Counting Backwards

by Laura Lascarso

  “Does A.J. have anything on him?” Margo asks.

  “Some money, maybe, that’s about it.”

  What about his keys? I wonder, but I don’t say it aloud.

  “What will they do to him?” I ask Victor.

  “He’ll get sent to the first floor.”

  I shudder at the thought of it. “For how long?”

  “Who knows?” Victor shrugs. “He’ll deal. It’s not his first time.”

  “That doesn’t make it any better,” I snap, irritated that he isn’t more concerned.

  “I’ve spent my time in there too,” Victor says, then glances at Margo like What’s her problem? They think I’m overreacting.

  The bell rings, and the remaining safeties herd us back into the school building. I can’t get the image of A.J. out of my head, the expression that crossed his face when he looked at me. Was it . . . shame?

  Later that afternoon in my dorm room I move my duffel bag and unplug my clothes from the vent. I call down to him but get no response. In the middle of one of my attempts to reach him, I glance up to find Brandi standing in the middle of my room. I do the first thing I can think of—I pull a Charlotte and let out a ferocious roar, screaming so loud it hurts my own ears to hear it. Brandi curses me and rushes out of the room. Not until Tracy’s standing in my doorway do I dare stop.

  “What’s going on?” Tracy asks.

  “Brandi,” I pant, “in my room.”

  “She stole my earrings,” Brandi shouts from across the hall.

  Earrings?

  “What earrings?” Tracy asks.

  “My gold hoops.”

  “Did you take her earrings?” Tracy asks me.

  “No.”

  “Yes, you did too, you crazy bitch. Trish and Stacia can’t find theirs, either.”

  I didn’t take them, but I can guess who did.

  Tracy stands in the hallway between us. “Can you prove she took them?”

  “Search her room. I know she has them.”

  I tense up, worried about what Tracy might find if she searches my room—the money, A.J.’s key—but she only glances around briefly, not even bothering to look. “I don’t see anything,” she says.

  “Then you must be as blind as you are stupid.”

  “Maybe so. But your smart mouth just lost you your phone privileges for the next two weeks.”

  “What? You can’t do that.”

  “I just did.”

  “I’m talking to Kayla about this.” She storms down the hall, and I nearly laugh out loud.

  “Thanks, Tracy. You’re awesome.”

  “Mm-hmm, and don’t you forget it.”

  I try calling down to A.J. a few more times that night but get no response. I look for him the next morning on walkover, but he isn’t there. In line I ask Margo if she’s heard anything.

  “Don’t worry, T, he’ll be out in time for the dance.”

  I clench my fists. “I don’t care about that stupid dance, Margo. I don’t even want to go.”

  “I bet you’d go with A.J.”

  “Ugh, you’re making me crazy.”

  I glance up and see Brandi and her crew walk by, minus their earrings. Their earlobes look strangely naked, and they seem to have lost some of their menace as well.

  “What’d you do with their earrings?” I ask her.

  “I buried them someplace they’ll never be found. I’m doing them a favor, really. Hoop earrings are so passé.”

  “You should have included me.”

  “Next time, T. You’ve gotten a lot of heat lately. You can make it up to me by coming down to my room this afternoon. We need to pick out our dresses for the Harvest Ball. It’s only eight days away.”

  “Dresses? Where’d you get dresses from?”

  “It’s in the welcome packet. Everyone brings a dress, and lucky for you, I happen to have a few extra.”

  “Margo, I really don’t want to go to this dance.”

  “But you will, Taylor, because you’re my friend and you’d do anything to make me happy.”

  I shake my head at her. Not many people amuse me, and even fewer can get me to do what they want. Unbelievably, Margo can do both.

  School passes by in a daze. I keep hoping to see A.J. in the hall, but he is nowhere. In the pen that day, I make a beeline for Victor. I want information.

  “The safeties trashed our rooms,” he says, “but they didn’t find anything. We’re too good for that.”

  “Where’s A.J.?”

  “Back in the dorms.”

  “Is he okay?”

