Boot Camp

  Amazingly, Adam stares at Joe as if he needs to know if this is true.

  “You have to be kidding me, Adam,” I tell him. “It never occurred to you that there was something strange going on when you and your goons could terrorize Pauly in the bathroom and still not get turned in by Ron or Jon?”

  Adam is still staring at Joe. In a way I’m as surprised as Adam is. I’d naturally assumed that he and Joe had an understanding.

  “Adam, how long have you been here?” I ask. “A year? A year and a half?”

  He doesn’t answer. His eyes dart back and forth between me and Joe with a look of desperate uncertainty.

  “You think you’re ever gonna get out?” I ask. “You must be crazy. They need you here. You’re their perfect enforcer. Their junior terrorist puppet. They don’t even have to tell you what to do, because that sick brain of yours automatically seems to know.”

  Circle has gone silent. Most of the kids are looking at Joe, as if waiting to see what he’ll say. But Sarah stares at me with eyes filled with dread and warning. Finally Joe lifts his head, a sinister smile on his lips. Suddenly I feel a chill.

  “Always good to hear what’s on your mind, Garrett,” Joe says, his smile triumphant.

  Adam sits back in his chair, crossing his arms and gloating. My extremities grow cold, and I feel myself withdraw. A poisonous cloud of regret settles around me. They set a trap and I walked into it with eyes wide open. Bang! In my mind a door slams shut. A key turns.

  Sarah gives me a pained expression. Almost as if she’s disappointed.

  Joe nods slowly. “Guess you’re not as smart as you thought, Garrett.”

  Guess not.

  “Back to TI, smart guy.”

  THIRTEEN

  “Prolonged periods of physical restraint may be necessary.”

  The concrete floor of TI feels colder than last time. Fall has arrived. I’ve lost count of how many days I’ve been here and how many times Ron and Jon have come in to twist my legs and arms and leave no visible marks or bruises. Every part of my body hurts.

  In a bizarre way, the distraction of the pain is almost a relief from the worst torture of all—the hours alone with nothing to do but think. You begin to ask yourself what you could possibly do to get out of this damp, chilly room and off this cold, grimy floor. And that’s when the inevitable thought arrives:

  Was being with Sabrina worth this?

  No! No! No! Don’t think that! That’s exactly what they want!

  This is how the rewiring begins. If I’d been sent here for eating M&M’s, wouldn’t I be wondering right now if it was worth it? If it meant getting off this miserable floor and sleeping in a bed and seeing other humans, wouldn’t I agree never to play video games again? If they keep me here long enough, I’ll eventually agree to anything. Fill in the blank: “If you’ll let me out of here, I swear I’ll______________________________.”

  a) never use bad words again

  b) stop picking my nose

  c) dot the i and cross the t

  d) listen to my parents

  It makes me wonder how Sarah has been able to withstand it for as long as she has. It doesn’t seem humanly possible. Pauly, too, in his own strange way. I can’t imagine the inner strength it must take. I’ve been here five months. They’ve been here for years. If I were either of them, I probably would have given in a long time ago.

  All you have to do is listen to your parents.

  This is why Lake Harmony works. Because it has to. Sooner or later I will believe whatever they want me to believe.

  “Are you ready to listen to your parents?” Ron demands, standing over me with one foot on my neck, pressing my face into the floor while Jon twists my right ankle.

  “Yes, sir,” I hear myself answer weakly.

  “Liar!” Ron shouts.

  “No, I mean it, sir. I swear.”

  “You’ll say anything to get out of here.”

  True.

  “How do we know you’re not lying?” Jon asks.

  “I’ll prove it, sir,” I blurt out in desperation.

  “How?” asks Ron.

  “Sir, you tell me.”

  The pressure on my face eases as Ron takes his foot off my neck. Jon lets go of my ankle. It’s a relief to rub the grime off my sore cheek where it was flattened against the floor.

  “I’ll be back,” Ron says.

  His shoes head toward the door. It opens and closes. I don’t know where he’s gone, but for the first time in what seems like an eternity, I feel hope. The hope that I’ll soon get out of TI.

