Crazy House

by James Patterson

  People around me roared their approval. Nathaniel punched his fist in the air and yelled, “Yes!”

  I stared at him. What a hypocrite!

  “Start yelling your agreement,” he said in a low voice only I could hear.

  “No! I—”

  “Cassie. Start yelling your agreement.”

  Everything in me protested even looking like I agreed with the Provost and his thugs. Becca was still missing, for God’s sake! And my folks—

  “Do. It. Now.” His voice was quite definite, and his elbow pressed into my ribs.

  He’d survived as the leader of the Outsiders for a long time, all while looking like the best son the Provost could hope for.

  “Arrests are imminent!” the Provost cried.

  With bile rising in my throat, I punched my fist in the air. “Yes!”

  PART

  TWO

  42

  BECCA

  DEFIANCE AND A LACK OF regard for rules has always been part of my personal charm, but let me tell you, they were long gone. After my miscarriage, they sent me back to my prison room as soon as they were sure the bleeding had stopped. I shuffled between two guards, knowing that this was my absolute lowest, both physically and emotionally.

  The guards pushed me through the sliding door of metal bars, and I went to a lower bunk and gingerly sat down. My roommates knew enough to wait until the guards had gone before they gathered around me in support.

  “Oh, my God, Becca,” Merry said, hugging me. “I was sure you were dead!”

  “Almost,” I agreed dully.

  “What happened?” Vijay asked.

  “The guard kicked me, and it made me miscarry.” No point in prettying it up. “But it wasn’t complete, so they aborted the rest of… it.”

  “Oh, Becca.” Merry’s face, already blotchy from crying, crumpled again.

  “You were pregnant?” Diego knelt in front of me in concern.

  I let out a breath. “Yeah. I guess so. I didn’t want to admit it—even to myself. But I was.” I met my roommates’ eyes. “A teacher back home—he raped me. I wanted to tell the police, but right then my pa tried to kill himself. Things were crazy, and by the time Pa was stable, in the hospital, I couldn’t think about anything but him. Anyway. I got pregnant. Well, now I’m not.”

  Gingerly I lowered myself onto the bunk and curled up, my back to them. It occurred to me that I was on Robin’s bunk, and I could stay here, sleep here, because Robin was gone. And so was my baby.

  I started to cry, muffling it in Robin’s blanket.

  “Becca Greenfield!” A guard was waiting for me out in the hall.

  Diego, Vijay, and Merry looked shocked that I wouldn’t be given more time to recover, but I wasn’t. I knew not to expect special consideration. I knew not to expect anything anymore.

  43

  THE GUARD CUFFED MY WRISTS and took me to the classroom. I walked as slowly as I dared, my insides burning with each step. Glancing up at the windows, I longed to catch a glimpse of Hope, but not even my dragonfly was with me now.

  The Strepp was already in the classroom, pacing as she always did, rapping a wooden ruler against one palm.

  “Sit,” she said.

  I did. Obedient Becca. Becca in pain.

  Strepp wrote on the whiteboard: “Despite my discouragement, I shall rise again; I will take up my pencil which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.” - Vincent van Gogh.

  Did she want me to draw something now? An art test?

  But she wasn’t done. Her next quote was: “Defeat should never be a source of discouragement but rather a fresh stimulus.” - Robert South.

  “Do you know what these quotes mean, Becca?” she asked.

  My brain was hardly working well enough to know my own name, but what the hey. I took a stab. “Don’t give up?”

  “Yes!” Ms. Strepp pointed her marker at me. “Yes! Truly great people do not see their defeats as steps backward, but merely as steps along their journey.”

  Whatever. Okay. I kept quiet, wishing I could get my hands on a bottle of ibuprofen. A whole bottle.

  “Do you feel defeated, Becca?” she asked.

  For the first time, I met her gaze. Maybe she wanted a rote answer, like, “Never!” or “Yes, I’m ready to do anything you say,” but I gave her question serious consideration. What did defeat mean? On the one hand, I felt pretty damn banged up and abused. I didn’t care if I woke up tomorrow. On the other hand, would I try to break out of here if it meant I could see Cassie again? Hell, yeah.

