Teen Killers Club

by Lily Sparks

  Teen Killers Club

  A Novel

  LILY SPARKS

  Dedicated to my sister Allison,

  who said this was her favorite book from the first draft,

  &

  every high schooler who has ever spent lunch

  hiding in the library

  Acknowledgments

  This book would not have been possible without the enthusiasm and faith of my literary agent, Stacia Decker. My sincere thanks to Matt Martz for bringing this story out into the world, and to Ashley Di Dio, Sylvan Creekmore and Melissa Rechter at Crooked Lane Books, for making this literary process so deeply rewarding.

  I am grateful to my parents Richard and Barbara Sparks for always valuing creativity and imagination, and to my sisters Cinnamon and Allison for their love, excitement, and being the world’s best baby-sitters! Personal thanks are due to Darren Herczeg, who told me to share this manuscript with the pros. Thank you to Jason Micallef, who’s taught me so much about telling stories. And thank you to the coolest senior in the world, Price Peterson, without whom my writing/life would be dark indeed.

  But most importantly I want to thank my husband Ryan Sandoval for believing in my dreams. And for filling so many days of Lovey’s first year with magic, while mom went off and typed.

  Chapter One

  The Girl from Hell

  Prison is a lot like high school. The same institutional beige hallways, the same long hours of sitting in forced silence, and the same rigid social pyramid of cliques upon which your life depends. In both prison and high school, I’ve been a total loner.

  Boarding the prison bus this morning feels uncannily like getting on my school bus almost two years before. There’s the same sudden silence from the girls already cuffed in, and their eyes follow me in the same sidelong glances as I shuffle down the aisle to the same place I sat on my old route: the way, way back.

  Of course, we’re all in orange and beige jumpsuits, but you wear uniforms in high school too. I wore black jeans with the same thrift store leather jacket every day back then, layered my neck with thin black chokers and cheap silver chains, circled my eyes all the way around with black lines like they were key words in a poem, and kept my hair a violent blue. It’s now faded to the color of old jeans, with my roots grown out almost to my eyebrows.

  What’s missing is the laughter. Starting freshman year, whenever I’d pass by a knot of people, there would be a sickening three-count of mounting tension and then the snickers would burst out behind me. Even Rose, when she was with her other friends, would laugh.

  Now no one laughs. They’re too scared.

  It turns out being feared is lonelier than being ignored. It’s ironic, all the effort I spent trying to look “scary” in high school when now I’d give anything to sit across from someone whose skin didn’t crawl at the sight of me, Signal Deere, “The Girl From Hell.”

  “Assistance up front! We need an escort!” the driver calls to Officer Heather, who’s clipping my handcuffs to the latch on my seat belt. She swears softly under her breath and cinches my restraints with a final tug before turning down the aisle.

  Correctional officers are, by the way, worse than even the worst high school teacher. Imagine the bossiest, pettiest kid in your class being put in charge for a day. That’s a correctional officer. Or at least that’s how they are at Bellwood Oregon State Juvenile Penitentiary, the beige and concrete labyrinth I finally got out from under this morning.

  When Officer Heather lands at the bus door, her expression sours, her voice rising loud enough for me to catch “… not in my job description!” about her latest charge, a figure hidden from my view by four massive male security guards.

  “Is that NOBODY?!” one of the girls whispers a few rows ahead.

  “What? Nobody’s not real, she’s like the bogeyman.”

  “Yuh huh, look at her! With the ski mask and everything!”

  “I’m not riding on a bus with Nobody! They can’t just stick her in with Gen Pop, that freak is dangerous—”

  Silence falls abruptly as Officer Heather leads Nobody, who is maybe six feet tall, down the aisle by her cuffs. Like the rest of them, I’ve heard the stories, and they’re all looking true: she is unnervingly gaunt and lanky, and her long pale arms are crisscrossed with ugly, shiny red burn scars.

  “I’ll put you with Blue,” Heather says for the benefit of the whole bus, which is on the edge of mutiny at this apparition from prison folklore. “You two Class As can chat.”

  The completely silent bus erupts into hissed whispers at this:

  “Class A?!!”

  “Blue hair is a Class A?!”

  “They can’t be in here with us!”

  Correctional officers are never supposed to reveal our Wylie-Stanton Index Classification. If other inmates find out you’re a Class A, it’s a death sentence. Though I’ve been “lucky” enough to spend most of my incarceration in a single concrete cell in Diagnostics, in my few brushes with General Pop I’ve kept my head diligently down. But with these words, my cover is blown.

  Although where we’re going, I guess it won’t matter.

  Nobody folds her tall frame into the brown vinyl bench beside me, her broad shoulders pressed against mine, so close I can see the loose threads blown by the slow, ragged breath through the hole cut in her ski mask. Officer Heather’s hands shake as she fastens her in.

  And then, in a sly gesture as she turns to go, Officer Heather plucks off Nobody’s ski mask.

  Nobody rockets forward, howling, shaking her bleached blonde hair over her face, which is a blur of hot pink in my peripheral vision, and the entire bus gasps as one.

  “What are you doing?! Give it back!!” I yell.

