Stolen

by Elizabeth Gilpin

  The next memory involves running in place for what felt like an eternity. We weren’t allowed to stop no matter how tired we got. Staff and supports walked back and forth screaming disclosures and general insults, like a greatest-hits record. Some of it was personal; some seemed to be directed at everyone. We had become a single hive once again, indistinct and equally broken.

  “What are you thinking right now?”

  “Is it that you are worthless?”

  “Maybe if you’d been better, your daddy would have loved you.”

  “Maybe if you had done things differently, those boys wouldn’t have used you.”

  “Maybe if you weren’t so easy and attention-seeking, you’d be in a better place now.”

  We all felt rejected and unloved. We all felt scared. We all wondered why we were there.

  We all kept running.

  “Run so fast that the voice telling ‘ME’ she doesn’t deserve to live is gone.”

  I managed to zone out by pretending I was on the soccer field. I imagined darting across the field. I was the center forward and the midfielder kicked a beautiful shot to the right corner of the box. A magnificent give-and-go. I outran the defender, kicked a beautiful shot, and…

  GOAL!

  When I came back to reality, I realized everyone had stopped running. The only other person not balled up on the floor crying was Brittany. Her face was drenched in sweat and she looked ready to throw up. Like me, Brittany didn’t want to give Alan the satisfaction of letting him know he’d gotten to her.

  “Your parents don’t like you. Why do you think you’re here? You’re a fuckup. Run all you want. You’re still gonna be just as unlovable.”

  We would hold out for only so long and could never win either; as always the exercise wouldn’t end until we were all in tears. Brittany finally broke, and as soon as she did, all eyes were on me. Monica came over to deal the final blow.

  “What are you trying to prove, Elizabeth? That you’re better than everyone else?”

  Monica turned to the rest of the group. “Who here thinks Elizabeth is better than the rest of you?”

  I stopped running. It was time to give in; it just wasn’t worth it. Monica and Alan could have this round. I collapsed to the floor with the rest of my peer group, my face dripping with sweat and the requisite tears.

  Another memory flashback: lying on the floor while “Gravedigger” by Dave Matthews played on a loop. Alan began to talk about our “rock bottoms,” but once again his speech seemed designed to confuse us. Instead of the traditional lowest-point meaning, he used the term to refer to the core part of us.

  The innermost, purest part of that Little Me.

  This exercise led into individualized guided meditations, another technique from large group awareness trainings said to induce hypnotic states. Each of us had a staff member sitting by our side, whispering in our ear. I was unlucky enough to get Monica. I lay in a fetal position while she ran through a scenario, so close I could feel her stale breath on my neck.

  “I want you to remember your bedroom as a child. What did it smell like? What did it look like? Did you have a twin bed? A princess bed? Were your walls pink or flowery? Did you have glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling?”

  I pictured my bedroom with my monogrammed sheets.

  “I want you to remember every poster, every doll, every little glass animal in your room,” Monica said. “Pick them up, feel them, and remember everything that Little Me loved about them. Hug your favorite stuffed animal. Hug it so tight you may never let go. Smell it and give it all the love in the world.”

  I thought about my baby blanket and imagined running my fingers through those loops.

  “There were good memories in that room. But there were bad ones, too, weren’t there? Now I want you to remember all the pain you experienced in the same room. Suddenly, Little Me is in her room crying. She’s all alone crying. Those dolls and toys aren’t protecting your Little Me right now. She’s not the shiny ball she once was. She’s watching out the window, listening to her parents fight about what to do with her. She’s the problem child no one understands.”

  Don’t listen to her. Block out the words.

  “Outside the door, all she hears is someone yelling the word slut,” Monica said. “‘You slut. You fucking whore.’”

  I bit down on my lip.

  I’m not a whore. I’m not a disappointment.

  “Back out the window her mom pushes her dad, she can only hear every other word. The argument is about her, she’s the problem child. What are they going to do with her? She keeps crying. What does Little Me do to make herself feel better?”

