2. Haley
HALEY
10 years ago
S hame weighs on me, heavy and suffocating, but the fear cuts even deeper, slicing me to the bone.
The reality that weighs me down: I’m fifteen, and I’ve been arrested.
Arrested .
The word echoes in my head, driving the shame even deeper. Anxiety washes through me in waves.
Two men burst into my bedroom while I was sleeping and pulled me out of the bed. They handcuffed me while I stood there in my pajamas. I couldn’t understand what they were saying. My screams didn’t help. My pleas for them to stop. The terror was far too overwhelming.
Arrested? Me?
It was a bad dream. It had to be a bad dream. It couldn’t be real.
I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to wake up.
But I didn’t wake up.
Not even when they started to take me out of my bedroom. They weren’t cops. Not real cops. They were kidnapping me.
I struggled, and my shoulder hit the poster that's been hanging on the back of the door since I was eleven. The actor’s face tore in half, and the paper crumpled under one of the men’s feet.
“Mom!” I knew she would come for me. I knew she’d stop these men from kidnapping me. That’s what they had to be doing. Not arresting me, kidnapping me. “Mom, help!”
One of them slapped me. Fast. Unthinking. Like he done it a million times before.
Shock betrayed me, making my body still as they gathered me up making my fighting useless.
“Stop. Dad!”
I hadn’t been getting along with my parents. They didn’t like the friends I made at school. They didn’t like the dark clothes I’d been experimenting with.
They didn’t like how I’d stayed out a few times, unable to make myself leave.
But they wouldn’t let this happen. They wouldn’t! My parents were going to stumble out of their bedroom any second and save me.
I tried to shout it as we passed their bedroom door, but there was too much to say.
“Mom, please,” I screamed instead. “Mom, they’re taking me. Mom! Dad!”
But the door didn’t open.
It stayed closed like they couldn’t hear. I screamed until my throat was raw.
I stared at that door as they took me away, hoping, praying. Open. Open. Open.
It didn’t open.
My stomach clenched with new terror. The men took me down the stairs and I couldn’t see my parents’ bedroom door anymore.
The fight went out of me when I got to the back of the car with the door slammed shut. That was like a nightmare, too. I knew they wouldn’t let go, and that closed bedroom door broke something in me.
It’s all I can think as the early morning sun starts to show and the car takes me away. It’s silent. There’s no way to fight anymore. I’m trapped.
Even if I got free, where would I run?
Outside, the neighborhood was silent. Curtains twitched in the window of the house next door.
I pulled against the men as hard as I could praying she would see and help me. The lady next door, Kathy, was always in everyone’s business. She’d spotted me in my own backyard more than once and asked what I was up to.
Of all people, Kathy wasn’t going to let kidnapping happen on our street.
Kathy’s porch light stayed off.
Her front door stayed closed, just like my parents’.
I tried to call for her. She was my last hope. I knew she didn’t like me, probably for the same reasons my parents had been so disappointed , but I still thought I meant something to them.
A hand clamped down over my mouth before I could scream her name.
“Don’t make this worse,” one of the men told me roughly. He sounded bored. Annoyed that I wasn’t going along with this kidnapping. I couldn’t remember what they’d said when they put the cuffs on. What charges? How could they take me to jail? Why ?
The vehicle in my parents’ driveway wasn’t a police car. It was a white van with a door that creaked as the second man pulled it open.
The first shoved me inside and onto a worn seat with practically no cushion in it. A metal frame under the cloth dug into my ass.
There were more handcuffs, chaining me to the inside of the van.
“Where are you taking me?”
They climbed in the front seats, and the man who had told me not to make it worse started the engine.
“Which jail are you taking me to?” I don’t even know how I’m able to speak with my heart rampaging as it does. I’m still fucking terrified.
They didn’t answer.
If my parents wouldn’t save me, and Kathy wouldn’t, then maybe the police would listen.
I was naive enough to think they were taking me to jail.
We drove right past it and I thought I would cry but apparently the tears have all dried up.
Instead, we drive away from all the lights and onto back roads and highways. I can’t keep track of where we’re going. I don’t know if they’re making extra turns to confuse me, or if I’m just too shocked and tired and sick to remember them.
When the van rumbles to stop, it’s still night. It might be very early in the morning. The sun isn’t up yet. A single bare lightbulb shines down on a sign.
