Shock Point (11 page)

On her seventeenth push-up, Cassie slipped in the puddle of her own sweat, her still-weak left arm unable to hold her any longer. She landed on her chin on the hard tile. The pain in her jaw was so intense that she thought she had pushed it out of place. She rolled on her back and put her hand to her mouth, feeling her jaw pop as she opened and closed it. Her clothes clung wetly to her.

“You! Start again!” Miguel said. “Twenty push-up.”

All this because she had cried on her birthday. With each push-up, Cassie’s jaw throbbed and her left arm shook violently. With each dip down, she thought about Rick and how he had betrayed her. And by the time she had completed her push-ups, Cassie had decided that if it were the last thing she did, she would expose Rick and Peaceful Cove to the world. Even if she was forced to wait two years until she was eighteen and legally free to leave, Cassie vowed she would hold this resolve tight inside her, polish it up like a pearl, and finally bring it forth into the light.

Cassie was already awake when the screaming began. Even though the Respect Family’s room was at the other end of the building from OP, and one floor above, screams penetrated the walls as if they were cardboard. It was impossible to tell if the scream came from a boy or a girl. Cassie had learned that everybody sounded the same when they were being hurt.

When she had first arrived at Peaceful Cove, the screaming had bothered her. Now she found herself wishing that whoever was screaming would just shut up. She wrapped her towel around her head and tried to go back to sleep.

A few minutes later came the wake-up call—Mother Nadine shouting at them to get up. She was always grouchy in the mornings. In silence they got up, bunched up their sheets, and folded their wooden beds against the wall. The room was now completely bare, except for the row of battered milk crates at one end.

Cassie found the crate labeled with her last name. In went her sheet and her pajamas. As quickly as possible, Cassie put on her underwear and the least soiled of her uniforms. She had been here six weeks now, but even if it had been six years she didn’t think she could get used to the complete lack of privacy.

Mother Nadine was leaning against the wall with her eyes closed, so Cassie risked a smile at Hayley as she stood on tiptoes to stack her crate. Cassie was rewarded with a wink. From watching Hayley, Cassie had learned how much she could get away with. And it was quite a bit. Most of the staff didn’t have the energy or the will to ride the kids all the time. They took catnaps, read magazines, flirted with each other or sometimes the older kids. Only the sadistic ones—and they were a minority—tried to find ways and reasons to hurt them.

Clutching their toothbrushes and towels, the Respect Family lined up single file and went out into the hall, becoming part of the silent commotion. In family groups of twenty, two hundred young men and women spilled downstairs and into the first-floor hallway. Even in flip-flops, their feet made enough noise that a few people risked a whisper or two of conversation.

Out in the courtyard, they lined up for head count. The day was already hot, the sky a hard blue bowl turned over them. The only sound, aside from the crash of the waves, was the guards counting in Spanish. Across the yard, the boys had lined up in their family groups. Occasionally, people would rub the sleep from their eyes or yawn, but for the most part they were still, hands dangling at their sides, staring at some invisible point in front of them.

As she did every morning, Cassie looked at the sea out of the corner of her eye. The ocean, with its infinite stretch of horizon, was like a taste of freedom. As she watched the white-capped waves roll in, Cassie wondered if it were true that every seventh wave was higher than the ones before.

She had only gotten to the fourth wave when the guards finished counting, then shouted the totals into their walkie-talkies. Since it was Wednesday, one of the days that their family showered, Tania, the guard working with the Respect Family, jerked her head in the direction of the showers.

A single pipe ran over the twenty wooden stalls, spilling water out of twenty separate holes. Like the rest of the girls, Cassie hung her uniform on a hook, then stood with her arms crossed tight across her breasts.
“Ándale,”
Tania said, and she turned the handle that ran water through the pipe. There was a collective gasp as cold water poured onto their heads.

They had three minutes. Quickly and mechanically, Cassie showered, using the small blue sliver of soap that dozens of other kids had used before her. After shaking two ants off her toothbrush, she brushed her teeth. The water went off, and Cassie dried herself.

