie or Nick, but I didn’t. Instead, I crept to the bathroom and stared into the mirror.

  For the first time in almost four months, I was completely alone. I had a true moment to myself, and I’d almost forgotten what that felt like. In the woods I didn’t see my own face at all except as a warped reflection in a bowl. Since arriving at Carlbrook, I hadn’t done more than glance in the mirror before six other girls came clamoring in for bathroom space. It occurred to me that I had been afraid to really look. I honestly didn’t know if I would recognize myself.

  Do I still have my freckles? Is there still a dimple in only one of my cheeks?

  I was worried that everything unique about me had been erased. That I’d become as vacant on the outside as I felt on the inside. When I finally looked in the mirror and saw a face that hadn’t changed at all, it made me angry. I looked completely normal, I could just as well have been at my old high school.

  I should look blank. I should be unrecognizable. At least that way I wouldn’t feel like such a fraud. How can I be in this hellhole and still look okay?

  My mom and I never actually made the quilt. I guess it just didn’t seem all that urgent. Not to a kid with an open future and endless tournaments still to come. As a newly sixteen-year-old girl, lying awake in a cramped double-wide trailer, I would have given anything for a sense of identity as concrete as a homemade quilt.

  Chapter 19

  WE WEREN’T ALLOWED to talk about workshops with students who had yet to go through them. There were rumors about each one, whispered words like funeral and hypnotized that filled me with dread. Workshop is such an unremarkable word. Dull and corporate. It didn’t seem to fit, but maybe that was the point.

  At CEDU they weren’t called workshops, they were “Propheets.” In their very first form, they were “Trips,” a word chosen for its association with psychedelics. Chuck Dederich wanted to induce an altered state of consciousness. An acid trip without the acid. Because there could be no drug use in Synanon, he created a mocktail from ingredients like sleep deprivation, repetitive music, and group hypnosis.

  In the hands of Mel Wasserman, they became even more insidious. His plan? Add another cult! Many of the workshop exercises were taken straight from the large-group awareness trainings that were a controversial part of the Human Potential Movement. Programs like est and Lifespring—which themselves developed from Dianetics—would bring groups of people together for several days of intense personal growth work. Techniques included hypnosis, guided meditation, and referring to people as “asshole”—an est specialty that fit in nicely with the CEDU model.

  But of course I didn’t know any of that back then. All I knew were the rumors and whispers. After about a month at Carlbrook, still on bans with my entire peer class, it was finally time for my first workshop. The night before Integritas, I gripped my baby blanket tightly. I’d hardly slept at all when I heard my alarm go off.

  Time for Integritas, peer group Pi.

  Workshops began at dawn. That part I knew, but I couldn’t tell you when they ended. Time played by different rules inside the workshop trailer, which had blackout shades over every window. All I knew was that it was dark when we walked in and dark when we walked out. If the sun even rose at all, it was news to me.

  “Get in a single-file line. Eyes down, group Pi.”

  Two so-called student supports, kids who’d already been through Integritas, gathered us from the sleeping mods. Brittany and I joined the line, falling between Charlotte and Maya. We marched across campus in total silence, past the pond and the mansion. By the woods where it was even colder and darker. It felt like heading off to war.

  But are we comrades or are we
enemies?

  I was on bans with everyone in my group, but I had a few vague impressions. Rose was a kiss-up. Conrad was a troublemaker. Benjamin and Dash seemed sweet. Lindy didn’t. While Levi was a goofball posing as a tough guy.

  Platoon Pi, reporting for duty.

  The first assault came in the form of a song. Specifically, a song from the Les Misérables sound track, which held an importance at Carlbrook I’ll never understand. I could hear Jean Valjean’s voice crooning from a hundred feet away. It pulsed out from the trailer and boomed against the trees.

  It’s way too early for this shit.

  When the song ended, it began all over again. We reached the trailer and made our way inside. The noise was deafening and all the lights were off. It really did feel like walking into battle. I half expected to be handed an AK-47. Or at least a bayonet.

  “Welcome to Integritas.”

  It was Alan’s voice. The music faded and the lights came on. Everything looked shockingly normal. Just a regular Carlbrook classroom other than the blacked-out windows. Instead of weapons, staff handed out pens and paper.

  “Before we can get started,” Alan said, “I want you all to write honor lists. And remember. This workshop is about Integrity. It’s about being honest with yourself and with other people. Remember: If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.”

  Writing an honor list was like going to confession, receiving no forgiveness, and waiting for the priest to tell the whole congregation about your sins. We were expected to write down every single thing we’d done that was out of standard or against the rules. Mine went:

  I stayed up in the bathroom after lights-out.

  Maggie told me my pants were too tight, but I wore them anyway.