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The school was just barely coming into view when I spoke again. I pointed across the track.

“You know what that door is?” I asked, as casually as possible. “The one by the incinerator?”

“No idea.”

“Groundskeeping can’t open it and neither can we. Maybe it’s a security thing?”

“Maybe. I think I saw Rosa go in there once.” Mason’s tone was matter-of-fact and disinterested, like he was just making conversation. I tried to match it.

“You did? Recently?”

“No. A year ago, at least. Rosa.” He glanced at me. “Isn’t she one that’s been here a long time?”

“One of the five, yeah.”

“It was before the gangs. She wasn’t a V then.”

I nodded but inside my heart was racing. Rosa. She’d been here since the beginning. She had to be one of them.

Chapter Twenty

D
uring the next few days I made a point of looking for Rosa, but watching her only added to my confusion. If she really was an android—and she had to be since she’d been in that room—then why was she always so quiet? She wasn’t influencing anything, wasn’t trying like Jane to prevent me from leaving. She was just there, shy and in the background. You’d think that if someone went to the trouble to build an android, they’d give it something to do.

After class I went down to Becky’s office and rang the bell. It took her a little longer this time to come down from the dorm, but as usual she was smiling and happy.

“Hey, Bense. What’s up?”

“I had a couple questions,” I said, as she opened the door and let me into the office. I sat down on the couch, and she leaned on the edge of the desk.

“Go for it,” she said.

“Okay. You have all the records for all the students, right?”

“What records do you mean?” She folded her arms. “There aren’t any grades.”

“I meant that letter you have—the one Ms. Vaughn gave me to give to you.”

“Oh,” Becky said, suddenly blushing. “You want to see what it said about you?” She turned from the desk and walked to a file cabinet. I stood to watch, hoping to get a glimpse of what else was in there. There weren’t many records, but everyone had a thin file.

She pulled out the folder with my name and opened it. The envelope was inside.

“Take a look,” she said, almost laughing.

The envelope had been opened very neatly, cut with a knife. Becky seemed like the organized type.

Inside was one sheet of folded paper. I pulled it out. It was blank.

I looked up at her.

“Seriously?”

Becky nodded, grinning sheepishly. “I think that she does that so that you’ll have to find me and won’t get sidetracked. But none of the letters ever say anything. Just pieces of plain paper.”

“So, if I wanted to find something out about someone—where they’re from, how old they are—then you have nothing like that?”

“Nope,” Becky said. “Not in the files. But I’ve been here for a while and I think I know everybody. What’s your question?”

I almost wanted to tell her everything. Looking at her standing there—her smile, her hair, her skin—she was real. And I knew a little about her past. I knew that she’d had her heart broken.

But everything I could say about Becky I could have said about Jane. I’d talked to Jane far more than I’d talked to Becky. Jane had emotions and sadness. I’d kissed her, for crying out loud. If that wasn’t enough to tip me off that she wasn’t real, I don’t know what would have.

“Do you know Rosa?” I finally asked.

Becky looked surprised and a little deflated.

“Yeah,” she said. “I guess.”

“It’s for something Mason and I are doing,” I lied. “You know how I was making that chart of when everyone came to the school?”

“Oh yeah,” she said, lightening a little. “Can’t you just ask her that?”

“She told me. But you know how she is—so quiet. Now I’m trying to figure out more—where she’s from.”

I had meant for this to be easy and quick. I’d hoped that Becky could have just looked in her files and rattled off some quick information and I could be done. But now I felt like I had to soothe Becky’s feelings, for some reason.

She sat up on the edge of the desk and crossed her legs. “I think that she’s from somewhere in the South. I want to say Georgia, but I’m not sure. What’s this project for, anyway?”

“Just curious,” I said. “Boredom, mostly. And I figure that someone ought to be keeping some kind of record of this place, just in case we ever get out of here.”

Becky nodded. “I write in a journal. Every night.”

“Really?” I sat back on the couch.

“Yep. I did before, too. I wish I still had those.”

I was watching her face. She seemed to be deep in thought.

“Where are you from?”

It seemed to shake her back. She sat up a little straighter and looked at me again. “Not far from here. Arizona. Flagstaff.”

“Really? How far away is that?”

