Stolen

by Elizabeth Gilpin

  The very first disclosure dropped us right into the deep end with a story involving bestiality. One of the student supports confessed to a situation involving the family dog and a jar of peanut butter. I stared at the ground as he spoke, feeling unsettled. I was genuinely shocked, and there was no way that didn’t read on my face. I mean, I’d been raised to believe that sex before marriage was a sin. Same for masturbation. Of course I didn’t follow the rules completely—but if there was any truth to those biblical ideals, then what kind of mortal stain was on this kid’s soul?

  The worst part was the casual way he talked about it. As if enticing an animal to lick peanut butter off your junk is just a normal, everyday thing. At first, I decided that one of two things had to be true: Either the kid was really sick or he’d made the story up. There could be a third explanation of course, this being Carlbrook and all. Between the school and the woods, the kid had probably been forced to tell this story so many times it had become run-of-the-mill.

  I wanted to forget the disclosure as soon as I possibly could. I felt violated, filthy by association. Unfortunately, a boy in my peer class had a very similar confession to make about his own dog. He broke down crying, and I wondered if there was a time the student support had sobbed through his own story.

  Those men were vampires. They fed on our pain like it was the only thing keeping them alive. They were ravenous and insatiable, always searching for another vein. Some buried trauma or unspeakable shame, fangs at the ready. They’d say whatever they needed to in the moment in order to get at those darkest disclosures, and then they’d suck us dry.

  I didn’t even have what they required. I had my same old recycled stories. Two blow jobs. A few unremarkable weed experiences. The one time I did Molly. I didn’t even have an ace up my sleeve like the one a lot of my classmates pulled out when they needed to satisfy the mostly male staff.

  When all else fails, go girl-on-girl.

  Lindy confessed to experimenting with a female friend back home. Variations on this particular theme tended to pop up during disclosure circles. It wasn’t hard to figure out that this was David’s favorite topic. His excitement was obvious. A Sapphic kiss at a sleepover, a lingering glance in the locker room.

  I didn’t even have any of those stories to share either. It wasn’t like I hadn’t thought about kissing a girl—who hasn’t? Just thinking about something isn’t enough to be a disclosure, though. So I ended up revealing that sometimes I would make myself throw up after eating. It wasn’t about body image so much as it was a way to stay in control. It was like my salt-and-ice burns, a way to sublimate the pain I felt when Nick ignored my calls or my brother said something shitty to me.

  I didn’t like to talk about those things—not at Carlbrook and certainly not back home. For me, self-harm was inextricable from my deepest inner pain—the part of me that didn’t feel safe or loved. If I was throwing up or burning myself, it just meant that I was having an extra-hard day.

  At Carlbrook, most of my days were of the extra-hard kind. I constantly felt the urge to self-harm or make myself throw up. I didn’t, because the stakes were so high, but the feeling rarely left me. This disclosure circle wasn’t any different. The whole workshop had been an exercise in degradation, and I wanted nothing more than to purge it from my system.

  “Every single person in the room has made bad decisions,” Alan said. “We’ve been liars, cheaters, thieves. We poisoned our bodies with drugs, alcohol, sex.”

  His eyes traveled around the room as he talked, locking us in with his gaze.

  “Why’d we do it? Just for fun? Did we fuck up our lives for the hell of it?”

  I wanted to look away but found it was impossible.

  “We did it,” he said, “because we’re our own worst enemies. So it’s no wonder we can’t be good friends to other people. We have to be our own friend first.”

  The student supports went around the room passing out supplies. We each got a handful of markers and a red paper heart. Arts and crafts, it seemed. A grade school activity that would undoubtedly come with an NC-17 twist.

  “This is your heart,” Alan said. “It’s yours and yours alone, but it’s not the heart you have today. It represents the pure version, the heart you had as a little kid.”

  I was momentarily confused. What happened to us being marbles?

  “I want you to cover your hearts with the things you loved when you were young and innocent,” Alan said. “People, places, imaginary characters. Maybe it’s a word like love or hope that hung above your childhood bed. Maybe it’s a picture of your favorite game. Anything that meant something to you back then, no matter how small, put it on the heart.”

  David stood over the CD player to cue up some creative inspiration. As he bent down to fiddle with the stereo his khakis rode up in a way that could not have been comfortable. I looked away, wishing I could unsee that image. David could have been a decade younger than Alan, but you’d never know it from the way he dressed.

  Thankfully, he got the stereo working. It was now time to rouse the artist within, and what but Les Mis could be up to such a task? “I Dreamed a Dream” began to play on a loop.

  There was a time when men were kind / When their voices were soft / And their words inviting.

  There was a time when love was blind / And the world was a song / And the song was exciting.

  I zoned out and began to scribble. I drew a soccer ball and an Olympic gold medal. A fighter jet soaring over the Pacific Ocean. I wrote Hotshot, my childhood nickname, across the middle of the heart. I sketched a garden and filled it with flowers and blackberry bushes just like the ones near my grandma’s house.

  There was a time. Then it all went wrong.

