New Horizons (6 page)

I kept my dead gaze forward and followed the line of troubled girls. Like Camp Hedgewood, New Horizons was still divided down the middle. Boys were on one side, girls on the other, with the mess hall separating the two. Some things never changed, and penis and vagina were never allowed to mix when it came to sleeping arrangements.

When I was 8-years-old I was terrified that all the cabins were in the woods. It was scary to think that if you needed to use the bathroom your only option was walking through the woods to get to the outhouses. But after a couple nights out there with your group, it was fun, and it was hard to be afraid of the branches tapping and scraping against the cabin. It was normal to hear things, and you could get used to anything if it became a routine.

“We’re almost there, ladies.”

The path we were on sloped down for a bit, and when we rounded the corner, the smallest cabin on the property became visible in the dark.

Cabin 519.

It was my old cabin. Back in the day, when you were given your cabin for the summer, it was like being accepted into a club. You were pretty much guaranteed to be best friends with your cabin mates after the summer was over. And every year I requested that cabin, and even though the people changed, it still felt like the same place.

But this time it was going to be different.

The cabin was painted white with green trim around the windows, but most of it was chipping. There was a small peephole in the middle of the door, and if I remembered correctly, it was the hole that a breeze liked to sneak through and shake the door at night. We used to say that the ghosts wanted in because they were afraid of the dark.

“This is it?” a redhead asked. She was tall and her teeth were covered in braces. It looked like they were new braces because her teeth were nowhere near straight. She was still in the beginning stages of getting rid of her crooked face.

“Yes, this is where you’ll be staying the next month”

“Next month.” I closed my eyes as it finally sunk in. That brought us to the end of summer. And it was just exhausting knowing that, and having to keep hearing it over and over again.

There was no lock on the cabin. It was still just a wooden block nailed to the door frame, and that wooden block slid over the door to keep it from moving at night. The door was swaying in the breeze, already open for us to explore. I remembered the raccoons, and how easy it was for them to sneak in and out during the day. It really made you question whether it was worth it or not sneaking chips and candy to camp. We always did, of course, and regretted it when a family of glowing eyes were staring at us in the early morning of the night.

“Go inside and check it out,” Sharon said.

It was neat and organized on the inside. There were three sets of bunk beds, with one on either side of the cabin, and one across the back wall. There were water jugs on the end of each bed. One for each of us, I assumed. They were all written on with sharpie markers, randomly numbered so we would know who was drinking from what. A window on the right was the only view of the outside, and carvings from Camp Hedgewood days filled the ceiling and walls. Somewhere, my name was carved. It was still cozy, to say the least, but I never remembered it as being that small.

I shoved through the other girls and headed straight for the back bunk bed on the far wall. It was the only bunk bed that was alone and it was my favourite. The bigger braided girl tried to get past me. I jumped up onto the bed before she could, and I looked down at her.

“Why do you get the good bed?” She glared at me through her long lashes that went straight out from her face. There was no curl.

“Because I got up here first.”

“Ladies, neither of you will get it if you keep it up,” Sharon said.

It was mine though. Because I had jumped up and claimed it. She had to grab one of the other bunks that were across from each other. The little girl of the group got the spot under me. All we had was one grey blanket and no pillow. At least the thin mattresses had a sheet over them. I wondered how clean they actually were though. I climbed down and picked up my empty, four-litre jug.

“49.” I held it by the handle and traced the number with my other hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“You can fill your jug at the hose on the side of the mess hall during you breaks, but that’s it. So be smart about it. And if you lose your jug, that’s all you’re getting.”

We were each given a plastic baggie of toiletries. Sharon passed around one baggie to each of us from a brown paper bag she had pulled out from under one of the beds. All that was in the baggie was a toothbrush and a bar of soap.

“Where’s the shampoo?” a short girl asked. Her hair was a frizzy blonde, and she had huge boobs that made her t-shirt bulge. I wondered what she was missing from home that normally shaped her into a better version of herself.

Sharon held up the bar of soap.

“Oh wow,” I said. It made me smile to see the hurt on that girl’s face. I felt it from across the room.

The girl bunking under me just stared at her baggie. It was like she was going into shock. She had a low pony tail and her clothes were big on her. She couldn’t have been older than fifteen. It wouldn’t be good for her to be around us older and meaner girls.

“What about toothpaste?” the redhead asked.

“You don’t need it.”

“Don’t need it?” I laughed because I couldn’t believe it. “Hello—cavities are a thing. And they suck.”

“If you brush correctly, you won’t need toothpaste.”

“That isn’t a thing. There’s no way.”

“At New Horizons it is.”

Sharon showed us the bathrooms next. I knew exactly what to expect as we were led through the dark. When she stopped at a little shed in the woods with a cut-out moon crescent, I looked at the girls and their faces were blank. They had no idea what they were looking at.

“There is no running water out in the woods, hence the outhouses. There is a bottle of hand sanitizer sitting on the floor of every outhouse. There are approximately five outhouses scattered across this property. It’s not as bad as it looks, ladies. Believe it or not, you will get used to it.”

It wasn’t as bad as it looked. It was worse. Because when you needed to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, you were almost screwed. Sure, there were several of the outhouses spread out across the property in between the cabins, but when you needed to go, there was no quick way of getting to the bathroom in the dark.

There was a single candle beside the toilet seat. She bent down and lit it with a match that was on the side. It was the only pretty thing in the area.

