Counting Backwards (10 page)

I remember what he said last night about how he came here angry, looking for a fight. And all the violence in his past.

“What was that about?” Margo asks me. We’re standing in the same spot, still linked arm in arm.

“I don’t know.”

The safeties raise up the other kid and drag him away. His manic energy is gone, and he looks ill and used up. He’s the one who started it, but right now he sure seems like the victim. Victor rushes over to us. Nobody’s dragging him anywhere, and I understand why he keeps A.J. around, for protection.

“This is not good,” Victor says. “They’re going to drug-test Cameron. I bet he’ll say we gave him the pills.”

I remember the kid’s eyes, the way he moved so erratically. Of course, he was high.

“Did you?” I ask.

“No,” Victor says defensively. “We’re not drug dealers. Cigars, cigarettes, a little liquor here and there, but that’s it. He got them from somewhere else.”

“Does A.J. have anything on him?” Margo asks.

“Some money, maybe, that’s about it.”

What about his keys? I wonder, but I don’t say it aloud.

“What will they do to him?” I ask Victor.

“He’ll get sent to the first floor.”

I shudder at the thought of it. “For how long?”

“Who knows?” Victor shrugs. “He’ll deal. It’s not his first time.”

“That doesn’t make it any better,” I snap, irritated that he isn’t more concerned.

“I’ve spent my time in there too,” Victor says, then glances at Margo like
What’s her problem?
They think I’m overreacting.

The bell rings, and the remaining safeties herd us back into the school building. I can’t get the image of A.J. out of my head, the expression that crossed his face when he looked at me. Was it . . . shame?

Later that afternoon in my dorm room I move my duffel bag and unplug my clothes from the vent. I call down to him but get no response. In the middle of one of my attempts to reach him, I glance up to find Brandi standing in the middle of my room. I do the first thing I can think of—I pull a Charlotte and let out a ferocious roar, screaming so loud it hurts my own ears to hear it. Brandi curses me and rushes out of the room. Not until Tracy’s standing in my doorway do I dare stop.

“What’s going on?” Tracy asks.

“Brandi,” I pant, “in my room.”

“She stole my earrings,” Brandi shouts from across the hall.

Earrings?

“What earrings?” Tracy asks.

“My
gold
hoops.”

“Did you take her earrings?” Tracy asks me.

“No.”

“Yes, you did too, you crazy bitch. Trish and Stacia can’t find theirs, either.”

I didn’t take them, but I can guess who did.

Tracy stands in the hallway between us. “Can you prove she took them?”

“Search her room. I know she has them.”

I tense up, worried about what Tracy might find if she searches my room—the money, A.J.’s key—but she only glances around briefly, not even bothering to look. “I don’t see anything,” she says.

“Then you must be as blind as you are stupid.”

“Maybe so. But your smart mouth just lost you your phone privileges for the next two weeks.”

“What? You can’t do that.”

“I just did.”

“I’m talking to Kayla about this.” She storms down the hall, and I nearly laugh out loud.

“Thanks, Tracy. You’re awesome.”

“Mm-hmm, and don’t you forget it.”

I try calling down to A.J. a few more times that night but get no response. I look for him the next morning on walkover, but he isn’t there. In line I ask Margo if she’s heard anything.

“Don’t worry, T, he’ll be out in time for the dance.”

I clench my fists. “I don’t care about that stupid dance, Margo. I don’t even want to go.”

“I bet you’d go with A.J.”

“Ugh, you’re making me crazy.”

I glance up and see Brandi and her crew walk by, minus their earrings. Their earlobes look strangely naked, and they seem to have lost some of their menace as well.

“What’d you do with their earrings?” I ask her.

“I buried them someplace they’ll never be found. I’m doing them a favor, really. Hoop earrings are so passé.”

“You should have included me.”

“Next time, T. You’ve gotten a lot of heat lately. You can make it up to me by coming down to my room this afternoon. We need to pick out our dresses for the Harvest Ball. It’s only eight days away.”

“Dresses? Where’d you get dresses from?”

“It’s in the welcome packet. Everyone brings a dress, and lucky for you, I happen to have a few extra.”

“Margo, I really don’t want to go to this dance.”

“But you will, Taylor, because you’re my friend and you’d do anything to make me happy.”

