Wild Bird

  “What happened?” I ask.

  She just shakes her head and stumbles off in a stream of tears, and before I can get up to go after her, Tara approaches. “Ready?” she asks.

  “Uh…not if you’re going to do that to me!”

  “She’s letting go of pain, Wren. She had a tough breakthrough, and it’s left her feeling exposed and exhausted.” Her accent is still magic, but I notice the smile she gives me doesn’t shimmer like the one she had at the beginning of the day.

  “If she’s letting go of pain, why’s it look like she’s drowning in it?”

  “She’ll be fine, Wren, I promise.” She nods at my notebook. “So…can I have a look?”

  I want to say No, but I remind myself that there’s nothing in what I’ve written that she can use to “help” me. So I say, “One sec,” and scribble To Be Continued! and sign off Wren (aka Baloo of the Desert). Then I grab the group of pages and pull them out of my notebook, making a thick tassel of torn holes at the edge. “You guys should really tell the new prisoners how this works,” I say, giving her the pages. “If Hannah hadn’t explained it, I might have nothing to hand over.”

  “You wouldn’t have written a letter home?”

  I shrug. “I’m not great at letters.”

  “And yet,” she says, taking my pages and counting through them, “we have seventeen of them?”

  I shrug again, like no-big-deal. “There’s illustrations.”

  She begins to read my letter, and she actually laughs out loud a couple of times, but after she’s made it through about three pages she fast-forwards through the rest, then looks at me and says, “This is very entertaining, Wren, but this is not the idea of letters home. The purpose is to explore issues, to get to the root of what’s brought you here.”

  Right. And leave you in a big puddle of pain.

  “Oh, I know what’s brought me here,” I assure her. “A big dude named Joel, a black SUV, a seven-thirty-seven out of LAX, and those guys,” I say, pointing to the jailers. “Why write home about stuff my parents set up?”

  She’s quiet for a very long time, and I catch her eyeballing the sun, estimating how much time she has to hike out before dark.

  Adults are so transparent.

  I’m pretty sure that if I stonewall a little longer, I can cut the whole “therapy session” short. So I just wait her out. And finally she asks, “How’d you find your mother’s letter?”

  “I didn’t find it—Dvorka handed it to me.”

  She gives me a little smirk. “You know what I mean, Wren.”

  “Did you bring shampoo?” I ask. “Because, really, you should share.”

  Her smirk turns to a frown. “Is this how you handle conflict at home?”

  “Are you saying we’re having conflict? Because I didn’t know that. I thought you and I got along okay. I like your hair, did I mention that?”

  Her eyes pinch closed and she lets out a little sigh.

  Even that seems to have an accent to it. A little Aussie sweetness.

  “I found her letter to be a bit detached,” she says. “Guarded. Did you?”

  “Do you guys read everything?”

  She nods. “It’s part of the program.”

  “Do my parents know?”

  “Certainly.” She takes a deep breath and tries again. “So…would you describe the letter as guarded?”

  “Sure. That’s a fine word to describe it.”

  “Why do you suppose that was the tone of it?”

  For some strange reason, playing with her isn’t doing anything for me. So I go back to being petrified wood. Maybe I have the name of a bird, but there’s no way I’m interested in this can of worms.

  She sits, waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

  I see her check the sun again.

  “Do you have an envelope?” I ask, hoping to wrap things up. “Because I’d really like my brother to get my letter.”

  She does have one folded in half inside her pocket, and she hands it over with another sigh. I make it out to Mo-Bro Clemmens at our address and then draw big sunrays all around it. For the return address, I write Desert Bear and draw a snake coiled around it, then give the snake x’s for eyes and a funny tongue. I take my letter back from Tara, fold it in thirds, and stuff it inside.

  When I hand the envelope to Tara, she gives me a solemn look and says, “I’ll give you a pass for now, but next time this will not fly. You’re learning how to survive out here, but what really matters is you learning to survive at home.”

