Authors: Dan Carr
I jumped up onto the table.
“Get down,” Larry said. He pointed at me. That was something a parent did to scare their child. What was it about a fingertip that was intimidating?
“A GIRL GOT OUT! I SAW HER ESCAPE!” I screamed. My hands were on either side of my mouth. I don’t think that did anything to make my voice louder, but it just felt appropriate.
The other residents looked at each other and then back at me. There was whispering, and even the glowing Fireflies—the goody goodies—were stopping to think about it.
“You did not see anything,” Larry said. He got off the stage and came over to me. He stayed on the ground and let me stay up on the table. My group was still sitting around me, watching me. Their chins were so close to my feet, and I could have kicked some sense into each one of them.
“Yes I did.” I stared at him. “You’re the liar.”
“Be quiet Valerie,” Brooke said. “You’re just upset you never got anything. Because you finally know you’re messed up.”
“You’re so stupid,” I told her. Her head was going to be the first one kicked off—and then Twin’s, and then Logan’s.
“No, you’re crazy,” she said back.
“Why don’t you just go and kill yourself already,
Brooke
.” I sat down on the table, so that I was at her level, and looked her right in the eyes.
“Maybe you should,
Valerie
.”
“Maybe I will!” I lifted my hands up so that everyone could see that my palms were empty. I wasn’t going to hit anyone or throw anything. I was just being violent in different ways.
“Enough.” Larry held up a hand.
I got off the table, and the room snapped back in place. Residents began to move. We went back into our little lives, where we watched the world in groups of six.
Sharon came over to our group. Kenzie and Logan got up, and then Twin did, and then Brooke. They were all shiny and glowing, and they were only like that because Larry had dimmed the lights. That was the only way anything could really shine.
Guy came over to my table when he noticed me staying there. He stood near me as the rest of my group was escorted out of the mess hall. He waited for me to move before even asking me to.
“Guy, she got out.”
“She didn’t get out, Valerie.”
I shook my head.
“Think about it,” he said.
“There’s nothing to think about. I saw it.”
“You didn’t see anything. You can’t get far on a broken leg. She barely made it to the woods, Valerie. She never got out. She was sent home.”
“There’s no way,” I whispered.
“I promise you, Val.” He looked right at me.
It couldn’t be true. I had seen her get out. Kind of. Mostly. I liked the wild possibility of someone doing something stupid, and not listening to rules and restrictions. It was exciting to think that there had been a wild, pointless escape.
I turned around to see if I was alone, and then there was little Tracy behind me. Her eyes that had been full of optimism were completely deflated by Guy’s news. That was what hope and then disappointment looked like on a person.
Back in the day, Larry had said that disappointment was life motivating you, but from the look in Tracy’s eyes, I believed it was something that was killing us.
The day went on as usual. The rain came hard and quick, and maybe it really was more than a little storm. At least we didn’t have to go outside, but that meant staying close near groups of people I didn’t exactly want to look at all day. Murray was staring at me from one side of the room while activities played out in front of me, and Lisa Hatcher watched from the other side. When it was finally time to go to our own cabins for bed, I was relieved to be free from the glares drilling holes into my skull.
I was finally sleeping. Because I was used to how things were around me. I was settled in, and tired from my environment. In my dream, Dad was screaming at me to stop being such a snot for not wanting to see Mum, and I couldn’t get out of bed. There were tears streaming down my face because I didn’t know how to speak up and tell him what was wrong with me—that my body ached and I was sad for no reason. He kept yelling and yelling at me to stop being so lazy, and I wanted to get up and do things, and I wanted there to be a reason. Low iron, or something small. Something not scary.
When I woke up in my bunk, my heart was pounding and I had real tears in my eyes. I wasn’t dreading going home, but it was scary knowing that I had to deal with the same things that weren’t a big deal to anyone else. Waking up on time, putting on clothes, being around people, and eating full meals. I couldn’t do it.
It was time for a change.
I was staying in New Horizons until Dad came and got me. And then from there, I had a lot of things to do. Like decide what I wanted to do during my days, and what I wanted to work toward. God, it was scary to even think about.
I climbed down the ladder and put on my boots. Logan was snoring on the top of her bunk, and Twin had her glow stick around head. The light coming off it was irritating. Right then I had the great idea of stealing the glow stick from her. Just to see what it was like.
As quietly as I could, I reached under the bunk and lifted the glowing halo off of Twin’s blonde head. She didn’t move at all in her sleep because she had no idea her Firefly status was being taken from her. It glowed so nicely in my hands and I presented it to myself like there was a huge crowd and my parents were waving at me to look at them. I waved at Brooke, and smiled at Logan, silently thanking them for the great time. I put it in my head and turned around and bowed at Tracy. When I looked up, I saw that her bed was made and she wasn’t actually in it.
“Woah.” I was stunned.
It was just an empty bed. Tracy’s boots were gone. Her water bottle, number 66, was sitting next to 49. It was completely full. Not a single drop was needed to fill it.
It was interesting to me, different, and since I wasn’t tired, I decided to make it my business to see where Tracy was. I went outside, and carefully shut the door behind me.
The wind pushed my hair into my eyes. I pulled it back behind my ears and jumped off the step. The glow of the light on my head actually helped me see, and I wondered what I looked like from far away, running through the woods with a bright pink glow over my head.
The outhouse was just down the path from me, and when I got to it, the door was closed. I knew she was in there. Tracy probably had the urge to go in the middle of the night.
