“Tonight?” Cassie whispered to Hayley on Thursday evening as they were lined up for head count. She felt light-headed and buzzy.
Hayley gave the slightest of nods. They had checked out the OP room as they walked to head count, and for once it was empty. Mother Nadine had just left for five days of vacation. She had teased them with her upcoming trip to California, where she would enjoy American food, American air-conditioning, and American movies. Some of the Level Sixes had sucked up major before she left, asking Mother Nadine to bring them back news of current fashions and movie stars, asking her to drink a latte for them or eat a bagel. As a substitute housemother, the Respect Family now had Rosa, who normally just passed out textbooks and graded tests when she wasn’t gossiping with her friends.
In the bathroom before lights out, Cassie popped the wads of old gum into her mouth. At first it was so dry that it cracked into shards, but then it began to reconstitute itself. Before returning to her family’s room, she tucked the lump inside one cheek. As Rosa was leaving, Cassie followed her out in the hall, palming the gum.
“Rosa?”
“¿Sí?”
“It’s about the math we were studying today. I don’t really understand about dividing a polynomial by a monomial.” As she spoke, Cassie leaned against the edge of the doorjamb, sheltering it with the small of her back. “Can you explain that to me?” Her fingers poked the gum into the space where the lock would normally click into place. She had practiced the move twice before while cleaning the room, so she knew that the gum would keep the lock from catching.
Mother Nadine would have been suspicious in an instant, but Rosa had a plodding earnestness about her. It was clear from her face that she had no idea what Cassie was talking about. All she said was, “Manãna. You go to sleep now.”
But of course Cassie didn’t sleep. She could feel Hayley watching her even though she never looked over. At 12:30, an hour after the guard’s heavy footsteps had echoed down the hall, Cassie began to move as silently as a shadow. Once on her feet, she slowly let the wooden slat that served as her bed fold itself back into place. Across from her, Hayley moved like a mirror image. Cassie saw one pair of eyes flicker open, shining wetly in the darkness, then another. The other girls stayed silent, watching, observing the unspoken code of silence that governed most of the students. It was always safer to pretend that you had seen nothing, knew nothing. At least Rebecca was still truly asleep, one arm flung over her eyes.
Picking her water bottle off the floor, Cassie tiptoed to the door, eased it open, and stepped out into the darkened corridor. Hayley followed. Cassie turned and slowly closed the door, her eyes on the girls in the Respect Family, both those who met her gaze and those who slept on, oblivious. This would be the last time she would see them. She was surprised to find tears pricking her eyes. I’ll tell them what it’s like, she promised them silently as the door closed.
They tiptoed down the hall and then the stairs. Cassie was grateful they were made of cement and couldn’t creak to betray their passing. Once on the first floor, where there were no sleeping rooms, she breathed a little easier. Staff, including Father Gary, slept in the short arm of the L, on the third floor.
Hayley glided to the main door, tried the handle, and then turned to give Cassie a thumbs-up. They had been fairly sure—but not certain—that the staff relied on locking kids in their rooms, a cage within the cage of the compound. One worry down.
Now to get supplies. They went around the corner to the main office. Before Hayley turned on the light, Cassie pulled down the blinds. Anyone looking from the other wing of the building might see light leaking around the edges, but that couldn’t be helped.
Sliding open Martha’s desk drawer, Cassie rooted through pens, paper clips, and candy wrappers. From the jumbled mess, Hayley plucked a red lighter. “Let’s take this,” she whispered. “Just imagine, tomorrow night we’ll be sitting around a campfire. And then maybe by the next morning we’ll be in America.”
Cassie continued to search through glue sticks and gum wrappers for the keys to the closet. She pushed down a feeling of panic. If they couldn’t get inside the closet, her plan wouldn’t work.
“What’s this?” Hayley said, pulling out a wad of paper-clipped American bills from the very back of the drawer. “Money. Lots of money. I wonder if Gary knows about this. I have a feeling this did not begin life as Martha’s money.” She split the bills in two and handed one wad to Cassie, motioned for her to tuck it in her bra. “If someone ends up on our heels, try throwing this at them. With any luck they’ll get distracted chasing after American money.”