  A little while later the door opens. Two sets of shoes come in. One set belongs to Ron. The second set is Joe’s. “Ron says you’ve had a change of heart, Garrett.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Sit up.”

  I press my palms against the floor and slowly push myself up. Joe hands me a clipboard with a piece of lined paper and a fat rubber marker.

  “Do I have to tell you what to do?” Joe asks.

  “Write a letter to my parents, sir?”

  “No, Garrett. Write a letter … to Sabrina.”

  Dear Sabnima,

  You haven’t heart from me because my parents sent me away and I am not allowed to contact anyone. The reason they did it was to give me time to think about the decisions I’ve made. As You know, my parents were against our relationship from the beginning. I disobeyed them to be with you. Now that I’ve had time to think, I can see why they left the way they did. They’ve always wanted the best for me, and I understand why they think you and I are wrong together. I’m sorry, but I realize now that I made a mistake. I should have listened to my parents more carefully. Sincerely,

  Gannett

  Joe has left to do other things, so I fold the letter carefully and hand it to Jon, who immediately opens and reads it, then hands it to Ron to read. Meanwhile, I try to hide the discomfort I feel at these strangers reading something so personal.

  “What do you think?” Jon asks Ron.

  “Let me show it to Joe,” Ron says and leaves.

  The minutes pass, but at least I’ve accomplished something: I get to sit instead of lie facedown. Rarely has something so mundane felt so momentous. Like that first breath after being held underwater.

  “See, getting with the program isn’t so hard,” Jon suddenly says. “It’s all about facing your mistakes, man. We’ve all made ’em, or we wouldn’t be here. Joe and Mr. Z and all the rest of them are just trying to help us. It’s a good thing my mom sent me here when she did, because—”

  Otherwise you’d be dead by now?

  “—I never would have made it. I’d have died for sure. And believe me, if I can make it, anyone can, ‘cause I was one seriously messed-up jerk. I’m telling you, Garrett, you can do it. You gotta do it. Once you’re here, there’s no choice. And once you do it, you realize it’s good for you, man. I’m telling you, this is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

  The zeal of the newly converted …

  The door opens and Joe comes in, followed by Ron. Joe holds up the letter, a knowing look on his face. “Nice try, smart guy. I mean, at first glance it’s halfway convincing. This stuff about how you can see why your parents felt the way they did. Very clever till you read between the lines and realize that nowhere do you admit that what you did was wrong. And then that last sentence about how you should have listened more carefully to your parents? Right, so you would have known what they were planning.”

  Just as he did with the last letter I wrote, Joe holds this one out in front of him like a dirty diaper and slowly shreds it. I’m waiting for the order to lie on the floor again, when he says, “Get up.”

  The command catches me by surprise, and Joe sees it in my eyes. “What? You thought I was gonna make you stay here for another week? Nah, come on, what kind of guy do you think I am?”

  I rise to my feet uncertainly. What’s he up to?

  “You did okay, Garrett,” Joe goes on. “You wrote a letter. It
ain’t good enough, but it’s a start. See how it works here, buddy? You play ball with us, we play ball with you. You let me know when you’re ready to write another one.”

  “Come on, Garrett, pass it! Pass it!” Mr. Sparks shouts. We’re playing soccer, and I’m dribbling the ball down the right side of the field deep in the opposing team’s territory. Mr. Sparks is running parallel to me about fifty feet to my left. The only defender left between us and the goalie is Pauly, who’s spent most of the game standing in the same spot. As Mr. Sparks and I come toward him, he catches my eye, jerks his head toward Mr. Sparks, and mouths the words “Pass it!”

  Even though we only play about once a month, soccer is the preferred sport for lower-level residents at Lake Harmony because the field is big and keeps us spread far apart, thus discouraging conversations. Until a moment ago, I was actually having fun. It’s a bluesky, crisp fall day, too chilly to stand around without a jacket, but not bad as long as you keep running. Mr. Sparks loves soccer. He started out as the ref, but when Unibrow Robert grabbed his side and complained of a stitch, he eagerly took Robert’s place and became a player, too.

