Middle Ground

by Katie Kacvinsky

  I crossed my arms over my chest and arched my back. I was the product of Richard’s prodigious accomplishments. I was his poster child. I wanted him to take a good, long look at me. What did he think of his program now?

  Richard glared at Connie. “Next time, when I ask for a student, see that they show up looking a little more presentable,” he said, as if my appearance were a grooming accident and not due to months of torture.

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  My dad took in my appearance, my sullen face, my weak frame. I met his gaze, our eyes crashing together like trains on the same track. I wanted him to see me like this. I wanted him to get a firsthand look at what was happening inside here.

  “I have appointments, so if there isn’t anything further to discuss?” Richard asked.

  “I think we’re done here,” my dad said. He shifted his eyes to Richard. “I’d like to talk to my daughter for a few minutes. Alone.”

  “We don’t usually allow visitors.”

  “I think in this case you can make an exception.”

  My dad pressed his gaze, and I saw Richard back down.

  “Connie, see that Madeline returns to her room when they’re finished. You’ve got ten minutes.”

  Connie nodded, and my dad led me out of the office, down the hall. He pressed his hand against my lower back while we walked, which made me stiffen, and informed Connie we’d be outside. He opened the front door and we were met by the bright sun. I squinted underneath it but the heat was appreciated after the sterile office building. We walked until we were in the center of the courtyard, and my dad turned to stare at me.

  He dropped his cool composure. He looked horrified.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I stated.

  “How are you fine? You look emaciated. What’s going on, Maddie?”

  I studied my dad. He was the person I’d grown up admiring. He used to be such a hero in my eyes. A national celebrity. Someone so brave and strong. Sometimes I liked to believe I inherited a few of those traits. And staring at him, I knew I still loved my father. I couldn’t help it. Love was ingrained in my skin, in my fibers. And love pushes you to open up. It encourages you to trust. I didn’t want to fight him anymore. I didn’t have the heart. I only wanted to tell him the truth.

  “I need to tell you something,” I said, and he nodded quickly. I knew I didn’t have much time. I told him the highlights—that the detention center was brainwashing kids, that they were planting fear in our minds to control us, that we were all being drugged and emotionally tortured.

  “I don’t believe it,” he said. “We test kids the moment they’re released from these centers. We’ve never found any evidence of abuse, mental or physical. There’s never been one incident of drugs reported.”

  I groaned at his comments. “Dad, stop looking at people like we’re just some points on a graph. I’m not a statistic. Look at me. Look at what they’re turning us into. They’re killing us. They’re poisoning us. There isn’t time to argue about it. Look around and see it for yourself. It’s gone too far, can’t you see that now? I’m living proof of it. We’re not the enemy. We’re the victims.”

  My dad blew out an angry sigh. “If you had stopped associating with people like Justin Solvi, none of this would have happened. Those people are bringing you down, Madeline. They’re recruiting you to be in a radical cult, nothing more. Maybe now you’ll start to agree with me.”

  I glared at him for assuming this. “It isn’t Justin’s fault. He’s the reason why I’m surviving this hellhole,” I argued. “My friends are the ones helping me get through this. I could have broken out of here months ago if I wanted. I’m in here because I choose to be in here.”

  He shook his head. “Some friends, to encourage you to stay in here and rot.”

  “Don’t you get it? You know me better than that. I made the decision to stay. They didn’t encourage me. And don’t forget that you willingly put me in here,” I reminded him.

  “I had no choice, Maddie. Paul recognized you. It was all over the news. I had to let it happen.”

  “To make yourself look good,” I pointed out.

  He inhaled a deep breath. His eyes blinked hard. “One day, I hope you’ll forgive me,” he said. “One day you’ll understand.”

  I hated that expression. Adults always said “One day you’ll understand,” but what they really meant was they didn’t want to take the time to understand us.

  He stared at me with disbelief, as if he’d only just heard what I’d said. “You’re telling me you could escape, but you’re willingly staying in here? Why?”

  “I’d rather be miserable in here, fighting for the life I want, than out there, being forced to live half a life. At least I know what I want. Not very many people can claim that.” I tightened my lips, and my eyes mirrored the stubbornness in his. I lowered my voice. I took a huge risk, because for the first time, he looked scared. A door was open, a passage that my dad rarely welcomed me through. It was his vulnerable side. It was a tunnel that passed the thick walls of his mind and went straight to his heart. It was a passage I thought he had closed on me, but I could see it was open. He still loved me, and when you love someone, it’s your instinct to help them.

  “My friends are out there, working twenty-four hours a day. We’re figuring out a way to free all of these kids before it’s too late. The only reason I’m not a vegetable right now is that they’re risking their freedom for me. They’re meeting with me every week to help me get through this. That’s why the DC hasn’t broken me yet.”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “Madeline, I’m begging you to be rational. What you’re talking about is impossible. You could be executed for something like this.”

  “Not if you’re willing to help.”

  He told me there was nothing he could do. “I have no authority here.”

  “You can use your voice. Speak out against the DCs when we expose what’s really going on. We have the evidence; we can prove it. You can’t be blind anymore to what’s happening in here. You see it with your own eyes now. So, back us up.” My eyes pleaded with him to agree. “You know how much weight your words carry.”

