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.
eighteen
April 13
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.”
“So you’ve got nothing.” Cassie couldn’t tell if Michelle’s words were a challenge or a dismissal.
“No!” The word burst out of Cassie louder than she had intended. Two people waiting at the counter turned around. She lowered her voice. “The proof is these kids. Three kids died. Three kids who were taking Socom. Three kids who were patients of Dr. Wheeler.”
“And Dr. Wheeler is your—” Michelle looked at Cassie, her blue eyes expressionless.
“Stepfather.”
“And how well do you get along with him?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Thatcher said, his voice angry, but Cassie laid a hand on his arm.
“It’s no secret that we don’t get along that well. But that doesn’t change the fact that three kids died. Three kids who had the same doctor!”
“I’ve written about medical research before,” Michelle said. “So I know there are safeguards to prevent this kind of thing. The FDA has a bunch of hoops. Research has to be reviewed by outside monitors. The drug companies themselves have rules the doctors have to follow. If these deaths were related to this drug, then someone should have figured it out a long time ago.”
“But those things only work if everyone tells the truth,” Cassie said. “What if the doctor lies to the kids about what kind of shot he’s giving them? What if the doctor lies to the drug company about whether someone meets the criteria because he gets ten thousand dollars for every kid he enrolls? What if the drug company doesn’t look too closely because the only way they’re going to make money is if the drug gets on the market?”
Thatcher played what would have been their trump card, if they still had it. “And when it comes to these three kids—the parent signatures were all made by the same person.”
Michelle’s brows drew together. “These three kids are brothers and sisters?”
“No—I don’t think their families even knew each other,” Cassie said. “But if you look at the parental signatures side by side, they all look the same. Like the same person signed these three different names. The letters are shaped the same way, slant the same way, have the same spiky loops. And what they look like is my stepfather’s handwriting. You see, if he signed them, that may mean their parents didn’t ever have to know that they were on Socom.” She explained how Socom was a shot, one that lasted for weeks. “Not pills, so nobody else would have to know. And he might even have told them it was a special vitamin shot, or something else that wouldn’t hurt.”
Cassie and Thatcher both waited as Michelle pursed her lips and tapped her pencil against the table again. She nodded her head as if she had come to a decision. Then she snapped her notebook closed and slid it back into her purse, tucked the pen behind her ear.
Cassie felt like a trapdoor had opened in her stomach.
“Look,” Michelle said, leaning forward and gesturing with her now-empty hands. “It’s a given that a kid wouldn’t like the new guy their mom just married. I know I didn’t. But you don’t have any real evidence that your stepfather is this evil guy who’s killing teenagers. You say nobody but you knows these kids were on this drug. You don’t have any records to back this up, and you say if I talk to the families, they may not know about it, either.” Michelle picked up her bag. “Sorry, but I’m not going off on a wild goose chase. If you can get some real proof, then give me a call.”
nineteen
April 30
Today was her sixteenth birthday. Underneath the table, Cassie counted on her fingers to make sure, then slowly resumed eating the rice and stale crackers that counted as breakfast. She was surrounded by two hundred strangers, all dressed alike, all chewing silently, all being watched over by two guards. Instead of her mom singing “Happy Birthday,” she was listening to a PGA, a personal growth audiotape, droning on and on about proper nutrition.
“If seventy to eighty percent of the food you eat is not water rich, what you are doing is clogging your body. Eat eighty percent water-rich food. Try it for the next ten days. Watch what happens to your body. It will blow your mind.?
??
Blow your mind? How long had they had this scratchy tape, anyway? Besides, students at Peaceful Cove were given no choice about what they ate.
In her two weeks at Peaceful Cove, Cassie had realized that a nagging hunger would now be her constant companion. The pathetic thing wasn’t eating rice and stale crackers for breakfast. The pathetic thing was that she wished she could have more, but there were never any seconds.
If she had been home, she would have spent all day eating. Blueberry pancakes in the morning, a Gardenburger, fries, and a milk shake from Burgerville at lunch, and for dinner her mom would have taken her out for a Caesar salad and a baked potato, with a stop afterward at Baskin-Robbins for a hot fudge sundae with mocha almond fudge ice cream topped with extra nuts. Her dad would have sent her a box of See’s Nuts & Chews, as well as a Nordstrom gift card. And then tomorrow he would have taken her out to dinner, just the two of them. She wondered what kind of story her mother and Rick had told him.