  “No worries, mate,” I tell her in an Aussie accent. It comes out sounding chirpy, even borderline manic. I don’t care, though. For now, I’m off the hook.

  I wasn’t kidding about not talking about my feelings. I’ve been here four weeks now and still haven’t done it. I also haven’t written to my parents.

  They cannot make me.

  Felicia is long gone, and Brooke and Kelsey are on their last week—or at least close to it. We’ve got two new Rabbits, but there’s a big gap between them and the rest of us.

  The other inmates seem to really like Tara-the-Therapist, but I still find my whole body gnashing every time she shows up. It’s a cold grind in my head, in my gut, in my heart. I want her gone. I want her warm-honey voice to shut up. I know who she is, what she does. She’s not fooling me.

  She doesn’t seem to be on any regular schedule, which tweaks me. I like to know what I’m up against, and this whole camp is like moment-to-moment, which drives me nuts. Some days we do “curriculum” and just hang out in camp doing what’s basically hippie-dippie schoolwork about botany or astronomy or geology or math that’s “tied to the wild.” Some days the jailers take us on day hikes to nowhere. We just hike all day through the stupid desert, have lunch on some bluff, where we’re supposed to appreciate the “wonders of nature” and the “magnificent views,” then hike back to camp.

  And then there’s the predawn “Strike camp!” wake-up call that seems to be totally random, too. Could be two days, could be a week. And then we could be lugging the tarp stretcher all day or just a couple of hours. “Embrace the journey,” Dvorka keeps reminding us. “The destination is just a mirage.”

  Whatever the bleep that’s supposed to mean.

  We’ve had two washdays where we got rations of “locally sourced water” to do a full sponge bath and wash out our clothes. It wasn’t enough water to wash all the clothes—mostly the small stuff like undies, socks, bandannas, and T-shirts—but it was better than nothing. And funny to see underwear dangling all over the place, drying out.

  One of the things I hate most about being out here is the stupid gnats and flies. They’re little and black and buzz around your head. They’ve gotten worse lately, and the only thing that makes them disappear is sunset. Bug repellent helps, and smoke from the fire does too. I’ve gotten used to the smoke but don’t like to use the repellent unless the bugs are really bad. When you add up sunblock, bug repellent, smoke, and dust, you wind up with a layer of gross that a sponge bath can’t cut through.

  I really, really, really want a bath. One I can sink into. One with bubbles up to my neck.

  Almost as annoying as the flies are the stupid trust-building exercises the jailers force us to do. Give me a break. All a blindfold does is make me feel trapped. It also covers up the fact that what we’re doing is really lame. There’s a lot of climbing and spinning around and being led to cliff edges that turn out to be six-inch rocks that couldn’t twist an ankle. There’s also way too much touching by your “trust partner” involved. They physically move you, which I hate. Let me crawl, blindfolded, through the dirt all by myself. I don’t care if I go over a cliff. Just quit muscling me around.

  Hannah noticed how uptight I was when we got paired up for trust building today. I was blindfolded and being a real mule, digging in as she tried to maneuver me. But she didn’t grumble like Brooke did, or sigh over and over like Kelsey did. She leaned in from behind me and whispered, “Don’t worry. I won’t le
t anything happen to you.”

  Her words seemed to float into my ear. They felt so kind. Sincere. Truthful.

  I could feel myself let loose a little, and once that started, tears bled into my blindfold. I don’t know why. Maybe because, as always, Hannah was being nice to me. Maybe because I knew she trusted me. Over the last couple of weeks, she’s told me so much stuff about her mom and her life. I’ve held back, but hearing her confide things through our tarps late at night makes me feel trusted, and more than once I’ve wished I wasn’t so scared to trust her back.

  Trust between people is a convoluted thing, because which comes first—trusting or being trusted? It’s a paradox, as Mr. Wexler used to say. The chicken-or-the-egg thing. He and Hollister Keegan debated it for a whole class period, which was stupid. Of course the egg came first. Not that that stops trees from falling in the forest without anyone hearing them.