  Victor pats my shoulder. “He’s fine. He likes being by himself.”

  No, he doesn’t, I think, frustrated that I can’t do anything to help him. I remember A.J.’s voice in the basement, his sad story and the loneliness that loomed so large. Then I had to go and run out on him.

  The bell rings, and I continue on to automotive, where we work on the Bronco. Turns out, all it needs are some new belts, hoses, and an alternator, which have already been ordered. I watch the car keys trade hands. I’d only need the key for about a minute by myself to make a mold, assuming A.J. will help me with the rest. But what can I use in place of plaster?

  Margo won’t let up on me about this dance, and A.J.’s not responding to my calls through the vent. I need something to take my mind off him, so that afternoon during leisure I corner Kayla in the common room and ask if I can go down to the second floor. I need to try on some damn dresses.

  “Why?” Kayla asks me suspiciously.

  “Margo wants me to pick out a dress for that dance thing.”

  “The Harvest Ball?” she says, her voice rising an octave.

  “Yeah. That.”

  “Of course you can. I’ll take you there myself.”

  I follow her down to the second floor, where she hands me off to Tabitha, the second-floor intern. “You have to show me your dress after you pick one out,” Kayla says before leaving.

  Margo meets me in the hallway, wearing a black satin slip dress that cuts above the knee on the left side and drops down to the floor on the right. She’s adorned it with a feather boa and a long black cigarette holder, minus the cigarette. She’s even penciled in a fake mole on one cheek.

  “First dress,” she says. “Not my favorite, but what do you think?”

  It looks great on Margo, but I want it for myself. I like its simple lines and soft sultriness. “I want that one,” I say, “without all the weird stuff.”

  “Don’t you want to see the others first?”

  “No.”

  “So that means you’re going, then?”

  “I guess it does.”

  She smiles, and her dimple smudges her fake mole. “Come to my room and try it on. I’ve got a ton more dresses to show you.”

  Walking into Margo’s room is like stepping into a backstage dressing room. She has clothes everywhere—scarves, hats, and costume jewelry strung from every post and knob, a fluffy shag rug and lavish comforter, black-and-white posters of movie stars on the walls, and enough makeup on her desk-turned-vanity to service the entire floor. She has five opened trunks vomiting clothes and shoes—more pairs than I can possibly count. Her room looks so . . . lived in. How long has she been here to collect all this stuff?

  “Wow, Margo, where’s your room?”

  She giggles and disappears behind a Japanese dividing screen. I glance around and notice all her packs of gum and empty containers of Tic Tacs.

  “What’s with all the breath fresheners?”

  “I suck on them at night,” she says. “It helps me fall asleep.”

  My eyes come to rest on an unopened pack of Bubblicious, and I get a brilliant idea. Maybe bubble gum would work as a plaster for a mold. It’s soft and pliable. I glance to the screen where Margo is throwing her dress over the top, then reach over and slip the pack of gum into my pocket.

  “Have at it,” Margo says, reappearing in a silk kimono and holding out the black dress to me. I feel a little bad th
at she’s invited me into her room and I swiped her gum, but she has plenty more. And knowing Margo, it probably wasn’t even hers to begin with.

  Behind the screen I shrug off my jeans and T-shirt and pull the dress over my head. It falls past my shoulders in a whisper. I don’t have too many curves, but the ones I have are quite apparent in this dress. And it’s so light, it’s like wearing nothing. I come around the screen and show her.

  “T, you look gorgeous. Where have you been hiding those legs?”

  I glance down. I haven’t seen my own legs in a while. I need to shave, which means asking Kayla for a razor and having a safety supervise me, which is a good enough reason for me to wear pants. I glance around the room and remember that the only mirrors we have are the creepy playground mirrors, but I don’t need to look. It’s comfortable and practical. This is the one.

  “Me next,” Margo says. She hands me a couple of raffle tickets. “This might take a while. Go bother Tabitha for some sodas and make mine a diet.”

