It occurs to me that the undressing rule must exist for the girls who got sent here for liking other girls. The thought makes me almost mad enough to walk out among them naked in protest. Almost. But if soap is the punishment for swearing I don’t want to think about what the punishment for that would be.
A soft tone rings from a speaker above my head.
“Hurry up!” Chloe says. “That’s the three-minute warning.”
I pull the nightgown over my head and bundle my dirty clothes under my arm. I exit and make a beeline for the sink.
“No time,” Chloe says, and yanks me away.
My mouth is still sour from the soap. I want to pull away from her, but the frantic look in her eyes convinces me not to.
When we step out into the main room, all the girls are lined up against their bunks. Chloe starts to run, my arm in her grasp.
We make it to our bunk. Tessa is standing there, hands clasped behind her back like everyone else. She’s tamed her wild tresses into two neat French braids.
Chloe grabs my things and shoves them into my suitcase, then smoothes the pillow and the covers. Tessa gives me a glance. I smile at her. I want her to like me. I want to have a friend here. She doesn’t smile back.
“Her hair,” Tessa says. At first, Chloe seems ready to yell at her for talking. Then the words register.
“Shoot,” she says, fully panicked now. “Shoot!”
Chloe yanks my hair. “Ow!” I say.
“Stay still,” she says to me, then turns to Tessa. “Don’t just stand there. Help me.”
Tessa steps behind my back. I can feel Chloe dividing my hair down my skull with her fingernails, then handing half to Tessa. They pull at the sections fast and hard and sloppy. My scalp stings.
“Careful,” I say, but they’re not more careful. If anything, they yank harder. I look around the room and notice every other girl in tight French braids, just like Tessa’s, two down each side of their head. All except the girls with short hair. Those girls wear elastic headbands. Everyone is staring at us, anxious.
There’s another soft tone from the speakers, and Chloe drops my hair and lines up next to me. She yanks at Tessa to stop braiding, but she won’t. Tessa finishes her side, then switches to the left, which Chloe only managed to braid to the top of my ear. I hear the click of the front door opening, and Tessa drops my hair like it’s on fire and snaps to her position in the lineup.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. There’s pain in her voice. She didn’t finish. The last third flows loose down my front. I glance at Chloe, but she won’t look at me. There are tears in her eyes. I reach to finish the braid myself, but she slaps at my hand. I toss the unfinished braid behind my back, hoping to hide it.
Mrs. Hemple walks in with Hairy and Baldy, who stand by the door. She walks slowly past every girl, examining each one. No one makes eye contact with her. No one says a word. They stare at the opposite wall or at their toes. There are no words from Mrs. Hemple either. The room is devoid of any noise except the soft thud of her tennis shoes. She looks like she should have a riding crop in her hand, but she doesn’t.
As she reaches one girl, a mousy brunette near the front, the girl sucks in a sharp breath, then holds it until Mrs. Hemple passes.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
We’re near the back of the room. She’s walking so slow it takes a full five minutes for her to reach us. I think I hold my breath the entire time too.
She stops in front of me and immediately reaches for my hair. I’ve fooled no one.
“What happened here, Chloe?” she asks.
“Tessa didn’t finish the task I assigned her,” Chloe says. There’s fear in her eyes. I glance at Tessa, and her mouth hardens into a firm line, but she says nothing. Why would Chloe lie? We ran out of time. So what?
“Is that so?” Mrs. Hemple asks.
“Yes, ma’am,” Chloe says. I don’t understand why she’s doing this.
“No,” I say. Their eyes snap to my face. I spot the fear in Chloe’s eyes. She’s all but begging me to shut up. “It’s my fault.” I won’t have Tessa take the blame for something she didn’t do, and Chloe will only lie like she already has. Mrs. Hemple looks to Chloe.
“It was both of them,” Chloe says, trying to cover for her lie. “Tessa dawdled and Emma resisted. But it’s Emma’s first night. Tessa should know better.”
“It’s kind of you to show compassion, Chloe, but it’s not up to you to decide who is guilty and who is not,” Mrs. Hemple says. She reaches for something inside her deep pockets and pulls it out. It’s a large pair of scissors.