As she dressed again, she saw a scorpion skittering across the wet cement toward her. One of the baby ones, less than an inch across, which meant that it was one of the most dangerous. Until she came here, the only scorpions she had seen had been in paperweights. Cassie quickly slipped on her flip-flops. From the other girls she had learned that you couldn’t hesitate. She stepped on it firmly, then scraped the resulting mess off on the edge of the open drain.

Outside the showers Cassie fell back in line, then hung up her towel on the clothesline. She used the pipe by the ditch to rinse the mud from her feet and flip-flops. Some of the girls used this water to brush their teeth. Cassie didn’t. She was sure that was why some girls spent so much time on the toilet, crapping their insides out.

After their shower the Respect Family split up to do daily chores. Cassie was in charge of sweeping and mopping their family’s room. For the first few weeks Rebecca had watched her, occasionally going so far as to run her fingers over the still-damp tile. Cassie had been the model Level One, not so much for the hope of leaving, but just to go up a level and get some privacy back. Now that she was finally a Level Two, Cassie was left on her own.

Since the room was only about twenty feet square, it didn’t take long to finish her mopping. Cassie leaned against the wall and closed her eyes, knowing Mother Nadine’s schedule as well as her own. Right about now, their housemother would be out in the courtyard, sharing a cigarette with Father Roberto and trying to flirt in her American-accented Spanish.

When she felt the air change around her, Cassie jumped. But it was only Hayley, who was in charge of cleaning the hallway.

“What’s up?” Cassie said, relaxing back against the wall.

“Not much, just chillin’.” Hayley closed her eyes. “Just trying to stay out of Mother Nadine’s line of sight. Although she isn’t as bad as some of the others.”

“How many housemothers have you had?”

Hayley started counting on her fingers. “Seven. I heard Mother Nadine got caught having sex with some eleventh-grade boy back when she was teaching in the States, so that’s why she’s here. It takes a special kind of American to put up with the crap that goes on here. The Mexicans I can understand. They’ve got to make a living. But Father Gary always likes to have a couple Americans around, so he can trot them out if a parent unexpectedly shows up.”

“Parents can come here?”

“It doesn’t happen very often—and they’re only supposed to come if you’re on Level Four and they’ve gone through a seminar back in the States. But occasionally someone just shows up. That’s happened twice since I’ve been here. Gary has spies at the airport and the border. When he hears somebody’s coming, he immediately goes into cover-up mode. The place gets cleaned up, we get real food, and we get to wash our clothes in a machine.”

Cassie listened for a long moment to make sure no one was coming, then whispered her obsession. “Hayley, I’ve got to get out of here.”

“It’s impossible. I’ve been here two years, and nobody’s made it out. Nobody. Two guys died trying.”

Cassie gulped. “How’d they die?”

“They found one in the desert. It’s real easy to get turned around out there.”

“My watch has this compass ring thingy.” Cassie showed it to her, dialing the ring on the outside so that it made a tiny ticking noise. “I don’t know how to use it, though,” she admitted. “How did the other one die?”

“Tried to jump from the roof, using a broomstick like a pole vault to go over the wall. I’ve always wondered about that one, though. I heard a noise that night, like a shot.”

Cassie put her hand over her mouth. “They wouldn’t kill somebody for leaving!”

Hayley shrugged. “Depends on what they were worried someone might say, and who they might say it to. Three years ago, Gary’s brother was running another school in Jamaica, but the authorities closed it down because they were putting kids in OP in dog kennels with duct tape across their mouths. You’d think that would give the parents a clue that something was wrong, but no, most of them just arranged for their kids to be shipped here.”

“Duct tape and dog kennels? How do you know that?”

“Because I was there.”

“Wait. Your mom knew that about the school—about the kennels—and she still let them send you here?”

Hayley shrugged. “She’s a pretty high-powered executive. She’s hardly ever home. I don’t think she knew what to do with a kid after my dad took off. He used to be the, you know, the househusband. Mr. Mom.”

“Then why not just put you in a regular boarding school?”