  I pass the ball to him, and he heads toward the goal. Now only Adam, the goalie, stands between him and a score. Meanwhile, beside me Pauly wastes no time.

  “There’s a circuit-breaker box in the hall outside our dorm,” he whispers. “I’m pretty sure it’s the master switch for the whole camp. We pass it every day. All we need to do is start a commotion, and I’ll open it and pull the main breaker. Soon as the power goes off, the doors will automatically unlock and the alarms won’t work.”

  There’s a desperate determination in his voice. As if he truly believes that it’s a life or death situation and this crazy plan is his only hope. From my look of doubt, he must know what I’m thinking.

  “My father is Mr. Handyman,” he explains. “He was always showing me this stuff, because ‘real men’ know how to fix things. Kind of ironic when you think about it.”

  “So you pull the breaker and all the lights go off. What stops them from turning the breaker back on?” I ask.

  “Sarah’s got a padlock. It came with her suitcase and she hid it when they weren’t looking. It’s probably not that strong, but it’ll still take them a while in the dark to find a wrench or something to jimmy the lock and turn the electricity back on.”

  “And in the meantime?” I ask.

  “We start the fire.”

  “Score!” Mr. Sparks shouts triumphantly after kicking the ball past Adam and into the goal. The chaperone runs back toward midfield with his arms raised.

  Pauly doesn’t miss a beat. “As soon as the power’s off, kids will go crazy. With the alarms dead, they’ll take off in every direction. It’ll be total mayhem. Then when they open the gate to let the fire trucks in, we sneak out.”

  Knowing the little I know about Pauly, I wouldn’t have thought him capable of coming up with such an audacious plan. As if he’s read my thoughts, he points at his head. “What I lack in physical strength, I make up for here. Too bad my father could never figure that out.”

  “Come on, Garrett! Let’s go!” Mr. Sparks shouts as the teams line up to start playing again.

  I slowly turn away from Pauly.

  “Last night was a full moon,” he says in a frantic rush behind me. “That means in two weeks it’ll be the new moon. The darkest night of the month. That’s when we have to go.”

  FOURTEEN

  “You will continue your educational studies in order to remain on grade level.”

  Crash! One day about a week later an incredibly heavy cardboard box smashes into the carrel where I’m studying, knocking me sideways against the wall and pinning me there. It’s too big and heavy to get my arms around. I’m trapped with the smell of cardboard in my nose and dust in my eyes. The box weighs a ton. Most of it’s on my left thigh, pinning it down on the chair painfully and cutting off the circulation. Even as my left foot begins to tingle from lack of blood, I have a feeling I’m lucky. Had the box knocked me over completely, I could have been crushed.

  “Get it off him!” someone shouts. Sounds like the troll. I hear quick scuffling footsteps, then the dry slither of hands sliding over the cardboard as they try to get a grip.

  “Easy!” the troll shouts. “Come on, lift!”

  The box starts to rise, but someone loses his grip and the full weight of it thuds back down, once again crushing my leg painfully.

  “For God’s sake!” the troll yells.

  Once again hands slide around the box and start to lift. I manage to get my fingertips under the bottom edge to help, but pinned the way I am it’s hard to get any leverage.

  “Careful!” the troll shouts. “Easy! Don’t let it fall! It’s a brand-new Sony!”

  Accompanied by a small chorus of grunts and groans, the heavy box slowly eases off me. The pain in my leg subsides, and I can feel the blood start to flow back to my tingling foot.

  “Careful! Careful!” the troll urges. “If this thing is broken, I’ll have your hides.”

  The box slides away. Now that the pain in my leg is easing, I become aware of a deeper, pulsing ache from the side of my head to the top of my right shoulder— the part of my body that slammed against the wall when the box crashed down. The pain slowly creeps around my skull and becomes a pounding, brainrattling headache of such intensity that it hurts to open my eyes and focus. But when I do, I see that it’s Adam, David Zitface, and Unibrow Robert who’ve pulled the box off me.