“Please don’t,” Tessa says. “It was Chloe. She forgot.”
In a flash, Mrs. Hemple grabs Tessa’s left braid, the same side that’s unfinished on me, and cuts it off close to her scalp.
“No!” I scream. “She didn’t do anything!”
Mrs. Hemple turns to me and swiftly grabs my left braid too. I hear the swoosh of the scissors and watch as Mrs. Hemple pulls my braid free. More than a foot of hair, my hair, dangles from her hand.
I reach up and feel the absence of what once was a source of pride. I loved my hair. I loved playing with it and styling it and shoving it into buns and ponytails. Now half of it is gone. The surface is nearly bare, just a quarter inch of stubble pokes out at the center of the cut. At least a foot of hair. Two years of hair. Gone. It doesn’t seem real.
“Those who cannot take care of what God has given them do not deserve to have it. These will be sent to Locks of Love and made into wigs for people who do deserve it,” Mrs. Hemple says. “Perhaps you will remember not to be so careless in the future.”
Tessa is crying. Chloe looks half mad, half relieved. I am speechless.
Mrs. Hemple turns on her heel. “Evening prayer,” she says.
Immediately, everyone in the dorm drops to their knees and folds their hands. I follow their lead, still in shock. In unison, they recite:
“Now the light has gone away;
Savior listen while I pray.
Asking Thee to watch and keep
And to send me quiet sleep.
Jesus, Savior, wash away
All that has been wrong to-day;
Help me every day to be
Good and gentle, more like Thee.
Let my near and dear ones be
Always near and dear to Thee.
O bring me and all I love
To Thy happy home above.”
Mrs. Hemple walks to the door. The lights go out, and we climb into our beds. It sounds like a hundred mice scampering to their holes.
“May Jesus bless your dreams and wake you with new energy to be more like Him day by day,” Mrs. Hemple says. The door closes, and there’s a click as a lock turns.
It’s the darkest darkness I’ve ever experienced. There are no windows. My eyes fight to adjust, but it’s too dark to see anything. Someone is crying below me. I think it’s Chloe, but I can’t be sure. I wish she’d stop.
I’ve never heard the words of that prayer before, but they haunt me. Now the light has gone away. Now the light has gone away. Now the light has gone away. It has.
I won’t stay here. I can’t.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
SOMEONE BANGS ON THE door early in the morning, so early it feels like I haven’t slept at all. It takes me a moment to remember where I am. When the realization hits, I dig back under my thin blanket, wishing for the pleasant ignorance of sleep. But soon there’s a harsh tug on my elbow.
“Get down!” Chloe says, her pug face staring up at me. “Now.”
I notice everyone scampering out of their beds and kneeling on the floor in front of their bunks. Reluctantly, I get down too.
Mrs. Hemple comes in, and there is another short prayer, then Chloe informs me that we have a mere ten minutes to get ready for the day. The other girls are rushing around like madwomen, so I follow suit. I brush my teeth, pee, put on my standard-issue long khaki skirt, tennis shoes, and a loose pink T-shirt that has t
he New Mercy Ranch logo printed in the upper right hand corner. Even my bra has to change. Instead of my regular underwire (a weapon!) I’m now shoving myself into a shapeless sports bra with a neckline almost as high as the T-shirt.
When I catch a glimpse of my hair in the mirror, I nearly lose it. I try to catch Tessa’s eye, but she has her back to me, and no one is talking so I’m guessing it’s a rule.
“Hurry up!” Chloe barks at me.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” I ask, pointing to my lopsided locks.
“Clean up the braid and use this for the other side,” she says, shoving an elastic headband at me that she grabbed from a basket of them on the counter. I’m guessing I’m not the first to face Mrs. Hemple’s shears. I do what Chloe says to my hair, and I look ridiculous.
Next we file out of the dorm (prison bunk) and into the cafeteria. Some girls have eggs and pancakes with syrup, but when I get to the front, I’m handed a solitary bowl of tepid oatmeal. Much like the bunkers, there’s a caste system with the food too: you don’t get real food until you earn it.