“She didn’t think they were strict enough.” Hayley’s voice was bitter. “She said I was incorrigible. I was smoking, breaking curfew. She would drop me off outside school and I would just cut and hang at the skate—” Suddenly she picked up her broom and began to sweep the already clean floor.

Cassie grabbed for her mop just in time. Mother Nadine appeared in the doorway, hands on hips.

“You don’t fool me for one minute, girls.” But her protest was halfhearted, and neither Hayley nor Cassie looked up. Things at Peaceful Cove generally went better if you never met anyone’s eyes. Finally Mother Nadine barked, “Line up!” They went downstairs, joining the rest of the Respect Family for breakfast.

The meals were laid out on the table—boiled cabbage and fish, one of Cassie’s new favorite meals. Back in the States, she had eaten fish only rarely, chicken maybe once every six months, beef and pork never. Now she ate whatever was put in front of her—fat, scraps, organs. Even so, there was never quite enough.

After breakfast, the Respect Family joined the Health Family in one of the classrooms. The morning PGV was about confidence. Cassie had seen it the first week she came, so she only half watched. The tape lasted thirty minutes. The two teacher’s aides stood outside in the hall, talking, so instead of taking notes, she wrote a note to Hayley.

“I’m here because I found out my stepdad was prescribing an experimental drug to kids that killed some of them. He was afraid I was going to tell. But if I don’t, more kids will die. I HAVE to get out of here.”

Cassie dropped her pencil, then passed her note to Hayley when she bent over to pick it up. Hayley palmed it like a pro. No one was watching, though. Rebecca looked half asleep, her head propped up on her hand. Hayley read the note, then raised her eyebrows and gave one quick nod.

After they had written their two essays and turned them in, it was 9:30. Time for school. Only there was no teaching. Instead, the Mexican chaperones passed out textbooks that more or less corresponded with the grade you would be in if you were in the States. Cassie’s dog-eared textbook—
Our American System: An Introduction to Civics
—had been published in 1982. You were expected to teach yourself—to read, take notes, and when you finished a chapter, ask for a multiple-choice test. If you got stuck, you could raise your hand and one of the aides sitting at the back of the room might be able to help.

Cassie finished a chapter on the First Continental Congress and raised her hand. Without making much of an effort, she took the test. The textbook was on her desk, so she could look up any answers she didn’t know, but she didn’t bother. The first time she had taken a test, she marked down a few answers that she knew, guessed on a bunch more, and turned it in. When she got it back the next day, she had gotten twenty-one out of forty questions right. She had also gotten a B.

From Hayley, Cassie had learned that it was impossible to get anything lower than a B. Peaceful Cove was a five-star boarding school where everyone received a 3.0 average or above.

After lunch and another class, Cassie’s family lined up in the hall to do laundry, a weekly chore. They went back upstairs to get their clothes and sheets, then headed outside. Each of them grabbed a white plastic five-gallon bucket and dipped it into the cold ditch water. The guard poured a handful of soap into each bucket. Cassie plunged her clothes in and then rubbed the edges together.

The guard stood in the shadow of the building, smoking a cigarette, his eyes closed. A dozen whispered conversations sprung up. Instead of looking at each other, people kept their eyes on the guard instead, so that conversations had an oddly sideways quality.

When the rest of the girls started whispering about their favorite foods, Hayley leaned closer to Cassie. “Is what you said about your dad true?”

“It’s my stepdad, but yeah. He’s been testing this new drug, kind of like a super-Prozac for teenagers. It’s supposed to do everything Peaceful Cove does to make kids ‘better,’ only it takes a week or two, not years.”

“Some parents would want that.” Hayley lifted her uniform from the gray water and began to twist it. “And maybe some wouldn’t. Maybe for some, it’s just easier not to have their kid around.”

“I don’t think any parent would want it if they knew that three kids had died taking it. My stepdad found out I planned on telling, and the next thing I knew I was being shipped off here because they supposedly found crystal meth in my room.”

“So why do you want to go home so bad? He clearly doesn’t want you there.”

Cassie thought of Darren. “I have to find someone who will listen before more kids die.”