Slain (32 page)

Paige burries her face in her palms.
 

The letter lists everything that I’ve done, and she knows more than I gave her credit for. The sex. My lack of faith in God. Me not even confiding in her that I’m a murder suspect. The plans to go to a different college. We were supposed to be roommates, but I never filled out the housing request forms. Of course she figured it out when she saw a stranger’s name instead of mine. I should have anticipated that, but I was too wrapped up in myself to think about her. They want it to hurt me that I’ve hurt her, and it does.

Pastor Pete goes next. Like Paige, he takes out a letter to read to me.

“You’ve been struggling for a while. I didn’t want to see it at first. I prayed that you’d figure things out on your own. I’ve worked with tough kids before. I’ve seen it a million times, but I never thought it would come to this with a girl like you. I can only pray that you’ll take this for what it is. An opportunity to change your life for the better.”

He looks into my eyes, and his gaze is caring and earnest. He’s everything he’s supposed to be, but it only makes me angrier. I don’t need his generosity or his understanding.

“My life is fine,” I say. It’s not. But God certainly can’t help.

“You may be done with God, but He’s not done with you. Not yet.” Pastor Pete reaches across Mike’s lap to squeeze my mother’s hand. “And neither are we.”

When Mrs. Hemple calls on Mike, I protest.

“No,” I say. “He doesn’t get to talk. Not to me. Not about what I’ve done wrong.”

“Is this about that story you told your principal?” Mrs. Hemple asks. “I’ve been working with girls like you for a long time, Emma. And you know what? They use stories like that to gain sympathy or to call attention away from their own actions. We call them TTs here for Tall Tales. It’s time to stop the lies.”

“You don’t know anything about it,” I say.

“I know everything, Emma, absolutely everything. Do you think Mister Kent would have come all the way down here if he didn’t want to see you get the help you so desperately need?”

I shoot out of my seat. “I won’t listen to it,” I say. “Not from him.”

The men are on me before I see them coming. They force me back into the chair and grab my wrists.

“No!” I scream, “let me go!” I struggle away from them, but they hold the chair still so I look like a child throwing a tantrum. Maybe I am.
 

I catch Mike’s eyes as I writhe against the men. His face is the model of the concerned boyfriend, but his eyes are as happy as a cat who just caught a mouse. He wants to see me struggle, wants to hear me scream. The knowledge of it gives me the strength to calm myself. I won’t give him the satisfaction.
 

The cuffs click onto my wrists, tighter than before.

“What did I tell you, Emma? Your freedom is a privilege here, not a right.”

“Mom? Please tell them to take these off,” I ask in as even a tone as I can manage.
 

“It’s for the best, honey. I know it doesn’t feel like that right now, but you’ll see.”

“Your mother is right. We’re all here because we care about you. That includes Mister Kent. You will listen to him like all the others. Mr. Kent?”

 
Mike clears his throat, just like Paige. They have the same nervous tics, the same wrinkle between their brows. The difference is in the eyes. I steel myself for his words.

“Dear Emma.”
 

I’m right here, asshole.
 

“You are a liar.” It comes out angrier than he wants it to. He takes a deep breath. “You lied about loving me.” He pieces his own words together like an early reader making them whole for the first time. “You lied about loving God. You lied about where you were after Winter Formal. You lied about wanting to stay a virgin. The Bible says to resist the Devil and he will flee. That’s why I had to resist you. You are filled with the Devil.”

I roll my eyes so hard it feels like they’re going to pop out of my head. Mrs. Hemple notices.

“An open ear is an open heart, Emma.”

I guess I have neither. I stop listening to him. I count tiles on the floor. I count spots on the tiles. I count roses on the curtains and stars on the bulletin board. I memorize the girls’ names and how many stars they have. Annabel—zero stars, Lisa—fourteen stars, Jenny—four stars, Krista—seven stars, Bianca—nine stars, Chloe—twenty-two stars, Carrie—three stars, Selena—
 

“Emma?” I look up. Mrs. Hemple’s brow is furrowed. “I asked you what you had to say to Mister Kent.”

I snort. “Go fuck yourself.”

This does not go over well. My father gasps, my mother sobs. Mrs. Hemple sends them out of the room to have a private “time out” session with me.

