He went on to describe how guests would be retained until the custodians declared them fully reoriented. To avoid temptations of the flesh they would shower separately. Dress in isolation. They’d never see each other unclothed. Once deemed ready, they would be integrated into the general population housed on the lower floors. The papers they and their parents had signed during the admitting process amounted to nothing less than a voluntary legal commitment to a residential treatment and recovery program.
“Please,” the Commander read, “for your own safety, do not attempt to leave this building.” He reminded them about the electric fence and the dogs. He explained that their contact with their families would be extremely restricted. “You may write letters, but know that those letters will be read by the staff, who have the option of censoring what they construe to be untrue or manipulative communications.”
To Kevin, Mr. Peanut sounded tired, as if he’d delivered this speech too many times and his heart was no longer in it. Kevin’s stomach was too full, and today had been a long one. As the Commander’s voice droned on, Kevin exchanged bored looks with Pig the Pirate. Jasper yawned. Tomas sighed as if mooning over his future seat on the fifty-yard line. Brainerd looked at his wristwatch, smugly. The floor guards had confiscated everyone’s phones. Nobody could text. Brainerd knew the time because only he wore an old-school watch.
Listening, Kevin fought off a feeling of cold dread. It wasn’t the words the Commander said that spooked him. It was how he said them, as if he were reading those words off a stone tablet delivered to him atop Mount Sinai. Resigned and ominous, the Commander sounded like a judge decreeing a death sentence.
Jasper yawned behind his hands. Troublemaker shoved his dinner tray aside and leaned facedown on the table, cradling his head in his crossed arms. He’d barely begun to snore when the Commander looked up from his script. He surveyed the seven of them. He asked, “Any questions?”
No one replied. Kevin wasn’t taking any chances. He sat straight with hands clasped primly in front of him. Fast-tracking to his twenty grand.
“Gentlemen,” the Commander coaxed, “have you nothing you’d like to ask?”
Brainerd raised his hand as if they were in school. When called upon, he asked about their general studies. In reply, the Commander explained that they’d be tutored in History, English Literature, Latin, Mathematics, and Geometry. A library of devotional tracts was at their disposal. Under the table, somebody kicked Brainerd for being such a brownnoser.
Troublemaker whispered, “Disposal is right.”
Kidney Bean asked, “What about sports?”
The Commander regarded him. His jaundiced eyes sought out a name tag. “Mr. Bean,” he continued. “Time allowing, you’ll be free to make use of the basketball court behind the building as well as the swimming pool located in the basement.” He looked expectantly from boy to boy for another question.
“What about the steroids?” asked Pig the Pirate.
“And the weight lifting?” added Jasper. No one dared to ask about the promise of whores and strippers as part of their reconditioning.
The Commander cocked his head, confused. Despite whatever rumors they’d heard, there would be no anabolic steroids or bodybuilding. Kevin could tell by the stricken look on Whale Jr.’s face that muscles had been part of his Homecoming dream—to be a pumped-up, 100-percent-certified he-man riding past the adoring throngs. Whale Jr. looked crestfallen.
Kevin heard the sound of musical notes. Four distinct notes. It was someone pressing numbers on the keypad in the hallway. He watched as a floor guard entered from the back of the room. The guard caught the Commander’s attention and jerked his thumb toward the exit. The Commander nodded and said, “If there are no more questions, then it’s time for you to return—”
A voice interrupted. “One question.” It was Troublemaker. Lifting his face from his arms crossed on the table, he asked, “When do we hook up with Betsey?”
Everyone looked at him with a new appreciation and respect. The name “Betsey” hung in the air. To judge from the Commander’s face, the name had hit a chord. Troublemaker obviously had an inside track.
The Commander smiled. Not a happy smile, this was the smile of someone keeping a secret. “Tomorrow, you gentlemen have a treat in store for you.” He lifted his discolored hands into the air. “Tomorrow, you will meet a lovely young woman.” He closed his eyes as if swept away with happiness. “She is thoroughly…” To demonstrate what mere words couldn’t convey, his hands molded a curvy, hourglass shape in the air. His palms came together, and he brought them to his chest. He pressed his clasped hands against his heart.