  Whatever. I was glad the blindfold was there to hide my tears. And I let Hannah guide me for what felt like miles through ups and downs and turns. When we finally stopped and she pulled off my blindfold, we were back to the exact place we’d started. Lame, as always, but I didn’t feel completely annoyed like I’d been with Brooke and Kelsey. Instead, I felt weirdly…exposed.

  “I think it’s safe to say,” Michelle said to the group when we’d all come back together, “that each of us has felt betrayed at some point.”

  All the inmates looked down, which told me that I wasn’t the only one thinking No kidding.

  “Learning to trust again can be as hard as learning to love again after we’ve had our heart broken. It’s the other edge of the same sword.”

  “Amen to that,” Mia muttered.

  “Likewise,” Michelle continued, “holding another’s trust is a profound responsibility. And breaking someone’s trust is, in some ways, worse than breaking their heart, because it accomplishes both at once.” Michelle was quiet, letting that soak in before saying, “This afternoon I want you to reflect on the people who have broken your trust and why you let those people stay in your life, if you did. But you should also reflect on trusts you’ve broken and how those actions have affected you.”

  “So we’re journaling?” Shalayne asked.

  “That’s one option,” Michelle said. “Group share is another, or you can partner.”

  I didn’t want to journal. Between curriculum, journaling, and letters to my brother, I’ve done more handwriting out here than I have in my entire life, and I’m sick of it. Plus, our journals are supposedly private, but they’re hard evidence and not something I want falling into the hands of the enemy, since everything around here seems to get relayed to my parents.

  I also didn’t want to group-share. Hearing everyone else’s stories can be interesting, but even after four weeks, talking about my own stuff still makes me puke. And there’s no getting away with fiction out here. I don’t know how, but the jailers can totally tell.

  So when Hannah caught my eye and said, “Do you want to partner?” I nodded and we went off to a private spot of dirt.

  I wasn’t planning to spill my guts, but after some back and forth and nudging from Hannah, I heard myself talking about Meadow. About our friendship. About the way she’d betrayed me, cut me open, left me to bleed. It was like I wasn’t even me. I was off to the side, watching me talk about Meadow. Hearing me talk about Meadow.

  And then I wasn’t off to the side, watching, anymore. I was me again, sitting right in front of Hannah, crying about Meadow.

  Hannah reached out and held my hands. “That girl is not your friend.”

  “I know,” I said, and completely lost it.

  I’m barely over my meltdown about Meadow when letters arrive. I hate letters more every week. It’s like getting sucker-punched. One minute you’re innocently standing there, the next you’re doubled over, gasping for air, fighting not to show how much it hurts.

  I got sucker-punched for real in third grade when Tex Cauldwell said I cheated in four square. He was right, but my friends wanted him out of the game, too, so his fist became the sledgehammer of justice.

  Last week there was a letter from my dad. It was all about him growing up poor and walking seven hundred miles uphill both ways in the snow to get to school so he could get an education and “provide me with a better life.” Like he was thinking about things like that in elementary school? Not a chance. As Mr. Wexler would say, my dad’s looking back through the distorting prism of self-awareness.

  I hated when Mr. Wexler would throw out phrases like that. Nobody in eighth grade wants to hear about distorting prisms of self-awareness. Nobody except Hollister Keegan.

  For some reason, though, Mr. Wexler’s sayings keep popping into my brain at random times. Maybe because I’m surrounded by boring nothingness so big that even my dad suffering from distorting prisms of self-awareness seems worth thinking about.

  So last time, I got a letter from my dad but nothing from my mom—something that both relieved me and tweaked me. Anabella wrote some phony stuff about how it’s just not the same there without me, which, of course, was code for things being a whole lot better with me gone.

  Except for Mo, I haven’t written any of them back. And I’ve written him a lot. I’m sure my parents read all my True Stories, because why else would Dad say he grew up camping and wished he could be out here with me, starting fires, sleeping under the stars, feeling the cold morning air against his cheeks.