“How do we shower?” a different blonde girl asked. This one had a boy haircut and a boy chest. She was standing next to the frizzy haired blonde who was depressed about the lack of shampoo. To be honest, they both had the same kind of hair—dry and nicer looking in another life somewhere outside of New Horizons. But when you were stripped of things that made you look good—makeup, jewelry, nice clothes—just your skin and bones were all you had to work with. The two blondes still had their blonde hair though. Just because it was one colour didn’t mean it was real. That didn’t seem fair.

“The lake is your shower,” Sharon said.

The lake. That gave me hope—that we still had access to the shoreline. It could be an escape.

“Do you provide razors?” the redhead asked.

“You don’t need that.”

That was crazy. I thought about my legs and how hairy they seemed to get in just a day. Or my armpits, and how itchy it would be to have stubble up there.

“Right now it’s bunk hour. Bunk hour is your time to get to know each other, maybe read a novel from the bookshelf, or catch up and relax. You get them at random points in the day. The last one is right before lights out. That is one hour before bed, and then you’re asleep. I will come around and make sure you’re in bed, and there will be random checks throughout the night. If you have to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, you go to the outhouse, and then you’re back to your cabin. There is a nurse on duty at all hours for emergencies only. During the day, she is someone you can go to for tampons, pads, Band-Aids, and whatever else you may need. She is located at the ward, which is attached to the mess hall, which you already know. Again, there are counsellors doing random night walks, so that means no funny business. There is no audience in New Horizons. Just be good.”

It was all business, with words and instructions. And if you didn’t listen, that was when you messed up. Sharon gave us ten minutes to go to the outhouses and brush our teeth in the woods. I brought my jug, 49, and was careful not to waste too much water. When I got back to the cabin, the next debate was what to sleep in. We only had one set of clothes. I slipped off my boots and laid them on the floor near the ladder. I didn’t bother taking anything else off. I was uncomfortable either way and just laid under my grey blanket and ignored everyone else as they got themselves into their bunks.

Sharon left the only lantern that we had for light. She said she’d be back for it in an hour when we would have to go to sleep.

“As an ice breaker, I say we each say something about ourselves,” the redhead said.

“I’m going to kill you in your sleep if you don’t shut up,” braided girl said.

That was all I needed to hear to know that cabin 519 wasn’t cabin 519 anymore. There were no telling secrets and stories and laughter. There was no sharing, or dreaming of tomorrow. It was just dread, and depression and holding in piss—because even though you went to the bathroom, that didn’t mean you could go.

I covered myself with the thin blanket. The other girls began to whisper back and forth for a bit. I turned over onto my side and felt for the groove in the wood for the initials of an 8-year-old girl who just wanted to leave her mark.

4:
THIS IS HOW I DIE

In cabin 519, and everywhere else at 2:00 a.m. in New Horizons, you were supposed to be asleep.
But it was our first night at the facility for troubled youth, and I was already imaging ways to escape through the fence surrounding the property. Maybe it was useless though. The worst part since my arrival weren’t the uniform or that none of the residents were allowed to leave—the worst was listening to the girl’s whispering about their wild pasts. I just wanted to fall into a deep sleep and never wake up, but that was hard when everyone wanted to know who you were, where you came from, and more importantly, what happened the night you were taken.

They were all the same abducted stories, and then came the whole repeating of names when they forgot who they were talking to—was it Rachelle who tried to stab her cousin? Or Meghan? Surprisingly, there were no Meghans. But we looked like a bunch of Meghans. Meghans with an ’h’—the worst kind of Meghans. And to be honest, there was no point trying to remember exactly who was who. It was just a one month stint, and none of the girls mattered to me. I laid on my top bunk and listened to the girls and their ramblings about their hometowns, their families, and their cats, and I decided I was going to make it all up.

I started with their names.

The curvy, tall redhead with braces glued to her head was Green Gables. She liked asking personal questions about our families and schools and if we had ever had cheesecake before.

“Is that like an innuendo for something?” the girl with braids asked. She shared a bunk with Green Gables.

“No, I’m seriously just wondering. Homemade cheesecake is really good,” Green Gables said.

The two girls who weren’t responding to a lot of her questions I referred to as Twin and Twinner, or the twins for short. They had the same laugh and the same colour hair and shared the same bunk. That’s what was required to be a twin. But they had their differences too—Twinner had no tits, and Twin had really fuzzy hair and an addiction to kick. If I had to guess, Twin was a smoker back home. She kept her toothbrush between her fingers and her lips, taking a drag every now and then.

My bunkmate below wasn’t very talkative. She stayed in her cave and occasionally answered questions with one-worded answers. When I heard scratching from below, I looked down over the bed and saw her carving her name into the wood.

TRACY MCPHERSON

Something in my gut gave me that dejavu feeling, and I remembered that there were a lot of McPherson’s in my hometown. Tracy McPherson was making me miss home, and I didn’t like that. It was Bambi from that moment on.

“I just got fired from my job so it’s not that big of a deal being here,” the girl with the braids said.

“Where did you work?” Twinner asked.

“At a gas station.”

And that was when the big girl with braids became Karen—for no particular reason. She just seemed like an everyday Karen, except she was failing high school and having sex with her neighbour’s son who was five years older than her.

I stayed out of the conversation, but even though I wasn’t talking, I could still listen.

“How old is everyone?” Green Gables asked.

Each girl went around the room and said 17-years-old, and when it came to me, I decided to say my age at least since that was easy. The only girl who wasn’t seventeen in the cabin was my bunkmate under me.