  “No nonregulation clothing during transfer!” Officer Heather barks, fleeing up front.

  Nobody whimpers like a kicked dog as she strains to cover whatever is left of her face with her scarred hands, but her cuffs are too short and she can’t reach. I look away and see the man who’s just boarded the bus, the same man who met me in a holding cell in the bowels of Bellwood this morning. “DAVE!” I scream to be heard over the wild girl beside me. “Dave, can’t she keep her hat?!”

  Dave frowns under his unmarked baseball cap. He looks from Nobody to Officer Heather and leans toward her, consulting.

  The girls in front of us take advantage of the moment, twisting around in their seats to gawk.

  I lean forward and hiss: “Turn back around. Right. Now.”

  And here is the real difference between prison and high school, here is the difference between being Signal Deere, loner goth, and Signal Deere, the Girl From Hell: the second I say turn around, they do. They whip around in their seats and hunch, frozen in fear like startled rabbits. Like I could somehow break loose from my cuffs and claw their shocked faces right off their skulls. Because I’m a Class A, and who knows what I can do.

  The brakes shriek and sigh as the bus rumbles into gear and I turn toward the window as much as my restraints allow, to give Nobody some privacy. Still, her pain is inescapable—as is her harsh, chemical smell, which gets stronger as she rocks back and forth, back and forth. They must hose her down with antiseptic instead of letting her shower. Might as well get used to it, though, because if Nobody is the other Class A, then we’re headed for the same place.

  * * *

  Dave described it as a brand new “program” for young Class As when I met him this morning. My first impression of him was that despite lacking any official insignia, he was more in uniform than the prison guards who herded me into the room. He was calmly cycling through calls on something like an Apple Watch as they cuffed me to the table and withdrew. I could hear him say “affirmative” before he pulled his sleeve over the gadget and f
ixed me with an appraising stare.

  When I’d asked if he was there for my appeal, he threw back his head and laughed.

  “You tested Class A on the Wylie-Stanton, and you plan to appeal?!”

  In case you haven’t been in prison recently, the Wylie-Stanton is a profiling algorithm run on everyone convicted of a felony now, sort of like a personality quiz (“Which Kind of Criminal Are You?”), except you don’t have to answer any questions. No, the Wylie-Stanton just takes all your available data—and there’s a lot: they have your emails, your grades, your medical records, your internet browsing history, your purchases, your texts and tweets, and whatever other binary trail your ISP has made through digital space—and runs it through an algorithm.

  It’s like the algorithms Amazon uses, except instead of using your search history to predict if you’re in the market for frilly tops and laundry detergent, Wylie-Stanton will predict if you’re up for some murder and arson.

  If you’re a sweet little old lady who’d never so much as jaywalk, you’ll be ranked as the lowest class, Class D. If you’re capable of killing another person, you’ll get moved a couple rungs up the ladder to Class B. The very top of the classification system, the Class As, are the .001 percentile, human-shark, super-manipulative, criminal genius maniacs. Charles Manson, for example.

  And me.

  “I didn’t kill Rose. I was framed,” I told Dave. I’d said those words so many times, to so many people who didn’t believe me, they’d begun to feel like lies.

  “Well, what your file says,” Dave indicated the manila file in front of him, “is that you were found in a woodshed with Rose Rowan’s body in your lap, her murder weapon in your hand, and no evidence of a third party in the shed. And your only defense is you have no memory of the night she died.” He studied my face carefully. “And worse than any of that, on conviction you tested Class A.”

  “I plan on appealing.”

  “Let me save you some time with that one.” Dave gave me a tight-lipped smile. “I guess you don’t get newspapers in Diagnostics, but it passed the Senate last month: appeals from Class As will no longer be heard in court. Class As are no longer eligible for parole.”

  I curled forward a little, as though I could brace myself after impact.

  “Class As can’t be fixed. Can’t be rehabilitated. Heck, you don’t even feel remorse, do you?” He opened my folder, and rifled through evidence photos from my trial until he found my official Wylie-Stanton classification paper, tilting the large glossy crime scene prints toward me as though trying to shove them in my face.

  I looked away fast, but not fast enough. A flash of Rose’s red mouth and strands of her dark hair floating in a halo of blood burned into my brain even after I squeezed my eyes closed.

  “That’s what the public thinks, anyway. So I can promise you will serve every last minute of your eighty-year sentence.” He rapped on the desk between us and I opened my eyes to see he’d swept away the photos and placed a contract in front of me. “Or you can join this little program we’re starting.”

  “What kind of program?”

  * * *

  Click click, click click.

  Nobody’s cuffs rattle as she rocks. The bus creaks and sways. We’re pulling into another prison yard, the facility the Gen Pop girls are going to. It seems huge from the outside, a vast concrete warehouse for bodies; but I’m sure that, like Bellwood, inside it’s as cramped and airless as a submarine. My gray cell was barely wide enough for me to stretch both arms out. I had no window, just a strip of fluorescent light they kept on twenty-four hours a day. I got good at sleeping with a blanket over my head.

  Officer Heather is on her feet, rapping out directives before we’ve come to a complete stop. As she’s unbuckling the girls closest to us I call, “How much longer?” but she doesn’t respond. I doubt she knows anything about the program we’re going to anyway, given what Dave said about it.

