Sisters in Sanity (9 page)

“It sounds great. I haven’t seen much of the area.”

“Don’t you get out, to walk around or anything?

“Not really. They have these hikes when the weather is warmer, but they’re more like marches. It’s not about enjoying the scenery.”

“It sounds awful, this place you’re in. I looked it up on the Internet. Really scary stuff.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

“You know what? I’d rather just forget that place for tonight.”

Jed smiled, but he looked sad. “What place?” he asked.

We drove along a winding road uphill. The moon was reflecting off the giant, sheer red cliffs jutting straight out of the canyons. I stared out the window in between sneaking glances at Jed—mainly at the side of his neck. I had such an urge to lick it, imagining the taste, salty with dried sweat. We wound through the mountains, Jed playing me songs that had been released within the last six months, music that I’d missed. After about a half hour, we pulled into a town called Springdale, and Jed parked the van. “I think this is the end of the road. The park starts now. We can just walk from here. If you want.”

“I’d like that.”

“Are you cold?”

I was freezing. All I had on was the skirt Martha had stitched me and a sweatshirt I’d borrowed from Ansley. I nodded. Jed pawed through the back and pulled out his beat-up brown suede jacket, the one he wore everywhere, the one I used to sneak sniffs of when he wasn’t looking. “Here, you wear this. And I’ll grab a blanket in case we need reinforcements.”

We walked into the park and Jed tried to catch me up on life in Portland. He made me laugh with gossip about who was dating whom, which band had broken up, who had gotten a record deal. I had forgotten how easy it was to talk to him, and all my nerves from earlier in the evening vanished. We walked for a half hour, until we found ourselves in a grassy clearing next to a small river.

“Want to stop awhile?”

I wanted to stop for more than a while. I wanted to freeze-frame the night, leave it so it would go on forever, even though I had to be back in a few hours. But I just said yes. Jed spread out the blanket, and we lay down. The sky was amazing, full of millions of stars and so crisp you could see the Milky Way. “I
forgot how clear it was out here,” Jed said. I was lying right next to him, so close I could see the faint veins in his earlobes. I reached over and squeezed his wrist.

“Thank you, Jed.”

“For what?”

“For everything. For the letters, for dragging the band to Utah. For this,” I said, gesturing to the sky.

He took my hand and stroked my palm. “I didn’t do it for you,” he said in a quiet voice. “Not entirely.” Then he took both my hands in his grasp and kissed me on the inside of each wrist, moving his way up with feathery kisses to my elbows, my shoulders, my neck. By the time he reached my lips, my whole body was humming with anticipation, and the kiss itself, it was like melting chocolate. We stayed there for a while, kissing and touching. And then Jed started to laugh.

“God, I’ve been wanting to do that for too long.”

“You have? Then why didn’t you, you moron?” I said, smacking him on the chest before burying my face into his neck and at long last licking it like my own personal lollipop. He kissed me again, all over my face, then pulled away and brushed the hair out of my eyes.

“At first I just thought you were too young. Then it was because I didn’t want to mess things up with the band. And then you were going through all that personal crap and I didn’t want to add another complication to your life.”

“You’re not a complication. You’re the opposite of a complication. You and the band were the two good, effortless things in my life.”

“And you, Brit, are a rock star. Don’t let anyone make you feel like any less.”

“I won’t.”

“Promise me.”

“I will if you promise to stop talking now.”

Jed grinned as he reached for me again.

That night, after we fell asleep under the blanket, after I woke up with my head on Jed’s chest, I took a sense-memory picture. It was something my mom had taught me to do, to record how a place sounded, looked, smelled, tasted, and felt. That way, if something was really special, you could take it with you, summon it at any time. I pulled up memories of my
mom that way a lot, and I knew I’d be calling up this night again. As I was recording everything, listening to Jed’s heart thump in my ear, I saw a shooting star flame across the sky, like the world’s biggest firefly.