Finally, under a bunch of used tissues, Cassie’s fingers closed on a set of keys. After a couple of tries, she unlocked the closet. Near the top of the pile, she found her suitcase, with its rainbow ribbon tied around the handle. The first thing she grabbed from the suitcase was the snorkel set in a mesh bag. Then she pawed through the slippery plastic bags her mom had packed until she found the ones with her Nikes and socks. She snatched up clear bags holding a pair of jeans, a baseball cap, and a striped sweater. Stripes! She hadn’t seen striped clothes since she entered Peaceful Cove.
Hayley had disappeared into the back of the closet, and now finally emerged with a shocking pink Hello Kitty suitcase. She saw Cassie’s expression and shrugged. “What can I say? I was a kid when my mom sent me away.”
Going back to the closet, Cassie dug around until she found a backpack. Yanking out empty folders and three-ring notebooks, she imagined a parent carefully packing for a fictitious “campus.”
A sound made her head whip around. But it was only Hayley, her fist stuffed in her mouth as she knelt by her open suitcase. She spoke in a strangled whisper. “I don’t know what I was thinking. When my mom sent me to Jamaica, I was only twelve. None of this is going to fit me.”
“Especially not the shoes, and that’s what most important,” Cassie said briskly, leaning over her own suitcase again. They didn’t have time to lose. “And I don’t have another pair that aren’t sandals, so start looking. For everything else, you can wear my stuff—we’re about the same size. But quick! We’ve got to get out of here.”
She began to open suitcase after suitcase, shoving them aside as quietly as she could when they yielded nothing. Had her mom been the only one who had packed a snorkel set?
“Forget it, Cassie.” Hayley had found a pair of Adidas and was busy stuffing them into one of Cassie’s plastic bags. “I’ll just hold my breath or something.”
“It’s way too far to do that. When I get to the other side, I’ll take off the snorkel and flippers and send them back through the tunnel. If you miss a flipper, it’s not the end of the world. You can still pull yourself along with your hands. Just be sure you get the snorkel. I’ll send it last so you can be ready.”
The office was a mess now, suitcases gaping open, clothes heaped on the floor, stuff piled on Martha’s desk. Cassie found another backpack for Hayley and began shoving things in. They each now had shoes, long pants, sweaters, socks, hats, and sunscreen. They had filled their water bottles earlier in the evening. Cassie had even found a single Powerbar in someone’s suitcase, although there was no telling how old it was.
Cassie shrugged on her backpack, then pulled out the snorkel from the mesh bag, slipping on the goggles and leaving the mouthpiece dangling. Hayley followed her outside, turning out the light as she left. They slipped down the hall, out the front door, and into the night. Clouds covered the moon.
Even though the air was warm, Cassie started to shake. This was it. They were really doing it. They looked left and right. No guards, no sign of life.
Hayley pulled her pajama top over her head, then found the hole in the fence, wrapped the top in a rock, and pushed it through. They had both managed to keep their bras on when they dressed for bed. Cassie listened for the thunk of it landing, but heard nothing but waves. With any luck, someone would spot it and think they had gone over the fence, buying them some time while t
hey searched the rocks. Without her top, Hayley was all planes and angles, too thin, her bra slack, her white chest and back contrasting strangely with her freckled arms.
They picked their way past the shower shack, ducked underneath the towels, and headed to the ditch. Cassie stepped out of her flip-flops and put one foot into the water. It was colder than she expected. She stepped back. There was no way they could stay, but she was suddenly too frightened to go.
A light went on behind them. They ducked down and turned, shielding their eyes. Someone stood at the front door, sweeping the length of the courtyard with a powerful flashlight. Cassie prayed that they were hidden by the towels.
“Go on without me.” Hayley pushed her. “Go! I’ll create a distraction.”
“What are you talking about?” Cassie hissed. “I’m not leaving you. We’ll turn ourselves in.”
“No! One of us has to get out and tell people what it’s like.”
“Then you go!” She tried to thrust the flippers in Hayley’s hands.
Hayley’s shadowed face suddenly looked old. “My mom doesn’t want me. Why do you think she’s kept me here? Go on—and tell people about this place. Maybe somebody will pay attention to you.”
