15. Haley
HALEY
10 years ago
H e’s gone.
He’s gone, and I don’t know what to do.
I can’t think. He’s gone, and that means there’s nowhere for me to look for him.
He’s gone, and in this place, that can only mean I’ll never see him again.
The fear consumes every thought and feeling. Is my heart even beating anymore?
I stare at the open door of the room with no cameras, both hoping I’ll see him and hoping I won’t.
If he made it out, then I never want to see him in this place again. If he’s free, then he should stay free. I know that’s what he’d tell me to do. If I got away, he wouldn’t want me to come back for him.
Keep running. Don’t look back for anything. Never let them see your face again.
My eyes sting with tears, but I don’t let them fall. I’m just so scared, and I’m not even scared for me. I’m scared for him.
He could be dead for all I know.
I’ve seen what they do to him. The people in charge of this place would do it. They would kill, and brush the murder under the rug. That’s how they get away with everything. If they really screw up and hurt somebody too badly, they just blame it on the kid.
It makes my hands shake with rage. They can blame it on us because our parents already think we’re lost causes. The teachers could tell my parents anything, and they’d eat it up. They want to be reassured that we need help beyond anything they can handle. We have to be the worst of the worst or else it’s our parents who failed.
My mother is the one who sent me here in the first place because she thought I was evil. She probably still thinks I’m evil. I have no way to tell her I’m not. I don’t know what she hears from the school or if they hear anything at all. They’re probably just living their normal lives, hoping these kind people can get me back on the right track.
I reach down and curl my hands around the seat of the chair to keep myself from standing up and screaming.
If he was in front of me now, I’d have no problem staying still and silent for as long as it took.
I’d do anything for him. Even just to see him for a fraction of a second.
But he’s not here, and I’m alone. The desire to fight is almost overwhelming.
I close my eyes for a few seconds and take deep breaths.
“Be good,” I whisper to myself beneath my breath. “Play nice. Let them think you’re broken.”
I repeat it a few more times until I’m sure my fear is hidden. A broken person doesn’t let people know who they care about because a broken person doesn’t care about anyone.
“I don’t care,” I whisper. It’s them I don’t care about. I can’t even lie to myself about him. I will only say that if that’s what it takes to buy myself some time. Nothing I say to them means anything.
It’s all fake. I’m just faking it so I can get out of here. I’m just playing the part that will lead to me getting free.
Thunk, thunk. Footsteps ricochet in the hall. I let go of the chair and fold my hands in my lap and sit up straight.
Mr. Jay comes into the room with no cameras. He doesn’t try to hide how much he likes it in here. He sneers at me, his eyes roaming over my body.
I bite my tongue to stop any words from coming out of my mouth. He’s a creep and a monster. If he decides to touch me, then he’ll do it, and nothing I say will stop him.
He plants his feet a short distance away from my chair. If he leaned forward, he could reach me. I don’t move.
Don’t move a muscle , I remind myself.
Mr. Jay stares at me until my breath gets shorter. I hate waiting to find out what they’ll do. It’s always bad, always humiliating, and somehow I never guess right.
“Have you reflected on your actions?” he asks.
“Yes, sir.” What he’s really asking is whether I feel sorry for the riot. I didn’t start it. While we were running, someone said something about the lunchroom. I just got swept up in it, and there was no way I was going to fight to come back to the school.
“And?” he prompts.
“And I’m sorry I broke the rules.”
“You did more than break the rules. You put our school at risk.”
“I’m sorry.” I’m not actually sorry. I don’t know how I could be. The riot felt like a dream. I was almost outside my body, going along with everybody else.
“I don’t think you are.”
I don’t answer him. I’m playing nice. Faking it. If he expects me to argue, he’ll be disappointed. I’m not going to. I just look up at him, my hands demurely in my lap.
The corner of his lip curls. He wanted me to put up a fight. The man doesn’t need an excuse to hurt me, but he likes to have one, and I’m not giving it to him.
With a disgusted sigh, he jerks his head toward the door. “Get up. Follow me.”
I do.
The whole school is silent except for the voices of some of the teachers. It was so loud when we were escaping. It really felt like we were about to be free. The energy was electrifying. It’s the same feeling I had during those playground games when I would reach the slide that meant safety, my heart pounding and my body flooded with relief.
I’ll feel that again someday. I will. I don’t know how or when, or what I’ll have to do to guarantee I have that feeling, but I’ll get it.
No matter what.
Now, I have just have to fake it.
Mr. Jay stops at another room and gestures me inside.
I stop myself from letting out a gasp at the last second.
The room is a nightmare. Blood and dirt cover the floor, some of the mess in wide streaks, like they dragged someone who was bleeding into the room and used them to mop the concrete.
“This is your punishment.”
I blink, not wanting to look at Jay. “This?”
“Clean it up.”
I lift my hands in front of me. “I don’t have?—”
“With this.”
He holds a toothbrush. Whose is this? It’s been used—I can tell that from how the bristles are sticking out. It’s not mine. I thought I was used to the horrible things they did here, but my stomach clenches.
I take the toothbrush.
It’s dry, not wet, so he didn’t pull this out of someone’s mouth.
“Get down on your knees.”
I get down on my knees at the edge of the mess. “I don’t have anything to?—”
“Start scrubbing.”