—
As if lost in a rapturous dream, he closed his eyes. He sighed. “And she will grant you access to all the erotic mysteries of the female body.”
Breakfast was eggs and French toast. Afterward, the guard ushered them down a new stairway and through a couple security doors. With every step the air was tougher to breathe. More stale. Dense with humidity and heat. For a short stretch, Kevin could smell the chlorine of the swimming pool. That proved they were in the basement, but the guard led them down two, maybe three more flights. He halted the group like a traffic cop, with the palm of one hand. Holding each door open, he waved them through. These corridors were less like hallways than tunnels. Pipes ran along the ceiling, and the floor was scuffed concrete. Moisture condensed and dripped from the pipes. Puddles forced them to watch where they stepped.
They’d been awake most of the night, whispering the name between themselves. Betsey.
Now they acted like this was a big adventure, but every step felt like they were being buried alive. Jasper whispered, “I hope we get to wear a condom. My sperm could eat through steel.”
Tomas agreed. “That would suck, getting a baby out of this.” In whispers they griped about the prospect of becoming a teen father. They knew, firsthand, what monsters kids could be. Brainerd speculated that Betsey might be one of those expensive, incredibly lifelike, anatomically correct Real Dolls. Troublemaker alone kept silent.
At each new door, the guard punched a number into a keypad on the wall. Each keypad made a different series of musical tones. Each lock, it seemed, had a different four-digit code.
Betsey. The name rang in everyone’s mind. All morning they’d repeated it while they ran their combs under steaming water and slicked back their hair. The Commander had said they should dress as if they were attending a formal dance. While they’d tied their neckties and shined their shoes, the girl’s name had haunted them.
Now they crowded behind the guard. They tripped on their own feet and careened off the cinder block. Their whispers and giggles reverberated between the walls and floor. It was nerves, plain and simple. They acted like seven smart alecks, but in truth they were scared shitless. Seven teenagers on a blind date. To Kevin it felt like standardized testing in school. Whatever the conditions, he thought that if he could have sex with this stranger he’d be phoning his parents to come get him, tomorrow.
Once more, the dread haunted him. He was about to take part in a basement gang bang, sharing some girl he’d probably never again meet. Life was already too full of people you met only once. He was fairly sure Brainerd and Kidney Bean felt the same way, but he didn’t want to say it aloud and risk spoiling everyone’s fun.
To justify what was about to happen, Pig the Pirate kept saying the girl, Betsey, must be a whore. Not to be outdone, Whale Jr. insisted she was a nymphomaniac.
It filled Kevin with wonder. Every step took them farther down. Dungeon deep. Torture chamber deep. He was about to earn twenty G’s from a single fuck. This had to make him one of the biggest whores in history. To launder the ill-gotten gains, his mind turned it into a wide-screen color television, a laptop computer, diapers.
They arrived at a door with no handle. The guard pressed a button on a call box mounted on the wall. He leaned close to it and said, “Sixth-floor residents.” Static crackled from the box, and a voice
said, “Stand clear.” It was the Commander’s voice.
The guard waved for them to step back, and the door swung outward. The room beyond it was dim compared to the hallway. The air that wafted out was cold as a vault. They shuffled through. Once the door shut them inside, it took a few blinks for their eyes to adjust. Kevin could hear a gurgle of running water. He could smell perfume mixed with chemicals that made his eyes sting. The only thing to see was the Commander. He stood under the room’s one light, surrounded by darkness. Next to him was a long table. Whatever lay on the table, it was covered with a greasy sheet of milky plastic.
“Gentlemen,” the Commander said. He stooped to grip an edge of the plastic. As he lifted it, he asked, “May I introduce you to Betsey?”
—
The Commander cast the sheet aside. On the tabletop lay a thing. Something. It stretched the full length of the stainless-steel work surface.
