Shock Point (8 page)

Father Gary brought a girl about Cassie’s own age into the closet, gave her his chair, and introduced her as Cassie’s new “buddy,” Rebecca.

Rebecca had sharp features, high cheekbones, and dirty blond hair pulled back in a French twist. She managed to make her khaki blouse look like something you might actually want to wear. There was a faint white spot right under her lower lip from a healed piercing, and an acid green smiley face was tattooed on her ankle, but aside from that, she could have been a poster child for Peaceful Cove, with a tan and perfectly white teeth.

“You are going to be part of the Respect Family,” she said after Father Gary left. “That means we are sisters.” She gave Cassie a cheerleader’s professional smile. “Our housemother is Mother Nadine. You call the other family’s mothers ‘mother’ as well. For example, the mother for the Dignity Family is Mother Catherine. You can never, ever call the mothers by only their first names.”

The words, the ideas, the strangeness of everything were all starting to blur together, and the heat had sapped Cassie’s last bit of energy. She leaned her head back against the wall, wishing she could sleep, wishing she didn’t have this girl sitting in front of her, talking, talking, talking.

Rebecca snapped her fingers in front of Cassie’s face. She jolted up a level of wakefulness. Forcing her eyes wide open, she shifted in her seat and crossed her legs at the knee.

“You can’t cross your legs here,” Rebecca rapped out.

Cassie crossed them at the ankle, then tucked them demurely under her chair.

“You can’t cross your ankles, either.”

Cassie uncrossed her legs and sat up straight, willing herself to be invisible, willing Rebecca to go away. She didn’t know what she wanted more—to drink or to eat or to sleep. At least if she could sleep, she could dream about being someplace else.

Taking a rubber band from her wrist, Rebecca handed it to her. “And your hair can’t be down—it must be pulled back. As a Level One, you can never raise your eyes. When another person approaches, bow your head. The only exceptions are the teachers and Father Gary.” Cassie couldn’t help but make eye contact with Rebecca when she made this point. She seemed completely serious. “Unless you have permission, you’re not allowed to speak to anyone other than staff or students who are Level Three or higher. And because you’re a Level One, you can’t talk or sit or stand without permission. For example, if you wanted to get up, you would have to say, ‘May I stand?’ If you wanted to go through that doorway, you would have to say, ‘May I cross?’ But you can only ask Level Threes or above.”

“How can I tell who’s a Level Three or whatever?”

“By our shorts.” Rebecca’s fingers caressed the hem of her navy blue shorts. “Level One wears yellow, Level Two green, Level Three red, Level Four brown, Level Five navy blue, and Level Six gets to wear black. Once you’re on Level Three, you have to tell the staff if anyone breaks a rule—or both of you get in trouble for it. At Level Four, you get privileges like snacks”—Rebecca said “snacks” the way other people said “money”—“and being allowed to wear earrings. You also get to issue consequences.”

“What’s a consequence?” Cassie asked, trying to make sense of everything.

“The only way you can get out of here is to earn points. One hundred points means you get to go to the next level. If you get in trouble, not only do they take away points, but you also get consequented. That means anything from having to write a five-hundred-word essay to stuff that’s a lot worse. If you don’t ask permission to go through a doorway, for example, you’ll probably get an essay. Maybe more, depending on the person’s mood.”

“What if I don’t ask anybody and just do something?”

“Then you’ll get to spend time in OP. Trust me, you don’t want to go there.”

Cassie had a feeling this was the only thing she would ever trust about Rebecca. She asked the question she hadn’t asked Father Gary. “What’s OP? And why don’t I want to go there?”

“OP stands for observation placement. Sometimes we just call it ‘lying on your face.’ Because that’s all you do.” Her smile was oddly proud. “I spent sixteen days in a row in OP once.”

Cassie thought of the two boys she had seen lying on the floor, not moving except to blink. “For what?”

“I passed male authority and didn’t say, ‘Excuse me.’ ”

“Who’s male authority?”

“Any man who works in the program, from Father Gary on down to the Mexican cooks. If you don’t say ‘Excuse me’ when you pass, they’ll report you to Mother Nadine, and then you’ll get in trouble. And even though you always should obey male authority, watch out for Mr. Chadwick. He’s one of the two American teachers here. It’s better not to be alone with him, if you know what I mean.”