The dry toothbrush can’t clean the blood and dirt off concrete but I do as I’m told. “Spit,” he orders and I do. It doesn’t take long for my knees to ache from my position on the floor. When I try to balance on my heels, Mr. Jay barks at me to get back on my knees.
He tells me how worthless I am. But I already knew he would say things like that. It means nothing now. His opinion is shit.
Even through my pants, my knees hurt like the skin is being cut.
Both my knees will be bruised and raw by the time he lets me out of here. That’s what always happens. That’s probably why there are concrete floors and no rugs anywhere. Students spend too much time on their knees. Rugs would only make that easier, and we’re not here for things to be easy.
My knuckles get scraped, too. My hand is cramped around the toothbrush when a bucket thuds down next to me.
“Keep going. And this time, use the soap.”
I answer diligently, “Yes, sir.”
The warm, soapy water does a better job on the filth, but all I have is a toothbrush. I don’t have a mop or even a rag, so the water just gets dirty and red and collects in a pool on the floor. I tried my best to push it toward the drain with the toothbrush. The floor isn’t slanted like it normally would be in a room with a drain, so I have to do it one toothbrush-sweep at a time.
I stop thinking about how long it will take. I’ll be in here as long as Mr. Jay wants me to be. The floor and the mess are just his excuses. I could probably clean it until it was spotless, and he’d walk across it again with mud on his shoes just so I had to start over.
I go through the alphabet while I scrub, then count to a hundred. I try to remember science facts I learned in school. In my real school, not this one—I don’t think I’ve ever learned anything here except cruelty.
But then I think of him. Of a different life where we’re together and there’s no pain.
The pain in my knees and my knuckles becomes background noise.
I swallow back tears. I had done so well keeping my mind blank, but now the thought of him blurs out the blood and dirt on the floor.
Is this his blood?
Did he lose too much to survive?
I force myself to stop thinking about things I don’t know are real. I force myself to keep scrubbing. To get the room clean.
My legs hurt from my toes to my hips when I finally scrape the last bit of soap and blood and dirt into the drain. The door opens and shuts behind me. I hadn’t realized I was alone. Hours must’ve past.
“Rinse the floor.”
I stagger to my feet. My ankles were bent in an awkward position for too long, so I struggle to keep my balance. Mr. Jay points at the bucket of water. It’s a deep, dirty gray color now.
The metal handle cuts into my palms when I pick it up. There’s still quite a bit of water left, and I nearly fall over from the weight of it.
But I don’t.
I walk a few crooked steps toward the drain, then start pouring as carefully as I can. The water streams out of the bucket and pushes the last of the mess into the drain. This floor will probably never look completely clean again, but it doesn’t look like a murder scene anymore.
I did that.
I’m not proud of the job I’ve done—the punishment I’ve endured. I’m more surprised that it was possible at all. I thought the toothbrush would never get anything off that floor, even with the water.
The last of the water spills out of the bucket, and I put it down on the floor. I’m exhausted and shaking, the toothbrush still clutched in my hand. Does every room in the school look like this? Will I be scrubbing floors until I fall over dead?
It’s hard to pick my head up, but I do.
Mr. Jay narrows his eyes. “Now brush your teeth.”
My mouth drops open, but I close it again. I’m too numb to be shocked, but this?—
“I—” My tongue is so dry that it struggles to move. “I don’t have?—”
“There’s no need for toothpaste.”
I lift the toothbrush to my mouth and push it inside. I’m not here. I’m not here, and I’m not doing this. This is happening to someone else. I’m watching it happen to someone else.
The taste is awful. I gag on it, but I know better than to think he’ll let me off after a few seconds.
Mr. Jay doesn’t.
He makes me open my mouth so he can be sure I’ve brushed every single one of my teeth with the foul toothbrush, covered in blood and dirt and soap.
When I can’t stand to brush for another second, I pull it out of my mouth and bend over to spit into the drain.
“You will swallow.”
I don’t want to. God, I don’t want to. Saliva fills my mouth. I’m going to be sick. I’m going to be sick, and then?—
No. I can’t.
I’m not here. This is happening to somebody else.
It’s not me.
I have to fake it until I get free. I have to fake it, and that means doing whatever Mr. Jay says.
I swallow, tears pricking my eyes.
It almost comes up, but I swallow again. That happens three times before I’m certain I won’t throw up. I stay bent over the drain for another few seconds, then stand up straight and face Mr. Jay. I’m a mess on the inside. I’m disgusted and afraid and tired, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to keep going.
I have to keep going.
“Doesn’t it feel good to do the right thing?” Mr. Jay asks in a voice that’s sweet as honey. “Your mother picked this punishment for you.”
“Y—” I’m almost sick again, but I choke it down. In another few seconds, I’ll start crying. The only reason I make myself stop is that I’ll get another punishment. I can’t take another punishment. Not tonight. “Yes, sir. It feels good to do the right thing.”
I keep on doing the right thing for three months before I see my mother again.
When I do, she can’t believe the person I’ve become. She’s proud of all the progress that I’ve made and so relieved that I finally saw how wrong I was before I came here.
My mom cries and kisses both my cheeks. “You’ve grown so much. You’ve turned out so well.”
She’s so pleased with everything the school has done for me that she makes me stay another two months and finish out the year so I can graduate with my classmates.