That sign scares me more than anything.
It’s just a regular sign with the name of the school.
This can’t be a school. The building doesn’t look like a school, and schools don’t kidnap students in the middle of the night.
But the sign could be in front of any school. It looks cheerful. There’s a logo of an open book. All I know is something is very wrong and I have no way out.
The door of the van opens, and the men climb in to pull me out.
“Don’t fight,” he grits between his teeth.
I don’t want to leave the van. My legs are numb from sitting on the hard seat and my wrists feel bruised from the cuffs, but the van seems safer than whatever this school is supposed to be.
“Where—” The men jostle me as they yank me out of the van and put me on my feet. The pain rips through my arm and it fucking hurts. They know how much bigger they are. They know they can push me around. I swallow the lump in my throat and try to keep the tears back as they surround me. Rocks dig in to my toes, scraping my skin as they hustle me across the driveway and into the school.
It doesn’t smell like a school. Every school I’ve been inside smells pretty much the same—like lockers and the polish on the floor of the gym and the warmed-up food scent of the cafeteria.
This place reeks of decay, like a building that should’ve been torn down long ago. There isn’t enough light to see much of it clearly, but there has to be mold—that wet, creeping smell like decomposing plants.
They take me to a room with a concrete floor and a drain in the middle. One man steps in and tears my pajamas off. I try to cover myself but I can’t.
“Don’t,” I shout, over and over.
He leaves me with nothing. Naked in a room with two men and then goes to the right with determination while the other two stay on guard.
I’m not ready for the hose when it hits.
The second man turns on the spray full blast. It’s freezing water, soaking my hair and my skin and taking my breath away.
I gasp and try to curl away like an animal. I can barely breathe. One shock after the next.
I’m an animal to them. A piece of meat. I shiver so hard I know there’s another word for it—convulsion, I think, but the next frigid blast makes me forget.
I can only pray and try not to think about what’s next. When the hose is off I cover what I can of myself and hope it’s over.
“A towel, please,” I beg. I can’t even hug my arms around myself because of the cuffs.
A woman’s voice answers. I didn’t see her come into the room, but she’s there in front of me, her lips pinched with disgust.
Tall. Her long, dark hair finished with a sweep of hair spray to give it volume. Her eyes are light blue and narrowed behind thin rimmed spectacles. She wears heels that click and echo in the room even though I can’t see them, her wide legged black pants are so long they nearly touch the floor.
I want to plead with her to help me, but I can’t make my voice work. My words are caught in my throat from the way she looks at me.
“No towel. You’ll have to earn it,” the woman tells me. There’s no kindness in her eyes. Nothing but blank, dead emptiness. She doesn’t see me as a person.
I’m not a person here.
I hug myself as best I can. My bones feel like they’ll snap. Fear tightens around my lungs, letting me breathe only in sharp, shallow gasps.
She drags me to another room with the same rough concrete floor. My toes are numb, barely feeling the cold beneath them. She flips on a light—a flickering fluorescent light, too bright. On the side of the wall, there’s a mirror. The woman’s hand on my arm digs in hard enough to bruise. There are boys in the other room beyond the mirror. Her hand is at my wrist. She releases the cuffs from my wrists, and when I open my mouth, I open my mouth to scream for help.
I can’t catch my breath. I can’t scream. Even if I did, who would hear me?
When I raise my hand to my mouth to cover my sob, the woman yanks it back down and shoves me into the seat attached to a narrow desk.
The desk is the first thing I’ve seen that belongs in a school. It reminds me of the desks in my homeroom last year. I never thought of those desks as something normal.
This one isn’t normal. It’s the only desk in the room, and it faces the one-way mirror.
The woman grabs my face with her fingers and turns my head to look at her. Her thin fingers dig into my skin so deeply they hurt. I swear her nails will puncture my skin.
“You will not watch,” she orders. “You will study your new rules.”
Then she turns my head to face the window again.
There aren’t any rules to study, except on the far wall of the room through the mirror. I struggle to read them. The woman stands behind me, close enough that I can feel her there but not close enough to touch me.
There’s a man in the room with the boys. It’s the middle of the night. Why are they up so early doing jumping jacks? It makes no sense. What’s wrong? What’s happening?
I hunch forward, shivering.
“Sit up straight,” the woman barks, and pulls me up by my hair. I hold in my yelp and try to sit still. I try to do what she asks.