The thing’s skin looked as white as soap. It wore a flowered dress that left its pallid arms and legs bare. The folds of the skirt draped its slender thighs as far as the knees. Its arms lay straight at its sides. Kevin prayed it was merely a life-sized dummy. He told himself it was just some statue molded out of soap or wax. If it were a person, he prayed she was only asleep.
That smell they’d noticed through a dozen locked doors—sweet and acrid—here was the smell’s source.
Black flies circled it. They alighted on its skin, roving the back of each hand, wandering up and down its thin, bare limbs. They puckered their proboscises and kissed its arms like old-movie Romeos. A cloth bandage wrapped one wrist. Another bandage clung to the side of its neck.
A gold chain circled the other thin wrist. Little medals dangled from the links. A charm bracelet. A few of the charms, Kevin recognized. One was a tiny golden Bible. Another was two faces, the smiling and frowning masks of Drama Society. Hanging next to that was a gold baseball. Next to the baseball was the little flaming torch that symbolized high school Honor Society. The collar of the dress was frilled with lace, but Kevin could see a gold cross sitting in the hollow at the base of its throat. The cross hung from a thin thread of gold beads that looped around its pale neck.
Kevin couldn’t bring himself to look directly at its face. Not yet. In case its eyes might still be open. At the sight, his scalp prickled. Every hair on his head stood up so painfully it felt as if ghosts were tugging it out at the roots.
The thing laid out on the table, it had long auburn curls. They cascaded around its ashen, heart-shaped face and rested against the shoulders of its flowered dress. Some curls fanned out. They hung over the edge of the tabletop like a lank fringe. Clearly, Kevin and his crew weren’t the first kids to mess with the Betsey thing. The more his eyes adjusted, the more Kevin could see black stitches like the seams on a baseball, only sewn with black string. They showed where the thing’s pale skin had been sliced open and sutured back together. Some cuts looked fresh. Some didn’t. It looked as if the Betsey thing had been taken apart too many times to count. Butchered by too many boys to keep track of.
The Commander fixed them with compassionate eyes. “My young gentlemen,” he assured them, “you need not be terrified of women.”
Tomas whispered that the stitches looked like tiny railroad tracks. To Whale Jr. they looked like zippers, as if they wouldn’t need to cut anything. You could just pull one thread and the thing would come unraveled.
The Commander looked down at the Betsey thing. He cocked his head as if listening. He asked, “What’s that, my dear?” He put a finger to his wrinkled lips as if to shush the boys. Bowing low, he turned his face sideways so that his yellow ear hovered over the painted mouth. Its lips sparkled with pink gloss. He closed his eyes for a moment and nodded. He said, “Yes, of course, my darling.” He lifted his hand and curled a finger, beckoning them to come closer.
None of them moved.
The Commander planted his fists against his hip bones and stomped one foot in a huff. Indignant, he said, “May I remind you gentlemen that your families are sponsoring you in this program to the tune of one thousand dollars each week? Many of them have mortgaged their homes and farms.” The Commander fixed them with a reproachful eye. “The sooner you engage with the curriculum, the less of a crippling financial burden you’ll impose…”
A thousand dollars a week. Kevin knew that no health insurance in the world would pay this claim. The brutal size of the money stuck in his head. He stepped closer to the door. He felt behind his back, but his fingers couldn’t find the knob. There was no knob on the inside.
In the glare from the one overhead light, he could recognize more charms hanging from the thing’s bracelet. There were minuscule golden ballet slippers. A musical note, representing Choir. Future Farmers of America. The air in the room was so motionless that none of the charms moved.
The Betsey thing, her waxy eyes were open. Dull as blue paint, they stared straight up at the blazing, bare lightbulb, unblinking.
Troublemaker whispered, “This is her parents’ revenge, sending her here.” He meant the false eyelashes and the sparkle-pink-painted fake fingernails glued on top of her ragged real nails.