  She pours salt on her wrists. Takes an ice cube from the freezer. When the ice touches the salt she feels better.

  “Okay, now the door opens,” Monica said. “Big Me is there. Big Me gives Little Me a hug. Little Me is crying, but Big Me tells her it’s going to be okay. She says, ‘You’re lovable and you’re good enough. You aren’t a problem child and you don’t deserve to be yelled at. You don’t deserve any of the things that happened to you. You’re just a little girl and I love you.’”

  Don’t listen to this. It’s a trap. She’s trying to mess with you.

  “Now I want you to turn around and see a tiny door you’ve never seen before. There’s a light inside. Big Me carries Little Me through the door. The room opens up into a magical land of flowers and love. There’s music everywhere. You’re dancing with Big Me and your family is there. You feel whole. You feel worthy. You feel all the love in the world.”

  This is fucking insane.

  The crazy exercise continued until I was told to become a caterpillar who transformed into a beautiful butterfly. Somehow the butterfly had to find three golden keys. Each key had a word engraved on it, a message for leading a successful life.

  Forgiveness. Compassion. Love.

  Once the keys were in Little Me’s possession, the exercise finally ended. I was told to slowly open my eyes. “The Rose” by Bette Midler was playing on the stereo. I realized it had been playing on a loop the whole time.

  Maybe I had lost touch with reality, after all. I don’t know where the rest of those hours went or what else happened in that trailer. Somehow, I made it through Teneo and was one step closer to graduation.

  Chapter 31

  I CAN STILL remember my first concert like it was yesterday. The Spice Girls at the Blockbuster Pavilion in Charlotte, North Carolina. It was the summer of 1998, just before I turned ten, and it was the American leg of the Girls’ famous Spiceworld tour.

  I absolutely loved the Spice Girls. Sporty Spice was my natural counterpart, but I also had the blond pigtailed look of Baby Spice. I loved them so much I even saw their terrible movie in the theater. After my mom took me to that concert (the one where the band stripped down for the song “Naked” while hiding strategically behind chairs, much to her dismay), I was even more obsessed. I sang Spice Girls songs day and night for the rest of the summer.

  Singing had always been a secret dream of mine. I never spoke about it, and I didn’t hang it on my wall for everyone to see. Because singing didn’t come naturally to me like soccer and swimming, it was a complete fantasy. It was something I’d really have to work at, and even if I did there was no guarantee I’d actually get good. So I kept my dream a secret from everyone but my friend Caitlyn.

  Caitlyn had a beautiful voice. She hoped to be a professional singer one day, and she had the chops to make it happen. She was raised by a single mother who worked a lot, and for a period of time Caitlyn spent a lot of time at my house. We’d hang out in my room and sing together. Occasionally, I’d hit a note that was halfway decent and she’d look at me and smile.

  “Hey, that was really pretty.”

  I loved music because it came from the heart. It was all about feelings, and your feelings couldn’t be wrong. Unless, of course, you ended up at Carlbrook. Everything I loved about music, the way a single song could make me feel okay for having
dark thoughts, was twisted inside out at Carlbrook.

  Music was never simply something to be enjoyed. It was always tied to our therapeutic work, a tool to heighten our emotions so we’d lose ourselves completely. Songs played on a loop until they became automatic triggers for certain emotions.

  Even in our free time, we couldn’t just listen to music any old time like normal teenagers. There was a music committee for that, with total control over a single stereo and a book of CDs. It was the same collection used to torture us in workshops—Bette Midler, Les Mis—so I wasn’t exactly vying for stereo time.

  In fact, I had actually begun to fear music during my time at Carlbrook. My mind started to associate it entirely with trauma. Old trauma, relived. New trauma, created in workshops. The trauma, for example, of being forced to participate in a talent show.