Tears pricked at the back of Cassie’s eyes, but she had already cried too many times today to cry any more. “How come he’s not Father Chadwick?”

Rebecca shook her head as if Cassie were being deliberately stupid. “Because he’s a teacher. Only the heads of the boy’s families are known as fathers. Them and Father Gary. He founded this whole place.”

“How many other kids are here?”

“More than a hundred boys and about eighty girls. All from the States. But don’t even dare look at the boys. Eye contact is unauthorized nonverbal communication. You might be by a boy at a PGV or in class, but you don’t look at them, you don’t talk to them, and you sure as hell don’t touch them.” She leaned closer. “And listen. Don’t you dare screw up or it reflects back on me, okay? Until you learn the rules, I will be watching everything you do. And I mean everything. And don’t think just because I’m your ’buddy’ that I won’t turn you in if you do something wrong. Because if I don’t, I can get busted, too. And there’s no way I’m going back down to Level One. Not when I can get to Level Six and finally get home.”

“How long have you been here?” Cassie asked.

“Two years, five months, and eighteen days,” Rebecca answered without even having to think. “I was fourteen when my mom sent me here.”

Cassie felt dizzy. She put one hand against the wall to steady herself. There was no way she herself could be here that long. Years and years and years? “What did you do wrong?”

“I was dating a boy who was nineteen. It was completely inappropriate. My mom was afraid I was going to get in trouble.” She looked at her watch. “It’s dinnertime.” Cassie’s stomach gave an answering growl. “You walk in behind me and you do what I do. And remember—don’t talk and don’t look at anyone.”

Cassie picked up the tattered paper sack Martha had given her for her belongings and followed Rebecca as they walked through the now-empty office and out into the corridor. They went through several hallways and into a large room where dozens of teenagers sat in cheap white plastic patio chairs, eating from mismatched tables painted white. A wide aisle separated the girls from the boys. The only sounds in the room came from cutlery, chewing, and a loud voice issuing from a tape player on a card table next to two guards who stood with their arms crossed.

As she walked in behind Rebecca, Cassie could feel dozens of pairs of eyes flick across her, but no one looked at her directly. Then she remembered that she wasn’t supposed to be looking at the other kids at all, so she looked at Rebecca’s straight back instead.

After putting her belongings down in the corner where Rebecca indicated, Cassie did everything Rebecca did. She took a battered metal tray from a pile, then a piece of bread, a plastic glass filled with something bright orange, a metal spoon, and finally a chipped white china bowl into which a Mexican woman ladled soup. Cassie’s stomach rumbled. Rebecca sat down at a table that had two empty places, and Cassie took the seat opposite her.

The voice on the tape player was talking about self-confidence. “
Put a smile on your face and lift your head up, and you’ll soon find that your attitude has adjusted to suit your expression.”

Cassie’s drink was gone in one gulp—it tasted like watery Tang—and only then did she realize that no one was getting up to get more of anything. She picked up the bread and began to eat it. There was no butter, and certainly no olive oil or sea salt, like there was in the restaurants Rick liked to go to. The bread had a strange, almost sandy texture, but she was so hungry, she didn’t care. The other kids ate as eagerly, scraping their spoons against their nearly empty bowls, or running a crust of bread over the bottom to get any lingering juices. Forgetting again that she was to keep her gaze lowered, Cassie glanced around the room. Everyone seemed thin, and if this was an example of a typical meal, it was no wonder.

Her gaze stopped on one girl. Around her neck a grimy cardboard sign hung from a string. In printed black block letters, it read, “I’ve been in this program for three years, and I’m still pulling crap.” Rebecca kicked her in the shin and Cassie looked down at her tray again.

She picked up her spoon and slid it into her bowl. It was some kind of thin soup. White grains of rice and a few slices of carrot in a greasy-looking broth. She took a spoonful, brought it up to her lips. It tasted oily and rank, but she was hungry enough to overlook the flavor. It was warm and it was food. She dipped her spoon back down in the broth. Something floated to the top. A piece of fat, white and gelatinous. She prodded it with her spoon. Lazily, it turned over. Cassie put her hand to her mouth and swallowed, hard. On the back was something short and stiff. Bristles. She felt the corners of her mouth pull down at the same time as her stomach seemed to move up, pressing higher and higher.

