Counting Backwards (15 page)

A.J. comes back a minute later and sits down next to me, but I have nothing to say to him. He’s supposed to be on my side, not taking orders from my father. He reaches for my hand, but I pull it away.

“Go away.”

He sighs but doesn’t leave. I want to go right now. Get into a car and drive away, lose myself in a big city where no one knows my name and I am just another face in the crowd. There I can start over and be someone else—someone better. And all my bad memories will wash away like dirty water down the drain.

“Please, A.J., just leave me alone.”

He stands and shuffles his feet a little, like he’s hoping I’ll
change my mind, but I turn away and face the wall. Finally he leaves. I bury my face into the pillow and bite it to keep from crying. I reach into my pocket and feel the metallic smoothness of the car key.

I’m leaving tonight.

After lights-out I wait an extra-long time for everyone on the third floor to fall asleep. I linger over the air vent, thinking to call out to A.J. and tell him good-bye. But he’d be mad at me for breaking my promise to him, and he might try to convince me to stay. It’s not the perfect solution, but what other choice do I have?

I stuff my pockets with the essentials—cash, keys, map, bus schedule, phone numbers, and Tatters. I sit on the edge of my bed, listening for the sounds of Sandra finishing up her rounds, then slip like a shadow down the hall. I unlock the stairwell door and follow the stairs all the way down to the basement. At the end of the hallway I find the fire alarm and rest my fingers lightly on top of it, praying that when I pull it, the door will unlock just as Margo said it would. If everyone’s asleep, I’ll have that much more time to get away. Every second is precious.

I take a deep breath and yank it down.

The fire alarm wails, and I push open the basement door to the cool evening air. I take in a huge gulp of it and sprint down the hill, away from the dorms, risking a glance back to
see the first safeties coming out with residents trailing dully behind them. I tear across the field, staying in the shadows of the high school. Outside the garage, I grab a brick off the ground and hope the fire alarm is loud enough to mask the sound of breaking glass. I bash in the side window, taking care not to cut myself on the jagged glass, then reach through and unlatch the deadbolt from the inside.

Inside the garage, I punch the button to open the garage door, hop into the Bronco, and jam the key into the ignition. The car rumbles to life, and I swiftly back down the driveway with the headlights off, turn, and follow the maintenance road to where the front gate stands wide open, just as it was on the night of the Harvest Ball. Kids are still shuffling out of the dorms like zombies. The floor safeties have their hands full. No one’s even looking my way.

The fire trucks scream toward me, but I ease down on the accelerator anyway. The first truck races past, and I brake hard. The second one follows right behind it, and as soon as it’s through, I hit the gas.

I’m through the gate and down the driveway when I instinctively brake at the stop sign and look both ways. That’s when a Jeep screeches to a stop in front of me. I make eye contact with the driver, a safety—a whole Jeep full of safeties. My heart beats double time as I fight the panic rising in me. Where did they even come from?

I back up and make a swift turn, racing the other away. The Jeep growls behind me, right on my tail, while the safeties shout at me to stop. I’m running blind now. I never mapped this way out. The pavement ends and I follow a dirt road, turning randomly, trying to put space between me and them, swerving and kicking up sand, praying that one of these roads leads to someplace good.

My front tires hit water, and I skid to a stop. I’ve dead-ended at a lake.

I’m caught in their headlights as they jump out of the Jeep and shout orders to secure me, but I’m not stopping. I’ll run to the road and hitch a ride. I’ll run all night if I have to. I fall out of the Bronco and sprint away, batting branches and hurdling over fallen trees. Thorns scratch at my face and arms, but I hardly feel them. I have to get away. They crash through the forest behind me, their flashlights throwing beams of light on the trees as they shout directions to one another, hunting me.

I come up to a chain-link fence and stop short. On the other side I see the dorm and the residents on the lawn. Terror washes over me. They’ve backed me up against Sunny Meadows. I turn back, thinking to lose myself in the woods, but the safeties are already there. They have me cornered.