I shake my head at her. Not many people amuse me, and even fewer can get me to do what they want. Unbelievably, Margo can do both.

School passes by in a daze. I keep hoping to see A.J. in the
hall, but he is nowhere. In the pen that day, I make a beeline for Victor. I want information.

“The safeties trashed our rooms,” he says, “but they didn’t find anything. We’re too good for that.”

“Where’s A.J.?”

“Back in the dorms.”

“Is he okay?”

Victor pats my shoulder. “He’s fine. He likes being by himself.”

No, he doesn’t,
I think, frustrated that I can’t do anything to help him. I remember A.J.’s voice in the basement, his sad story and the loneliness that loomed so large. Then I had to go and run out on him.

The bell rings, and I continue on to automotive, where we work on the Bronco. Turns out, all it needs are some new belts, hoses, and an alternator, which have already been ordered. I watch the car keys trade hands. I’d only need the key for about a minute by myself to make a mold, assuming A.J. will help me with the rest. But what can I use in place of plaster?

Margo won’t let up on me about this dance, and A.J.’s not responding to my calls through the vent. I need something to take my mind off him, so that afternoon during leisure I corner Kayla in the common room and ask if I can go down to the second floor. I need to try on some damn dresses.

“Why?” Kayla asks me suspiciously.

“Margo wants me to pick out a dress for that dance thing.”

“The Harvest Ball?” she says, her voice rising an octave.

“Yeah. That.”

“Of course you can. I’ll take you there myself.”

I follow her down to the second floor, where she hands me off to Tabitha, the second-floor intern. “You
have
to show me your dress after you pick one out,” Kayla says before leaving.

Margo meets me in the hallway, wearing a black satin slip dress that cuts above the knee on the left side and drops down to the floor on the right. She’s adorned it with a feather boa and a long black cigarette holder, minus the cigarette. She’s even penciled in a fake mole on one cheek.

“First dress,” she says. “Not my favorite, but what do you think?”

It looks great on Margo, but I want it for myself. I like its simple lines and soft sultriness. “I want that one,” I say, “without all the weird stuff.”

“Don’t you want to see the others first?”

“No.”

“So that means you’re going, then?”

“I guess it does.”

She smiles, and her dimple smudges her fake mole. “Come to my room and try it on. I’ve got a ton more dresses to show you.”

Walking into Margo’s room is like stepping into a backstage
dressing room. She has clothes everywhere—scarves, hats, and costume jewelry strung from every post and knob, a fluffy shag rug and lavish comforter, black-and-white posters of movie stars on the walls, and enough makeup on her desk-turned-vanity to service the entire floor. She has five opened trunks vomiting clothes and shoes—more pairs than I can possibly count. Her room looks so . . . lived in. How long has she been here to collect all this stuff?

“Wow, Margo, where’s your room?”

She giggles and disappears behind a Japanese dividing screen. I glance around and notice all her packs of gum and empty containers of Tic Tacs.

“What’s with all the breath fresheners?”

“I suck on them at night,” she says. “It helps me fall asleep.”

My eyes come to rest on an unopened pack of Bubblicious, and I get a brilliant idea. Maybe bubble gum would work as a plaster for a mold. It’s soft and pliable. I glance to the screen where Margo is throwing her dress over the top, then reach over and slip the pack of gum into my pocket.

“Have at it,” Margo says, reappearing in a silk kimono and holding out the black dress to me. I feel a little bad that she’s invited me into her room and I swiped her gum, but she has plenty more. And knowing Margo, it probably wasn’t even hers to begin with.

Behind the screen I shrug off my jeans and T-shirt and
pull the dress over my head. It falls past my shoulders in a whisper. I don’t have too many curves, but the ones I have are quite apparent in this dress. And it’s so light, it’s like wearing nothing. I come around the screen and show her.

“T, you look gorgeous. Where have you been hiding those legs?”

I glance down. I haven’t seen my own legs in a while. I need to shave, which means asking Kayla for a razor and having a safety supervise me, which is a good enough reason for me to wear pants. I glance around the room and remember that the only mirrors we have are the creepy playground mirrors, but I don’t need to look. It’s comfortable and practical. This is the one.

