I skipped breakfast once. Just pushed the food around on my plate and threw it away.
I broke bans by smiling at Charlotte in the hallway.
I paused. I’d also broken bans with Brittany pretty much every day since I’d been at Carlbrook, but I didn’t want to get her in trouble. I also didn’t want to be in trouble, and if she wrote about our nighttime chats and I didn’t, that’s exactly what would happen. I decided to compromise. I’d confess, but I wouldn’t get specific. I jotted down “I broke bans with Brittany” and hoped it would match whatever she wrote.
“Are you sure that’s everything, Elizabeth?”
Alan was reading over my shoulder. I felt his hot breath on my neck and his hand on my back. I tried not to cringe.
“Don’t get caught lying,” he said. “Remember, we always know more than you think.”
I stared at my paper. Other than my half-truth about Brittany, I really had listed everything. Or at least I thought it was everything. Carlbrook had this way of making me feel like I had done something wrong even when I knew I hadn’t. Was there some grand crime I was forgetting? I’d thought about running away; did I need to write that down?
They can’t read your mind, Elizabeth. Chill out.
I honestly wasn’t convinced. I felt like I was going crazy.
Should I write that down?
Thankfully, the student supports soon appeared to collect our lists. In exchange, we were each given a journal. There was an intricate design on the cover that felt vaguely Greek and/or Latin.
“Okay, peer group Pi,” Alan said. “We’re almost ready to get Integritas going. But first I want you all to write down your goals for the workshop in your new notebooks.”
I saw Catherine walk to the stereo. She cued up more Les Misérables.
“And remember,” Alan said again, “this workshop is about integrity. While we’re in this room nothing is more important than honesty. So please be sincere about your goals.”
Sincere about my goals, okay. Let’s see. I want to survive this. How’s that? My goal is to get out of Integritas without being hypnotized or brainwashed. And after that, I want to get out of this abusive hellhole.
Catherine turned up the music. It was suddenly hard not to laugh.
Great. I basically have the same goals as Cosette.
Why stop there? If they were going to make us identify with characters from Les Misérables, we may as well be the student revolutionaries.
My goal is to overthrow the government of Carlbrook. Alan, David, Randall, everyone in charge. Then I want to burn this place to the ground.
I didn’t write any of that, obviously. The student rebellion in Les Mis was a failure, after all. Everyone who participated died. Instead, I wrote some crap about wanting to understand myself better. To figure out where all my anger came from and why it was so hard for me to accept love from others. I really had no idea. There was so much about my childhood I just couldn’t remember. Basic things, like my first day of school or learning to ride a bicycle.
If I know how to ride a bike, someone must have taught me, right?
I racked my brain, but the only thing I could locate was a memory of my sister learning to ride a tricycle. I remember running beside her and pushing her down the hill from our house. We were gathering speed little by little until I suddenly realized she was going way too fast. I saw the tricycle flip over backward and my sister come crashing down onto her head.
I didn’t mean for her to get hurt. Maybe I’m just a monster who hurts everyone I touch. If that’s true, hopefully this workshop can help me own up to it.
We ate lunch in the trailer. I desperately wanted some fresh air but would have to settle for a stale sandwich. At least it meant I could take a break from being inside my own head, wondering who else was in there with me, and feeling generally paranoid and insane. I chewed my stale sandwich and drank from a small cup of water, which was all we were given.
Part of me wondered if keeping us dehydrated was just another way to mess with our heads. A control tactic, part of the acid trip. It didn’t help matters that the first thing I saw after lunch was a pendulum, swinging from Alan’s hand.
So the rumors are true. They do hypnotize us, after all.
Alan flicked the metal ball. It began to swing back and forth.
“I want you to take a good look at this pendulum,” Alan said.
Don’t do it. Look anywhere but there.
“Focus on the way it swings. How it goes all the way to the left and then all the way to the right.”
Blink if you have to. Pretend you have something in your eye. Just don’t let him get to you. Not today, Alan!
“The pendulum represents our relationship to pain and joy. As far as it swings to the left, that’s how much pain we feel. And to the right, that’s our experience of joy. You can’t have one without the other. One will always influence the other.”
Wait. It’s just a metaphor?
Maybe, but now Alan wanted us to lie down and close our eyes.
“Just take a deep breath and relax.”
He asked us to imagine ourselves as little kids. What did we dream of becoming back then? When the whole world was full of possibilities.
“Pick up that childhood dream and really look at it,” Alan said. “I want you to look at it so deeply that you’re there again. Wearing what you used to wear, smelling all those familiar smells.”
I’ve never been one of those people who can relax on command. “Just relax” is usually my cue to do the opposite. I closed my eyes because I had to and thought about my dreams. Back when I was all about becoming a fighter pilot, I used to run around the backyard in camouflage pants and an Annapolis Naval Academy T-shirt, catching snakes and shooting BB guns. I was fearless and maybe a little bit crazy. When a BB pellet ricocheted off the wall and hit me in the stomach, I didn’t cry. I laughed. I was proud of the bruise it left. I thought it was cool.