“Nice and easy there, sweetheart,” one of them says while I crouch in wait for them to advance. He takes a step toward
me, and I dash through the widest space between them. But one of them catches my arm and yanks me back. I fall hard on my side. I try to stand, but he rolls over on top of me, shoving my nose into the wet leaves and dirt. They lift me by my arms as I kick the air, trying to make contact. They drag me screaming to the Jeep and drop me on my tailbone. A jolt of pain travels up my spine and makes my head throb. Two of them grip my arms on either side while another crouches in front of me and holds my ankles. A single thought cycles through my terror and fury:
How did they find me so fast?

They drive back to the dorms and park on the lawn, where everyone is watching, wide awake. They haul me out of the Jeep. My eyes fall on A.J. standing beside a safety, looking terrified and sick to his stomach.

I see the guilt in his eyes, and that’s when I know. He told them. That’s how they found me so fast. He must have been listening to me pack up through the vent. Or maybe he was down in the basement while I was leaving. He knew every move I was going to make. That’s why he gave me the key, so that he’d know how to catch me.

It was all a trap.

My anger hits like a wrecking ball, and I start screaming at him, “You don’t speak! You don’t speak!” over and over again.

He begs me with his eyes, but he is false. He was never my friend. He’s a spy, a fake, a phony, and I hate him for it. All
my planning and preparation is for nothing. I am a prisoner. Trapped. Because of him.

“He made me the key!” I yell at the safeties, at everyone. They look at me like I’ve lost my mind, and maybe I have, but I want everyone to know. He gave me something to stand on, then ripped it away to watch me fall.

“He has all the keys,” I scream, “to all the locked doors! He goes wherever he wants!”

My thoughts dissolve into garbled nonsense as they carry me through the lobby and onto the first floor. They drop me in a time-out room and shut the door behind me.

I collapse on the ground with my cheek to the cold, hard floor and howl.

They move a bed into the time-out room. The cardboard trays come three times the next day, but I don’t care enough to eat. The fluorescent light goes out at night and flickers on the next morning. The window changes colors. There’s a camera behind a cage that watches me like an insect eye. There is no escaping it.

Dr. Deb visits. She wants to talk, but I start laughing and can’t stop. After she leaves, another woman comes in. She says her name is Pamela and she’ll be my personal safety. I recognize her from my first day here, the one who checked my head for nits. She looks as though she hasn’t smiled in twenty years.

Pamela leads me to a room farther down the hall where there is a bathroom and a shower, tells me to undress, then watches me do it. She turns on the water, and the shower spray feels like a million tiny spears piercing my skin. Pamela hands me a bar of soap and tells me to wash myself. When I’m done, she shuts off the water and hands me a towel and a stack of clean clothes. My underwear is baggy and hangs off my hips. I haven’t been eating much.

Back in the room I sit on the floor and count the flecks on the linoleum. There are proportionately fewer dark brown than light brown, and even fewer greens. I search for shapes in them, like I might with clouds. I time the heater to predict when it will shut off and come back on. My eyes flash over the air vent a hundred times an hour.

I hate him.

The light goes off again. Nighttime. I lie in the bed and drift in and out of consciousness. I dream of my grandmother’s hands, her fingernails hard and smooth as river rocks, caked with dirt from working in the garden. I dream of her eyes, shining in the lamplight of the evening as she sat with her head bowed over her sewing machine, patching together skirts with patterns more brilliant than daylight. I dream of her storyteller voice. . . .

“Time to get up.”

The light flickers on, and Pamela is there instead. I want to dream longer. I want to never wake up. I close my eyes and try to find my grandmother, but she’s gone.

“You’re off observation,” Pamela says flatly, and strips away the thin blanket, exposing me to the cold air. “Follow me to your new room.”

She opens the door, and I walk out to the hallway. A hopeful feeling rises in my chest, but she stops before we get off the floor. It’s a door just like the other one. It seems I’m
living in a nightmare, because I can’t stop the door from opening or prevent my feet from moving forward. There is the same white bed, same metal chair. The only difference is instead of a camera there is a metal rack across the back wall where my school uniforms hang. She tells me to put one on; I must go to school.

I’m suddenly immobilized by fear. The stares and whispers behind my back, I don’t have the strength to face them. And A.J. I don’t want to feel the anger and betrayal. I don’t want to feel anything, ever again.