  Margo has soda privileges. I wonder how that’s possible with all her smoking and setting things on fire, but she does seem to get her way a lot. I stop by Tabitha’s room and trade the tickets for a Dr Pepper and a Diet Coke, then drag a chair from the common room out to the hallway. I finger the dress’s silky material and think more and more that this dance might be the perfect opportunity to make my break. It’ll be dark and loud, kids will be everywhere, the safeties will be distracted. . . .

  Meanwhile Margo models her collection of evening gowns, strutting down the hallway like it’s a runway. A few of the other girls pass through long enough to give us strange looks, but for the most part, they keep to themselves.

  “What do you think about this one?” she asks, pivoting expertly and throwing out one hip. It’s her seventh dress, a deep blue, strapless wraparound, which she’s wearing with barely there silver heels.

  “It’s pretty. You look . . . tall.”

  “Do you like it more or less than the last one?”

  “More. Definitely.”

  “The last one wasn’t that hot, was it?”

  “It was totally hot, but I can’t even remember it now because you look so hot in this one.”

  “One to ten, Taylor. I need quality control.”

  “Nine and a half.”

  Margo gives me a satisfied nod, then totters back to her room to change. I pop some gum into my mouth and chew, thinking I need to know more about what goes on at these dances. Margo would be great for that, but the last time I mentioned my school project—aka escape—she got all huffy with me.

  “Last one,” Margo calls.

  She glides down the hallway in a wine-colored Renaissance gown with a tight-fitting bodice and satin trim. It isn’t the dress so much as the way Margo carries herself, head held high, shoulders back. Like a queen—regal and strong.

  “That one’s my favorite,” I say. “I give it a ten.”

  She smiles. “Hair up or down?”

  “Up. It shows off your neck.”

  “Yes, I think you’re right.” She twirls once, and the fabric balloons elegantly around her legs. “I’m beat. Let’s take a break.”

  Ten minutes later we’ve changed back into our regular clothes and are crowded into the handicapped stall in the second-floor bathroom so that Margo can smoke a cigarette. She’s got a toilet-paper tube stuffed with dryer sheets, her own invention, which she blows the smoke through to hide the smell, but the bathroom still reeks, only with a dash of spring.

  She’s sitting on the back of the toilet with her shoes on the seat, gazing at the murky window, when I notice she isn’t sucking her cancer stick with her usual vigor.

  “What’s up, Margo?”

  She shakes her head, and her blond hair frames her face in soft wisps, so that she suddenly looks much younger, or maybe it’s because I rarely see her without her makeup on. “I’m nearing the end of my program.”

  “I know, Margo. You’re lucky.”

  She sighs and takes another puff, discarding the tube and letting the smoke escape from her nostrils like a dragon.

  “I don’t understand. What’s the problem?”

  She sits up straighter and stares at me. “You still don’t know who I am, do you?”

  I don’t know what she means by that. I feel like I know her pretty well, even if we haven’t been friends for very long.

  She hops up off the toilet and does a little tap dance on the tile floor, then sings out in a child’s voice, “Eat your Vitabites every day, and you’ll grow up to be strong someday.”

  I have a flashback to when I’m eight years old, eating the marshmallows out of my Lucky Charms and watching morning cartoons when a Vitabite commercial comes on. The hair, the dimples, the demented flight attendant smile in the making. A younger version of Margo Blanchard.

  “You’re the Vitabites girl?”

  “One of them. That lasted until I was ten. Then I had bit parts in a couple movies, some catalog work. Then, when I was fourteen, I just . . . fell apart. I was hospitalized for a couple months. After that I was just so tired. I wanted to sleep forever. My agent told me I’d lost my sparkle, and my parents started fighting all the time. I stopped eating or getting out of bed. That’s when they decided to send me here.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Two years this November,” she says, holding up two slender fingers like a peace sign. “I always talk about getting out of here and moving to New York or L.A. and becoming an actor, but I don’t know anything about what’s going on in the world. I’m so out of touch with . . . everything.”

  I think about that for a moment. She and A.J. have been trapped in here for two years. It’s been less than a week for me and I already feel totally disconnected from the outside world. For Margo, leaving Sunny Meadows would be like waking up from a coma.