Her birthday! The idea still seemed so strange that Cassie actually pinched herself. If only this were a dream. Then she could wake up in her room with her posters and her lime green beanbag chair, her own clothes and her own choices. Except that girl, the Cassie who had walked home with Thatcher, the Cassie who had worried about taking her driver’s test and making new friends—that girl was the one who now seemed like a dream.
For the last two weeks, the real Cassie had been here, keeping her eyes down, only speaking to ask permission, gagging on the weird food, crying herself to sleep at night, but quietly, so Rebecca wouldn’t hear. Reality was that Cassie was going to be stuck here for months, if not years.
Cassie had never felt so helpless or so hopeless. Or so hungry. Her spoon scraped across the now-empty bowl.
There was a nudge against her thigh. Cassie jerked, then tried to hide it. Hayley, who was sitting next to her, pressed something square into her hand. Cassie’s fingers explored the serrated edges. Two soda crackers. Rebecca had warned her that you were only allowed to accept another’s food if you were a Level Three or above. But this was Hayley, who wore the same Level One yellow shorts. That didn’t stop Cassie from palming the crackers. She coughed, reached for her water, then quickly brought up her other hand and dropped the crackers in her bowl. Luckily, Rebecca was staring down at her own food.
On Cassie’s second day, Rebecca had gone over the finer points of consequences. You could be consequented for horseplay, poor sportsmanship, looking at a member of the opposite sex, frowning, talking about drinking/drugs/sex, burping, or showing an “unsatisfactory attitude.” A Cat. 1 offense, such as rolling your eyes, was consequented by a modest loss of points. Further along, a Cat. 3 offense, such as swearing, cost a significant number, and might drop your score beneath your current level’s threshold. In that case, you would be demoted and lose whatever privileges came with your old level. Being found with evidence that you planned to run away was a Cat. 5—the worst—rewarded with both automatic demotion to Level One and a long stretch in OP.
Rebecca hadn’t covered what category food-sharing fell into, but Cassie guessed it was probably a Cat. 1. The risk seemed worth it. It was more than just two crackers—which really wouldn’t do much to fill her up—but how the gesture warmed Cassie, made her feel less alone. Rebecca still had her eyes on her food, so Cassie gave Hayley a smile and was rewarded with a wink in return.
After lunch, Cassie followed the other girls from her “family” as they returned their trays and then lined up single file. Three feet apart, holding their water bottles, they walked to one of the classrooms, where they joined another family to watch a thirty-minute personal growth video—PGV—on drug abuse. They listened to PGAs at every meal, and twice a day they watched a PGV. All the audio- and videotapes were on topics like alcoholism, racism, exercise, and other subjects that were supposed to help them grow. But the audiotapes just sounded like strangely worded rants. The acting on the videos was bad, and the plot lines ridiculous. The takeaway message the students were supposed to regurgitate in a follow-up essay was always obvious—drug abuse was bad, studying was good, anger bad, self-esteem good.
Mr. Chadwick leaned against the wall at the back of the room, his arms crossed. Even though he was probably not even thirty, he had only a few wisps of hair combed across his scalp. He was also half a head shorter than Cassie. Yesterday she had seen him slap a Level One boy across the mouth, hard enough that the red finger marks hadn’t faded by the time class ended.
Cassie hadn’t been paying much attention to the video until it showed a teenage actress blowing out candles on a cake, celebrating her newfound sobriety. She told herself it was stupid, but it suddenly hurt to breathe. A bubble was expanding in her chest, choking her. When she blinked, hot tears spilled down her face. She dashed them away with the back of her hand.
The girl sitting next to Cassie looked at her quizzically.
“My birthday,” she mouthed back, answering the unspoken question. The shades were pulled down for the videotapes, so they were camouflaged by the semi-darkness.
The other girl narrowed her eyes, clearly not understanding. “It’s my birthday,” Cassie whispered.
Rebecca’s voice cut over the sound from the tape. “Mr. Chadwick, Mr. Chadwick. Cassie is talking!”