“I don’t feel well,” I say to Pamela.

“The nurse has cleared you for school.”

I stare at my uniform. The thought of having to put it on makes me want to tear my hair out.

“It will be easier if you dress yourself,” Pamela says, letting her threat hang over me like a noose. I put on my clothes. I have no other choice.

Pamela shepherds me across the lawn, and I watch my feet shuffle over the dead grass. The sky is bleached of its color, like a sheet that’s been left on the line too long. Inside the building it’s stuffy and crowded. The desk confines me, and I can’t get a full breath. Brandi stares at me in shocked silence as I claw at my clothes. Sulli helps me out to the hallway, where Pamela is waiting.

I sit on the floor and stare at the industrial carpet, at all
the different hues interwoven to form the resulting color, which is an ugly, nothing blue. Finally the feeling passes.

“Back to class,” Pamela says, showing no mercy.

In the pen Margo comes over and tries to talk to me, but Pamela won’t allow it. “No socializing outside of class or group,” she barks. Pamela is a Doberman with big, lethal teeth.

Margo retreats to Victor, and they bob like buoys on the water. There is an ocean between us, and I don’t have the will to bridge it. A.J. is there too. He stares at me from across the pen like he’s in pain. I avert my eyes. I hate him more for his apologetic looks.

Automotive therapy has been replaced by independent study. In class I don’t lift my pen and I don’t raise my hand. I just don’t care. I stare at the grain on the laminated desks and imagine I’m in a deep, dark tunnel underground.

Days drift by like clouds.

Margo gets bolder in her attempts to reach me. She rushes up to me in the hallway, squeezing me so tight it hurts my ribs. I can smell the smoke on her clothes and her perfumey hair. A rush of memories flood me and for a second, I feel the embers of my former self ignite.

“No touching,” Pamela snarls.

“I love you, T,” she whispers. She walks backwards, away from me.

The next day Sulli tells me in first period that Margo’s been released. That night, alone again in my room, I lay my head on my pillow and try to feel sad about Margo’s release, but I can’t, and it frightens me.

I meet with Dr. Deb for therapy three times a week. I don’t have the energy or desire to speak, so I stare at the window until the sunlight makes my eyes burn. She says this program isn’t working, and she’s going to talk to my team about having my privileges reinstated. I have no opinion on the matter.

Another week passes. It’s December now, and the trees are dropping their leaves like tears. I stare at their skeletal frames and think they must be the only ones who know how I feel. Pamela loosens my chain. My classmates are now allowed to speak to me, and some of them do, but I have nothing to say back.

Pamela makes me attend group activities, but she can’t force me to participate. I pretend I’m a lizard and time how long I can stay absolutely still without blinking.

One day in assembly, A.J. finds me and sits down next to me. I know it’s him without even looking over. He’s been waiting for this opportunity, when I’m a captive and can’t simply walk away. What more could he possibly want from me? I wish he’d just leave me alone.

“Taylor,” he says. The pulse of my name on his lips is so familiar I can hardly bear to hear it.

“You don’t speak,” I say to him, though I know it’s not true anymore. I see him sometimes talking to Victor and the other guys. Selfishly, I wish that he didn’t speak, because that would make it easier for me to ignore him.

“I want you to know how sorry I am. I should have never—”

An icy pain rakes across my chest. I stand up and walk away as fast as I can, sucking in ragged breaths, trying to keep it together. Pamela follows me outside and snaps at me to “
get back in there
.” She won’t let me sit anywhere else, so I take my seat next to him and focus on Charlotte in the row in front of me. I stare at her curly red hair and imagine we are mermaids swimming free in the ocean.

Over the next couple of weeks, my silence hardens around me like a mud wall. People give up trying to talk to me, even look at me. Except A.J. I avoid him at every turn, but I cannot cut off my ears.

It’s a cold night, and we’re sitting outside around a fire. My fingers, hands, arms are numb, but I won’t put on my jacket. Because there are some things Pamela can’t make me do. I clench my teeth to keep them from chattering and stare at the flames, flickering like hands, so warm and inviting.