Middle Ground

by Katie Kacvinsky

  My walls of self-assurance crumbled. Richard had found my pillar of confidence and ignited an explosive at the base of it. I’d be worthless if I went through another round of nightmares. I’d take up all of Justin’s time again, making him hold my hand through another taxing round of treatment. I’d risk my friends’ lives to keep them meeting with me. This whole thing had been pointless. I felt tears prick the back of my eyes and blinked them away. I pressed my lips together to keep them from shaking.

  Richard walked into the center of the room and pointed up at the screen, at the image of my brain still suspended there. He reached his hand around it like he was holding it. It made my stomach clench.

  “Let me tell you why the brain fascinates me,” he said. “Our entire lives, we’re educated. Logic is painstakingly drilled into us. If we were smart, we would be more logical. But for how large our brains are, humans defy logic. They only want to make decisions with their emotions. Logic is wasted on us.” He looked over at me. “That’s what makes us dangerous. We’re the smartest, yet the most unpredictable force on this planet.”

  “Emotions aren’t always bad,” I pointed out.

  He raised his arms up helplessly. “We can’t control them. When something is out of our control, it needs to be monitored. We’re irrational creatures. We make self-indulgent decisions, not wise ones. How can you trust such an unpredictable species?”

  “Our emotions protect us,” I argued. I was desperate to prove a point. “We’ve existed for thousands of years for a reason. We wouldn’t be here today without our emotions. Fear makes us smarter. It forces our senses awake. Anger makes us change. Love makes us compassionate. Maybe you’re focusing your counseling sessions on the wrong emotions.”

  He shook his head. “Humans refuse to learn. We make the same circular mistakes over and over in life because we always let our emotions get in the way and do the thinking for us. Our own minds are our weakest link. Someone needs to put us in our place.”

  “We don’t belong in a cage.”

  He frowned. “Metaphorically speaking, yes we do. Wouldn’t you agree that you’ve always lived within boundaries? Schedules? Rules? You’ve always been guided. It’s the only way we can survive. We think we’re the smartest, most superior species on the planet, Madeline, yet we’re the only species that is destroying it.”

  He took a vial out of his lab coat and uncapped it. “I remember your father told me, about three years ago, what a disappointment you were to him. How you never seemed to learn. Now I can see why.”

  “I’m not taking that,” I said.

  “Relax,” he said, and the wall screen snapped back to that perfect hillside. A velvet green valley surrounded us, and soft cotton clouds swelled in the blue sky. Classical music filled the air but now the stringed instruments sounded like a cry. A violin wailed out a lonely monologue. A breeze stirred the room. I knew I couldn’t fight him. I downed the liquid in the vial and waited to black out.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, expecting the dark curtain to fall over my mind. But this time it was different. Seconds after I swallowed the drug my mind jerked, like someone had slammed my head against a wall. My temples pushed against my eyes. The valley and sky pressed together into a spinning swirl. He bent closer to me and I reached out for him. I couldn’t breathe.

  “Do you want to know why I showed you my favorite program?” he asked. His words pierced my mind like knives. He was in my head, his fingers clawing at my brain. My head throbbed, and screams circled around me, high, desperate cries for help. I was too stunned to answer. Too paralyzed to move. My heart beat so fast it ached. I withered like a plant dying under a blazing desert sun.

  “I showed it to you because I want the last thing you see to be beautiful,” he whispered. “I think it’s the best way to die.”

  When I could finally open my eyes, I was standing in an empty hallway. I wasn’t in the dormitory anymore. This hallway was bright, lit by a stream of fluorescent lights. To my right was a row of glass panes that separated the hall from an office. A handful of people sat inside behind desks separated by beige cubicle walls. MAIN OFFICE read a sign posted over the door. Across the hall were closed doors; a sign on one said ATTENDANCE, and the other said GUIDANCE COUNSELOR.