Later that morning, back in the dorm, I could still taste Jed on me, could smell him, feel the spot on my chin that had been rubbed raw by his stubble. It already felt like a dream, the whole night—Jed driving me back, telling me I didn’t have to go, that I could just stay with him, go back to Portland. I wanted to say yes, but I knew that wasn’t the answer. I had to figure out how to get out of Red Rock free and clear. I had to get my life back. Jed said he understood and promised that he and Clod would be waiting for me when I got home. Then I snuck back into the room, where Bebe was laying awake in her bed. She flashed me a thumbs-up sign with a questioning
look and I flashed her a thumbs-up back, along with the world’s goofiest grin. She silently cheered and motioned for me to get into bed. I lay there, watching the sun come up through the shades, savoring the night.

At 6:30
A.M.
, the lights went on, and Sheriff’s voice boomed over the speaker, “Rise and shine, girlies.” I didn’t want to erase Jed’s scent by showering, so I just got dressed. At seven, I shuffled out to roll call. I had to clench my mouth shut to keep from smiling. Normally roll call was split by Levels—Three and Four in one group, and Five and Six in another—but this morning we were all ordered outside to the quarry. When I got out there, V sidled up next to me. “Something’s up, something’s happened,” she hissed. “Whatever you do, don’t say a thing. I mean it, Brit. Not a word.” And then she disappeared to line up with all the Level Sixers.

The counselors came out and did the head count, same as they did every morning. When they were done, they went and conferred with one another and Sheriff. There hadn’t been a school-wide roll call since I’d arrived, so this was a rare event. Everyone was buzzing, talking to one another about what was
happening. V was giving me her sternest look. I had a bad feeling.

After some talk, Sheriff came back out. “I bet you girls think you’re pretty smart,” he began, scanning the crowd. “I bet you think you’re so clever. Well, let me tell you, this ain’t gonna end pretty. One of you girls decided to take a little night off, didn’t you? We got a call this morning saying that someone had spotted a Red Rock uniform over in St. George. Nah, I thought. My girls are smarter than that. They know better. But just to be sure, we got out our surveillance tapes, and you know what we found? We found that someone here had broken the trust. We got it on tape.”

Shit, shit, shit, shit,
I thought to myself. I’m so screwed. But even as I knew I was about to get nailed, sent down the river to Level One or worse, part of me didn’t care. I wouldn’t have traded last night for the world.

“We got ourselves a bit of a problem,” Sheriff said. “It’s dark. And we don’t have a good shot of who it was, but we’ve got some ideas. And trust me, we’re going to find out just who our runaway is. So before we get into this further, I’m giving the guilty party this
one opportunity to step forward.”

V was practically burning holes through me with her eyes, her brows in full-arch mode. I kept my mouth shut.

“I can’t say I’m surprised. A liar, a cheat, and a rat, that’s who the guilty girl is. And rats don’t come out easy, but there’s ways to smoke ’em out. You girls are gonna help, too. Starting now. If anyone knows who our runaway is and wants to tell us about it, step forward. I can promise you, you’ll be rewarded.”

Tiffany! She would fink me out in a second. She’d been snoring when I left, but who knew if she’d woken up to pee and saw that I was missing. I stared at her and saw that Bebe was looking her way too. But Tiffany was watching Sheriff with rapt attention. She was too dumb to fake dumb. She didn’t know.

“Again, I can’t say I’m surprised, girlies. Disappointed, but not surprised. So how about we add a little incentive to the pot, something to motivate you girls into helping us find our guilty party? As of right now, you are all dropped down a level.”

A yell erupted from the crowd. “No way.” “That’s not fair!” “It’s not our fault.” Everyone protested.

“Quiet!” yelled Sheriff. “You’re right, it’s not fair.
But we’re a family here and we take responsibility for each other’s actions. One of you girls broke the rules. So this is the way it’s gonna be until we figure out who ran out last night. Now here’s where you girls can help yourselves. I know that some of you must know what happened. Whoever did this didn’t act alone, is my hunch. So here’s our little game. You have a week, and in that week I want to find out who ran out last night. If any one of you names the culprit in a week, you’ll all be restored to your current levels. If you don’t, you’ll drop down again. Is that understood?”