  After Teneo, we were each required to perform an “Ades Aces,” as they called it, which apparently means “to stand on the edge.” Talent shows are nightmarish enough when the participants want to be there. If you sign up by choice, ostensibly it’s because you have some talent to show. Our specific performances were assigned regardless of any skill set we might or might not have had. Instead, we were made to perform whatever the staff thought would make each of us feel most vulnerable.

  Music, dance, speech. Anyone could get any of them. While I never saw anyone forced to juggle or spin plates, that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

  Once again, it was like the school read my mind. They peered inside and found my secret wish to be a better singer. They must have known I both loved and feared singing because when it came time to assign me an Ades Aces, I was given the song “Alive” by Jennifer Lopez.

  The song’s message relates the simple gratitude of being alive. It’s about feeling okay in your own skin. The lyrics were a near perfect fit with my current state of mind—and that pissed me off. The decision to keep on living had been hard-won and Carlbrook hadn’t gotten me there, I had gotten myself there.

  To make matters worse, I hardly had any time to learn the stupid thing. We had only that one stereo to share, which meant practicing in groups—something I was way too self-conscious to do. I was insecure about my voice, but more than that, I didn’t like the feeling of having to perform on command. I needed to be completely out of everyone’s earshot. I would look for the quietest places on campus to rehearse sans stereo without anyone listening, but they were pretty much nonexistent, so most of my rehearsing was done in the five-minute showers I got each night.

  Everyone sings better in the shower anyway, right? Still, I couldn’t bear the idea of anyone hearing me. I whispered the words over and over, trying to get them right. I had no idea if I was in tune or even if I had the correct melody memorized. My showers got longer and longer every night as I just tried to get the thing to sound as not-horrible as possible.

  “Elizabeth, what are you doing in there? There’s a line, you know.”

  On the day of the show, I put on the dress my parents had sent for the occasion. I did my hair to the best of my ability, and we were even allowed to wear a little makeup. I sat upstairs in the commons waiting my turn but hoping it would never come. I felt a surge of empathy for the older students who had performed in the past. Once again, I felt like I was about to be strip-searched in front of the entire student body. I was about to be as naked as the Spice Girls, but it wasn’t by choice and I didn’t have a chair to hide behind.

  The show began. Lindy cracked her way through “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” A girl with daddy issues quietly sang her way through “Not Pretty Enough” by Kasey Chambers. A kid named Tony, who was from South America, had to recite “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost in Spanish. Dash sang “I Won’t Grow Up” from Peter Pan.

  Levi was up next. He had been tasked with reciting Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, and I must say he did a good job. It was an impassioned delivery, even if the original was pretty hard to live up to.

  I moved to the side of the stage as my turn came closer. Charlotte was up next. She had a great voice and actually went on to sing professionally post-Carlbrook, so naturally Charlotte was assigned a dance. Not just any old dance. Poor Charlotte had to do an interpretive dance. To a country song, of all things. As the first notes of “I Hope You Dance” by Lee Ann Womack sounded, she began to flitter across the stage.

  I could tell she felt ridiculous. Charlotte was dressed in a frumpy blue smock selected by the staff, and unlike the rest of us, she wasn’t allowed to wear makeup or rehearse. As she jumped and pirouetted across the stage, really giving it her all, I understood why Charlotte had been given this particular Ades Aces.

  It wasn’t Charlotte up there dancing. It was the version of Charlotte that Carlbrook had created. A shiny new marble cleansed of all its scratches—even the ones she’d gotten by fighting for a spot on the lifeboat. Alan and Randall were molding a success story out of the upper-crust rebel from overseas. The girl who’d arrived at Carlbrook with escorts and a face full of makeup. They wanted Charlotte to see how fantastic she could be if she stayed pure, if she bought in completely. They wanted to strip Charlotte of everything that made her exciting and unique and turn her into an obedient puppet.

  But although she danced her little heart out until the very last word, I knew the real Charlotte was still in there. She was only doing what she had to do. I saw her face relax the moment she could stop smiling. She had gotten past another obstacle and was one step closer to being done with Carlbrook.

