7. Dean
DEAN
10 years ago
T he “treatments” are never treatments in this hell hole.
It’s like everything else about the school. It’s not really a school, it’s a prison for people like me. Delinquents. Nuisances. Some of us did actually commit a crime and got caught. I know I’ve shoplifted before but I got away with it. It was just candy bars. It was wrong and I know that. It was stupid. That was last year when I was 14. My buddy Nick did it first and I know I shouldn’t have. It was dumb and I was missing my mom.
Just thinking about her makes me want to cry. She wouldn’t want this for me. She would have told Dad there was another way. Bad grades and acting dumb… I know I shouldn’t have, but this?
I don’t deserve this. No one fucking deserves this.
It’s not a school, and the treatments aren’t really treatments—they’re just torture.
That’s obvious after about an hour in this place, and it only gets more obvious as the days go by. If you stand in silence, perfectly still, just listening to the cries and screams, the things they tell us… it’s not right. Nothing here is what it’s supposed to be. I really do wonder how they sold this place to our parents. What the hell would they put on a brochure to make this seem like it would help?
It feels like my soul is chipping away piece by piece.
I wonder if they needed my dad’s consent for the treatments, because I’ve been in treatments for months, and there’s nothing to treat. Nobody in their right mind would call this medicine. Nothing about it will heal me. It’ll only make things worse.
That’s the goal. These people want to break me. They want to turn me into someone who follows orders at every cost.
I’ve been doing that already. They don’t know how much it costs to feel like this, but then they don’t care.
Mr. Jay cares least of all. I’ve been alone with him in this room for an hour. Maybe two. Maybe three. There’s no clock, so there’s no way for me to be sure what time it is. After dinner, I think. I try not to guess what time it is. Time doesn’t matter anyway. You’re up when they tell you to get up. If that’s 3am or noon, it doesn’t matter. If you got to bed at 9 and they say rise and shine at 10, you get your ass up or you get the shit beat out of you.
Besides, time doesn’t pass normally here. I think it’s been hours, so it’s probably only been minutes. I think it’s been years, so I’ve probably only been here for months.
It’s better if I don’t think about it.
Most of what’s on my mind is that my stomach hurts.
It hurts because it’s full of water. Mr. Jay said to drink a bottle when we first came in. Then another. Then another.
It’s been hours and he keeps bringing in bottles to drink. I don’t know how many so far. All I can remember is that it was warm and tasted like plastic, like it had been sitting in a case too long. I can’t move from where I am. I can’t let my back rest against the chair. I have to sit on the edge of it. The stack of books in my lap. My legs stiff.
I have to piss and I know he wants me to piss myself. To hurt and ache. To be weak and pathetic. I hold it in though. Silently sitting perfectly still. Staring ahead and trying not to cry when the baton comes down on the books.
This is because of what happened at dinner, which was…
I don’t know what it was. Something one of the staff members didn’t like. Might just have been my face being my face. I can’t remember the details anymore. I’m not even completely sure I’m remembering the right dinner. All the days are starting to seem like the same day.
Maybe that’s what they’re trying to do. Fuck up our sense of time so badly that we don’t know what year it is, or month.
The joke is on those bastards. I know it’s the middle of the year because the room is hot. If it was fall or spring, the room would be freezing.
It’s sweltering now. Sweat drips down my back.
“I have to use the bathroom.”
“No you don’t,” he tells me and I close my mouth. I could scream. I could scream but then I’d be hit again.
“You need to answer the question correctly,” he tells me, his tone condescending.
My ass has gone numb from sitting on the hard chair so long, my bladder full and my legs aching with the pressure of the stack of textbooks.
“What’s the first rule that all students are required to follow?” Mr. Jay glances at the wall as he speaks like he might find a window there. Who knows? Maybe there’s some window he can see that I can’t.
I answer hoping to be done with this. “Rule number one.” We’ve gone over this at least a hundred times. “Do not look at another student.”
“What’s the second rule all students are required to follow?”
“Rule number two. Do not make verbal contact with another student.”
“What’s the third rule all students are required to follow?”
“Rule number three. Do not—” My stomach lurches, and I clamp my teeth together and swallow hard to stop myself from being sick or pissing myself. “Do not make physical contact with another student.”
“What’s the fourth rule all students are required to follow?”