“Five or six hours.”

“And you don’t have any friends there? Someone you could contact?”

She laughed softly and shook her head. “I lived with my grandma, on an old ranch. Homeschooled. She died when I was fifteen.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” She looked down at her skirt and smoothed it with her hands. “I like that you’re collecting this stuff. When you’re done I’d like to see it. Maybe we’ll have some real records here for once.”

I nodded and smiled. “Sure.” There was so much more I wanted to say. I wanted to trust her. I wished I could.

By the way, Jane was an android.

I stood up to leave but didn’t step toward the door.

Becky watched me expectantly—or was she trying to say something to me? I couldn’t tell. Her eyes looked intense, but distant.

“I’d better go,” I finally said.

She looked into my eyes. “Okay.”

I turned and had almost touched the doorknob when she spoke.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “About Jane. All of us in the Society aren’t like Laura and Dylan.”

A flare of anger sparked, but I tried to keep it down.

Without turning around, I nodded.

“Don’t . . . ,” she began, but stopped. I waited, my hand tightly gripping the doorknob and squeezing it until my knuckles were white. She was still one of them. Anna had become a V. Others had joined Havoc. But Becky was still in the Society.

She stammered out her words. “I’m only trying to . . . I just . . . I just want everyone to be safe.”

“Okay.” I opened the door and left.

For the next few days I tried to find a way to talk to Rosa, but nothing presented itself. We’d stopped eating lunch on the bleachers—it was too cold—and lots of the girls retreated to the dorms to eat, rather than be in the cafeteria.

I was lonely.

Every day was getting worse. I’d spent my entire life without anyone I could talk to—that was normal. I was almost always in a foster home with six or seven other kids—all of whom were as screwed up as I was—and I never stayed longer than a few months. By the time I was twelve or thirteen I’d stopped unpacking my bag altogether. I was never part of a team, never in a study group or a clique. I was always the new guy.

But at Maxfield I’d had friends. I’d had people who talked to me. Jane was a weird case—she’d never actually been my girlfriend, and I’d only known her for a few weeks, but we were definitely friends. We talked all the time. And now she was gone.

She was never real.
I don’t know why I had so much trouble remembering that.

My other friends seemed to be drying up, too. The same distrust that was ruining things with Mason had wrecked my friendships with the rest of the V’s. I was just there, in the background.

I missed people. I missed Jane. I missed Mason and Lily. I missed being able to sit in a group and think they were my friends. Now, every time I was in a class or the dorms or the cafeteria I was looking around at the faces.
Was that leg movement mechanical? Do people really blink like that? Is she breathing?

I’d spent my whole life alone, but I’d never felt as alone as I did now.

I finally had my chance to seek out Rosa. As we filed out of the classroom, the TV screen in the hallway was running announcements—contracts were going to be renewed that night, so everyone would have the afternoon to finish job responsibilities. When the V’s met, I was once again assigned to garbage duty, but I kept listening when Curtis doled out the assignments. Rosa was sent up to the third floor to fix a broken radiator.

I kept to my routine, starting with the dorms on the fourth floor, with plans to work my way down to the classroom where she was. I wanted it to look normal, not like I was stalking her. As I picked up each garbage bag, I planned what I’d say to her when I got down there.

Unfortunately, Isaiah was in the dorms, too, and as I passed his door he came out to talk.

“Benson,” he said. “Question.”

“What?” I didn’t look back at him but continued with my job, opening each door and taking the trash.

“I heard that you and Mason went to the wall.”

“We did indeed,” I said, dumping a basket into my large can.

“That’s against the rules.”

I glanced at him for a moment and then looked back at my work. “It is not against the rules, actually. I would think that you of all people would know what the rules are.”

“True,” he said. “Going to the wall is not against the rules. Attempting to escape is against the rules, however. And, as you know, the V’s lost the last paintball match and have increased punishments.”

I feigned innocence. “Did I attempt to escape?”

“I think you are, even this very minute. Planning is part of the attempt.”

I pushed the can down the hall to another door. “Then you’d better lock up half the school.” The painful part was that it wasn’t true. Isaiah knew as well as I did that hardly anyone was seriously trying to get out.

“So you admit it?”

