Sisters in Sanity (13 page)

Except that I hadn’t heard from Jed since the night I left that stupid message on his machine. After a few days, the excitement I’d felt at admitting I loved him was clouded by doubt. What if I’d blown it, said too much, shown my hand? I wasn’t much of a game player with guys, and Jed and I had been such good friends that it hadn’t occurred to me to be anyone but me. I didn’t totally regret what I’d done because I believe in telling the truth, but I tried to imagine what it must have been like to get that message—hearing
my desperate voice in the dark. After two weeks and no word from Jed, I figured I had my answer. I’d over-stepped, scared him. Sure, Jed was amazing, but he was also a guy, and guys are skittish about love. Aren’t they?

May turned into June. I turned seventeen and told no one. I got a card from Dad and hoped to get one from Jed, until I realized he didn’t know when my birthday was. The days were so hot, over a hundred degrees. Sheriff even canceled backcountry therapy. A kind of tired malaise settled over the Sisters. Restrictions had eased, but not enough so we could really hang out. The big plan had stalled. It was all just blah. The only bright spots on the horizon were two pieces of good news we got in early June. First of all, Cassie’s graduation date was set for August. And then there was Martha.

Martha had recovered and was going home. Best
yet, her mom and dad were bringing her by Red Rock to get her stuff, get checked out, and say good-bye to us. I was surprised that they were going to allow her and her parents on campus and shocked when Bebe, V, Cassie, and I got pulled from lunch to attend a private farewell meeting in the front parking lot. And then I was completely speechless when I saw Martha: She had lost at least thirty pounds.

After we all hugged and wiped our eyes, Martha laughed. “Can you believe it? After everything, Red Rock accomplished what it was supposed to. Made me skinny.”

“It’s true, darling, but you look awful!”

“Bebe!” V scolded. But as usual, Bebe was just telling the truth. Martha had big, dark circles under her eyes, and her rosy complexion had a sallow tint. Her skin also seemed to kind of hang off her where she’d lost the most weight.

“Give me a break. I was in a coma. They tried to tell my mom that I was anorexic. But she knows me too well, knows how much I like to eat. I had kidney failure caused by severe dehydration. Who knew getting hot could do such damage?” Martha said, beckoning us all into a huddle. “Mom’s furious at this
place,” she whispered. “She yelled at Sheriff. She’s got them scared, so they’re kissing her butt. That’s why they let me have this meeting with you, to say ’bye.”

“Your mom’s not the only one,” Cassie said, pointing to me. “This girl was livid. She’s been on a campaign to get this place closed down.”

“Yeah, except it kind of fizzled,” I said.

Martha stared at me, her eyes shining. “Don’t give up, Brit. Don’t. If anyone can do it, you can. Please don’t give up. Please?”

“Okay. Okay. Take it easy,” I said.

“I’m sorry. It’s just that you guys kept me going in here and I can’t bear the thought of leaving you behind.” Martha started to cry.

“Darling, what is it?” Bebe asked.

“I don’t know. I just feel so, I can’t explain it, like everything’s whooshing around inside me. I’m so sad to leave you.”

“You’re not leaving us,” I said. “You’re going home. There’s a difference.”

“Yeah. What’s the first thing you’re gonna do back home?” Cassie asked.

“I don’t know. Eat. My mom’s dying to put some
weight back on me. Isn’t that hilarious?”

“She wants you fat again?” Bebe asked incredulously.

“She wants me healthy.”

“We all do,” V said.

“Thanks, V. So everything’s okay with you all. I mean you and Brit aren’t still mad at each other?”

“Brit and I were mad at each other?” V asked, raising her eyebrows. “Or was it that Brit was mad at me?” she said, giving me one of her intense, I-can-see-your-soul stares.

“Oh God, I put my foot in it. As usual. I’m sorry—please don’t fight. It makes me sad.”

“Everything’s fine, Martha,” I said.

“Please get out soon. So you can come visit me. I’ll make you icebox cake,” Martha said, smiling at me and Bebe.

“And lemonade, darling.”

“And lemonade. And I’ll catch you a firefly.”

“No, don’t catch it. Just say hi to one for me.”

Martha’s mom tooted the horn. “Okay. I think I gotta go now. I’m going to miss you guys so much.”

