Beyond Belief (17 page)

I was also friends with two sisters, Eva and Caitlin. Eva liked putting on makeup and all things girly, and I was really a girly girl at heart, too, even though I tried to be a tomboy, because that was what was cool back then. I liked going to Eva’s room with her during meals or during bathroom breaks while on the decks, and going through her bottom drawer and finding cool stuff. Eva, Caitlin, and Naomi seemed more human and less robotic than any of the other kids at the Ranch, which was probably what attracted me to them.

Because our uniforms were laundered at the end of each day, we were allowed to wear regular clothes for evening Scientology studies. Caitlin, Eva, and I liked to swap clothes. We also shared music and exchanged Christmas presents every December.

Hanging out with Caitlin and Eva, it was hard to ignore that we were all getting older, as were the kids around us. Though it was strongly discouraged by our superiors at the Ranch, kids were suddenly talking about things like flirting and liking boys. It all seemed pretty innocent but, before long, I began to see the consequences when it wasn’t.

N
OT LONG AFTER
I
GOT BACK,
I
STARTED ON THE
L
IFE
O
RIENTATION
Course, or LOC, which was the course that came after the completion of the Key to Life. This time, Justin was going to be my twin. Because the supervisors at the Ranch were not qualified to deliver the course, we had to take it at the Int Base in the evenings, replacing our Scientology studies, which took place at the Ranch.

In LOC, we learned more about the twelve human conditions and the steps that had to be taken in order to improve our state of well-being as well as other parts of Scientology’s Ethics technology. Twinning with Justin was frustrating. We were eight years apart and had a hard time getting along. Just as in Key to Life, we were required to read the text out loud without stumbling or hesitating. If I made a mistake, I had to stop and look up the word I supposedly didn’t understand in the dictionary. Justin would stop me if I made the slightest mistake, as he was supposed to, but I would deny it. He had no sympathy, and would get even more annoyed at me for lying. In reality, I had little idea what the whole darned book was talking about, but I couldn’t let him know that, either. We were constantly raising our hand to call the supervisor, who was tasked with being our mediator. My brother, peevish and domineering, would make fun of me, and I would be in tears.

Eventually, Justin told the staff at the Ranch that I was in way over my head, and that LOC was too complicated for me. He also told them there was no way I was capable of retaining anything from Key to Life, either. He started spot-checking me in front of Mr. Parker and Mr. Bell, asking me things like, “What is the subjunctive mode?” As much as I had mentally rehearsed these answers for the past three months, Justin was right: I couldn’t remember them.

In Scientology, forgetting was considered “blankness,” and a symptom of a misunderstood word. Essentially, by forgetting, I was admitting that I had gone past words I hadn’t known. This was considered a false attest to a course, which was an offense. Because of his tattling, I was assigned the lower condition of Doubt, which meant I now had to do several weeks of amends before I could rejoin my group.

I also ended up having to redo most of the Key to Life course. I’d go to the Int Base in the mornings to twin with a woman there. I would travel with the morning food run, returning to the Ranch when lunch was delivered. Thankfully, the Key to Life was not as challenging the second time.

Because I missed decks to do the course, I had to make them up in the afternoon, but it wasn’t that bad. I got to work with my brother’s friend Teddy, who had become a member of the Ranch staff and was now called Mr. Blackman. Our projects were technical things, like fixing the well on the property. I’d ride with him on his motorcycle to the worksite, and sit beside him, handing him his tools. It was much more relaxed than regular deck time, where everybody was under pressure to move fast and produce. Here, I was hardly working at all.

I enjoyed hanging out with Teddy. He’d ask me about Florida, where he had been born. He’d tell me how he just wanted to graduate from the Cadet Org so that he could get a girlfriend. Sometimes, we’d climb up the mountains around the creek to watch the sunset, or hike to a gorgeous waterfall. I had never known that the Ranch property was so pretty, because I had never had time to enjoy it. Teddy became my friend, although as my brother’s friend first, he was really like a brother to a pesky little sister.