Then there was soccer. At one point I truly thought that would be my life. I’d win a World Cup or two, my face would be on a Wheaties box. No big deal. The next exercise was about childhood heroes, and there was only one person in my mind. Mia Hamm, of course.
“My hero was Babe Ruth,” Dash said.
“Jem,” Charlotte said. “From Jem and the Holograms.”
Benjamin’s hero was Superman. Levi’s was Al Capone. Brittany’s was Superwoman, or maybe she just ripped off Benjamin.
“My hero is my sister.” Maya was sniffling as she said it, a wad of crumpled tissues already in her lap. “She’s so brave and confident. I wish I was more like her.”
“That’s great, Maya,” Alan said. “Really feel whatever’s coming up.”
I was next.
“Mia Hamm.”
“Were you a soccer player, too, Elizabeth?”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s basically all I ever did.”
“That’s great,” Alan said. “Let’s get you back to Mia Hamm.”
Hearing him say those words made me wish I’d lied. I wanted to yell in his face.
Fuck you. I’ll never be Mia Hamm. Or anyone like her. That’s a dead dream, Alan.
To add insult to injury, the names of our heroes were written down on index cards and Alan taped them to our shirts. Back in the woods I had sort of enjoyed being Number Nine. Now, looking down and seeing “Mia Hamm” clinging to my J.Crew sweater like a name tag made me feel like I was being mocked.
Maybe I was, because the next exercise involved giving each other compliments—which wasn’t exactly what I’d come to expect. Alan put Charlotte in the hot seat and asked the rest of us to list the things that made her just like Jem.
“Charlotte wasn’t born a drug addict,” Alan said. “She was born pure and beautiful. You all were and that piece is still in there. Charlotte just hardened around it.”
He touched Charlotte’s hair and I shuddered.
“Elizabeth.” Alan must have heard my movement. “Why don’t you go first. What do you
think is true, deep down, about Charlotte?”
My throat felt dry and tight. I was relieved I didn’t have to say anything shitty, but I still felt put on the spot. None of us even knew each other. We’d been on bans this whole time, and now we were suddenly expected to see everyone’s true selves?
Plus, it was Charlotte. The girl I met in the dining mod on my first night, when I knew instantly that we were destined to be friends.
“I think Charlotte seems strong,” I said.
Charlotte smiled, and I knew I’d said the right thing.
“That’s great,” Alan said. “I agree.”
“You’re definitely a leader,” Rose said.
Everyone took a turn saying something nice about Charlotte. Since we didn’t actually know much about each other, a lot of us echoed the same idea. Charlotte seemed relaxed, like she’d let her guard down a little. Maybe workshops weren’t really so bad after all.
“I was in the woods with Charlotte,” Maya said. “And I know she’s strong and doesn’t give up. But she’s kind and vulnerable too.”
After Charlotte had received her compliments, Alan asked her to pick the one that resonated most. That would be her “truth,” a label summing up her essential identity.
“Maybe it’s something you usually hide. Something people don’t often recognize in you.”
Charlotte was silent for a moment. I didn’t blame her. It seemed like a trick question, and who wants to give themselves a compliment?
“Vulnerable,” she finally said, echoing a sentiment Maya had shared.
Alan nodded at Catherine, who scribbled vulnerable on an index card. This one went right over Charlotte’s heart.
Sensitive. Honest. Trustworthy. Kind. One by one, my classmates went around the room branding themselves. When it was my turn, David said he could tell I was fearless.
Since it came from a staff member, there was no way it was going to be my truth. Maya told me I was sensitive, which I appreciated, but it didn’t feel quite right. It wasn’t how I wanted to see myself.
“She’s powerful,” Brittany said.
I nodded. It sounded good—and if it wasn’t my real truth, at least it was something I wanted to be true.
“I’m powerful,” I said.
“Great choice,” Alan said. “It suits you.”
When another round of catering arrived, we broke for dinner. It was mystery-meat cold cuts once again. Which hardly mattered when my mouth was too dry to know the difference, and it all tasted like starch anyway. I wasn’t eating, I was fueling up. I just needed enough energy to make it through the rest of the night.
After dinner it was time for my very first disclosure circle. This meant going around the circle again and again, sharing dark secrets about our pasts. We’d have to reveal traumas and crimes. Everything we’d ever done and even some stuff we hadn’t.
Months later I was a student support for another group’s Integritas, and it gave me a little insight into the disclosure circle process. Before we started, the staff asked the supports to decide on an initial disclosure to set the tone for the group. They said that if we picked something “basic,” like an eating disorder or smoking weed, the other kids would choose basic disclosures of their own. If we landed on something harder, like rape or abuse, the circle would take a very different tone.
Alan took the reins on this one. He told us all about how he’d been abused as a child, which led to years of confusion and acting out. In later workshops he would divulge the specifics of those lost years: drug addiction, anonymous sex, various combinations of the two. Every word he spoke set off another alarm bell, like my brain was trying to drown him out in an act of self-protection.
I really, really don’t want to hear about you having sex.
“It had me under its thumb for a little while there,” he said. “But I beat it.”
Fine. Good. Please stop talking.
“And now I get to help kids like you.”