There was a shout, and Cassie knew they had been spotted.
“I’m not leaving without you!” Cassie grabbed Hayley’s arm, but the other girl just spun away from her and began running, grabbing a towel from the line as she went. There was a sudden flare of light. Cassie gasped. Hayley had lit the towel on fire, and now she hollered and twirled it over her head, stamping her feet up and down on the bare earth. In the darkness her blue eyes glowed like silver.
The burning end of the towel flickered, nearly went dark, then brushed against another towel, which suddenly blazed up, orange and red flames throwing that corner of the courtyard into brightness. The flames leapt from towel to towel, racing the length of the clothesline, and then suddenly the thatched roof of the shower stalls was alight. The fire had a sound now, grumbling to itself as it ate. Openmouthed in horror, Cassie looked from the shower stalls to the main building. It was made of stucco—but the roof had been freshly coated with tar. Didn’t tar burn?
More shouts in Spanish and English, screams, lights being switched on. Father Gary appeared in the entrance. The bigger bulk of Martha came up behind him, shouted at him, tugged his free arm. He paid her no mind. His head swiveled from left to right as he scanned the courtyard. Looking for something. Or someone. In the flickering light, Cassie saw that Father Gary held something in his right hand. It wasn’t a walkie-talkie or a cell phone. It was a gun.
Cassie snugged the flippers over her feet, put the snorkel mouthpiece between her teeth, and slid into the ditch. The water was so cold that she gasped and nearly lost the mouthpiece.
Cassie had never snorkeled in freshwater before, and she quickly discovered why no one would want to. She wasn’t nearly as buoyant as she had been when she and her mom had gone to Hawaii. The heavy pack pushed her down. With her hands, she walked herself forward and into the mouth of the pipe.
It was completely black. When Cassie closed her eyes, it made no difference. Her breathing sped up. She had never been afraid of narrow, constricted spaces before, but then again, she had never been trapped in a narrow pipe filled with water. She pulled herself forward, grabbing frantically for the ridges of the pipe, slick with algae. Her kicks were uncoordinated, her legs moving in a frenzy, desperate to propel her through and out of the pipe.
She was no longer thinking about Peaceful Cove. Her world had narrowed to the size of a three-foot-wide metal tube filled with water. The pipe wasn’t even wide enough to swing her arms overhead, so she was half swimming, half crawling. Every few feet, her hips and knees bumped painfully against the bottom. Her mouth ached from biting down on the plastic mouthpiece. What if the water got deeper or the pipe narrowed down?
Suddenly, water was in her mouth, finding its way down the snorkel despite the float valve. She had to stand up, she had to. Cassie thrashed, wanting nothing more than to feel air on her face. But the pipe was too small to kneel in.
Something heavy and soft smacked her on top of the head. When she tried to push it away, her fingers sank into squishy fur. Some kind of animal, dead and rotting in the water. A wave of nausea rolled through her as she clawed it away. The pipe was never going to end. She was going to die in this pipe, die like this animal had.
And then suddenly she felt the space change around her. There was cold air on her back. She was out in the open ditch in the field beyond the compound.
Coughing, Cassie crawled out of the ditch. She opened her waterlogged backpack, shoved on her shoes, and began to run.
twenty-nine
June 17
Stumbling over rocks, trying to avoid the spiky bushes, Cassie kept on, shaking as much from fear as from cold. The only way out was forward. To keep moving and to get as far as possible before they took a head count and figured out who was missing. Before they forced Hayley to tell what she knew.
She turned around to look at Peaceful Cove. A dark column of smoke blotted out the stars. The air was filled with an oily, burning stench. The roof must be on fire! Cassie thought of the girls in her family, the kids she saw every day, the kids who at first had been interchangeable to her in their dirty uniforms. Were they trapped inside their locked rooms, already unconscious from the smoke?
A sob burst from her, and Cassie stumbled, blinded by her own tears. Why had she left Hayley behind? She should have insisted. Maybe they both could have made it. What would Gary do to her now? Would he turn her over to Hector?