“What’s the matter?” Rebecca hissed without looking at Cassie or even seeming to move her lips.

“I’m a vegetarian. I don’t eat anything with eyes.” Cassie started at the small explosions of sound around her. She realized it was muffled laughter. A girl with short strawberry blonde hair and the bluest eyes Cassie had ever seen tipped her a wink. Her expression was kind, and seeing it made Cassie nearly want to cry again.

Rebecca said, “The rule is you have to eat at least fifty percent. You don’t want to end up in OP on your very first day.”

By trying not to think, by eating only the broth and leaving the bristly scrap of fat, as well as a chunk of pink and white bone, Cassie managed to eat roughly half. She wasn’t really here, she told herself. It was just an accident that her body was. Her heart and soul didn’t need to be touched by this place.

The rest of the day went by in a blur. It turned out that Cassie’s behavior was wrong in a hundred little ways, from shifting in her seat that evening while they listened to a tape about the importance of exercise, to not keeping three feet behind the next person in line, to forgetting and making eye contact with some of the other girls. Rebecca was always next to her, whispering in Cassie’s ear, chiding her, riding her, correcting her.

It was a relief to go to bed at 9:30, even though Cassie’s bed turned out to be nothing but a piece of plywood bolted to the wall, with only the sheet to cover her. No pillow. The girl who had winked at her during dinner—she heard Mother Nadine call her Hayley—elaborately cleared her throat. When Cassie looked at her, Hayley made a show of rolling up her own towel to use as a pillow. Cassie followed suit. No blankets, but it was so warm that they would have provided nothing but sweaty weight. There were bars on the windows, and once she turned out the lights, their housemother locked them in for the night. There was no way to escape.

At 3:30 P.M., Cassie and Thatcher sat waiting in the coffee shop near school. Half an hour earlier, it had been crowded with students, but most of them had left to catch one of the Tri-Met buses that stopped every few minutes across the street. It was warm outside, a beautiful spring day, but Cassie’s fingers felt like ice. She curled them around a mocha, full fat, grande sized, even though she had read they had something like 400 or 500 calories. She figured she needed to keep her strength up.

A woman Cassie judged to be in her mid-thirties came ticktocking in on low-heeled pumps. She was slender, with straight blond hair pulled back in a careless bun. She wore black pants and a crisp French blue shirt with the cuffs rolled up. As she took a narrow tan notebook out of her purse, she looked around the room.

“Ms. Haynes?” Thatcher called uncertainly.

Without answering, she came over and sat at their table, tucking her long legs under her chair. Her blue eyes were framed by black-rimmed glasses. Glasses that would have made anyone else look nerdy but just made her look efficient, no-nonsense, and even more beautiful by contrast.

“All right. What’s this about? Drug dealing on campus?”

Cassie looked around, hoping no one was listening. She leaned forward. “No. It’s about legal drugs that aren’t on the market yet. They’re in the testing process, but three kids have died.”

“Died?” The reporter raised one eyebrow, managing to look both skeptical and interested.

Cassie launched into an explanation of what she had found in Rick’s files, as well as what he had said about Socom’s side effects. Thatcher interrupted, trying to explain about the probabilities, but Cassie could tell she wasn’t following.

“Why would any doctor give his patients fatal drugs?” Michelle was sitting back in her chair now, tapping the eraser end of her pencil on the table, looking dubious. “And why wouldn’t someone else have figured it out?”

“For most people, the drugs work. They only make a few people have delusions. And they’re working on trying to tweak it so it won’t happen again. But they’re covering the problems up so they can still get approval.”

“What proof do you have? Your boyfriend said something about you having the files?”

Boyfriend? Cassie shot a quick glance at Thatcher, who shrugged, two spots of color burning in his cheeks.

“I looked at the files and even took pictures of them. But when I tried to get them last night to show you, they had been altered. Now there’s no mention of these kids being on the drug at all. And the memory card from my digital camera is gone.”