The sight of the lumpy, cooling mass turns my stomach, so I shove it forward and lean back in my chair.
“If you don’t eat it all, you get locked in the Grace Tank,” Tessa whispers to me across the table without even looking up. I don’t know what the Grace Tank is, and I don’t want to find out. I stare at the bowl, trying to muster the courage to eat.
“Is God’s provision not good enough for you, Miss Grant?” this is another adult. I don’t know her name, but I assume she’s another enforcer under Mrs. Hemple.
“No, ma’am,” I say, and force myself to take a bite. It’s everything I can do to stuff the rest down my throat before yet another bell rings and everyone at my table stands with their dirty dishes and walks toward the kitchen.
I realize after a moment that it’s only my table who’s standing up. The other girls, the ones in levels above me, continue to eat, some tables even allowed to chat. I open my mouth to ask Chloe what’s going on, but she interrupts me before I can.
“Level Ones do the dishes,” she says, then sits on the counter in the kitchen to supervise. She doesn’t lift a finger until we’re done.
As it turns out, Level Ones don’t just do the dishes—they do all the cleaning. For the girls’ side, and the boys’ camp too, which is on the opposite side of the property from ours, past what looks like a training pen for horses. I only know it’s the boy’s side because Tessa tells me. While we’re cleaning, there’s no sign of them.
I can tell the direction by where the mountains are. We couldn’t have been driving long enough to cross over them, so they must still be to the west. But beyond that, I can’t tell much. Even as a Denver native, I don’t know the Rocky Mountain Range well enough to tell which peaks are which, or where I am in relation to them. Tessa doesn’t know where we are either.
The rest of the morning is spent on our hands and knees, scrubbing tiled floors with rough steel wool. Cleaning toilets and washing windows until my fingers pucker. By the time lunch rolls around, I’m so tired and hungry I take what they give me and devour it: a stiff bologna sandwich (one slice on stale white bread) and a glass of milk. And after we’re done eating, the dishes again.
Finally, after doing the dishes, we’re allowed to sit down. Chloe leads us into the “community room,” which turns out to be the same room they took me to when I arrived.
The chairs are arranged in a tight circle. Mrs. Hemple is sitting in one of them, studying her Bible. We all sit down, and she raises her gaze.
“Bow your heads,” she says, and all of us obey. “Dear Jesus, I ask You to be with us right now. Let Your light shine on our darkness until it is exposed and cleansed with Your love. Amen.”
Everyone raises their heads. I notice that they’re all sitting perfectly still, knees together, hands clasped on their laps. I do the same. Today is about watching, learning, finding a hole.
“Chloe, begin please.”
“My name is Chloe, and I am asking Jesus’s forgiveness for the sin of rebellion.” What that could mean, I have no idea. I wonder who Chloe’s parents could be—Puritan-level Christians who tolerate no disobedience? Or lazy people who ship off their daughter so they don’t have to deal with any sort of disagreements at all?
“And why are you here, Chloe?” Mrs. Hemple asks.
“I’m here because I am a willful and disobedient child who needs the love of Christ to change my bad attitude.”
This continues around the circle.
“My name is Rebecca, and I am asking Jesus’s forgiveness for the sins of lust and murder.” Jesus.
“And why are you here, Rebecca?”
“I am here because I gave away my purity before marriage, then killed the child God gave me in His grace.” Well that explains things. Abortion, the worst sin of them all.
“My name is Zoe, and I am asking Jesus’s forgiveness for the sin of wrath.”
“And why are you here, Zoe?”
“I am here because I punched a boy at my school and broke my dad’s nose with a hammer.” She doesn’t look like a particularly violent girl. She looks tiny, weak. It makes me wonder what her dad did.
“My name is Cassandra, and I am asking Jesus’s forgiveness for the sin of coveting.”
“And why are you here, Cassandra?”
“I am here because I stole a pair of jeans from the mall.” Oh, come on. This is just ridiculous. I’m not saying she should go around stealing things, but to send her here for something like that? It seems totally insane.