He goes on through his list, and I go on through the rules. When he gets to the end of the list, he starts over at the first rule.
I nearly cry. My throat closing up and tears pricking my eyes.
“I have to pee.” I tell him. “I’m going to piss myself,” I confess.
“No you don’t,” he tells me and adds another book to the stack then presses them closer to my stomach.
I don’t know why I’m being punished, and I know he won’t tell me if I ask. The reason will come down to something I did wrong. Some word I didn’t say right. Some attitude I had while I was answering. It’s not like I can forget the rules. I could repeat them in my sleep, and sometimes I dream about having to recite them in places they don’t belong, like a gas station or at the movie theater. Like one day I might get out of here. Although I’m starting to lose hope.
“The rules,” he says. “When you break the rules we have to break them into you.”
Biting my tongue, I resist the urge to ask which one I’ve broken. My mind instantly goes to the girl. The vision of her.
I haven’t even seen her. I don’t know her name. It’s like he knows my thoughts. It’s not a rule though, I’m allowed to think of her. She’s the only thing keeping me sane. The desire to know she’s okay.
He asks again and I answer the damn questions.
“—make verbal contact with another student,” I say. My stomach is so tight with all the water. If I was anywhere else, I would’ve been sick by now. That’s something I can’t do in this room with this man. If I throw up, he’ll probably start over and we’ll be here for another year, me listing out a sadistic monster’s idea of school rules and Mr. Jay looking bored.
My stomach lurches, and I swallow.
Swallow.
Swallow again.
Am I going to throw up or piss myself? I don’t know which he’s after. I don’t know which will get me the worst punishment either.
“I have to throw up,” I tell him, leaning forward and the books slip, my leg cramps.
I’m not sure when he starts to hit me. The blows seem like they’re coming from far away. We go back to the beginning of the list and through the whole thing again. At first, he hits me with an open hand, but that must be boring, too, because he switches to a fist.
Why does he do it? I don’t know. I guess it probably makes some kind of sense to the people who run this place, but it will never make sense to me. There’s just no reason for him to do this. It’s not even worth my time to figure it out.
My head is so fucked, I can barely make sense of the room. It spins and goes fuzzy. Everything does. I’m here but I’m not.
I’m also not sure when I stop…being there.
I’m still in the room. There’s no escape from this place, so my body stays on the chair. I don’t try to get away from Mr. Jay’s fist. I know where I am, just like I know the rules are taped to the wall opposite me. The print is too small for me to read them, but I don’t need the paper to tell me what they are.
My mouth moves, but it belongs to someone else. The longer I talk, the more I feel like someone else is talking for me.
The longer Mr. Jay hits me, the more it feels like he’s hitting someone else.
That’s been happening more often lately, I think. I exist in my body, but I don’t. The school exists around me, but it doesn’t. As I sit in the chair, answering Mr. Jay’s questions, I start to imagine another place.
I don’t imagine much at first. For a while, all I can picture is a sidewalk. It’s a regular sidewalk with some cracks in the concrete and grass on either side. It’s not like the patches of sidewalk in front of the school that don’t lead anywhere. This sidewalk leads to somewhere else—I know it.
Eventually, it becomes a street with houses and yards in the front. It’s not some half-abandoned place with one building in the middle of nowhere. It’s a neighborhood.
A nice neighborhood, with people who aren’t sick bastards in it. People who check up on each other to make sure they’re okay. Dads who mow the lawn on the weekends. Moms who go shopping on Wednesdays.
A fucking paradise, right?
I imagine walking down that sidewalk until the middle of the street. That’s when I stop and go into a house.
This isn’t my dad’s house. This is my house. I live here, and nobody else can get in. I can shut the door and flip the lock, and they can’t touch me. The living room has carpet, not concrete, and the furniture’s simple and clean. I’m safe here.
In this house, there’s a picture window in the living room. It’s not some bullshit prison privacy glass. It’s a normal window I can see out of, with curtains that I can close if I want. If I don’t, I can let the sun in. I could break that window with my bare hands, if I wanted, because it’s not safety glass.
In this house, I don’t want to break the window. I don’t need to. None of the people who run the school exist anymore.
Is this a daydream?
Guess it doesn’t matter.
In the daydream, or whatever it is, I sit down on the sofa in my living room and watch the sidewalk outside the house. People walk by. Little kids and teenagers and parents. All kinds of people.