Then there was the sound of a vehicle, very near, and Cassie threw herself facedown on the rocky ground. Headlights swept over her. It was a pickup, jouncing its way to the compound from the village. The village lay directly between her and the U.S. When the sun was up, she could use the compass ring on her watch, but not now. For now, she had to put as much distance between herself and Peaceful Cove as she could. She cut to the right, determined to give the village a wide berth.
She ran through a palm grove, then down a slope, holding her arms outstretched in front of her to keep from running into something. With one hand she still gripped the snorkel, with the other her flippers. The wet backpack thumped against her spine.
Gradually, Cassie’s eyes adjusted to the dark. Things were shadows upon shadows. At one point she dug a hole for her snorkel gear, using the stiff tube of the snorkel itself instead of her bare hands. She’d heard that tarantulas like to bury themselves in the sand, and she didn’t want to grab one. Afterward, she kicked the sand over. It made a little mound, but in the dark, it looked good enough to be missed for a day or two.
She sat on the ground, took off her Nikes, then pulled on her jeans over legs that already stung from a dozen nicks and cuts. As she put on socks and then her shoes again, Cassie took stock of what she had. One Powerbar, eleven $20 bills, a watch with a compass ring that was more like a toy, a half gallon of water, and, if you didn’t count swearing, three dozen words in Spanish. She thought of the kid Hayley said had died in the desert, then pushed the thought away.
A ridge rose ahead of her, steep and dark. She saw it by absence more than presence, a shadow that covered the stars. Grabbing at roots and outcroppings, Cassie started climbing, sometimes on her knees. Once she tumbled backward, ending up on her shoulder blades, scratched and panting, her knee next to her shoulder.
When she righted herself, she looked behind her and saw a half dozen flickers far away. Little lights on the move. They looked the way she imagined fireflies might. Only these glimmers, Cassie knew, belonged to flashlights. Flashlights looking for her. She had been thinking about resting, her breath scouring her lungs, but instead she turned and went on, faster than before, half running down the other side of the ridge.
She walked for hours. The clouds had cleared and the moon helped her with its silvery-blue light. She had put on her sweater, but still she could not stop shaking, her
chattering teeth the only sound. She passed through ranchland where a half dozen scrawny cows slept, standing stock-still. A coyote yipped in the distance.
Finally, the edge of the sky began to lighten. When the sun rose, she followed Hayley’s directions and pointed the hour hand of her watch at it, then rotated the compass directional ring until the S was past the hour hand, halfway between it and the 12. She looked back down at her watch again, lined herself up so that she was facing north. Had she been walking in the right direction all night? Cassie was afraid her direction had been more northeast, but she wasn’t sure. She hoped that she wasn’t too far away from San Diego.
She wanted desperately to stop, to curl up someplace and sleep, but she knew she had to keep on. A cactus beckoned her, looking like something out of a Road Runner cartoon, as tall as a man, complete with arms. The more distance she put between herself and Peaceful Cove, the better. A few people with pickups and binoculars could make short work of searching for her. From her backpack, she pulled out her sunscreen, smeared some on, then pulled on a baseball cap to shade her eyes. Taking out her water bottle, she let herself take two sips. She had to make it last.
Cassie kept on, threading her way through squat barrel cacti with their thick, sharp spines, and cholla cacti with their fine, silvery ones. The back of her heels felt hot. Blisters were forming where no shoes had rubbed for weeks. A cottontail rabbit bounded away from her into the brush, its white tail winking. Every now and then Cassie would come across evidence that people had passed this way before, and these seemed like a good sign. An opened sardine can, a crumpled tube of Mexican toothpaste, an empty white plastic water jug caught up in the brush.
Every hour, she adjusted her watch to make sure she was moving north. By midafternoon she stood on the crest of a long fold of a mountain. Shading her eyes, Cassie spent a long time looking behind her. She saw nothing moving, no people, no plumes of dust trailed by cars. But instead of feeling reassured, Cassie felt alone and insignificant, as if at any moment she might disappear. She could get hurt or trapped and slowly die here and no one would ever know. Pushing the thought away, she lay down in the shadow of a rock outcropping and draped her pack over her face. She tried to forget how thirsty she was and sleep.