Another wail went up among the girls. Some were crying. I had to hand it to Sheriff. He was more clever than I’d pegged him to be. And his plan was successful. I knew that the Sisters would never give me up, but there was no way I was going to let everyone drop a level. I took a deep breath and started to work my way through the crowd.

“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Austin,” V said, striding forward, just as Bebe yanked me back by my collar. “I did it. I’m the one who went to St. George.”

Just like that, everyone was silent, and then in unison, everyone gasped.

“Larson, why am I not surprised?” Sheriff said. “I will meet you in my office, girlie. The rest of you are restored to your levels, but let this be a warning: if any one of you runs out again, I will knock all of you down a peg, immediately. So you might want to keep a close watch on each other, to prevent this kind of breach from happening again. Now get to breakfast.”

The crowd shuffled away, atwitter with all the drama. As our unit walked by, Sheriff called out “Hemphill, Howarth, Wallace, Jones, you come here.” Bebe, Martha, Cassie, and I slunk over. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed the little club you girlies have formed for yourselves. Don’t think for a second I think any of you is innocent in this monkey business. Just so you know, I’m gonna be watching you very closely, waiting for you to slip up, and when you do, I’m gonna be there to kick your butts. Now get out of my sight,” he said, wiping the saliva from his lips.

Silently, we walked toward the cafeteria. All around us, the other girls were giddy with gossip. “Can you believe it? God, that was so stupid,” one Level Three girl said.

“I know. Like, she’s Level Six. She’s about to get out. Why would she blow it like that?”

I was wondering the very same thing.

As I walked down the hall, I saw her there, standing outside Sheriff’s office, looking small, with a goon guard on either side of her. She was staring at me, trying to impart one of her silent cryptic messages. I knew she wanted me to look back at her, to receive the message. I knew that I should. I should be grateful. She saved my ass, took my fall. But I couldn’t look at her and I wasn’t grateful. I was furious.

“Are you going to leave your bed like that?” Missy asked me.

“Am I going to leave my bed like what?”

“All messy. Your sheets aren’t even tucked in.”

“You’re not serious.”

“I most certainly am. Pride in your home space is a sign of self-respect.”

“You caught me. I have no respect for myself.”

“You’re being sarcastic, right? It’s
so
not funny.”

“A sense of humor is a sign of self-deprecation,” I said and turned away, leaving my rumply bed rumpled.

Of the various maladies that had befallen the
Sisters in Sanity, Missy was among the worst. Two days after my breakout, the day after V was stripped of her Level Six status, Sheriff began to make good on his threat. At roll call that next day, one of the counselors informed me that as of that night, I would no longer be rooming with Bebe and Martha. After dinner, I was marched to a room in the other wing to find my stuff had already been moved, and I had a new roommate. Missy was the queen of the Stockholm-syndrome girls and one of Red Rock’s greatest success stories. After her parents enrolled her for ditching school to smoke pot a couple of times, she’d had a full-on turnaround and now she was a born-again good girl who loved to work her program and who gushed about being in AA like it was a sorority. When prospective parents wanted to know more about Red Rock, Sheriff would have Missy call them up and spew crap about how the school had saved her life. She was on the promotional video. Her picture was in the brochures.

As I unpacked, Missy watched me through squinted eyes, like she was trying to x-ray my stuff. When I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth, she
followed me and kept staring as I flossed.

“Do you mind?” I asked.

“Yes. I do. I mind that you’ve been here six months and you’ve made no progress. I mind that you have an attitude. And I mind that you’ve wasted everyone’s time. But now, you’re mine to mind.”

I just stared at her. She couldn’t be serious.