And then she’s there.
She’s so fucking beautiful.
She’s beautiful even at this school, but in the sun, she looks incredible. Everything’s better in the sun. We’re older. Just old enough that no one can force us to be where we don’t want to be.
The girl must feel me watching, because she stops on the sidewalk and looks in. She meets my eyes and waves.
If I wanted, I could go out to her. I could talk to her. Nobody can punish me for that here.
I can do whatever I want. And none of this happened. I never learned the rules so I can look her in the eyes and it’s okay.
I could touch her, even. I could find out what her skin feels like under my hands. I could find out how warm she is. They couldn’t stop me. Nobody could stop me.
Somebody shakes my shoulder. Violently, in a bruising forceful way.
“Fucking pay attention when I speak to you!” he screams and it’s then I feel the blood on my lip, wait no, my nose. My nose bleeds and the pounding in my head gets worse.
Fuck, it hurts. I’m going to throw up.
I don’t answer. It doesn’t seem like he’s talking to me. Where am I?
Eventually, I move my eyes and look at his face. Mr. Jay glares at me like I’m the one who kept us in here for so long.
He scoffs. “You’re done.”
I don’t bother to hope. I know he doesn’t mean that I’m done here at the school. They’ll never let me out. They’ve made that clear. I’m too worthless and stupid to be let out of this place. I’ll never tell them exactly what they want to hear, so they’ll never send me anywhere else.
“Done?” I ask. My mouth feels tacky and dry.
He leans in close, his eyes nearly black with anger. “Done for the night. You’ve wasted enough of my time. Get up you fucking animal.”
I can’t. My stomach is in knots. My legs feel weak. In some faraway part of my brain, I’m still in the neighborhood. I’m still looking out at the girl through my front window. For once, it’s not a cage. She’s outside in the sunlight, and I can look at her as much as I want.
Mr. Jay’s fingers dig into my arm. He escorts me through the hall—dragging me, really, and muttering things under his breath.
We stop outside the staff bathroom. He bangs in through the door, leaving me in the hall.
When I first got here, I might have seen this as an opportunity to try to run away. Now I know there’s no point. I won’t get to the front doors. Even if I did, there’s miles of empty land between me and the nearest place I could go for help.
The teachers would find me.
I turn my head, and there she is.
For a few seconds, I think I’ve gone back into my daydream. Maybe my mind really has split off and I exist there now.
The girl sits in a chair with no desk in front of it, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes bright despite the lack of light in the hall or in the room.
That’s the room they take people to for punishment. When they want to hurt somebody so bad there’s no record of what they’ve done. That’s the room with no cameras.
I stare at her face, hungry for the sight of her.
Her dark hair is a mess on one side, like she hasn’t brushed it in days. Her skin is pale, even her lips. She doesn't look like she did. She’s sick now like me. Fuck. Everything twisted in knots inside of me get tighter. Not her.
I stare at her but she doesn’t look up. She doesn’t see me.
She’ll never see me.
I can’t stand the thought. She has to see me. I almost say something. I swear there’s a whisper of a question: what’s your name? On my lips.
I’m breaking rule number one, and I’ll pay for it. If Mr. Jay steps out of the bathroom behind me, he’ll take me back to the room we just left. He might even punish me in front of the girl, in the room with no cameras.
I don’t care. I can’t stop.
Water runs in the staff bathroom. I have a few more seconds. The girl stares back at me, completely still, not making a sound. I know she sees me, though. Her eyes get a little brighter. Her breathing is a little quicker.
She sees me.
My stomach lurches again and my head gets light. I’m forced to lean against the brick wall. It’s fucking freezing. Suddenly everything is freezing.
The bathroom door opens with a creak behind me and I stand up straight, holding back bile. I turn my head forward and let my face fall into an emotionless mask. I don’t move a muscle, as if I’ve been staring forward the entire time Mr. Jay has been in the bathroom.
I can feel her eyes burning into my skin.
My heart beats loud in my ears. Another few seconds stretch by. All I want to do is look back at her but I don’t.
One day. One day we’ll be out of here. But I don’t know if I can wait that long. If they’re doing to her what they do to me… They have to be stopped. She can’t turn into what I am. They can’t do that to her. I won’t let them.