  Three short bells rang in quick succession, and the noise was answered by doors opening and a swarm of voices and footsteps flooding into the air. Students shuffled through the hallway carrying books, all of them shouting as if they were competing for who could talk the loudest. They looked about my age, and that’s when it dawned on me.

  I was in a high school.

  The office door swung open, nearly grazing my side. I backed up a few feet, and a man in a suit and tie walked out. He was tall, and his dark hair was combed neatly back on his head. He glanced quickly in my direction and waved down the hall to a teacher. My father was hard to miss, with his confident stride and arrogant energy. But he was nearly twenty years younger. He was skinnier, his hair was thicker, and he didn’t have the sprinkles of gray in it yet. He had sideburns and walked with a bouncier step. His expression was different too; his face bore a look of contentment I’d never seen him wear. Usually his features were hard and set like marble.

  I realized this was his school, where he’d worked as a principal before he’d founded Digital School, Inc.

  He acknowledged students as they passed with nods and smiles and he fell into step with a teacher who approached him. I watched him walk down the hall and then turn the corner, out of sight. I watched, fascinated by the crowd of kids wearing a colorful mixture of expressions, all individual and interesting. It was like being inside a moving piece of artwork. Another bell rang and the students started to disperse.

  The door of the admissions office opened in front of me and a boy walked out. He wore a heavy red winter coat that looked two sizes too big; it fell below his hips. A hat was pulled low over his head, the brim shading his eyes. His black jeans dragged along the ground. He strutted down the hallway like he owned the building. He headed straight for me, and I moved aside at the last second to avoid a collision. He didn’t even say Excuse me.

  “Punk,” I mumbled when he was out of earshot.

  “Hey, Thiel,” somebody yelled. I turned to see a group of kids coming down the hall in my direction. A clan of guys and a few girls clung so tightly together they moved like one creeping animal. A boy in the center of them, short, with black, spiky hair, seemed to speak out for the group. “Where have you been all week?” he asked the boy in the red coat.

  They held each other’s eyes in a stare-down. I looked from one to the other and backed away toward a closed door. I pressed down on the lever, but it was locked.

  “I got expelled,” the kid answered back.

  “You still owe me money,” the other boy announced. His friends snickered and nodded in agreement. They formed an eight-headed creature. Sixteen eyes glared at him. “Six grand,” he said. The group inched closer until they were right in front of me.

  The boy raised his arms in his heavy coat. “I’m all out. I told you I quit.”

  “You quit?” The animal sneered. “You’re not out until you pay your debts. Then we decide if you’re out.” His friends nodded, and the girls in the group watched the interaction with cocky smiles.

  I slowly pieced together what I was seeing. I started to put faces with names. I remembered photographs in the news of all the kids who’d died in a school shooting—the school shooting my father had to break up by killing the gunner himself, a kid named Aaron Thiel.

  “Do I need to come over there and beat the money out of you?” the guy asked, and he broke off from the rest of the group.

  I knew what was coming. I watched the boy lift up the waist of his red coat and reach his hand inside. I didn’t wait to see him pull the gun out. I already knew the ending. I knew the story it would begin.

  I turned and started to run.

  “Dad!” I screamed out as gunshots roared through the air, shaking the gr
ound under my feet. I tried to get past the mob of kids, but a body fell against me and knocked me to the ground. I wriggled myself free from the weight of a boy twitching on top of me. Screams ricocheted off the walls. The glass panes shattered and fell around my body. I wanted to shut my eyes, but they stared around me, wide open.

  I tried to get up but my feet slipped on a smear of blood and I fell over into shards of glass. The ground was wet and slippery, shining in a crimson red. People shouted. Doors opened. More gunshots. Blood splattered the walls. There were bodies slumped over bodies, some still moving. I tried to get up but I couldn’t use my hands. Footsteps crunched over glass. I could see the red coat out of the corner of my eye. I looked up, and the black barrel of a gun was a foot away from my head. It was aimed between my eyes, and it quivered just slightly. I felt the impact at the same time I heard the roar of the shot. It was like someone had smashed my head with a baseball bat. Then there was heat, and pressure, and then it lifted and I was slipping.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “Wake up, Madeline.”