  I added a rainbow to the sky. Some puffy clouds. Everything was happy and innocent…and easy to draw.

  I dreamed a dream in time gone by / When hope was high and life worth living / I dreamed that love would never die / I dreamed that God would be forgiving.

  Charlotte had her head down, scribbling intensely. I could tell she was avoiding the rest of the group. I tried to catch her eye, but she was totally focused on her drawing. I spotted musical notes, a microphone, and the pink-haired Jem.

  Then I was young and unafraid / And dreams were made and used and wasted.

  Dash had drawn a baseball diamond and written the names of his favorite players.

  There was no ransom to be paid / No song unsung, no wine untasted.

  Maya had drawn her family. It was a version of the classic little-kid picture: mom and dad on either side, two kids in the middle, triangle house behind them. Everyone was holding hands and smiling big, loopy grins.

  But the tigers come at night / With their voices soft as thunder.

  “Okay, guys.” Alan was pacing the room, examining hearts and massaging shoulders. “Take another minute or two to finish up.”

  As they tear your hope apart.

  “I hope you had some fun with that,” he said. “Because now we get to do the hard work.”

  As they turn your dream to shame.

  I knew a twist was coming, of course, but I didn’t expect it to be quite so cruel. We got back into a circle while Alan explained the rest of the exercise he called “pieces of my heart.” There was nothing clever or ironic about that name. Basically, it meant going around the circle saying the meanest possible thing about each person.

  “Every time you hear a judgment about yourself,” he said, “I want you to rip off a piece of your heart and let it fall to the floor in front of you.”

  The taker exercise felt like a warm-up compared to the barrage of insults that were about to echo across that trailer. Again, I told myself it was a forced attack, so it didn’t really count. I wanted to stay as detached as possible—like I was in a movie, playing a role. That lasted only so long before I began to break apart. I don’t know which hurt more, the judgments I gave or the judgments I received.

  “You’re a pathetic slut with zero self-esteem.”


  “Your daddy didn’t love you. That’s why you’re so desperate.”

  “You spineless, stupid coward.”

  I ripped my soccer ball in half and tore up my fighter jet. I was suddenly ashamed of everything I’d drawn. I wasn’t Hotshot, I was a worthless abuser. I was stupid and spineless. My heart deserved to be torn apart for refusing to forget all those dreams that were now out of reach.

  “Of course your daddy didn’t love you. You’re a terrible person. And a bad friend.”

  “You should be sent to lockdown for what you did to Kristen.”

  “Stupid bitch. Starting an underground in the only place willing to help you.”

  I shredded my heart until there was nothing left but a mound of red pulp. It wasn’t like I needed another stupid metaphor to feel like there were pieces missing from my life. I felt like my own identity had been turned into a weapon and used against me. The holes in my heart were already there. I had felt their absence my entire life, but whatever had been merely empty before was now hollowed out completely.

  I had a dream my life would be / So different from this hell I’m living / So different now from what it seemed.

  Now life has killed the dream / I dreamed.

  The first day of Amicitia finally came to an end after what felt like an eternity inside the stale trailer. David cued up “Everybody Hurts” by R.E.M. while Alan joined us on the floor for some good old workshop smooshing. We exited the trailer and walked back to the dorms in total silence.

  What could possibly be left to say?

  I breathed in the crisp air. It was a clear, cool night and the stars were shining. I looked up at them and thought about Kristen. I hoped she was somewhere great, surrounded by people she loved. Wherever she might be, she was certainly better off.

  She’s safer there. No matter where she is, it’s safer than here.

  As soon as the thought entered my mind I was absolutely certain it was true, and that meant my dream hadn’t been a bad omen at all. I wasn’t seeing a premonition of Kristen’s future, I was seeing the fate she avoided. Whatever happened next, whatever path she was on, at least she would be living a life that was her own.

  There was peace in that, and it was enough for that moment. I closed my eyes and fell right into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  The next morning, walking into the workshop trailer felt somehow different. It took me a moment to realize that music was playing on the stereo that had nothing to do at all with Les Mis. The specific song was “Break on Through (To the Other Side)” by the Doors, and I was about to hear it approximately fifty times.

  The Circle of Exclusion was a simple but vicious exercise. Basically, it was like the version of Red Rover that would be played at the X Games. Alan instructed us to form a barrier, linking our arms together as tightly as possible.

  “There shouldn’t be an inch of space between any of you,” he said. “There’s no such thing as too close together.”

  One by one, we each took a turn outside the circle. The idea was, quite literally, to break on through to the other side. The excluded kid had to ram his body up against the human circle again and again, trying to force a way in, while the rest of us did whatever we could to make sure we stayed impenetrable.

  Needless to say, I can no longer listen to the Doors.

  It was awful. Being the barrier was bad enough, but when my turn came I wanted to give up before I even began. Instead, I started ramming my body up against my peers again and again. Trying not to get hurt, physically or emotionally, as they did whatever they could to keep me from getting in.

  If I stopped for even a moment, the staff just screamed at me to keep running. There were only three ways this would end. I could break on through, break a bone, or break down completely.