It was the student supports’ turn to share next and after that, it would be us. I sat paralyzed with fear and prayed I would somehow get skipped over or be granted a pass. I had no idea what I was going to say. All I knew was that I didn’t want to use my made-up story from the woods. Writing about the first week that never happened was one thing, but actually saying those lies out loud was a line I couldn’t cross.
On the other hand, I didn’t want to share too many real things either. I ended up just talking about a blow job. I didn’t even have to get into the details. I just explained my religious upbringing, how I was raised knowing sex was something you saved for marriage. I was still a virgin, so it hurt when people in my hometown called me a slut. Little did I know I was setting myself up to be labeled much worse than that at Carlbrook.
We continued to go around the circle. Rose also had a blow job tale to tell. Charlotte shared some insane drug stories. Levi confessed to shoplifting. Lindy talked about throwing up after eating.
We went a few more times, running out of things to say just as the staff was demanding an escalation. The third round seemed to be when the lies started coming out. So the only options were making something up or sharing something really dark and personal.
I noticed that Benjamin seemed especially nervous during the third round. When the circle finally got to him, he broke down crying. His voice sounded broken and scared, and his mouth appeared contorted in pain. He told the group that he’d touched a family member once. A girl, younger than him, though he was still a child himself.
“Let it out,” Alan said. “Get it all out.”
Benjamin started sobbing, which was usually Alan’s cue to offer one of his infamous back rubs. Instead, he simply passed Benjamin a box of Kleenex. No one else moved to comfort Benjamin either. In fact, the rest of us all looked a little sick. We had no idea what we were supposed to do—or even how we were supposed to feel.
Alan exchanged a long look with David, then kept the disclosure circle chugging along.
He wrapped up the disclosure circle, and I silently prayed that would be it for the night. My whole body felt like one raw nerve, swollen and exposed. I had been poked and prodded all day, and I knew I couldn’t take much more before I broke.
Alan knew it too. He was like a predator catching a whiff of fear. He pulled a chair into the middle of the room and looked directly at me.
“Elizabeth,” he said, “why don’t you go first?”
Thanks a lot, God.
I walked to the hot seat on spaghetti legs. They continued to shake as I sat down. What happened next, I could have done without. The trailer door swung open and a group of more-senior students entered the room. They looked like hunters, thirsty for blood, and I felt like the deer they had sighted in their scopes, ready to shoot.
Before I could catch my breath I was in the thick of it. I was being roasted by the older kids and my peer class alike. My disclosures were being thrown in my face. I was a slut all over again. A dirty slut who gives blow jobs. Because I have no self-worth and the men in my life don’t love me. Fifteen people I’d never spoken to in my life told me I was a pathetic whore, desperate for attention.
I knew the actual content of my disclosure didn’t matter. I could have talked about burning myself with salt and ice and I still would have gotten it just as ruthlessly. They told me I was pathetic, that I didn’t deserve to live.
“What kind of worthless girl just sucks dick like that?” David said.
“You’re disgusting.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself.”
I could have counted every bad thing that had ever been said about me up to that point and multiplied it by ten, and it wouldn’t have come close to what happened in that trailer. I tried to breathe through it, squeezing my hands together, telling myself not to cry. I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction. But holding out just meant enduring the horror.
No guy is ever actually going to love you.
You’re just a pretty face with an open mouth.
/> No wonder your parents didn’t want you.
The accusations hit so close to home, like a broadcast of my own dark, internal monologue. All the worst things I’d ever thought about myself in my lowest moments now echoed inside the trailer. I started crying, feeling cracked apart. I closed my eyes and recalled a photo that hung on the wall back at home. A photo I’d seen a thousand times.
It was a picture of my brother the day he killed his first deer. He stood over the carcass, the animal’s blood smeared on his face. It was a hunting custom, the traditional way to mark a young marksman’s first kill.
When I opened my eyes, everyone in the room had blood on their faces. It was my blood and they’d earned it. A successful hunt, they shot me right in the heart.
It wasn’t even over yet.
“Okay, Elizabeth,” Alan said. “It’s time to pick your lie.”
The lie was like the shadow side of our truth. The way we cover up our essential goodness.
“Come on. Tell us who you’ve become.”
I had no idea what I was supposed to say. I just sat there sobbing and bleeding out. I wanted to disappear.
“Come on, Elizabeth. Tell us your lie.”
“I don’t know,” I whispered.
“You have to say something.”
“I’m worthless,” I said. And in that moment, I meant it.
“That’s a start, but there’s more. Tell us what really lives inside that heart of yours.”
I looked up at Maya and Charlotte, pleading for an answer. Maya had tears running down her cheeks, but Charlotte just looked angry. She shook her head, pissed off on my behalf, her expression saying what I felt: This is so fucked-up.
“Elizabeth…”
Alan was walking over. I didn’t want him to come near me.
“What’s it going to be?”
The whole day flashed before my eyes. Every horrible moment and the moments that had become horrible because I’d been naive enough to think they were kind. I thought about the goals I’d written down in my journal. I remembered pushing my mom outside Lynn Anne’s office. So I was a monster after all. A worthless abuser.
I had my lie.
“I’m a worthless abuser.”
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