“We’ll miss you, too. But we’ll see you again,” V said. “You can bet on that.”

“Brit’s gonna make sure of it. Aren’t you?” Martha said.

All I could do was agree. We hugged Martha one last time and watched as she climbed into the back of her parents’ rental car and zoomed back to her old life.

After Martha left, I felt renewed in my purpose. But I found it hard to get anyone else on board. Bebe was over Henley. She now preferred to organize a letter-writing campaign to her senator. V was still acting weirdly aloof about the whole thing. And Cassie—well, she was off in her own world concentrating on Laurel and her own pending graduation. I couldn’t blame her. She was so close to freedom. Why blow it? Only V would do that.

Henley’s reaction had taken a bit of the wind out of my sails too, but I wasn’t going to give up. I just needed a new game plan. The Sisters were convinced Henley wasn’t going to come around, but I still thought he was our best hope. I needed a pep talk, so I decided to risk another outing to call Jed. It was
after two o’clock in the morning, but he picked up right away.

“Hello.”

“Brit?”

“Yeah, it’s me. Um…how are you?”

Jed let out a long sigh on the other end of the line. I could practically see him smiling and shaking his head, could picture the exact curve of the lips I’d kissed. “I’m better now. But you had me worried. I’ve been in Massachusetts the past two weeks and I came home to your one message and nothing else. I thought you freaked out on me or you got into trouble. Are you in trouble?”

“I’ve pretty much been in trouble since I got here.”

“Wanna tell me about it now?”

And so I did, as fast as I could, because the clock was ticking. I told him about what had happened after I’d slipped out to meet him. I told him what happened to Martha and what I’d discovered and what I’d tried and failed to do.

“I don’t know, Jed. This Henley guy, he’s a jerk, but he’s the real deal. I feel like if I could just show him what’s happening here, show him what I’m really trying to do…”

“Do it,” Jed interrupted.

“What?”

“Don’t give up. Do whatever it takes to get that place shut down. I’ll help you if I can. But I think you’re all you need, Brit. It’s up to you.”

“You think so?”

“I know so, and besides…”

“What?”

“I need you to get out,” he said, his voice softening. “The real you. I’ve been carrying on with the fantasy for years now.”

“Don’t you mean months? It was only March when we, you know, got together…”

“I mean years.”

“Oh.” I just sat there like an idiot, smiling into the phone.

“Can you call me again?”

“Maybe, but they probably go over the long-distance bills with a magnifying glass.”

“Call collect then. And get out of there. Clod needs you. Seriously. If you don’t get out of there soon, I’m going to turn into a total sap. You’ll understand when you hear the songs I’ve been writing. All ballads.”

“Yikes. I’m surprised Erik and Denise haven’t staged an intervention.” I paused, took a breath. “I miss you.”

“Me too. And Brit?”

“Yes?”

“I love you, too.”

Okay, maybe he wasn’t a typical skittish boy after all.

The Sisters and I met a few nights later, and I laid it out for them. I told them I wanted to give it one more shot with Henley, to present him with the whole story. He didn’t even know about Sheriff’s history, and there was probably plenty more dirt where that came from. But it was up to us to unearth it. After all, who knew Red Rock better than we did? We would sneak out files, snoop through offices, catalog every inmate’s diagnosis. And then, when we had an airtight case, we’d take it to Henley. He’d believe us. He had to.

“I don’t know why you’re so hung up on this old journalist,” Bebe said. “He’s such a rude man.”

“I’ve just got a feeling. I mean, if you knew the
guy’s history—he’s done all this work to expose injustice. He’s got to have a big heart under all that gruffness, or at least he used to.”

I explained what I felt we needed to do. Cassie, because she was getting out soon, would have to have the least risky job. She’d do an informal survey, find out what every girl at Red Rock was in for. How many sexual deviants, how many kleptos, druggies, or none of the aboves. And how many girls were on medication.

“Be careful, Cassie. Don’t take any risks.”

“I got it covered, Brit.”

I assigned Bebe to get into the medical files—find out how many girls might have had suspicious “accidents” like Martha’s or been sick. We needed a list of cases that stunk of typical Red Rock staff neglect.