My friend Eva started commenting about how nice Teddy was to me. She seemed jealous. I thought this was odd, because, as far as I knew, they weren’t even friends. Most of the girls at the Ranch had some degree of crush on Teddy. When I was little, I did, too, but he was too old for me and too much like my brother. I actually liked another boy my age named Corwin, who liked me, too, and sometimes came to my dorm at night to talk. We sat across from each other at course time, and other times we hung out during meals. I would watch him skateboard on the ramp at the front of the Big House, innocent but flirtatious. My friends could tell we liked each other, because if there was a minute of free time, we were together.

For a few months, Teddy and I worked decks together until, one day at muster, I saw him being escorted off, clearly in trouble. Prior to this, I had seen Eva, dressed in civvies, being hustled to the Cottage by an adult. Being in civvies on a weekday was never a good sign. Next, I saw Teddy, also wearing civvies, being taken to a different building by Rosemary’s son, Mike, who was now also a member of the Ranch staff. I wasn’t sure what was happening, but from the looks of it, they had done something together. I heard nothing else until later that day at the deck muster, when the Director of Inspections and Reports from CMO International came to the Ranch. She was in charge of discipline and wielded a lot of power. Everyone at muster was so quiet I could hear my own breath when she stood before us and announced in a very serious tone that Eva and Teddy had been having an “out 2D,” “2D” being short for the Second Dynamic. Out 2Ds were any kinds of relationship that went beyond kissing. This was a very serious allegation.

The nature of this offense went back to the eight dynamics, which we were supposed to use when making decisions. Because the second dynamic was dedicated to family, personal relationships, sex, and children, Eva and Teddy being accused of an out 2D meant that they had been charged with something sexually unethical, which violated the mores of the group.

I was scared for them, as they most certainly would be harshly punished. As I stood wondering what would happen to them, the director of inspections had more shocking accusations, announcing that Justin had known about the relationship and hadn’t reported it. Failure to report meant he would receive the same penalty that they would. Justin was adamant that he had not known anything, but she clearly did not believe him and had him pulled from the assembly.

The next several days were a witch hunt with all the kids anxious and worried that they might be next. The woman from Int remained at the Ranch, giving meter checks and confronting people on various reports of unethical behavior. She made people write reports about any 2D activity, including flirting, that they had been part of or witnessed. Young as we were, the definition of flirting was often misleading, and if you had a crush on someone or spent time with him, that was enough to raise questions, as it was considered unacceptable.

As a result, I had to respond to a handful of reports that said that Corwin and I had been flirting. Though I knew that all contact between boys and girls was now being taken extremely seriously, I still would have hung out with Corwin had it not been for the disclosure that he had also been flirting with my old friend Rebecca, with whom I’d tried to run away. He came to my door to find out why I was ignoring him, and I was kind of mean. I told him that I just wasn’t flirting with him anymore. I could tell that he was a little hurt, but so was I.

Eva and Teddy were in big trouble, although they were allowed to remain on the Ranch and weren’t sent to the Rehabilitation Project Force, or RPF, which was standard for this kind of violation. RPF was for people who had messed up badly. They were required to wear all black; they had to run, not walk, while on their decks, wherever they went; they were not allowed to speak to other crew members unless spoken to first. They got half-pay and fifteen-minute meal breaks. If they disobeyed or backflashed, they had to run laps. Their days were divided between heavy manual labor and intense auditing, where they were required to uncover their evil intentions and get rid of them through Scientology processing. Being assigned to RPF was a Sea Org member’s worst nightmare. When I first arrived at the Ranch, the RPF program was located there.

Instead of RPF, Teddy had to endure being ostracized. He went from being the coolest guy at the Ranch to the pariah whom nobody spoke to.

“I used to think he was so cool,” a friend told me one day, “but now I just think he’s a loser.”

She wasn’t the only one who felt that way. In most people’s esteem, he had sunk to the lowest of the low. Later on, I learned from Teddy’s mother that he had been assigned to RPF after the out 2D with Eva, but my uncle Dave had saved him from having to do it. I never found out the reason, but I assumed it might have been because Teddy was young and technically a Cadet, not a Sea Org member.