  Gabe’s voice was distant and it echoed like he was talking in a tunnel. I wanted to reach out for him but my arms were too heavy to move.

  “Wake up.”

  I willed my eyes to open but they felt sewn shut. I moved them under the lids. I felt safe underneath their curtain. There’s something comforting about being blind. You don’t have to see your world falling apart.

  “We need to go. It’s almost midnight,” he pressed.

  He snapped on the bright overhead light and the curtain of my eyelids turned from black to yellowish red. A warm hand grabbed my arm and I yelped and cowered deeper in my bed. I pulled the sheets around me, the curtain tighter.

  “What’s the matter with you?” he asked. “Oh my God,” I heard him mutter.

  I knew what he saw. I had thrown up again. I could smell the acidic stench all over my sheets. My hair was matted to my face. Sweat drenched my clothes; even my sheets were wet. I curled up in a tight ball, and the plastic mattress pad under my sheet crinkled from my shaking body. I managed to open my lids, just a slit. The room was fuzzy. He bent down to look at me.

  “I thought the nightmares were over,” he whispered. My lips were trembling so hard I couldn’t answer him.

  “I’m going to pick you up, all right?” he asked. “I’ll take it slow, I promise.”

  He carefully slid his warm arms underneath me. He scooped me out of bed and I tucked my head under his chin and pressed my head against his chest because it was warm and moving with breath and blood and heartbeats. He carried me down the hall, into the bathroom, and helped me stand up next to the showerhead.

  “Rinse off,” he told me. “I’ll grab you a change of clothes.”

  After he left I peeled off the wet, sticky scrubs and threw them against the wall. I turned the water on and the hot jets pierced my skin and forced my eyes completely open. I took deep gulps of air. My lungs started to expand. I reached my arms out in front of me and touched the warm spray with fingers so cold they were almost numb. The hot water burned each tip, and the pain slowly woke me up. My thoughts were starting to thaw.

  ***

  By the time we got downstairs, we were almost an hour late for the meeting. My hair was still wet and dripping onto my sweatshirt. Justin took one look at my weary face and bolted out of his seat.

  “What happened?” he asked. Gabe held his hand up to warn Justin to stay back. He helped me into a chair in the corner of the generator room and I sat down and sipped at a bottle of water. Gabe handed me a blanket and I spread it over my lap. My mind was still fragmented, still coming out of its hiding place. I couldn’t look at anyone directly.

  Everyone waited for me to say something.

  “Abort mission,” I said flatly.

  “What?” Pat asked.

  “System failure.”

  “What is she talking about?” Clare asked.

  “I don’t understand,” Molly said. “You shouldn’t be reacting. I thought the counter-drug was working.”

  “It’s over,” Gabe said. “They caught on. They know they can’t break her with the Cure so they’re giving her something else.” He looked at me, his face severe. “You need to get out of here, Maddie. Tonight. It’s suicide if you don’t.”

  “What are you talking about?” Molly asked.

  Gabe sighed impatiently. “Remember when I told you Maddie was one of the only students who’ve talked to me in the six years I’ve been here?” We all nodded. Gabe looked down at his hands. “The other two passed away. The second one happened last year. The DC claimed each time that it was some kind of a virus,” he said quietly.

  “Are you sure it was a virus?” Molly asked.

  Gabe shook his head. “I got to know that second guy pretty well. He was a lot like Maddie. Determined. Stubborn. So confident it got him into trouble. They couldn’t crack him. They pushed him through a second round of counseling sessions when he didn’t break after six months. That’s when he started to get sick. He couldn’t keep any food down. He started having seizures. Then one day he wasn’t in his room.”

  “How can they get away with this?” Clare asked.

  “They hide everything,” Gabe said. “They have food stations on every floor, and I have to empty them and restock them each month, even though no one uses them. I throw away all the food and replace it, just in case people ever get suspicious and come in here for an inspection. It’s all a front so the DC looks humane.”