I opened the next door and stepped inside. Isaiah had to be a robot. He was too strict, too obedient. Was anyone actually like this?

When I reemerged from the room I was looking at him, and he stared back at me. “What if I were to tell you,” I said, dumping the basket, “that Jane was an android?”

Without waiting for his response I went back into the room and set the basket down. I wasn’t worried. If he was an android, part of the school experiment, then he’d already be aware that I knew about Jane. If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t believe me anyway.

“What?” he said as I reappeared.

“She was an android,” I said. “A robot. C-3PO.”

He stared at me. I took another basket and then another.

“There’s no insanity defense here,” he finally said. “You can’t wear a dress and get sent home for being crazy.”

“Okay,” I said. “But if you ever want to talk about it, you come see me.”

I opened another door and stepped inside to get the basket.

“I don’t think you know what you’re dealing with here,” Isaiah said, still standing in the hall by the large trash can.

I came out of the room and rammed my finger into his chest. “I’m the only one in the whole damn place who knows what he’s dealing with.” I tossed the garbage in the bin and then yanked it down to the next room. The last thing I needed right now was to deal with Isaiah and his self-righteous Society. It wasn’t about keeping anyone safe—it was about keeping himself safe. He did what the school wanted so that he’d be fine, not so that other people would be. I picked up a few wadded papers off the floor and stuffed them into the small can before heading back to the hall.

Two other guys were with Isaiah now. I quickly dropped the trash in the large can and went back into the room, trying to think of something to do—some way to get past them or talk my way out of this—but it was too late. They’d followed me in.

“This is what the Society is all about, huh?” I said, as the two thugs walked toward me.

I took a swing at one, missing, and then tried to run past them. But there was no way. In an instant I was on the floor. My good arm was being twisted behind my back and someone’s knee was pressing down on my spine. The more I struggled, the more pain shot through my body.

Isaiah calmly knelt down beside me. I tried to swing at him with my bad arm but the angle prevented anything more than a weak swat.

“If you want to escape,” he whispered, his lips almost touching my ear, “then do it and die already. I keep this school healthy, and you’re a cancer. Jane was a cancer, too. And Lily. Two down, one to go.”

I threw my head against his, but didn’t have enough power behind it to hurt him and the pain in my own head flared. I struggled against the two on top of me, but it was useless.

Isaiah stood, and in a moment he calmly ordered the two thugs to do the same. “Let him up.”

“The cameras saw all of this,” I said, trying not to show how much pain I was in. “You’ll be punished.”

He smirked and moved close to me, his face only inches from mine. His voice was barely a whisper, not loud enough for his guards to hear. “This school has four rules and one punishment—detention. All other rules and all other punishments are dispensed by the Society. The school has learned it can trust us.”

“What?”

“You can try to tell the others,” he said, “but they won’t believe you. Very few in the Society know.”

I was stunned. When I could finally find strength to say something I murmured, “I bet the school loves you.” I looked at the guards. “Did you guys know he’s the one who makes up the punishments?”

His goons’ faces didn’t change at all.

Isaiah walked toward the door.

“The school can still love you, too. Or it can hate you.”

And with that, he was gone.

I ignored the rest of the garbage on the fourth floor and headed down to the third. I didn’t know what to ask Rosa, if I should ask her anything at all. Maybe I should just forget about trying to find out who was an android. No one would believe me. No one else was trying to get away. Everyone seemed so maddeningly complacent. Granted, they’d been here a lot longer than I had, but if a month of my prodding hadn’t spurred any of them into action, I doubted that another month would, either.

I entered a classroom and saw Rosa kneeling by the radiator, her hands splotched with black grease. She looked up at me.

“Hey, Benson,” she said quietly, and then focused back on the radiator.

“Hey.” I pulled the trash bag from the room’s small basket. “Where did you learn to do that?”

“Here,” she said.

“Oh,” I said, trying to figure out how to stretch the conversation. “Someone taught you?”

“No. Some directions came with the contract.”

“But you’re at least mechanically inclined.” I tossed the bag into the big can.

“I guess.”

This was going nowhere. It was time to be bold.

“So, if you do a lot of maintenance stuff, have you ever worked on the incinerator?”

Her face was still down, and she was fiddling with a wrench. “Why? Is it broken?”