“I do not tolerate that kind of language here. You are in God’s house, and you will use your words to honor Him. Chris?”
 

Goatee walks behind me, and I hear the shuffling of cupboards and something else. He returns with a Dixie cup. He hands it to Mrs. Hemple. She presses it to my lips.

“Drink,” she says.

What’s inside is blue. Right away I can smell it. It’s liquid dish soap. I squeeze my lips tight.

“Derek?” He steps forward and puts his hands on my face. They smell like motor oil and cheap cologne. He clenches my jaw with one hand and squeezes my nose with the other.

I won’t let them do this to me. I won’t.

“The easy way or the hard way,” Mrs. Hemple says. “Those are your choices. It’s completely up to you. You can accept your situation and have it done with, or you can struggle and it will be worse.”

I choose the latter. My face goes hot from the force of my resistance, from the absence of air. I don’t care. I can hold my breath forever.

“Very well,” Mrs. Hemple says. “Chris? Why don’t you show Miss Grant what the hard way really looks like?”

Chris steps forward and karate-chops my windpipe. Not hard enough to break me, not that hard. Just hard enough to make me gasp. Once my jaw is open, Derek holds it tight. The third guy, the one I call Hairy, holds my head back against the chair. My arms strain as I fight against it, but it’s no use.

Mrs. Hemple pours the liquid into my mouth. It’s bitter and sour and awful. I choke against it. My throat churns the goo to bubbles. I want to spit it out, but I can’t force my jaw together enough to do it. I scream instead. I gag.

“Your parents will not come for you,” Mrs. Hemple says.
 

She’s right. They don’t.

The cup is full, and the liquid is slow as it drips down my throat. I can feel foam spilling past my lips, dribbling down my neck.
My cup runneth over.
 

Mrs. Hemple doesn’t stop until it’s empty. Then she closes her eyes, puts a hand on my forehead and prays. “Cleanse this child with the blood of the Lamb. Cleanse her, oh Lord, that she may see Your glory and change her ways to please You. May we help her to create a life that glorifies You and not her own desires. Amen.”

Mrs. Hemple takes a pitcher of water and pours it into my mouth. It gushes over my face and down my shirt. When it’s gone I can still taste the soap, but I can’t feel it anymore.
 

She leans down and looks into my eyes. “We love you, Emma. Each and every one of us.” She kisses my forehead and walks away. I hate that I’m crying.

I hear a door open and close. And clearly, on the other side, I hear my mother say, “Can we see her now?”

Mrs. Hemple says, “Emma needs some time to consider her actions.”

“Of course,” my father says.

They heard me. They heard everything and didn’t stop it.

After that there is nothing left in me to fight with. Derek releases his grip on my jaw, and I collapse into the chair. I am a small pile of something. Dirty laundry. Wilted petals. Fall leaves in the rain. My spirit goes dark.

When they finally bring everyone back inside my shirt is dry again, and I am dead eyed, slumped into the chair, head bobbing nearly to sleep.

My parents say their words, but I barely register them. They are not my parents. I have no parents anymore. I am an orphan.

“We love you,” they say, as they leave me behind.

A
FTER
THEY
’
RE
GONE
, M
RS
. Hemple calls someone else into the room. The girl is blonde and sturdy, what a German masseuse might look like at fifteen. She wears a floor-length khaki skirt and a loose pink T-shirt that says,
New Mercy Ranch for Troubled Girls
. So hell has a name.

“This is Chloe,” Mrs. Hemple says. Chloe, twenty-two stars, the most on the board. “She will be your companion during your transition here. You will do everything she says and model your behavior after hers.”

The cuffs come off. I’m too tired to tell who helps me to my feet.

“Chloe, please show Emma to the dormitory.”

We walk out into the night. The area is barren and dusty. I can see buildings dotting the landscape that look like big metal barns, like the buildings on a chicken farm. A chain-link fence surrounds it all. It looks about ten feet tall.

“Where are we?” I ask.

“Do not ask questions and do not speak unless spoken to,” Chloe says. She calmly grabs a whistle around her neck and shows it to me. “All I have to do is whistle to let them know you’re being a bad girl, so don’t try it.”

“Fine,” I say.