  He studied my face. He was wavering. “Do you realize how that would make me look?”

  I nodded. He could go to jail. He would most likely be linked to what was happening at the DC. The crime would be on his shoulders as well.

  “Dad, I know you started something with the best intentions. I know you did it out of love. But the system is broken. Remember the reason you started DS—to save lives. But look at me. There are thousands of kids like me in these centers. And it’s all covered up. Richard is covering it up. And you have the power to stop it. Please, support us. That’s all I ask. Be honest.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Do you think we’re ever going to be at a point where we can trust each other, Madeline?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Maybe we can start to try.”

  The office door opened and Connie stalked out. I backed away from my dad and followed her to the dorms. I looked over at him before I went inside and even in the direct sunlight his face was shadowed in anger. Anger can unravel you. It can give you the fuel you need to make a change. I could only hope it would work on my father.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Over the next month, the stifling air inside the dormitory started to move. Doors began to open. The atmosphere was spiked with life.

  The changes would have been invisible to the average person, but they jumped out at me like flashing lights. The first time I noticed something different, I was on my way to the bathroom. I passed a girl in the hall. Usually, if we saw another person in the hall, we bolted. We avoided one another like we carried contagious diseases that could be transferred by any connection, even eye contact.

  But this time in the hall, neither the girl nor I cowered. We didn’t hug opposite sides of the hall. We looked right at each other. Our eyes locked. She was skinny, like me
. She had red hair and freckles. Her eyes were light brown. Her mouth curved into a shy smile. She said “Hey” when she passed, and it nearly made my heart stop with surprise.

  “Hey,” I said back to her and returned the smile. I was beaming. My body was flushed with so much energy I wanted to sprint through the halls and scream. By the time I made it to the bathroom, my eyes had filled with tears. I closed the door and slid down the wall to the floor and basked in that simple moment. I’d forgotten how desperate I was to feel hope, to see some kind of acknowledgment that this struggle was worth it. I wiped the tears off my face. I hadn’t realized I was walking such a fine line, so close to the edge of despair. I’d been avoiding it the past few months. My friends helped me avoid it. They helped me to only see courage and strength and love. And that’s what got me through. I’d never looked down into that giant abyss of despair because my friends had forced me to keep looking up.

  That girl, that stranger, had looked at me; she smiled; she spoke. The counter-drug was starting to work. We had a chance, a real chance, to free these people. It wasn’t a dream anymore.

  The more I looked for signs of life, the more I saw. People were leaving their doors open. Voices flooded out. Music filtered out. Girls started hanging around the food machine like it was a coffee shop. Conversations spilled into the air. The Eyes reported us and extra counseling sessions were called, but the MindReaders didn’t work anymore.

  The DC fought to contain us. They added extra security. Doors were locked permanently and we all had to have escorts every time we left our rooms. The Eye reported all our movements. But it didn’t matter. We were winning.

  ***

  I settled into my desk chair with a cup of coffee. Only three more weeks until my six-month sentence was up. I could taste freedom. The nightmares had stopped completely. I hadn’t met with Dr. Stevenson in over a month. I’d behaved since then; I stayed in my room and focused my energy on getting out of here. I dedicated my time to finishing my DS classes. I paid my dues and served my time. Now I just needed to coast through, blend in, and stay out of trouble. Then I could shut the whole place down.

  I turned on my wall screen to finish a research assignment for Computer Ethics, the final project for my last DS class. My screen suddenly locked and I set my coffee cup on the desk with a frown.

  “Hey,” I mumbled out loud and tried to restart the computer. A blinking yellow light alerted me I had a message. I touched the light and there was a note informing me I had a mandatory counseling appointment.

  I sighed at the screen. It must be my last session, maybe to discuss how the release works. Would someone be allowed to pick me up? I checked off that I’d received the message, and the screen brought me back to my DS assignment.

  ***

  After eating dinner and sliding my food tray through the slot, I headed for the elevator. My scrubs still hung on me, but I had gained enough weight that my face had some color, and my cheeks were filling out again. I rode the elevator downstairs to my assigned counseling room, but when I walked inside, it wasn’t Dr. Stevenson waiting to greet me. Standing next to the wall seat was Richard Vaughn. I stopped at the edge of the room. I started to back up, as if I’d walked in on someone else’s counseling appointment.

  “Madeline,” he said with a smile that was too friendly to trust. He waved me in. “Come in,” he said, and motioned to the chair next to him. He was taller than I’d imagined, taller than Justin. He pressed his hands down into the pockets of his long white lab coat, which reached almost to his ankles.

  When the door shut behind me, the wall screens snapped on. Classical music filtered through the surround speakers, long dramatic chords of violins and cellos. It was graceful and melancholy, like music convincing you to move on after a tragedy. I looked around the wall screens and my eyes absorbed the most picturesque landscape I’d ever seen. The sky above was deep blue, cloudless, and stretched over us like a canopy. The room was no longer a detention center. Richard and I were on top of a hill looking down at a green valley below us. We stood on an old asphalt road that curved down a gentle slope. Green hills rolled through the distance like frozen waves of land. They looked as soft as velvet to touch. The hills dipped toward a crystal blue lake in the center. The still water reflected the sky and the hills. There wasn’t a single person or building in sight. Just wilderness and sunshine. The classical music seemed to flow out of the ground and down from the sky, and the wind and the trees moved to the rhythm.