  We were all quiet for a few seconds. The even moan of the generator was the only noise.

  “You’re saying they tried to kill her today?” Justin asked.

  Gabe swallowed. “They don’t let people win in this place. They don’t accept failure. One of these days she’s not going to wake up.”

  Justin pulled on his hair and sat back down so his eyes were level with mine. He asked me to tell him everything I remembered.

  I did my best to recap what happened the last few days. I told them everything from my father’s visit to Richard’s personal counseling session. I admitted to everyone I filled my father in on what we were trying to do.

  “You told your father our plan?” Molly said with exasperation. “Why not just sky-cam it to the entire country while you’re at it?”

  I was too tired to argue. “I’m sorry. When I saw him, it all made sense,” I said. “My dad can help us. If he’s willing to back us up—”

  “Why would he ever help us?” Molly asked. “We’re trying to take down his system. We’re the enemy.” She laughed but there was no humor to it. It sounded like a cry of defeat.

  I looked at Justin, and his face was unreadable, lost in thought. It would kill me to think I let him down.

  “But we’re not fighting my dad,” I said. “And he knows that. It’s this insane asylum Richard’s created. My dad had no idea what was going on in here. Richard refuses to let him tour the DCs. But now he knows.”

  “So what?” Pat said. “Is he suddenly going to join your side now?”

  “He won’t quit until he knows what’s going on. If there’s one thing I know about my dad, he wants people to be safe.”

  We were quiet as we all thought about this. Clare tapped her feet; Gabe fidgeted; I chewed my nails. Molly and Pat paced across the room. Justin was the only one who sat motionless, absorbed in thought.

  “What do we do now?” I asked. “Gabe’s right, I’m worthless to you if they put me through a second round of sessions.”

  “You’re coming with us,” Justin said. I looked around at everyone’s reaction. Molly looked anxious; Pat relieved. Clare was beaming.

  I worried about Gabe. “Won’t you get in trouble if they notice I’m gone?”

  “I can buy you some time,” he said. “Maybe a week, until your next counseling session comes up.”

  “One week?” Molly squeaked. “We need to try to free everyone in this place in one week?”

  “The counter-drugs are working,” Ga
be said. “Students aren’t scared anymore. Connie had to break up a floor of guys gaming yesterday. Practically every student has violated at least one of the rules in the last month. Vaughn has scheduled an all-staff meeting for next week—it’s the first one the DC has ever had. They’ve had to put floor security in the dorms because the Eyes aren’t working.”

  “They’re down?” Justin asked.

  Gabe shrugged. “One of the kids got out of his room at night and took a camera apart. It deactivated the whole system. All students have to be escorted when they leave their rooms now.”

  Justin laughed out loud at this. “That’s just too easy. And the entire staff will be together? In one room?” he asked.

  Gabe nodded. “A week from today.”

  “Well, now we have the date finalized,” he said. “In one week, we shut this place down.”

  “We can’t plan it that fast,” Molly argued.

  Justin raised his hands. “We don’t have a choice.”

  “He’s right,” Pat said. It was the first time I’d heard him step up and agree in a long time. “This is like a winning lottery ticket. We can’t pass it up.”

  “We’ll conference-call in two days,” Justin said. “Tonight, I just want to get Maddie out of here.”

  Everyone quickly got up but I dawdled. It was all happening too fast. I looked around the dingy basement and felt a sense of nostalgia. This room had become a sanctuary.

  I stood up and Gabe offered an encouraging grin. I hated leaving here without him. I felt selfish, like I’d used him as a steppingstone and now I was kicking him to the side.

  “You don’t have a choice this time,” he said, reading my thoughts. “You’re not coming back with me.” He reached his hand out so we could shake on it, but I surprised both of us and leaned in and wrapped my arms around his shoulders.

  “I promise we’ll get you out of here,” I said, and when I let him go, the blood rushed to his cheeks, staining them red. “Wherever we are, you’re always welcome. You’re our family now,” I said.