Personally, I couldn’t bring myself to feel the same condemnation toward Teddy that other people did. More than anything, I felt bad for him. I didn’t look at him and see someone who’d hurt the group or disobeyed Scientology; I saw him as my brother’s friend who’d always been nice to me.

As part of his ethics program, he had to read LRH’s ethics policies, which were kept in the same building in which the vitamins were stored. I was sure he expected me to be like everyone else and not talk to him, but when nobody was looking, I’d at least tried to say hi. I’d see him there if I was working, and I’d ask him how he was doing. Teddy was grateful for any friends, and a few times, I even saw him break down in tears.

Eva didn’t seem to be having as hard a time with being shunned as Teddy. I still talked to her on the sly, although I’d get in trouble when I was caught. One time, I was warned to stop fraternizing with her, or I would receive the same penalties that she had gotten. I continued anyway, as she was my friend.

Meanwhile, I was starting to be grilled about Justin and his relationship with a girl at the Ranch named Tiffany. All I knew was that Tiffany had once confessed to me her undying love for him, and I had never told anyone. During the interrogations, I stupidly said, “I’m not telling you anything about my brother!” which, of course, made the situation more suspicious. I thought my brother would appreciate my loyalty, but instead he was angry with me, and told me I was an idiot.

Eventually, things quieted down and the Director of Inspections and Reports went back to the Int Base, but her work at the Ranch clearly had the desired impact. After being sniffed out and persecuted, we were not just wary about who we were seen with, we were even more careful about who we could trust.

In many ways, though, everything I’d witnessed with Eva and Teddy had the opposite effect on me. Before the visit from the Director of Inspections, I’d sometimes wondered what I would do if I was put in a situation where a friend had done something bad and gotten in trouble with the group. Now, for the first time, I had my answer, and I was surprised at how quickly and naturally my reaction had come to me. No matter what was considered ethical or what Scientology would consider right, friends came first. Ostracizing friends was not something I could bring myself to do.

C
HAPTER
T
WELVE

FLAG AGAIN

I
WAS ELEVEN IN THE SPRING OF 1995, WHEN
M
OM TOLD ME THAT
I would be returning to Florida to complete my Key to Life redo. She said that, because Flag hadn’t gotten me through the course properly the first time, they were the ones who needed to fix it. The whole thing was very embarrassing. I worried that Nikki would be really upset with me for false attesting, but I’d have to deal with that when I got to Clearwater.

When I arrived, I noticed a few things had changed. Sharni no longer worked for Mom; she was working as a cook at the Hibiscus instead. She seemed to really like it, although she said she would miss hanging out with me. Now Valeska was going to be taking care of me. Not only that, she was also going to be my new twin in the Key to Life course.

In addition, Mom had a new male co-worker whom she seemed to spend a lot of time with. His name was Don Jason, and he was the right-hand man to the captain of the Flag Service Organization, a very high rank. He was a nice-looking man, with close-cropped blond hair and pale blue eyes, and his wife, Pilar, was an executive who worked in Mom’s office. Don would sometimes join us for meals, and Mom talked about him a lot.

That first day when I arrived at the course room, I was a little nervous about what Nikki would say to me, but I was relieved when she didn’t come down hard. The Key to Life course room had all new students this time around. I became friends with a huge boy named Buster and his twin Jason, who I thought was cute. Waiting for roll call, Valeska, Buster, Jason, and I would play twenty questions.

Valeska and I would take the bus home together after class. We’d go swimming, make silly videos, or paint each other’s faces. I’d sometimes help Valeska with her work, like laundry and snacks. That was when she’d tell me stories about her childhood. She had been born in Switzerland, and when she was young, her father wanted to join the Sea Org in England, but her mother did not want to. Despite the disagreement, the family decided to drive from Switzerland to England, and during a pit stop, her mother got out of the car, saying she was going to get coffee. She never came back. Upon arriving in England, Valeska’s father sent Valeska and her two siblings to the Cadet Org, even though none of them spoke English.