  “It’s paradise,” I said, like I was in a trance. I didn’t want to walk out of it. My feet floated like I was caught in a spell, like I could join the flock of white birds passing overhead. “Does this place actually exist?”

  Richard walked in a circle around me. He smiled out at the valley and nodded. “Of course it exists, Madeline. It’s my favorite program,” he said. “Anything we want exists. That’s the beauty of technology.”

  I watched him carefully. Beauty or power? I wanted to ask. I made my way across the room and sat down on the seat. He approached me and the landscape snapped off. I reached my hand out and wanted to pull it back. I could get lost in that valley and down those warm, inviting hills. The landscape turned into pale flesh-colored walls. Richard walked over to me and rested his hand on my shoulder. My body tensed under his touch.

  “When I’m in town I like to meet with a few of the patients personally,” he said. “I’m the DC director, but I used to be a psychiatrist myself.”

  I politely shrugged his hand off my shoulder. There was no point in pretending to cower in front of Richard.

  “I know your background,” I said. “You specialized in neuroscience at UCLA. You won awards for discovering hallucinogenic herbs. Then you specialized in memory-recovery treatments. You helped people with Alzheimer’s regain memory by using shock therapy. You made millions in the drug market and sponsored digital school.” I was quoting information Molly had dug up on him—details I never would have been able to find in the DC.

  He tilted his head to the side. “That’s right,” he said, clearly impressed. “I’ve dedicated my life to the study of the human brain. It’s the most complicated computer ever created. It’s a beautiful machine.”

  “Organ,” I mumbled, to clarify that it was not a machine. I wished Justin were here right now. This was a topic he would love to debate.

  Richard took a cord out of his pocket that was attached to the same MindReader Dr. Stevenson used with me, and I obediently slipped it on. I felt the familiar tingling sensation in my head. I wasn’t scared. I knew any memory he tried to download would be blocked.

  “Dr. Stevenson told me you were reluctant to cooperate with our program.”

  “Reluctant?” I asked, and my mouth fell open at this accusation. I had experienced everything every other student had faced. I’d had just as many nightmares. I didn’t cut any corners. The only difference was I fought back.

  “It’s as if you’re immune to our therapy,” he said, “which is very rare.” He pointed at the wall screen. An image of my brain appeared, its tunnels and ridges and canals wrapped in a tight bundle. It was the same picture I’d seen at my first counseling session. Once again, the blue and red colors were drastically unbalanced.

  POSITIVE: 3%

  NEGATIVE: 97%

  I couldn’t help but smile. I had managed to build even more defiance against their system. Then, staring at the image, it hit me what these numbers actually represented. It was another trick. The DC switched around the emotions. The 97 percent didn’t stand for anger and panic and anxiety and negative energy. That number was the positive reading; it stood for hope and courage and optimism and strength.

  “In all the years my program has thrived, I’ve never seen a student actually become more hostile from our procedures. You certainly have a lot of your father in you, don’t you? A very strong character. Mentally incorrigible.”

  I looked back at him and nodded. “You mean unbreakable?”

  “Defiance has its li
mits,” he said, and paused for a few seconds. “That’s why I’m scheduling you for a second round of treatment, one counseling session a week,” he said, and smiled at me. “With a slightly different drug. I think you’ll come around this time.”

  “What?” I said. My hands clamped down on the sides of my seat and squeezed the plastic cushion. I looked back at the screen and the numbers were already changing as panic started to take over. “You can’t do that.”

  He raised an eyebrow at me. “I run every DC in the country,” he stated. “I assure you I can. I’m lengthening your sentence to another six months, since your last sentence appeared to be such a joke to you. You don’t waste our time inside of here, Madeline.” His wrinkled mouth formed a thin line. “You only waste yours.”

  I took a deep breath. This wasn’t happening. I’d come this far. I’d endured months of torture. But I couldn’t do it again. I knew I couldn’t physically or mentally go through the nightmares again. I was getting nauseated just thinking about it.

  “We’re also going to freeze your computer use for the time being. I don’t think you’re ready to be involved with digital school or socializing yet.”

  “Dr. Vaughn,” I said, and tried to keep my voice steady, as if he would bargain with me. “My sentence is almost over.”

  “We have the right to extend it if we feel you aren’t ready.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Why do I need more counseling sessions?”

  His pale blue eyes were hard on mine. “Because you’re a threat, Madeline. You’re dangerous to society. We can’t let you out knowing you’ll just cause problems again. People are happy now, don’t you see? They like to be entertained; they feel entitled to have everything they want handed to them. The world you are fighting for simply cannot happen.”

  He leaned in closer until his face was inches from mine. “And I’m not about to let one teenage girl jeopardize my entire program.”