I gave V what I thought was the second-hardest job: Getting the goods on the staff and finding out how many of them didn’t even have the minimum qualifications to dole out advice and meds. She rolled her eyes. “Please, that’ll take me all of five seconds. What else you got?”

“The insurance part. If we can prove that Red Rock ‘cures’ girls as soon as their insurance runs out
if their families can’t keep paying, that will help make our case.”

“Done. And what are you doing?”

“I’m going to break into Clayton’s office. Get our files. Compare notes. See if they’re making stuff up. And I’m also going to go online, or have Jed do it, to find some graduates who can tell their own torrid tales. I’ll bet there are a lot of girls out there who would happily spill their guts about this place.”

“It all sounds a mite dangerous,” Cassie said.

“I’m afraid so, darling,” Bebe agreed. “You know I love the whole Mission Impossible idea, but however are we going to get access to all this stuff? You act like we can just waltz around wherever we please.”

I was beginning to understand that we could do just that. I didn’t want to risk the girls getting busted, especially Cassie, but in my few nights of sneaking around, my confidence had been growing. Red Rock had us all so scared, so convinced that they were lurking around every corner, that we all stayed in line (at least most of the time). But the reality was that Big Brother was mostly in our heads. Red Rock had some half-assed security system, and one measly nap-loving
guard at night. The Sisters had been sneaking out for meetings for almost a year and no one was any the wiser. I’d been caught when I broke out, but that wasn’t because any of the staff had nabbed me so much as that someone on the outside had seen me in my uniform and called Sheriff. I was starting to realize that the most effective restraint at Red Rock wasn’t the locked doors or the alarms, but our own fear. And only we could unlock that. I tried to explain that to the girls, but at the same time, I didn’t want my theory to be their downfall. Cassie and Bebe still looked a little dubious, but it was V who stepped up and saved me.

“Brit, congratulations. You have just discovered the secret of this place.” She had a sad look on her face, but I could see that it was tinged with pride.

“I have?” I asked.

“You have. The only thing we have to fear—okay, maybe not the only thing, but the biggest thing we have to fear, with props to FDR—is fear itself.”

Bebe took in a gulp of breath. “Oh, what the hell. I’ll infiltrate that infirmary if I have to break my leg to do it.”

“I’m in too,” Cassie said. “And I’ll get Laurel to
play sidekick. She works in the office and can make us photocopies if we need ’em.”

“I thought you and Laurel were
already
playing sidekick,” Bebe teased, making Cassie blush as she turned to me. “See, Brit? We’ve got your back.”

“It’s down to you, V,” I said.

V stared at me, and then the stern mask of her face broke into a sad smile. “Of course, I’m in. There’s no question.”

“So, darling,” Bebe asked. “What happens once we’ve dug up all the dirt we need?”

I had no idea. But I figured by the time we got there—if we got there—I’d figure it out.

For the next two weeks, the four of us were a hive of activity. We hardly saw one another except to check in, share what we’d found, and stash evidence in a hole that Cassie had dug on the edge of the quarry. All of us were totally invigorated—giddy even—the happiest we’d been since we thought we were getting a spa day with Bebe’s mom all those months ago. Except no one else could take
this
excitement away from us because we were generating it ourselves. Unless, of course, we got caught.

But we didn’t get caught, even as we grew more brazen. Bebe successfully called on her acting lineage and faked an epic case of stomach flu, willing herself
to barf. “All I have to do is think about the time we were driving in Mexico and my brother puked on me—I just start to go,” Bebe said. “I think Mother would call that method acting.” She ended up spending three unaccompanied nights in the infirmary, where no one bothered to lock the files, and she left there, cured, with a bunch of names: In addition to Martha Wallace, there were Gretchen Campbell, Natalie Wiseman, and Hope Ellis. Each of the girls had suffered a suspicious setback. Gretchen had broken her leg, Natalie had come down with scurvy, and someone—the file didn’t say who—had broken Hope’s nose. We couldn’t be sure that any of it had to do with Red Rock’s neglect, because Helga, the awful nurse who cavity-searched me, wasn’t exactly writing down “student suffered broken nose after fighting with a counselor,” but Bebe said that in a lot of cases you could read between the lines. Like scurvy. That could easily have come from a vitamin deficiency brought on by Red Rock’s horrendously unbalanced meal plan. And heat stroke? It wasn’t hard to imagine girls like Martha being forced to stay in the quarry or complete a death march when conditions were unreasonably hot.