Mr. Chadwick flipped on the lights, then walked up and turned off the TV/VCR, the high heels of his cowboy boots clicking in the absolutely silent room. He snapped his fingers. “You there. Cassie. Come over here.” He smiled at Rebecca. “Very good. Thank you for being such a concerned buddy. Ten points.”
As she walked to the front of the classroom, Cassie saw that the other kids had lowered their heads to stare at their desks. This seemed like a bad sign.
“You’re now on talking restriction, Cassie. The next time you are seen talking, you will be give a Cat. Three consequence and go into OP.”
Keeping her eyes down, she said quietly, “Yes, sir, I will not talk anymore.”
Mr. Chadwick made a sound that was not quite a laugh. “That’s it. You talked. Grab your water bottle, because you are going to observation placement.”
“What? That’s not fair.” The words shot out of Cassie before she could call them back.
“You talked again. Have it your way. You just earned yourself some more time in OP.”
Cassie pressed her lips together. As slowly as possible, she walked back to get her water bottle. Her mind was scrambling, trying to find some way out of this trap. But she couldn’t think of one. Protesting would just earn her even more time in OP. Mr. Chadwick was clearly in a mood, and he was going to take it out on somebody, and now that somebody was Cassie. Cassie could feel the other kids’ relief. At least it wasn’t them. Not today, anyway.
“Jill,” Mr. Chadwick said to a blond girl who was a Level Six. “Start the tape over, have them watch it, and then have everyone start work on a five-hundred-word essay. And if you see anyone talking, you report it to me.”
Mr. Chadwick grabbed Cassie’s arm right above the elbow. His grip was so tight that it hurt, but Cassie didn’t complain. Maybe if she were really, really quiet, it would be over faster. As he marched her down the hall, Mr. Chadwick called out, “Hector!” and a big guard came running. In the OP room, two boys lay facedown, unmoving, being watched by another guard. One of the boys had black hair bleached white at the tips.
“Get down,” Mr. Chadwick said, and gave Cassie a little shove so that she stumbled forward. Slowly, she lowered herself to the tile floor. “Facedown,” he said. She lay down on her stomach, her head turned to one side. She was about five feet away from the nearest boy. The floor was gritty and smelly, and under her cheek it was damp.
“Make sure she’s down, Hector,” Mr. Chadwick said.
She gasped when Hector straddled her back and sat on her butt. His weight ground her hipbones into the hard tile.
“The purpose of observation,” Mr. Chadwick offered, “is to give kids a chance to think. To reflect on the choices they??
?ve made. Now, what was the wrong choice you made, Cassie?” As he asked the question, Hector picked up her left arm, and lifted it up and in, so that the back of her hand rested on the small of her back.
She tensed. There was a right answer, and a wrong answer, but she didn’t know what they were. “I talked when you said not to?”
Mr. Chadwick made a sound like a buzzer. “Wrong. Show her, Hector.” He lifted her arm farther, so that her hand rested on her waist. The muscles in her shoulder were stretched to the point of pain, but she didn’t make a sound. The second guard, a small, thin man with a pockmarked face, looked at her and then away. “It was the way you said it,” Mr. Chadwick continued. “You were being insolent. You were mocking me.”
She hadn’t been; she was too scared to do anything like that. Should she say anything, or should she not?
He must have given a signal to Hector, because the guard pushed her arm again, forcing it higher, up to her shoulder blade, and she realized it didn’t matter what she said. “Weren’t you, Cassie?” Mr. Chadwick asked tenderly, and her arm was on fire now, it was surely going to snap. The tips of her fingers were as high as the nape of her neck. She didn’t want them to see her biting her lip, so she bit her tongue instead. The metallic taste of blood flooded her mouth.
“Weren’t you, Cassie?” Mr. Chadwick echoed. Hector was pulling her arm from its socket. He must be dislocating it. Her eyes rolled as she tried to see if the second guard might intervene. He looked at her, his teeth sunk into his lip so hard that it had turned white, and then he turned away.
Another inch. Her body was vibrating with pain. She kicked her feet and tried to buck Hector off, but the only result was that he winched her arm even higher. Her fingertips grazed the back of her head. She was nothing; the pain was everything. And Cassie suddenly knew what Mr. Chadwick and Hector wanted. They wanted to hear her scream.
So she did.