  “What if I get out and I can’t handle it?” Margo says. “What if I fall apart again?”

  “You’ll learn fast, Margo. It’s not so different from being in here.”

  She shoots me a doubtful look.

  “For real. You’re like . . . a force of nature. The first time I met you, you totally scared the crap out of me. You fight back against bullies like the Latina Queens. And you’re practically running your own small business with Victor. There’s so much you can do. Plus, you’ve got great . . .” I search my brain bank, trying to come up with what attribute Margo would appreciate the most. “Hair.”

  Her lips twitch like whiskers, and she almost smiles. “I’m a natural blonde, you know.”

  “I know,” I say, and nod emphatically.

  She takes one last drag from her cigarette and throws it in the toilet. It hisses back at us like a snake.

  “Okay, T, I’ve had my confessional. Let’s hear yours.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She rolls her eyes at me. “Every time I look at you, you’re staring at the fence or else scoping out the safeties. Not to mention the map of Georgia. I know you want out of here.”

  There’s no point in trying to hide it from her; she’s too observant. But if Margo knows and A.J. knows . . .

  “Are you going to tell somebody?” I ask her.

  “No, but you should know that Sunny Meadows has zero tolerance for runaways. You saw what they did to you just for running inside the fence.”

  “They’d have to catch me first.”

  Margo looks at me. “They will.”

  “What about the Harvest Ball?”

  “What about it?”

  “What’s the security like?”

  She shakes her head. “They’ve got safeties everywhere—on the lawn, in the gym, in the bathrooms. Besides, even if you got over the fence, where would you go after that? There’s nothing out there but ticks and mosquitoes. And no one comes down that road unless they’re coming here. They’d send out a search party and find you before morning.”

  “Not if I had a car.”

  Margo grabs me by my shoulders and
gives me a light shake. “Not on the night of the Harvest Ball. They’ll be expecting it, and it would really ruin my reign as queen. Everyone will be talking about you instead of me. Don’t you care about my feelings at all?”

  She wilts into the saddest pout I’d ever seen. Her eyes even get a little misty. What an actress.

  But she may have a point. It’s bad timing to try an escape when they’re fully staffed. And I sure don’t want to get tackled or thrown into a time-out room again. That would really ruin the ball for me, not to mention Margo’s dress. I need a better plan than climbing the fence. I need a car. I think of the gum in my pocket. Maybe by then, I’ll have one.

  “Fine,” I say at last, because she’s still looking at me, waiting for an answer.

  “Promise?”

  “I promise I won’t run away on the night of the Harvest Ball.”

  She hugs me tightly and it takes me by surprise, her gesture of friendship. I never really had a girlfriend before, definitely not the BFF kind, where you trade clothes and talk about boys and prison breaks. Maybe because I never felt comfortable bringing anyone home, not knowing what state our apartment or my mother would be in. I never found a girl I could trust to keep her mouth shut. But at Sunny Meadows everyone has their own baggage they’re dealing with, so there isn’t so much shame in it. And we’re forced to be with one another all the time—part of why I hate it—but in this case, it’s kind of . . . nice.

  “It’s time,” she says, “for me to show you how much fun Sunny Meadows can be.”

  Twenty minutes later during “outside activities,” we’re flying down the hill behind the dorms on cardboard boxes Margo convinced one of the maintenance guys to pull out of the recycling bin for us. The scattered leaves help us zoom faster and soften our falls. The safeties watch us from the top of the hill with their arms crossed, but from a distance, it looks like they might be smiling.

  We go up and down, over and over, headfirst and butt first. We make a train with our arms and legs, with Margo as conductor. I haven’t acted like such a kid in so long, and it feels good to just let go and have fun.

  A couple of more kids join in. I keep hoping to see A.J. among them, but he never appears. Margo convinces me to race some guys for Twinkies, and we wind up winning, while others compete to see who can wipe out with the most style. Sulli proves to be a real daredevil, sliding down backwards and somersaulting at the bottom.