  “Um, I guess not totally?” I hazarded.

  Her face took on an expression that I couldn’t fathom. But she said nothing and instead handed me a sheaf of papers: today’s tests.

  I did them all as fast as I could and turned them in in record time.

  Ms. Strepp glanced at them. “Be careful, Becca,” she said, flipping pages. “Remember—there are executions all the time. You’re on a short list.”

  “Yep. Got it,” I said.

  She nodded, still looking at me thoughtfully. “You have to do your best.”

  “Yes,” I said, praying I could go back to my room and sleep, but strongly suspecting I was about to do thirty push-ups over the nail board instead.

  Ms. Strepp stood up briskly, tapped the papers into a briefcase, and seemed like her usual cold, hateful self. “Okay. Good job, Becca,” she said, and left the room without looking at me.

  Mouth open, I just stared after her.

  Then it hit me: This was another one of her crazy-house games. She was keeping me off-balance, unable to know what to expect.

  It was working very well.

  44

  CASSIE

  “ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THIS?” Nathaniel’s voice was low in my ear.

  “No,” I said. “But I don’t know what else to do.” It was still weird, hanging with the Provost’s son—I’d despised him for so long. But I knew he hadn’t ratted me out about going to the Boundary yesterday, and this morning he’d been looking out for me, at Harrison’s house. It was still hard to believe that schmuck was dead. As soon as I had a minute to feel glad about it, I intended to.

  Now it was dark, but we still had a couple of hours till curfew. I should be at home doing schoolwork—my grades had suffered since Becca had disappeared—but instead I was out here, preparing to break the law for the first time in my life.

  “This is the only boundary road, right?” I asked quietly. “There’s not some secret entrance hidden somewhere that only the Outsiders know about?” I was pretty sure it was, but wanted to double-check. Before last week, I would have said I knew the cell like I knew my garden tools. Since then I’d found out that it had a lot of secrets.

  “Yep,” Nathaniel said. “Our crew has been all over the Boundary. There’s one way into Cell B-97-4275, and one way out.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  We’d left our mopeds behind—even their small electric engines would make more noise than us walking. With Pa’s rifle over my shoulder, I followed Nathaniel through a hole in the barbed wire, about two hundred yards from the open boundary gate. Cellfolk are so used to following the rules that the Provost doesn’t even bother closing or guarding the gate.

  “This way.” Nathaniel’s voice was very low. He stepped carefully over rocks and avoided the clumps of wild roses that made a thick and effective thorny barrier. There was a big ditch, a gully, about a hundred yards in, and he climbed down one side and offered me his hand. After a moment of internal back-and-forth, I took it. He motioned for me to go first up the other side, I guess to catch me if I fell. I scrambled up the boulders, my feet sliding only a bit, and then I was up and holding out a hand for him.

  “You’ve been out here before.” I wasn’t asking.

  “Yes. We’ve done as much exploring as we could.”

  “What for? I mean, what’s the point of knowing people from other cells?”

  Nathaniel pause
d for a minute, the moonlight making a sculpture of his face, his cheekbones. “There’s a bigger picture,” he said finally. “There’s a whole world. There are tens of thousands of other cells. And that’s just in the United! There are other Uniteds out there—where people speak different languages, where they look different. There are oceans—bigger than you could possibly imagine. Not just one ocean. Five of them. All of the United is on one landmass, one huge chunk of land. But there are six other enormous, gigantic chunks of land.”

  We walked in silence for a bit while I tried to wrap my mind around this. Was he just making it up? Maybe. What if he wasn’t? What if there really were oceans and huge lands besides the United? What would that mean for me? For any of us?

  “Your ma got taken for a mood-adjust,” he surprised me by saying.

  My brows came together and I got ready to lash out at him.

  “Mine did, too.”

  That was the last thing I expected him to say, and I gaped at him. In the night shadows, he gave me a half smile. “But they brought her back.”