“Do not speak unless spoken to,” she repeats, irritated this time.

“Okay, sorry,” I say.
 

She glares at me and lifts the whistle to her mouth. I lift my hands in surrender and shake my head. I give up. Even being with this mini-Hemple is better than the real thing. She calms down and turns sincere.

“Good girls follow orders. Dirty girls do not. From now on you’ll be a good girl, right?”

I nod and try not to laugh at the painfully earnest look on her face. I feel like I just stepped into bizarro-land.

“Good. Follow me.”
 

She leads me down a dirt path toward a building that’s labeled
Dormitory—Stage One.

“This is where you’ll sleep. I’ll sleep here too until you and Tessa move on to stage two, which is five stars.” Tessa, zero stars. “That’s when I can graduate. So you better get them quick because I don’t want to spend any more time in here than I have to.”

I nod. When we get inside I can see why she doesn’t want to sleep here. The room is small and cramped. The beds are wooden with thin mattresses and bunked three high with barely enough room to fit between them, enough to sleep maybe twenty girls. There are no sheets, only thin wool blankets. Some of the girls turn to stare at me with empty eyes, but none of them makes a sound. The whole scene reminds me of
Schindler’s List
, which everyone has to watch in ninth grade even though there’s a part with nudity they fast forward through. I wonder if they built them like that on purpose.

“The dorms get nicer after you move up stages,” Chloe says. She’s not reassuring me. She’s reassuring herself.

We walk to the back wall of what must be our bunk. There’s a girl already lying on the middle bunk who must be zero-star-Tessa. She glares at us with bright-green eyes. Her red tresses fan out across the pillow, long and blazing and glorious. Her beauty is stunning and frightening all at once.

“I sleep on the bottom, you sleep on the top. We’ll hear it if you try to get down. Won’t we, Tessa?” Tessa just rolls her eyes and turns over toward the wall so her back is to us. Chloe seems irritated by it, but she doesn’t speak up. Something about Chloe makes me think of the homeschooled girls at church, the ones who look at groups of girlfriends like a dog kept away from a steak. I wonder what she did to get here.

Then I look up to the top bunk. A shelf juts out on the end, the same as the other girls’ bunks, one shelf for each bed. There’s a small red suitcase on it. My red suitcase, which my mother must have packed days ago. It unnerves me how little I saw this coming. I think about my chances for escape. About my car parked snugly in the garage at home. How far am I from home? I have no idea.

“Change into your sleep dress in there, then brush your teeth,” Chloe motions toward a door that must be a bathroom, then looks at her watch. “You have seven minutes. Then it’s lights out.”

I stare at her for a moment. I usually sleep in my yoga pants and a tank top. I don’t even know what a sleep dress is, much less own one. Looking around the room, I see girls in old-timey white nightgowns. They’re buttoned up to the neck, full-sleeved, and down to the floor. No flowers, no frills.

Chloe interrupts my observation. “You have to be ready for lineup after that so you better hurry up.”

I climb into the top bunk and unzip my suitcase. I’m desperate to brush my teeth. There’s a note on top of my things in my mother’s handwriting. I can’t read it right now. I shove it deeper inside, resisting the urge to tear it to pieces. I find my toothbrush and my bath robe and a long granny nightgown I didn’t own before. I scramble down and head to the bathroom. Chloe follows. I expect she’ll be my shadow for a while.

The bathroom only has two stalls, and girls are lined up to use them. Two stalls for twenty girls? I’m glad I don’t have to pee. I start to undress, but Chloe slaps my hand. The line of girls turns to look at me.

“Don’t be indecent. Undress only behind the curtain.” She points to another doorway, and we go through it. Inside the second room is a line of empty stalls with curtains on rope as dividers. I enter one of them and pull it shut, glad to be alone for the first time since I left my house this morning.
 

It occurs to me that the undressing rule must exist for the girls who got sent here for liking other girls. The thought makes me almost mad enough to walk out among them naked in protest. Almost. But if soap is the punishment for swearing I don’t want to think about what the punishment for that would be.

A soft tone rings from a speaker above my head.

“Hurry up!” Chloe says. “That’s the three-minute warning.”

I pull the nightgown over my head and bundle my dirty clothes under my arm. I exit and make a beeline for the sink.