I moved onto the step and pressed my ear against the wood. There was no sound on the other side. I felt like Lisa Hatcher’s bully, waiting for her to take a piss, and then I would pounce and yell
“Ha! You pee!”
. I could see a glow from the cracks where a candle flickered on the inside, and the same pink glow that was on my head came from the crack.
I knocked on the door as hard as I could.
But she didn’t answer. It stayed silent.
“Hello!” I yelled. “Are you okay in there?” I swung the door open to see what was going on—-
I fell backward off the step, startled and scared, and immediately covered one of my eyes with my hand to put something between where I was and what I was seeing—-
There was Tracy, hanging, eyes open, with a halo on her head. Her feet were dangling.
“Bambi.”
There was a rush of sickness coming up, and I jumped forward and entered the outhouse to try and lift her tiny body upward to relieve the pressure around her neck. Her body was so cold, and I wondered why I had been asleep, dreaming of fighting, and she had been out here, killing herself.
“HELP! SOMEBODY HELP ME! I NEED HELP!”
On day one, I was worried about my shoes being too tight. But I had gotten used to it. Size nine really was a size nine—maybe my feet were swollen at first. And I didn’t want my hospital bracelet to be taken from me because I liked that it said the basics, and nothing more. And the worst thing about New Horizons was that I was missing my summer, and meanwhile, Tracy was terrified of going back to her house, while I was looking forward to mine—so I could hide.
Flashlights filled the area, and I wished for none of it to be real.
I was pulled backward before I could tell anyone what was going on. Two men had taken my place to push her up, to relieve the tension around her neck, and I stared at the scene and kept reminding myself that it was real and happening and not ever going to be any different than right then.
I’d never seen a dead body. Not up close and dead like that. And little Bambi was hanging by the neck, as dead as somebody who wanted to die could be. Her eyes were the widest they had ever been, and her skin was blue with a tint of pink from the glow stick on her crown. She looked like she was an angel strapped to the earth. I noticed the cloth hanging from the ceiling, and recognized our white t-shirts strung together, and the little knots some shaking hands had tied together. Like the program had taught her.
My arms felt light from no longer lifting her bodyweight. Another counsellor, who I realized was Guy, wrapped his grip around the top of my arm, like day one, and I could taste the salt of my tears trailing down my cheeks. In the corner of the outhouse the candle flickered, and I dropped down to my knees and sobbed.
17:
SQUARE ONE
I could barely keep my eyes open, and even though I had no idea what a migraine felt like, I was pretty sure I was having one right then.
Larry’s office still had the view of the fence, and Avril and Burrito Eater were standing with flashlights at their feet, guarding the facility.
It was a completely new place. Larry was pacing in front of me, and the walkie in his back pocket was playing fuzzy, short conversations between counsellors around the property. They were all frantic and sharing information they thought was vital—where they were headed, what they were doing.
It was pouring rain.
“I’m sorry you had to find her like that.”
“It was just the body.” My nails were dirty. I picked at the crud beneath the nail and tried not to think about anything but the process of picking at a nail, and cleaning it out. “I’d like to go back to my cabin.”
“It wouldn’t be right to send you there.”
“And why is that?”
“This is an event that might change your stay here,” he said.
My stay here
. That was something I didn’t want to think about in any kind of context. But I didn’t ask more questions because there was nothing to say. I put my head back and listened to the mess hall door open and close from the residents entering, and the noise of the chairs pulling across the floor. After a couple minutes, it was my turn to move too.
“What are you thinking?”
“What am I thinking?” I smiled. There was a lot to be thinking. I didn’t know what I really wanted to think about, but I knew what I didn’t want to think about. “I guess that could be anything,” I told him. And then I led him off course. “When I get out of here, what am I supposed to do?”
“What do you mean?”
“Say I stay here, complete my course—what then? Am I cured? Cured of what? What will I know that I don’t know now? Will I have a different outlook on things? Am I going to be a better person, and know how to apply myself in the real world? I feel exactly as I did a couple weeks ago, when I first got here—isn’t that bad? I feel the same. What am I supposed to do when I’m home, when I feel like I do right now?”
“I guess I don’t have an answer—I don’t know what you’re supposed to do. I just hope that we gave you the tools to try harder, and do better.”
I laughed.
“What else do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know. I just think there’s a huge script you’ve been reading across your eyelids when you close them at night, and you’re so well versed in it that you don’t even hear what I hear. The meaningless bullshit. I want a real answer, Larry. I want to know what I am supposed to do!”
“Do you really want specifics? Fine. I suggest that you grow up, get a job—any job. Fold clothes for living, bag groceries, I don’t care. Just get off your ass and make some money. Get your GED for fuck’s sake—you’re not a dumbass, you know that. And get the hell over yourself, and then maybe,
just maybe
, you’ll start to actually feel okay.”
The walls and the ceiling were painted two different colours. It was barely noticeable. The window behind Larry was opened a crack, and a breeze was making the curtains sway. I glanced down at his bare desk, and stayed completely still.
Larry leaned back in his seat. “You alive over there or what?”
I ignored him. “Are we done?”
“Follow me, Valerie,” he said. “And please, for the sake of others around you, please,
please
keep quiet about what is going on. I would like to explain things myself.”
It was funny that I was in a different position right then—that I was a god. Because I knew about life and the stark things that could happen if you weren’t careful. As soon as you become used to how things are going for you, life will tap you on your shoulder and remind you why it’s important to be grateful.