4. Dean
DEAN
10 years ago
W e’re never alone in this school. Should I even call it a school? It’s a hellhole. Hell on earth. The worst place imaginable for the worst people imaginable. Like me… but they’re worse.
I always thought that was supposed to be prison, before this. I knew people went to prison. I knew they got arrested and thrown behind bars and treated like shit.
But it’s not really about laws or breaking rules in this place. It’s not about being such a bad kid that our parents gave up on us.
It’s not about anything but sick fucks getting off on ruining our lives.
So we’re never alone. There are always eyes on us, even in the bathroom. No doors on the stalls. We can’t be trusted.
The bathroom has a concrete floor like most of the other rooms I spend time in here. There’s a drain in the middle of the floor. The concrete is almost always wet. They must have to spray it down a few times a day. More if they’re going to beat the shit out of somebody in here, and they usually do.
It has tiled walls and a mirror made out of metal and a rusted metal sink. When the mirror was new, maybe I could’ve seen myself in it, but now it’s just a metal plate with so many scratches and claw marks that there’s nothing but a shadow reflected back.
The bathroom has one stall and one urinal along the other wall. No door.
I go to the urinal. The staff member who escorted me here leans in the doorway, looking annoyed.
I bite back a sarcastic sorry . Sometimes I say things like that just to remind myself that I’m alive, but until today, I wanted to be dead.
I don’t want to think about that bastard in the door anyway.
I want to think about the girl.
Most times when I come in here, I like to think about the window. There’s one window on the far wall. It’s a narrow rectangle of foggy glass, so I can’t see out. It lets a little light in, though.
Most times when I come in here, I let myself look at it just once. They don’t like when I look out the window. They probably think I’m planning some escape attempt. But I just want to see something different.
Sometimes I do, but mostly I imagine scrambling up the wall and somehow bracing myself so I can punch the window out.
I think about how it would feel for that glass to break under my hands. Probably terrible, since it’s probably thick, but when it finally broke—damn, that would be victory. It wouldn’t matter if I cut myself or broke my fingers. I want to break this place as much as it’s broken me. I want to rip a part of it off and make it bleed until it chokes out its last breath and dies in front of me where I can see.
That’s just a daydream. I’ll never have a chance to break the window. Even if I could climb that high and keep myself up there, I wouldn’t have time. I’m strong enough to make it to the ledge, but like I said, we’re never alone. The man standing in the door could reach me before I threw the first punch, and he wouldn’t stop at pulling me down to the floor. He’d get a few punches in, too. I’d end up restrained at best and tortured by myself for who knows how long.
And then drugged up again. They force pills down the throats of the ones who fight back. They keep us weak.
I’m not thinking about that when I unzip the black slacks they gave me. I’m not even thinking about how that sick fuck is watching, or how they pretend it’s for our own good. I’m used to the fact that we’re never alone by now. I’m used to the smell of bleach and piss. I’m used to thinking that it smells like a prison and calling this a school is somebody’s idea of a joke.
I’m not used to thinking about a girl.
I haven’t stopped thinking about her since I saw her through the one-way mirror earlier in the night.
It’s obviously not a one-way mirror. There’s no sense arguing the point, though, because the people who run this place will just beat it out of us. There’s no convincing them because they know they’re lying. It’s enough that I know I can see through that damn window.
It’s a punishment if we do it. The lying. They scream in our face and the spit and smell of rancid coffee is enough to make me vomit. Liar! Fucking liar! They scream until my chest vibrates. Even if we’re telling the truth.
But they can lie to us. They can say we can’t see through it and we have to agree.
I was so surprised when I saw her sitting there. Her eyes were so wide and scared and sad, and she was still wet. Her hair all around her shoulders, wet and curling. She was shivering and cold, trying to warm herself up without moving. I didn’t expect anyone to be brought in and I wasn’t waiting for it.
I shouldn’t have looked but I remember that day. I don't remember how long ago, it’s been months since I was brought here at this point. Looking though… I shouldn’t have looked. That was just an excuse for more punishment, and my own mistake. I knew looking at her would earn me some strikes, and I knew saying anything about her would earn me more.
I was hoping she was okay though. If she just stays quiet and listens. She doesn’t look like she could take what they do to people here.
I still can’t stop thinking about her and the look on her face. I already know better than to make a face like that, but this girl—this beautiful girl—she’s never seen anything like this before. She doesn’t know what this hell is. She has no idea.
By now, she’s not as innocent as she was when she first got here. They take that from you in the first hour. But she still has no idea how bad it can get. She might even think there’s a chance of getting out.
I flush the toilet, pull up my pants, and wander over to the sink. The staff member at the door sighs and rolls his eyes. If I take too long at the sink, he’ll drag me away by the arm.
I count in my head. Twenty seconds is all you’re allowed. I’m going to wash my hands every chance they give me. It’s one of the only things I can do to stay human, even though by this point there’s not much humanity left.
Like when we had to keep going… although we knew what was happening to her.