The rest of the Sisters were in similar sinking boats. Bebe had been moved into a room with a Sixer named Hilary, another brochure girl who was pals with Missy and followed Bebe around just as doggedly as Missy did me. Cassie had also been moved, which made no sense because V was moved
out
of Cassie’s room. It was a tough call, however, to say who had it the worst: V or Martha. Martha still roomed with Tiffany, but the newly promoted Tiffany was on a crazy Level Six power trip. And V? Well, usually when you got sent back to Level One for some offense, you stayed in isolation for a few days at most before starting the long climb back up the level ladder, but after three weeks, V was still in her little room, shoeless and wearing her frayed pj’s all day. The powers that be were really pissed off, and they were taking it out on V for what I’d done. Maybe I
should’ve felt sorry for her or relieved or grateful, but when I thought about V, I still felt mad.

“I can’t say that I didn’t warn you about Virginia Larson,” Clayton said to me in a session after the breakout. She had that self-satisfied look on her face, the one that made me want to throw something at her.

“You did warn me,” I said, hoping that would stop the conversation in its tracks. No such luck.

“I told you she was a bad influence, that your mere association with her would have negative repercussions for you. It’s a fact of life that sometimes the actions of others rub off on us, and we have to take responsibility. And now you’re forced to accept responsibility for V’s
ir
responsibility. Isn’t that ironic, Brit?”

It was actually more ironic than she knew, and though this was one of the few times I agreed with Clayton, I wasn’t about to say so. I halfway suspected that she knew the truth and was hinting at it to bait me. Sheriff, on the other hand, took the more blatant tack. Every time I saw him, he pointed to his eyes with
two cocked fingers and then pointed them back at me. “I’m watching you, Hemphill. Waiting for a slip-up.”

Whatever. With the constant surveillance, things were pretty depressing around Red Rock. The one bright spot was Jed. Less than a week after the show, I got a letter from him.

Swoon. I was dying to get the Sisters together, to tell them about everything that had happened, but there was just no way. Martha and I were forced to sit at opposite ends of the room in class, so no more note passing, and I couldn’t even get next to Bebe in group
without Missy sneaking up or Hilary bounding between us.

A few weeks after the breakout and still no contact with the Sisters. I was starting to go batty. In order to keep myself from falling off the cliff into true depression, I called up my night with Jed constantly, reliving every moment. It kept me sane. And then when I thought things couldn’t get any bleaker, Clayton pulled one of her infamous head games.

“I’m going to have some news about your mother,” she told me at the end of a session. “So prepare yourself.”

Aside from Clayton’s occasional attempts to get me to go deeper about Mom, we hadn’t talked much about her. In fact, it had been years since anyone had seriously discussed my mother with me. Dad hadn’t. Stepmonster certainly didn’t. Even Grandma had stopped bringing her up much. It was as though she had died, even though we knew she was out there. In the beginning, when she first went away, I’d jump every time the phone rang, but after a few months, I stopped hoping she’d call.

“What news?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss that with you yet.”

“How can you not be at liberty to discuss it? She’s my mom!”

“I’m on vacation next week, so we’ll talk about it when I get back.”

“Why the hell would you bring it up if you can’t tell me about it? Do you like to torture me?”

Clayton smiled. “No, I don’t like to torture you. I’m giving you this heads-up because I need you to be prepared to open up, to work your issues.”

Two weeks? I suppose I could’ve asked Dad what happened to Mom, but if he knew something was up, why hadn’t
he
told me anything? His letters had been focused on Billy’s latest tricks and my recent report card. And they said
I
was in denial! That was
it
. I needed to talk to the girls. In group that afternoon, I passed Bebe a note.

“I hate her,” I wailed to the girls. “She’s so cruel. Can you imagine?” I’d just finished telling them about my latest conversation with Clayton.

“God, she’s the worst. She’s like a lion, sniffing around for weakness so she can pounce,” Bebe said. “She loves to natter on about how I have sex because I think I’m unlovable, and contrary to trying to show
me the folly of my thinking, it’s like she agrees! Stupid cow is just jealous. I’m sure she hasn’t been laid since before any of us was born.”

“You think
that’s
bad? She tells me that I’m an embarrassment to my parents!” Martha cried. “She says that I got fat to get back at my mom. Everything I do is to punish my parents, according to her.”

“That’s what she said about me,” Cassie said quietly. “That I was so angry with my folks I had to go and become this abomination.”