  Of course. They’re the ones who dropped the box in the first place. I shouldn’t be surprised, but sweet Jesus, I could have been killed. The burst of anger that surges through me tips my headache over the edge into blinding pain.

  Meanwhile, the troll yells, “Stand back!” There’s a ripping sound as he quickly opens the box. “Come on, help me.”

  Adam and his posse help the troll tear away the cardboard. The TV inside is big and bulky and encased in white Styrofoam. While they’re preoccupied with concern for the Sony, Pauly takes the opportunity to sidle up.

  “Adam did that on purpose,” he whispers.

  No kidding. I’ve started to tremble, partly because of how close I just came to being really hurt, partly in anger, and partly thanks to this debilitating headache. Were it not for the pain, I would beat Adam into a bloody pulp.

  “He’s not going to stop,” Pauly whispers. “You stood up to him, and he can’t stand that. Besides, as long as he does what Joe tells him to do, he thinks he can’t get in trouble.”

  As if Adam senses what Pauly is saying, he looks up from the TV and arches an eyebrow disdainfully, clearly disappointed I wasn’t more badly hurt.

  “The new moon is in six days,” Pauly whispers.

  The door opens and Joe stalks in. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Nothing, it’s okay,” the troll answers. “The boys were moving the new TV to the upper-level lounge, and it slipped and hit Garrett—” The troll falters and looks in my direction for the first time. “You okay, Garrett?”

  I nod, but there’s no mistaking the disapproval in Joe’s eyes as he stares icily at Adam, who shrugs back innocently as if it really were an accident. But that’s a crock and everyone knows it.

  Joe turns his attention to Pauly and me. “Back to your carrels.”

  “Six days,” Pauly hisses one last time, and turns away.

  FIFTEEN

  “You will be held accountable for your actions.”

  Parents can visit after six months. “Garrett’s parents are coming tomorrow,” Joe tells us at Shut Down. “You know what that means. Any infraction will be punished in the severest way possible. Any Level Four or higher will be busted all the way back down to Level One. Level Threes and below can expect a prolonged vacation in TI with weekly visits from Level Sixes. After the crap Megan pulled, the word from upstairs is we’re cracking down extra hard. That means zero tolerance and maximum behavior modification. I wouldn’t want to be the next kid who scre
ws up.”

  That night I hardly sleep. How can I convince my parents that sending me here was a huge mistake? I know they thought they were doing the right thing, but I’m certain they didn’t know that this place is a penal colony where inmates have even fewer rights than murderers doing life without parole.

  In the morning we wash, make our beds, and line up for the day’s orders. Joe arrives, wearing a windbreaker and a baseball cap.

  “Boots on,” he barks. “We’re running.”

  We pull on our boots and get back in line. Mr. Sparks arrives to lead the run, but as we leave the dorm, Joe shouts. “Garrett, step out!”

  I stop and let the others pass. From outside comes the scent of smoke as if from a woodstove. Joe doesn’t miss a trick. Seeing the way I pause to gaze through the open doorway, he catches the door just as it’s closing.

  “Want to step outside?” he asks, knowing that of course I do. Life inside is so oppressive and regimented that the outdoors has come to represent freedom, even if we are still watched most of the time.

  Outside I take a deep breath of the cool morning air. It feels so fresh, so different from the staleness inside. A light mist hangs over the grounds and makes the yellow and red trees look slightly out of focus. From the distance comes the faintest sound of what I could swear is a fog horn. The cool air quickly seeps through my polo shirt, and I feel a chill as goose bumps rise on my arms. Joe zips up his jacket.

  “Nice being outside, isn’t it?” He goes into his buddy-buddy act once the others have trotted off into the mist.

  “A little chilly, but yes, sir.”

  “Know how easy it would be to have this any time you wanted?”

  The answer is obvious. It would be as easy as admitting that being with Sabrina was wrong, that disagreeing with my parents is wrong, that having a mind of my own is unacceptable.

  “I asked you a question, Garrett,” Joe says.