“Me next,” Margo says. She hands me a couple of raffle tickets. “This might take a while. Go bother Tabitha for some sodas and make mine a diet.”

Margo has soda privileges. I wonder how that’s possible with all her smoking and setting things on fire, but she does seem to get her way a lot. I stop by Tabitha’s room and trade the tickets for a Dr Pepper and a Diet Coke, then drag a chair from the common room out to the hallway. I finger the dress’s silky material and think more and more that this dance might be the perfect opportunity to make my break. It’ll be dark and loud, kids will be everywhere, the safeties will be distracted. . . .

Meanwhile Margo models her collection of evening gowns, strutting down the hallway like it’s a runway. A few of the other girls pass through long enough to give us strange looks, but for the most part, they keep to themselves.

“What do you think about this one?” she asks, pivoting expertly and throwing out one hip. It’s her seventh dress, a deep blue, strapless wraparound, which she’s wearing with barely there silver heels.

“It’s pretty. You look . . . tall.”

“Do you like it more or less than the last one?”

“More. Definitely.”

“The last one wasn’t that hot, was it?”

“It was totally hot, but I can’t even remember it now because you look so hot in this one.”

“One to ten, Taylor. I need quality control.”

“Nine and a half.”

Margo gives me a satisfied nod, then totters back to her room to change. I pop some gum into my mouth and chew, thinking I need to know more about what goes on at these dances. Margo would be great for that, but the last time I mentioned my school project—aka escape—she got all huffy with me.

“Last one,” Margo calls.

She glides down the hallway in a wine-colored Renaissance gown with a tight-fitting bodice and satin trim. It isn’t the
dress so much as the way Margo carries herself, head held high, shoulders back. Like a queen—regal and strong.

“That one’s my favorite,” I say. “I give it a ten.”

She smiles. “Hair up or down?”

“Up. It shows off your neck.”

“Yes, I think you’re right.” She twirls once, and the fabric balloons elegantly around her legs. “I’m beat. Let’s take a break.”

Ten minutes later we’ve changed back into our regular clothes and are crowded into the handicapped stall in the second-floor bathroom so that Margo can smoke a cigarette. She’s got a toilet-paper tube stuffed with dryer sheets, her own invention, which she blows the smoke through to hide the smell, but the bathroom still reeks, only with a dash of spring.

She’s sitting on the back of the toilet with her shoes on the seat, gazing at the murky window, when I notice she isn’t sucking her cancer stick with her usual vigor.

“What’s up, Margo?”

She shakes her head, and her blond hair frames her face in soft wisps, so that she suddenly looks much younger, or maybe it’s because I rarely see her without her makeup on. “I’m nearing the end of my program.”

“I know, Margo. You’re lucky.”

She sighs and takes another puff, discarding the tube and
letting the smoke escape from her nostrils like a dragon.

“I don’t understand. What’s the problem?”

She sits up straighter and stares at me. “You still don’t know who I am, do you?”

I don’t know what she means by that. I feel like I know her pretty well, even if we haven’t been friends for very long.

She hops up off the toilet and does a little tap dance on the tile floor, then sings out in a child’s voice, “Eat your Vitabites every day, and you’ll grow up to be strong someday.”

I have a flashback to when I’m eight years old, eating the marshmallows out of my Lucky Charms and watching morning cartoons when a Vitabite commercial comes on. The hair, the dimples, the demented flight attendant smile in the making. A younger version of Margo Blanchard.

“
You’re
the Vitabites girl?”

“One of them. That lasted until I was ten. Then I had bit parts in a couple movies, some catalog work. Then, when I was fourteen, I just . . . fell apart. I was hospitalized for a couple months. After that I was just so tired. I wanted to sleep forever. My agent told me I’d lost my sparkle, and my parents started fighting all the time. I stopped eating or getting out of bed. That’s when they decided to send me here.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Two years this November,” she says, holding up two slender fingers like a peace sign. “I always talk about getting out
of here and moving to New York or L.A. and becoming an actor, but I don’t know anything about what’s going on in the world. I’m so out of touch with . . . everything.”

I think about that for a moment. She and A.J. have been trapped in here for two years. It’s been less than a week for me and I already feel totally disconnected from the outside world. For Margo, leaving Sunny Meadows would be like waking up from a coma.