Bebe shuddered. “Let’s not talk about that evil wench, darlings. What else is happening? Are you all enjoying your new bodyguards? How’s our little Tiffany?”

“Awful,” Martha said. “It’s like she’s taking all of her wrath out on me. What have I ever done to her? She even watches me eat now, and those bulimics know every trick in the book, so I can’t hide food in my socks anymore.”

“God, how horrific, darling. I empathize. My guard Hilary is of the kill-’em-with-kindness school, and I’m her new pet. She’s like this sparkly Mormon girl. Honestly, she’s got to be a plant, because there’s no way that girl could’ve ever done anything remotely
delinquent enough to land her at Red Rock. She’s a virgin, for Chrissakes. She even took one of those chastity pledges, and she’s after me to reclaim my virginity. Seriously, please tell her I can’t get it back.”

“I’m a virgin,” Martha declared.

“I reckon I am too, technically,” Cassie said.

“Never mind that, girls. My point is,” Bebe continued, “that she’s like a Mousketeer, and my most evil barbs don’t penetrate her do-goodery armor. God, I think I’ve met my match.”

“I doubt that,” I said.

“Everything is so rotten right now,” Martha said. “V’s gone. We have to sneak around. Sheriff has been forcing me to go on death marches, and now I have to go on weekly overnight expeditions. Tell me something good, Brit. Tell me about Jed.”

So I did. I told the girls about my amazing night out, and the letter Jed just sent me.

“God, it’s so romantic. You have a boyfriend,” Martha said.

“Do I?”

“Secret dates, sneakin’ love letters. Y’all have a Romeo-and-Juliet scenario happenin’,” Cassie said.

“I don’t know if he’s my boyfriend, but he’s the
thing that keeps me from going crazy in here. Besides you guys, of course.”

“I know, darling. Me too. And if it’s bad for us, can you imagine how poor V is faring? Three weeks in isolation.”

“Cruel and unusual punishment,” Cassie said.

“You must be so grateful,” Martha said. “She did all this for you, so you could be with Jed.”

I paused for a second. “I am.”

Everyone looked at me expectantly, like they wanted more.

“I sense a ‘but,’” Bebe said.

“What do you mean?”

“You seem a little off about this.”

“No I’m not.”

“Don’t BS a BS-er, Brit,” Bebe said.

“I’m not off. It’s just what she did was enormous and all, but don’t you think it’s a little weird that she did it?”

“Do I think it’s weird that she took the fall for you?” Bebe asked.

“Yeah, that she’d blow it for herself when she was so close to graduating. It’s not the first time she’s done
something like this, and I just thought it was a little, you know, odd.”

“What’s odd is that you seem so ungrateful that she took a bullet for you,” Bebe said with ice in her voice.

“I’m not ungrateful. It just made me feel, I don’t know how to explain it, but…”

“She was watching your back, Brit,” Martha said.

“You know, to fend off the monsters’ attack. Those’re your words, aren’t they?” Cassie looked at me like I’d completely disappointed her.

I took a deep breath. “Look, you guys, I’m not trying to diss V, and I feel horrible for what’s happened to her, responsible even. I should be the one locked up in iso, not her.”

“V turns eighteen in a few months, so she probably knew that she’d get outa here sooner than you would if you got dumped down to Level One,” Cassie said. “She’s a smart girl, that one. She’s got her reasons.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Remind me never to do you a favor,” Bebe said. “No good deed goes unpunished.”

“That’s not fair, Bebe. And this isn’t about you, so stop being such a bitch.”

“I’m the bitch? Please. And this
is
about me. V is my friend.”

“Oh, and I’m not, is that it?”

“Please stop fighting,” Martha pleaded. “You sound like my parents.”

“Yeah, you two tomcats, cut it out,” Cassie said.

Bebe and I just glared at each other, arms crossed around our chests while Martha and Cassie talked. Then it was three in the morning and I went back to my room with a new pit in my stomach about V and Bebe, lodged next to the one about Mom.