It’s hard to sit up when I’m shivering so hard. The chair doesn’t make it easier. The plastic is hard and cold, and I can’t warm up. The room is cold, too.
The man in the room with the boys shouts something at them, and they start doing jumping jacks faster.
One of the boys looks through the window and meets my eyes.
“Faster,” barks the man and the boy turns his head just slightly.
Can they see me?
Can he see me? I can see the boys, but I don’t know who to believe. The boy’s eyes stay on me, burning through the mirror. Maybe he can see.
I’m not supposed to look back at him, but the rules are written on the wall behind the boys. I can’t help it. I don’t want the woman to touch me again, so I keep facing forward and try to cover myself.
The woman paces behind me. Her footsteps are loud threatening in the room.
The man in the room with the boys looms over him, and he stops looking at me. He keeps doing jumping jacks, shoulders rising, arms, lifting and falling. An ugly bruise decorates his arm. My own arm throbs from where the men held me when they took me out of my bed.
That must be how they touch people here. How they handle kids like me. More of the boys have bruises, but I don’t dare look too long. The words on the wall don’t make sense, but I keep trying to read them.
I don’t know how long it’s been when one of the boys in the back breaks down crying.
“I’m tired,” he says. “I’m fucking tired. I can’t do this.” He falls to his knees, begging, tears streaming down his face.
He’s the only one showing any emotion. The other boys wear matching blank expressions as if they can’t hear his cries.
The door in that room bursts open, and three men stream in. They head for the crying boy, but not to help.
To restrain him.
They pin his arms behind his back and force him into a curled position that has to be excruciating.
I get to my feet and only realize it when the desk scrapes against the floor. None of the boys look at me.
“Sit down.” The woman’s hand digs into my shoulder.
“They’re hurting him!” I scream as she shoves me down. Every inch of my body runs hot with fear and anger.
On the other side of the mirror, the boy’s eyes flick towards me. One of the men has a taser.
He’s going to use it on the boy who’s being restrained.
It takes everything I have to stay upright and only watch. This isn’t right. This just isn’t right.
When the woman pushes on my shoulder again, I break away and run.
Neither of the doors is locked. I run into the room with the boys just as the guard leans over the restrained boy and tases him.
“Stop!” I shout over his screams, still cuffed, still naked. “You’re killing him! Stop, stop!”
The boys move out of the way as I pushed through them, scrambling to do something. I grab the man’s arm and try to pull him off, he turns the taser on me.
The electric pain crushes all the air out of my lungs. I crumple over the boy, my muscles seizing with more pain. It feels like it’ll go on forever.
But then the door swings open and another man enters. I can’t see, my vision blurry. But his footsteps are heavy. He walks a certain way. It’s odd. Uneven.
The room falls silent.
I’m on the floor, my shoulder, trapped underneath me. I can barely focus my eyes to see the man when he crouches in front of me.
“You can call me Mr. Jay,” he says. “What is rule number one?”
I can’t answer. My teeth are locked together.
He sniffs, as if he’s not surprised but I don’t know the answer.
“You cannot look at another student,” he tells me. That must’ve been one of the rules on the wall. “What did you do?”
I wrench my teeth apart.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Let me go home.”
“There is no going home.”
“But my parents?—”
“Your parents know. They want this for you.”
“They don’t,” I sob.
He shifts on his feet. “That’s two more punishments. There is to be no mention of your parents and no backtalk.”
He grabs my arm, fingers digging into the bruised spot where the woman held me, and pulls me to my feet. We’re back in the dark hall in seconds.
“Please,” I beg. “Just let me go.”
“You’re adding up your strikes.”
“What?” I ask confused as my feet barely manage to keep up with the pace he takes.
“Asking to leave is another strike.”
A sound startles me. I crane my neck to see what it is.
The boys are doing jumping jacks. More jumping jacks—with two spots missing.
“That’s another strike.”
“What? I—” I looked at them. All I did was look.
Another room. Another concrete floor. A hard wooden desk. My heart is in my mouth.
The door closes with a hollow sound, and then leather slips through belt loops. He’s taking off his belt.
I turn to face the man, my arms over my chest
“What are you going to do to me?”
“The right thing.” He swings the belt in his hand. “It’s all in the pamphlet. Don’t worry. Your mother knows.”