  “Yeah,” I said in confusion. “I’ve seen her standing with your dad, like at speeches and stuff.”

  “That’s not really her.” Nathaniel sounded wistful. “I mean, that’s her—her body. But her mind is different. Like she’s not even there. Sometimes she doesn’t know who I am, or where she is. During the day she sits in a chair, not speaking. Not doing anything.”

  This was horrible. I’d had no idea. As much as I’d imagined what had happened to my ma, it had never crossed my mind that having her come back might be worse.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, inadequately.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Me, too.”

  “My pa’s still alive,” I surprised myself by saying.

  Nathaniel glanced at me. “I know.”

  “They don’t think… they don’t think he’ll last much longer.” Why was I telling him this? I’d never even spoken to Steph about it.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  I let out a breath, looking at my feet to avoid tripping on rocks and old roots. “I go see him, in the hospital. As often as I can. I tell him what I’m doing, just like it was normal and we were waiting for dinner.”

  “Can he hear you?” Nathaniel’s voice was gentle.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. He never… reacts. But I still talk to him. Tell him to get better.” I shook my head. “It’s stupid, I guess.”

  “He’s your pa,” Nate said. “It’s not stupid.” Then he stopped and squinted into the distance. Wordlessly he pointed, and far away, way down the boundary road, I saw it.

  My truck.

  45

  WHEN I’D MENTIONED TONIGHT’S LITTLE excursion, I hadn’t expected Nathaniel to want to tag along. But he’d pointed out, to my annoyance, that he had much more experience exploring the Boundary.

  Now, as we skirted the trees and made our way through the brush parallel to the boundary road, I was thankful I wasn’t out here alone.

  When we got close to the truck, Nathaniel motioned for me to crouch down next to him.

  “What are we waiting for?” I whispered.

  “To see if it’s a trap,” he murmured matter-of-factly.

  Again, a thought that hadn’t occurred to me. It was like I’d been living half asleep, and was now waking up to see how things really were.

  “Come on,” he said at last, and we scurried over to my beloved truck. Which was totaled. As I took in all the damage, I had to keep swallowing so I wouldn’t cry. The passenger side was crunched in, and three of the four tires were shredded. The driver’s side door hung open, and the interior was already covered with a thick coating of red dust.

  I gestured to the windshield. It was broken, and the point of impact was where the driver’s head would have been. Gingerly I brushed sand off the seat and eased myself in. The keys were in the ignition.

  This was where Becca had sat, just a few days ago. I pictured her in my mind, speeding down this road, hair flying, whooping as she broke curfew, took my truck without permission, and pretended, just for a few minutes, that Ma and Pa were both sleeping safely back at home.

  My throat closed up and my eyes got hot. Slowly I traced the steering wheel with my fingers, knowing I would give anything to meet Becca’s hand on the other side. Then I was crying silently, salty tears sliding down my face, my throat aching, my breaths coming in painful jerks.

  Nathaniel reached in and took my arm, pulling me out gently. I stood against my ruined truck and sobbed as quietly as I could. My former enemy folded me into his arms and patted my back, one hand smoothing down my hair, not saying anything.

  I’d been strong for so long. For years. Out here in the cool night air in the middle of forbidden territory, I let it go. Nathaniel’s shirt was damp by the time I hiccupped to a halt. Without speaking we turned to head back through the brush, and from there we made our way across the barren land, down into the gully, through the woods, and then through the barbed wire fence.

  Kneeling, Nathaniel quickly wired the pieces of fence back together. “So it won’t be noticed in a quick inspection,” he said.

  I got my moped and wheeled it onto the ring road.

  “I’m so sorry about Becca,” he said.

  I pushed the ignition on my moped, but kept its headlight off.

  “Now what?” Nathaniel asked, one hand on my handlebar.

  “I really don’t know,” I said politely, and headed for the empty house that would never feel like home again.

  46

  AT SCHOOL, STEPH, MY BEST friend, was waiting at my locker.