  I actually found comfort in the physical pain. I liked it when it hurt because that numbed the sounds in my head. Each smash and I was transported back in time. I was flying into a windshield. I was burning myself with salt and ice. I was getting my lie. I felt like such a disappointment. But at least I’d have the physical bruises to prove it this time.

  I went from sad to angry to dead-set on breaking through that fucking circle. I kept going, slamming myself up against shoulders and backs again and again. I didn’t stop, not even when the music cut off and Alan was yelling my name.

  “Elizabeth! That’s enough! You can stop now.”

  Alan knew what I was denying: I was never going to break through the barrier. He seemed to be saying that I had humiliated myself enough and should just give up.

  So I did. I didn’t have anything left anyway. My entire body hurt and my heart was broken. I started sobbing, and all I wanted in the world was just to be left alone.

  That was never going to happen, though. I had to take my place back in the human circle and wait for the rest of the group to each take a turn. Some of them cried the entire time, some screamed obscenities, and some of my friends seemed like they were already dead.

  I couldn’t tell you who said what, though. Something happened that day, and maybe it was just in my mind, or maybe it had been a long time coming. After Amicitia, I suddenly felt like there was no difference between any of us. We weren’t individuals any longer, we were part of a hive. Too tired to fight, though we would be forced to do it anyway.

  Chapter 24

  BEING ON A program was as close as I’ve ever gotten to feeling like an animal at the zoo, but I wasn’t an exotic one—a red panda, say, or an anaconda—nor was I one of the marquee draws like a tiger or a giraffe. Now that Amicitia was over, I had to spend my days in the glass program room, where I felt both on display and completely alone. Everyone could see inside, but they didn’t always bother to look.

  We’re the meerkats. The flamingos. We’re those giant tortoises so slow and static that everyone always mistakes them for rocks.

  The rules of a program were straightforward. You were on bans with the entire school, with the exception of two student supports. It was just my luck to get a pair of Ponies, Molly and Paul, the student body president. They checked in on me every day, making sure I was on track with my therapeutic assignments. Every time I saw them trotting toward me I wanted to scream FUCK OFF! But somehow, I managed to hold it together.

  Since mine wasn’t an out-of-school program, I still went to class. I had to carry my program binder around like a scarlet letter. A reminder that I was on bans with everyone and couldn’t actually communicate with them, not during class, in the sleeping mod, or anywhere else. In a way, it was even worse than digging up stumps. I felt like a shadow, sort of there and sort of not, just a shapeless presence lurking in the corner.

  I had to run crews every night; and I still slept in my room, which had a very different setup now that Kristen was gone. Brittany was moved to another dorm and Rose, one of the Ponies, took her place. Every other second of my day was spent in the glass room. Meals came to us, brown boxes of cold cuts, and we sat in silence, doing what they called “emotional work.” My first assignment was a list entitled 100 Things I Hate About Myself.

  I would have preferred to list one hundred things I hated about the school. But it turned out that I had nearly as many problems with myself as I did with Carlbrook. As soon as I started writing down negative things about myself, I realized I could have gone on forever.

  I hate that I got myself here.

  I hate my anger and how it makes me full of hate.

  I hate my legs.

  I hate that I have stretch marks from the woods.

  I hate my stupid life.

  I hate that I don’t know who I am.

  I hate that I don’t know what I want to be.

  I hate how I’m not sorry about certain things.

  I hate that I can be mean.

  I hate how hopeless everything feels.

  I hate that I stopped caring about soccer.

  I hate that I let men treat me badly.

  I’m a slut. I’m desperate and easy.

 
; I’m pathetic and attention seeking.

  I hate that I want to hurt myself.

  I hate how scared I am all the time.

  I hate that I try to seem strong and brave when I’m actually weak.

  I hate that I’m nothing but a worthless abuser.

  By the time I was finished I honestly couldn’t tell how much of it was real and how much was for show. I knew that the more self-hating I seemed, the more I’d be praised for doing good work. So I called myself pathetic and desperate, mean and slutty. They were all things I’d heard, after all, so why shouldn’t I believe them?

  I was getting more and more despondent inside the glass room. It was like being under a microscope. Every minute of every day, the whole school knew exactly where I was. I was sitting at my program desk with my red binder. At first I didn’t mind when people like Maya or Luke would walk by and sneak in a wave, but soon that only made me feel worse. I began to keep my eyes glued to my binder at all times so I wouldn’t have to see life still going on outside the room.

  I was as lonely as I’d ever been, and yet I was never alone. That was hard enough, but I didn’t have any of my old tools or defense mechanisms to make me feel better. I couldn’t burn my arm with salt and ice or make myself throw up. There were no pills for me to swallow, no boys to distract me. All I had was bullshit therapy and a bunch of stupid assignments.

  Plus, one tiny silver lining. One Saturday night, I was assigned to trash duty during crews and that meant running pizza boxes from the dining hall to the dumpsters across campus. On my last trip I was delighted to find Charlotte crouched behind a dumpster, chowing down on pizza remains.

  “Shit,” she said. “Caught me.”