Mr. Peanut’s finger flopped forward, a knobby wand of bone, pointing at the group of them. The brittle fingertip roamed from one boy to the next as the Halloween voice recited, “He loves me…he loves me not…he loves me…he loves me not…”
—
That night, none of them slept. After dinner, they’d each drunk a glass of chocolate milk shake spiked with syrup of ipecac. The Commander made no secret of it. They’d each choked down a whole glass of doctored milk, and they’d been left to watch a copy of Steel Magnolias on television in the sixth-floor lounge. This was yet another therapy. Before Julia Roberts was even hitched, Pig the Pirate was yakking out his guts on the linoleum. By the end of her wedding reception, Troublemaker had hurled. Big foamy waves of chocolate hurl. They couldn’t even hear Olympia Dukakis cussing out Shirley MacLaine, the barfing was so loud. Big syrup of ipecac gushers. By the time Sally Field was standing at her daughter’s grave, the TV lounge was awash in vomit.
Now they were all back in the dorm, tucked into bed. The room, pitch-dark. Unable to sleep, Kevin was still trembling. The toxic smell of the basement hung in his sinuses. Not even the acrid stink of barf could displace it. He could hear Kidney Bean, two beds over, sobbing into his pillow.
Kevin’s head hurt. He slipped out of bed and crawled to the window. It was so cold the glass was frosted over on the inside. Kneeling there, he rested his headache against it. In the dark Kevin knew they were going down another wrong road. It had been wrong to force his parents’ hand. To make them prove their love, he’d done something terrible. He dreaded the possibility that he might have to do something worse to prove he was normal. Still, he held on to the hope that another lie, a bigger lie, could fix everything.
To block out the memory, Kevin muttered, “Damn.” The word hung in the silence and the dark. Tomorrow was going to be another day in the therapy room. Their second date with the Betsey thing.
Tonight, somebody said something. Brainerd. Moaning in his bed, his voice heavy with doom, he said, “We are in the hands of an elderly lunatic.” He waited, but no one took the bait. “And I don’t mean just God. I mean a real lunatic.”
From another bed, Jasper said, “All we need to do is tell our folks what happened.”
“How?” Kevin shot back.
Pig the Pirate insisted, “The Commander will tell them we’re just lying to get out of treatment.”
Gazing out the window, Kevin griped, “I’m never getting my twenty grand…”
Whale Jr. wailed, “I’m never getting my parade.”
Spitting mad, Brainerd countered, “Screw your parade. We’ve got to do everything that madman says, or my parents will go into debt for the rest of their lives.”
Kidney Bean went back to sobbing. “I’m not screwing dead snatch.”
“Screw all of you crybabies,” a voice
shouted from the dark. It was Troublemaker. He didn’t talk like a sixteen-year-old kid sharing a room with a bunch of bedwetters. His voice sounded determined. Not frightened. He spoke with a hero’s voice. Like a leader rallying his troops, he said, “We’ve got somebody more important to rescue.”
—
A series of long letters arrived from Kevin’s mother. She wrote that his father was killing himself with the effort to pay the weekly clinic charges. She scribbled her notes in “Get Well” cards, describing how his father had collapsed from overwork. She referred to it as a cardiac episode, but implied that it was akin to a broken heart. In closing, she urged him to obey the Commander and complete the program as quickly as possible.
Mr. Clayton wrote less often, but his letters were filled with details about how Mrs. Clayton had taken two part-time jobs. One, waiting tables, the other as a hotel maid. He confided that she fell into a chair, every night, and wept over her swollen, bleeding feet.
For his part, Kevin couldn’t write anything that wouldn’t be reviewed by the Commander’s staff. It was easy to imagine the progress reports that old man was giving them. That nut-job was going to bleed everyone dry.
There were other boys in the building. To judge from the sound of their footsteps, there were mobs imprisoned here. At mealtimes and outdoors, the sixth-floor boys were segregated from them. In dry weather Kevin could see them on the basketball court outside the big window beside his bed. They looked broken-down. Their ankles showed below the frayed hems of their pant legs. A big stretch of bare wrist showed between their hands and the cuffs of their shirts. It looked as if they’d outgrown their clothes. As if these too-tight T-shirts and jeans worn out at the knees were clothes they’d brought here at least a year before.