  Talk about looking back through distorting prisms. Guess he’s forgotten the whole get-up-in-the-freezing-cold-to-use-the-latrine thing. And I bet he’s never had to dig for water. Or go matchless.

  Tara-the-Therapist says I have to write them back. Every time, that’s what she says. “You won’t advance to Elk this way,” she tells me.

  Like I care?

  Even though Mia and Shalayne have both advanced.

  And Hannah’s talking about wanting to.

  One of the new Rabbits is named Jolene, and I want nothing to do with her. She’s whiny and dying over everything. She hasn’t stopped crying since she got here, and she’s not trying to hide it, either. She does these loud, wailing sobs. It’s like a fire alarm and fire sprinklers going off at the same time, and the fire department’s not showing up to shut things down.

  Anyone who’s okay with being that loud and obnoxious is going to be awful, even if they do shut up. And if Hannah advances to Elk and I don’t, I’ll be stuck with the crybaby when she finally moves up to Coyote.

  Not liking that scenario.

  Not one bit.

  So when Tara hands me my envelope of letters and says, “You know what you have to do, right?” I nod.

  She studies me, and I can tell she thinks I’m blowing her off.

  Which I may be.

  I’m not quite sure.

  “It doesn’t matter how angry or even brutal what you write sounds,” she says, pouring warm honey into my ears. “Show them your wounds. Show them your scars. They’re willing to listen, but they need something to work with. Someplace to start.”

  She leaves me with my letters from home, and the first thing I notice is that there’s nothing from my brother. It feels like a sucker punch, too. Not a Tex Cauldwell sucker punch, but it still hurts. Didn’t he like my True Stories? Doesn’t he miss me? Or…has Anabella turned him against me? What has she told him?

  A panic button goes off inside me as I imagine the ways Anabella could sabotage me. And what’s now clanging loud and clear in my mind is: that must be why he hasn’t written me back. Especially after last time’s really funny True Stories.

  The thought makes me feel so helpless.

  Helpless and mad.

  My dad hasn’t written either, which feels about right. It’s not like he talks much, ever. If his last letter hadn’t been handwritten, I would have suspected Mom wrote it for him. Two pages is more words than I’ve ever seen him string together on paper or out loud. Mom, on the other hand, could fill a book just asking you to get the mayo out of the
fridge.

  But there is a letter from Anabella. If you can call it that. It’s a printout of a screen capture of one of those cheesy ecards about sisters. The big sister has her arm around the little sister, and the caption reads, Friends may come and go, but sisters are forever. Under it, written in Anabella’s loopy handwriting, is I want to get back to this, and off to the side in smaller, tighter loops she’s written, P.S. Meadow is the girl in the article.

  The article?

  What article?

  All that’s left is the dreaded Mom pack—a fat envelope, sealed, with my first name across it, typed in Lucida Handwriting. Like running an envelope through the printer is easier than writing out four measly letters?

  Oh, wait. Right. That capital W can be a bear to get as pretty as Lucida does.

  I rip the envelope open, right through my name, and the fat pack of pages I unfold is not another typed letter. It’s a news article from the Internet. The article is not actually that long, but it’s got all the ad graphics along the right margin, so it takes up five sheets of paper. The headline reads: “Senior Assault Leads to Drug Bust,” and beneath it, in full ink-jet color, is a picture of Nico in handcuffs.

  My face goes hot as my heart hammers. Nico’s been busted? How? Did someone narc on him?

  Did Meadow? Is that what Anabella’s note meant?

  I start to read, but I’m distracted by the picture of Nico. Even seeing him in handcuffs, even knowing—and having known all along—that he’s dangerous with a big, bold D, his adorable dimple and his warm cinnamon breath flash through my mind, and suddenly I’m aching for Fireball Whisky and weed and the smoky interior of his Mercedes-Benz.

  By the time I get to the end of the article, I feel like throwing up. Not because of what’s in the story—that there’d been a rash of homes in a ritzy neighborhood broken into, only this time the “suspects” had gone from burglary to battery to busted.