  Yet I was still behind the barrier. As I walked down the stairs for my fifteen minutes of Carlbrook fame, my legs shook and my heart raced. I was genuinely terrified. I felt so vulnerable that I had to glance down to reassure myself I wasn’t actually naked.

  I looked out into the crowd and only felt worse. The room was filled with people who’d called me a whore and a terrible friend. Peers who’d scapegoated me and adults who basically implied I was part of some murderous underground. Suffice it to say, these were the last people on earth I felt comfortable singing for.

  I actually had to remind myself to breathe. That’s how completely petrified I was. If Jennifer Lopez’s delivery of “Alive” could be called “breathy,” mine was more like “hyperventilate-y.” As the first notes played, I nearly turned around and ran away. I saw Monica sitting alongside the stage, smiling in that smug way of hers. She truly did think she had me figured out. She thought she could sum up my whole life, all the pain I’d felt at Carlbrook, in a single song.

  I guess I’ve found my way, it’s simple when it’s right.

  She was right, I did want to live, but not for the reasons she thought. Carlbrook wasn’t saving me. It had almost destroyed me, and living in spite of that felt like an act of defiance.

  Feeling lucky just to be here tonight / And happy just to be me and be alive.

  Chapter 32

  CHARLOTTE HAD PROVED herself to be a model student with her dance performance, and she decided to run with the whole good-girl thing. But she did it in a way that would benefit her friends too. We were sitting around bored one weekend, lamenting the field trips the good kids got to take. Usually it was just a trip to a diner, but occasionally it was a basketball game or, bizarrely, a Mary Kay makeup party at a staff member’s house. While we didn’t want to do that, exactly, any chance to leave campus sounded pretty nice.

  Charlotte was our ticket to Applebee’s and she knew it. Luckily, she had the brilliant idea to start a committee that all our friends could join.

  “A church committee!”

  “Seriously?” I said. “You really want to do that?”

  “Why not? Isn’t church better than staying here?”

  I thought about it for a second. “Definitely.”

  Just like that, the God Squad was born.

  Once the staff approved our committee, they hung a list in the commons. If you wanted to join, you just had to sign up—pending adviser permission, of course. For me, just being from the Sou
th was enough to convince Monica that church had been a big part of my life.

  Our little group really gained legitimacy when Shelby signed up. In her pearls and sweater sets, she might as well have been a preacher’s daughter. I was pretty sure she even read the Bible every night like my mom, though whether she also kept a highlighter in her hand, I couldn’t say. A few more people joined—including Levi, who claimed he was ready for a religious conversion. Who knows, maybe it was true.

  When Sunday finally rolled around I was actually excited to get ready for church. I put on a loose skirt for the occasion, no stuffed animals needed. When I completed the look with a crewneck sweater and flats, I couldn’t possibly have been any more the good Southern belle.

  We piled into the Carlbrook van. Even though it reeked of cigarettes and stale hamburgers, something about it still smelled like freedom. As we took off down the road, though, I felt a wave of panic. The last time I got into a car that was ostensibly headed to Sunday service, it had been a trick, my parents’ first attempt to send me to the woods.

  “What church are we going to?” Charlotte said.

  “Um,” the driver said as he checked a note, “I don’t know. Some local Baptist church.”

  “But I’m Presbyterian.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  “Do you want to go to church or not?”

  The van continued driving down the road. Even though the landscape was drab and empty, just a scattering of houses that appeared to be crumbling in real time, I found myself unable to turn away from the window. After so many months of seeing only Carlbrook, anything that wasn’t a green lawn or a white mansion seemed impossibly exotic. Ordinary things, rusted trucks and barking dogs, struck me as utterly surreal. It was proof that there was still a real world out there, just as it was proof that I was no longer in it.

  The van slowed down and I saw a wooden structure up ahead, set back a little from the main road. It was small but recently painted, with a telltale cross on the roof.