During that hour, I didn’t imagine the sounds I heard coming from the office down the hall—the crack of a belt, and anguished cries. I’ll hear those cries for the rest of my life. There’s no doubt in my mind.
It was that girl. That was her voice. She was still human, too. That was her problem.
We’re not allowed to be human here. Our parents send us here to become well-trained animals.
My thoughts fly back to her trying to help. Trying to save someone she doesn’t know. Hell we’re not even allowed to know each other’s names. Maybe from outside of here… the thought hits me.
Did she know him? Is that why she did something so reckless?
He didn’t seem to know her.
Either way, he’ll spend tonight being tortured in a room alone to teach him a lesson.
What lesson?
Don’t know. I don’t think there’s any lesson to be learned at all. They just want to break us so they can send us back to our parents as shells of ourselves. Shells are easier to deal with than a full person, I guess. It’s easier to control a person who doesn’t have any interest in living.
I don’t want to live either. I would rather die than be here.
But that girl’s eyes?—
The way she still cared. I don’t want them to take that away from her.
Her eyes make me want to stay alive. They remind me that there is a world out there. A world where people like that girl can come from. She’s in hell with the rest of us now.
I’ve lost track of how many days I’ve been here. I only know that every time I fuck up, I’m staying for longer. That’s what they always say. I’m adding punishments. I’m adding strikes. I’m adding more days and weeks and months. The only way out is to prove that I’ve learned. I’ve given that a try before. We all have. It never seems to work.
Some of the guys leave eventually. When they behave so well they’re allowed to talk to their parents. Maybe their parents come to their senses. Maybe they finally manage to convince their parents of what’s happening here.
I don’t know. It’s against the rules to tell our parents anything about this place when we are granted the privilege of calling them. When I first got here, I was so mad that I didn’t talk to him even when I was finally allowed. That was months after they dragged me through the front doors.
I figured if he’d sent me to this place, he’d never believe me about what it was like. I still don’t think he’ll ever try to get me out of here. He probably forgot all about me. It’s been so long that he has to figure I’m a lost cause.
I finish washing my hands and shake them dry. There’s no paper towel in here. No hand dryer, either. There used to be a hand dryer at one point, but all that’s left of it is a rectangular dent in the wall where it used to be. Somebody ripped it off the wall before I got here.
I wonder what that was like. I wonder how much they paid for it. More than it was worth. Nothing in this place is worth anything.
“Finally,” the staff member grunts. It’s not like I took extra time at the urinal. I ignore him. I keep my back straight and shoulders up like they tell us. I walk on the barely seen painted line on the floor. It’s the only line we’re allowed to walk on. “Come on.”
I follow him back down the hall to the room where we sleep—rows of beds, too close together, eight of us in a room. My bed is on the far side of the room. There are no windows in this cell. Thought it was illegal to put this many people in a room without any windows. Just more proof we’re not people at all.
They tell us enough. We act like animals. So we’re treated like animals. We did this to ourselves.
I lie back down in my bed, the staff member breathing down my neck until I’m flat on my back. Laying perfectly straight like we’re supposed to do. Palms up.
He stalks away, and I close my eyes. The bed is hell, too. A thin mattress with springs poking into me. I only have a sheet on top of the mattress. I haven’t earned a blanket and probably never will. No pillow, either. I had one of those for about a week once. I can’t remember how long ago that was. I can’t remember what I did to lose it either.
So I lay my head on the wrinkled sheet over the squeaky plastic mattress cover and zone out. There are always people watching us—footsteps moving past the door, light shining in. I keep seeing flashlights shining in.
I let that stuff fade out. Best thing to do is keep my eyes shut and try to rest at least a little so I can get through another day.
So I have a chance of seeing that girl again. That’s what I want to wake up for tomorrow. That girl and her eyes. To know she’s still there. That bit of her that’s goodness in this fucked up place.
I roll onto my side and keep thinking about her.
I’m almost asleep when somebody near the door screams.
Damn. It’ll be twice as hard to fall asleep again now. I open my eyes, but I don’t move the rest of my body. I stay still and in place knowing what’s next.
Heavy footsteps come down the hall. Mr. Jay stomps into the dorm, his shadow huge in the doorway.
He leans over the bed and punches the kid in the face.
The kid gasps and lets out a strangled sob. Mr. Jay punches him again. The kid finally catches on and stops making noise. Nobody else moves. They’re all still on their sheets or, if they’re lucky, under their blankets.
“Out of the damn bed,” Mr. Jay says to the kid. He’s curled up on a bare mattress, his arms over his head. “Up.” He’s sobbing now. Why did he scream?
Was it in his sleep?
My throat goes tight and my eyes prick. I stay still knowing how many men are out there. Knowing if he just listens, they’ll stop.
The boy at the end of the row gets out of bed. His hands go to his face. If he didn’t have a broken nose before, he does now.
“Walk,” Mr. Jay says. The kid looks like he can barely stay on his feet, but that doesn’t matter to people like Mr. Jay.
They go out into the hall. The kid doesn’t come back that night.