V, in that mysterious way of hers, had managed to get all sorts of goods on the staff. None of the counselors had advanced degrees. Two of them weren’t even through college. One of the goon guards used to be a pro wrestler, and another goon had supposedly had his license revoked for drunk driving.

“How did you find out all this stuff?” I asked her. “Are you hypnotizing people, or something?”

“I just ask, Brit. When you give them half a chance people love to talk about themselves,
and each other
.”

“Really? I was starting to think you practiced voodoo.”

“Not at all. I’m just all smoke and mirrors, like the security system here. I walk into a place like I have a right to be there, and people treat me like I have a right to be there. I act like I have a right to know something, and people tell me what I want to know.”

I thought about that. Just act like you had a right to be there. I wondered if I could psych myself into breaking into Clayton’s office. Breaking in there and getting our files was the big task I’d set for myself, but so far I hadn’t been able to bring myself to do it. There was no camera in Clayton’s office, and her file cabinet wasn’t locked—just the door was, and I had
the pass key. But it felt like the walls had eyes, like they knew everything that happened even in the dark. Just like Clayton seemed to know what happened in the dark recesses of my mind. Why else would she keep harping on about me and Mom, wanting me to accept the possibility that I was going to end up like her? That the qualities I’d inherited from my mother were really just a stop on the road to madness? Part of me thought I should just own up to it. Otherwise, I’d be stuck on Level Four forever. And maybe if Clayton’s theory was completely bogus, I would’ve pretended to agree with her by now. But I wasn’t so sure it was, and I was terrified that admitting it to her would only make it real.

So I put off breaking into her office and helped Cassie and Jed follow up on former inmates instead. I’d put Jed in charge of tracking down blogs, diaries, or diatribes from Red Rock graduates. He was on the job, happy to be able to help. It felt good to have him on board. He’d found a bunch of stuff and had emailed links to a secret email account we set up. I checked it as much as I could, but it was Cassie, who took computer classes, who insisted on checking our email account the most. This was pretty risky to do
right in front of the counselors, but Cassie insisted on doing more. She’d had a shockingly easy time with her survey. Even the most circumspect girls opened up to her—even the Stockholm syndrome girls, who tended to look down on the nonbelievers like us, told Cassie what she wanted to know. Maybe it was because she was leaving, or maybe because everyone knew by now that Cassie couldn’t hurt a fly and wasn’t one to spill a secret.

I let Cassie be our computer girl until she almost got caught. One day in class, when she was printing out an email Jed had forwarded, one of the counselors snuck up behind her at her terminal. “I thought my goose was cooked,” Cassie told all of us at one of our late-night meetings.

“What did you do, darling?” Bebe asked.

“I hit the powerstrip on my computer, unplugged the whole thing and prayed. Ain’t nothin’ anyone could do. I mean a smart counselor might’ve checked my cache on Explorer, but the counselors here are all hat, no cattle if you know what I mean. Still, I was in a panic they’d see what I’d printed. Trust me, it was a long forty-five minutes.”

“I’m glad you didn’t get caught, but that’s enough
Nancy Drew for you, Cassie. You can do more for us on the outside,” I said.

“I s’pose you’re right. I wouldn’t wanna get this close only to blow it.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” I said, sneaking a glance at V.

After that, I took over the email correspondence. Through Jed I found a guy who’d sued Piney Creek, and he emailed that he would happily tell horror stories about Sheriff, including one about a time when Sheriff lassoed him to a chair and sat him in the sun all day. I also got a note from a girl named Andrea who’d been sent to Red Rock ostensibly for drinking. She wrote me that the real reason she’d been sent away was that her parents were fighting for custody of her, and her mom had enrolled her at Red Rock to keep her away from her dad. In the end, her father had to hire a lawyer to get her out. “We’ve both got lots of sordid things to say about Red Rock and would love to talk to you or whoever else wants to hear about it. I loathe that place with all of my being,” she wrote.

I printed out all these emails and stashed them, along with Cassie’s printouts and her survey, Bebe’s infirmary records, and V’s staff notes, in our secret
hole by the quarry. After almost two weeks, we had quite the pile going.

“But our little dossier is missing one important element,” V said. “Brit, when are you going to get our files?”