  “I heard that Mr. Harrison had a heart attack,” she murmured. “But now they say someone shot him!” She looked up and down the hallway. “I bet it was some girl’s dad.”

  I looked at her. “Some girl’s dad?”

  Steph wrinkled her nose. “You know how he was. All handsy. Wouldn’t surprise me if someone’s dad decided to put a stop to it.”

  I’d known about Mr. Harrison molesting me and Becca. I hadn’t heard about anyone else. I wondered if Steph was right.

  “Cassandra Greenfield, please report to the principal’s office.”

  Steph raised her eyebrows. “What have you done now?” she teased, because of course I never broke rules or did anything wrong, and all the teachers loved me. Good thing they didn’t know about my sneaking past the Boundary. Or did they?

  I rolled my eyes. “Must have been that fire I set.”

  In Ms. Ashworth’s office I sat in a hard chair in front of her desk, as I had done—was it only last week? This time we were joined by Mr. Lewis, the guidance counselor, who usually picked vocations for the students. Was he going to change my vocation? Should I remind him that I’d wanted to be a teacher?

  “Cassie,” Ms. Ashworth said abruptly, “this isn’t going to work.”

  “What?” I asked, surprised.

  “You speak when we tell you!” Mr. Lewis almost shouted, and I jumped in my seat.

  Eyes wide, I turned back to Ms. Ashworth, whose face was stern.

  “We tried to make an exception for you,” she said, and my eyes widened further. “But there was your mother, who never did fit in. Your father, and his shameful action a few months ago.”

  My face started to burn.

  “Didn’t have the decency to die!” Mr. Lewis said. “That’s what the SAS is for! But no—Greenfields always have to do it their own way.”

  “And Becca. An Outsider,” Ms. Ashworth said.

  “You Greenfields think you’re above everybody else!” Mr. Lewis snapped. “Like the rules of the United don’t apply to you!”

  My jaw dropped open.

  “You’re setting a bad example for the other kids,” Ms. Ashworth went on. “You lied about Becca being sick, didn’t you? You know this isn’t tolerated in the system. I have no choice but to expel you.”

  “Wh—expel? What do you mean?”

  “It means you leave here and don’t come back,” Ms. As
hworth said in a voice like steel. “We won’t take the risk of you infecting the other kids—good kids—with the Greenfield attitude.”

  “Leave school?” I was dumbfounded. Sure, kids had been kicked out before, but they’d done extremely bad citizen–type stuff. What had I done?

  “As for your vocation, forget it!” said Mr. Lewis, a vein in his neck starting to throb. “No one will hire a Greenfield anyway! You can kiss that good-bye!”

  I stared at them both, back and forth. In our cell, almost everyone graduated high school. And almost everyone had a vocation. Without a vocation, you couldn’t do much. You ended up like the losers that Becca had played chicken with.

  “I’ve done nothing wrong!” I exclaimed. “You can’t expel me, or take away my vocation!”

  “It’s not only our decision,” said Ms. Ashworth. “Though of course we support it. But you’ve been stirring up trouble. You’ve gotten a bad name for yourself. That kind of thing gets noticed.”

  The idea was so unbelievable that it was hard to take in. “But… what will I do?” I asked, wanting to argue but too shocked to put coherent thoughts together.

  “You should have thought of that before!” Mr. Lewis said.

  “Before what?” I asked. “Before I was a Greenfield?”

  “You’re dismissed, Cassie,” Ms. Ashworth said as Mr. Lewis began to gather steam for another attack. “Go home. And don’t come back.”

  47

  PEOPLE IN THE HALLWAY LOOKED at me and whispered as I slammed open my locker. I grabbed whatever was mine, stuffed it into my backpack, and slammed the locker door shut. They can’t do this! I fumed. This has to be illegal!

  But who would I turn to? The Provost’s office? Ha!

  In the parking lot I strapped my backpack to my moped. Glancing up, I saw Steph staring at me through a window. She mouthed, “What happened?” but all I could do was shrug, get on the moped, and putt-putt furiously away.