I have no idea what I’ll say when the circle comes around to me. Is this something I was supposed to be considering? Everyone else seems to be reciting the words from memory.
As I’m thinking, I hear Tessa’s voice.
“My name is Tessa, and I’m asking Jesus’s forgiveness for the sin of unnatural love.”
“And why are you here, Tessa?”
“I’m here for falling in love,” she says. Oh, Tessa. My heart breaks for her. Of all the reasons people are here, this one seems the cruelest.
“You know the rules, Miss Smythe. And you know what happens if you break them. Why don’t you try again?”
“I’m here because I committed unnatural sexual acts with another female.” I hate that she’s forced to tell the room this.
“That’s better.”
The circle comes around to me. Everyone’s staring, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.
“Miss Grant?” Mrs. Hemple says, her eyes intent on me. She knows I couldn’t possibly know what to say. Does she just want to make me squirm?
“Yes?” I say.
“Please share with the group what you are seeking forgiveness for.”
“I’m not seeking forgiveness for anything.” There’s no reason to lie. What else could they possibly do to me that’s worse than being here?
“So you’re perfect then?” Mrs. Hemple asks.
“I didn’t say that.”
“‘For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,’ Miss Grant. I imagine you’re familiar with that one?”
“Yes.”
“Then what is it you’re seeking forgiveness for?”
“Nothing,” I say. “I don’t need to be forgiven for anything.”
“What do you think, girls? Do you think Emma is as flawless as she says?”
“No, ma’am,” they all say in unison.
“Lie down on the ground Emma,” Mrs. Hemple says.
“What?”
“You heard me. Right in the center here.”
I roll my eyes, but follow her directions. If she wants to publicly humiliate me, I don’t care. But I will not lie.
“Stretch your arms out and close your eyes,” Mrs. Hemple says. I see her yank a dark cloth from her pocket. Whatever is coming, she planned it. She knew what I would say, and what she would do when I said it.
I let my arms extend along the cold linoleum, like a snow angel. I clo
se my eyes, and as soon as I do I feel Mrs. Hemple’s sour breath over my face, feel her hands and the cloth around my eyes, feel her lift my head and tug the cloth into a tight knot, feel her drop my head back to the ground with no efforts to soften the landing.
“Open the chest, Chloe.”
I breathe deeply, shut it all out. I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care. I’m on top of the Empire State Building. The wind in my hair. The sun on my skin. And Jackson. Jackson.
“Girls,” Mrs. Hemple says.
I hear the shuffle of feet, then feel hands. Hands gripping my wrists, my ankles. Panic rises inside my belly, but I push it back down. What can she do to me? She can’t kill me. I can handle everything else.
Then there’s a heave and something heavy, really heavy, thuds onto my chest. It feels like a sack of dirt, the kind you buy from the hardware store to fill flowerbeds, but there’s no smell of earth. The weight of it presses on my belly, on my lungs. Then there’s another thud and the weight doubles.
I struggle against the grip of the other girls, but they’re holding on tight.
“Be still,” Mrs. Hemple says.
“Take it off. I can’t breathe,” I say.
“It hurts, doesn’t it, Miss Grant?” Mrs. Hemple asks.
“Yes.”
“Just like the weight of your sins. They hurt just as much, if not more. We are literally buried under the weight of all that pain. Only Jesus can take away our burdens.”
Then another thud and another and another. My feet. My hands. My arms. My toes are angled foreword, pressing my ankles and feet into a dancer’s pointe. My hands and arms are pinned to the ground.
“Please take it off,” I say. Every breath is an effort.
“Who are you asking?”
“You,” I say.
“Wrong,” she says. “Another.”
Another thud, and the weight on my lungs grows again.
“Please.”
“Please who?”
I know what she wants me to say, but I won’t do it. She wants me to break, to beg Jesus for help.
I stay silent.
“Very well, Miss Grant. Have it your way.”
I hear the footsteps of the girls, walking around my head. Then another bag lands on my face, smothering and heavy and hard. I feel my face purpling, feel the pressure build behind my eyes.
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