“Tonight.”

“You said that last night.”

“I know. But Missy was restless. It was too dangerous.”

“You want me to go?”

“No, V. I can handle it.”

“Then do it, already. You got everyone all riled up with this. You can’t turn back now.”

“By tomorrow morning,” I said, “I’ll have the files.”

I never made it that night. As I lay in my bed, singing Clash songs in my head for inspiration, I told myself it was because of Missy. She was restless again. It was too dangerous to get caught this late in the game. Missy
was
a little restless, going to the bathroom a couple of times, but I could’ve gone if I’d wanted to,
if I’d had the guts.

The next morning, Bebe sidled up to me in the cafeteria, dropped a note on my tray and left.

It was the second time V had taken the fall for me. And once again, I was angry. But this time it was me I was pissed at. I’d allowed V to claim responsibility for my breakout and now I’d hesitated in following through with my grand plan. V didn’t hesitate. She marched into risk. And willingly paid the price for it.

Right there in the cafeteria I made a decision: I would go into Clayton’s office, not that night, when
everyone would be looking, but that day. I would go in because I had a right to be there, and the walls were only plaster and brick. I would get our files. I would make copies of them during dinner and I’d have them back before dark. Soon they’d change the key or lock the files or do something to keep one of us from striking again. Now was my window, and I had to leap through before it closed.

Clayton saw students in the morning and then again in the late afternoon, and she left Red Rock in between. I just had to sneak off the quarry and into her office, hide the files somewhere for Laurel to copy, and replace the originals, with no one the wiser. It was the equivalent of a commando mission behind enemy lines in broad daylight, with no camouflage and no backup. But it was what I had to do.

As soon as the door clicked closed behind me, I shuddered. Even though the rest of Red Rock had lost much of its intimidating veneer, Clayton’s office still had an ominous atmosphere. It felt like she was there, looking over my shoulder, though I’d checked to make sure her car was gone. I hated Clayton’s office more than any other room at Red Rock. It was like a cave housing all my deepest fears. I took a deep breath
and reached for her file cabinet. It was unlocked.

An odd calm came over me as I went through the files, plucking out
WALLACE
,
JONES
,
LARSON
,
HOWARTH
, and finally,
HEMPHILL
. I knew I had to work fast—get in, get out—but holding my file in my hand, I couldn’t resist. I flipped it open, and phrases like “denial” “idealizing iconoclastic characteristics,” “narcissism” “in common with mother,” “paranoid schizophrenia” glared at me in Clayton’s neat print. There was also a sheaf of Xeroxed letters my dad and grandma had sent, including some from Jed. And then there was a letter I’d never seen. It wasn’t a copy. It was the original, on what looked like a brown paper bag in handwriting I knew all too well. I dropped the rest of the files and sank to the floor.

When I finished reading, my tears were blinding me and I’d dampened the letter. I couldn’t see, I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t move. But then it was like some invis
ible force pulled me out of that office, away from the dark room where all my worst fears lived.

That same force guided me through the rest of the day. I don’t know how else to explain the way I managed to stash the files under my mattress, go back to the quarry, tell Laurel to make the copies, act halfway normal, get the files back from Laurel before dinner, and after dinner return the originals to Clayton’s office. Especially on this of all days, when V’s break-in had everyone up in arms again and acting all top-security. It was like someone else was leading me; it took me a while to understand that that someone else had really been the strongest part of me.

I hadn’t meant to read anyone else’s files. The plan had been to distribute each one to its subject and let the girls annotate their own, separating the truth from Red Rock’s lies. And really, all I wanted was for Missy to fall asleep so I could read my file again, read Mom’s letter again. I figured Grandma must have found Mom’s note and sent it to me. But why had Clayton chosen not to show it to me? To protect me? To punish me?

When the lights went out and I cracked our door to read by the glow of the hall, V’s papers were on top.
And on the top of her file was her date of birth. V was Aquarius, born in February. At first I didn’t give it a second thought, and I put her stuff on the bottom to get back to my own file. But then I looked back at her year of birth and I did the math. V was eighteen. She’d been eighteen for months—which meant she could’ve checked herself out ages ago. And I don’t know why, but the truth about V made me cry almost as hard as seeing my mom’s letter.