  “We want to use Class As’ skills in a … productive way. For the last two months, I’ve been going to major juvenile institutions like Bellwood around the country and collecting all the Class As under eighteen.”

  “There are other Class As?” Part of me had wondered, deep down, if Charles Manson and I were the only ones.

  “Of course. There’s another Class A at Bellwood. She’s already signed on.”

  He slid a pen toward me.

  “This is your last chance to leave this place outside of a body bag, Miss Deere.”

  I stared down at all the lines of fine print, trying to make sense of the legalese. My pen tip hovered over the signature line as I read.

  “We’ll be leaving within the hour,” Dave pushed. A glance at the clock told me the hour would be up in fifteen minutes. Not enough time to read before I signed.

  “What do you want us for?”

  “That’s classified.”

  “How am I supposed to agree to it if I don’t know what it is?” I set the pen down. “What, you want to run tests on us, is that it?”

  Dave stood up, then went to the two-way mirror, cupped one hand against the glass and tilted his head back. Satisfied no one was looking in on us, he turned back around and said with a shrug:

  “We’ll be training you to kill people.”

  * * *

  Click click, click click.

  Nobody’s cuffs again. I glance over at her scarred wrists and see what’s really been making that piercing click: a straightened paper clip. Just like the one that had been on the copy of Dave’s contract I’d signed.

  Click click.

  She digs it into the lock of her handcuffs, one hand already free, one long arm she can swing out to do anything she pleases with.

  Click click.

  Her cuffs spring open and fall to the floor.

  Nobody’s cold blue eyes lock with mine through the strands of her white blonde hair for just a nanosecond. Then she springs into the aisle.

  “Behind you!” I yell, but she’s already shot past Dave and Officer Heather and pounced on the driver, her long scarred arm swinging back wide before driving the straightened paper clip into the side of his neck. Jagged screams tear from his throat as we go flying into the oncoming lane.

  Chapter Two

  Welcome to Camp

  My head cracks against the window as an electric sputter echoes through the bus and Nobody springs backward, her long body rippling with convulsions from Officer Heather’s taser. Dave catches Nobody before she hits the floor, yelling at Officer Heather to stop, all of them bobbing and swaying as the panicked driver wildly overcorrects, sending the back of the bus fishtailing out in front of an oncoming eighteen-wheeler.

  As the tall chrome grill of the truck’s cab plows toward my window, time stops. I understand with perfect clarity that I am shackled to my seat by my cuffs as several tons of metal fly toward me and there is no escape, though I saw the cuffs back and forth with all my strength. The gaping mouth of the bellowing truck driver racing toward me will be the last thing I ever see. Will I feel it when the speeding metal meets with my body in between, will I hear my bones popping, will my brain be able to register my skull collapsing in around it, or will I get lucky and die instantly?

  Still better than what Rose got.

  “Hold on hold on hold on!” the driver screams.

  The brakes shriek and I tumble across my seat, the truck’s horn chasing us off the highway and onto the soft shoulder of the road as the bus careens to a stop. I lean against the seat in front of me, forehead slick with sweat, my heart pounding so hard my vision pulses.

  The bus door swings open with a sigh and the driver flees, his blue collared shirt purple with blood.

  “Okay. I’m calling a van to take them back to Bellwood right now,” Officer Heather gasps at Dave, who still holds Nobody in his arms.

  “Don’t.” Dave wearily lays the limp, unconscious Nobody across the first bus bench. “Call for a medic, have the ambulance take you and the driver to a local hospital.”

>   Heather is already dialing her phone. “I need to report this incident immediately—”

  Dave calmly takes the phone out of her hand. “No, you don’t.”

  “One of these little freaks just tried to kill us! This incident must be investigated and reported in their case files and—”

  “They don’t have case files. The moment we crossed the Washington state line these girls ceased to exist,” Dave says. “So if you want to sit through a year’s worth of disciplinary proceedings for impeding a federal officer, keep arguing with me. If you want to help someone, go help the driver.”

  Three cars pass as they hold each other’s gaze. Then with a small wobble she backs down, her shoulders bowing. She pulls the first aid kit off the wall, and stumbles down the bus stairs. Dave climbs behind the wheel, pulls the doors closed, and turns in the tall driver’s seat.

  “We’ve got about three more hours of driving ahead of us,” he calls to me. “How we doing back there?”

  I give him the most sarcastic thumbs-up I can manage.

  “Hey, Dave?” I call. “What do you mean we ‘ceased to exist’?”

  The only answer I get is the squeal of the brakes releasing as Dave eases back onto the freeway.

  * * *

  The landscape goes from industrial to rural, and then to something like primordial forest. Dark pines taller than most buildings in my hometown line the roads. There’s no towns or farms or even buildings, until we finally pass the world’s smallest gas station, with a hand-lettered sign out front reading: “LAST GAS 50 MILES.”

  For a long time after that, the view remains the same: trunks and branches and forest floor, except for one moment of blue, when we pass a field of lupin reaching up to the sun, and then the trees close in again. But the moment is dazzling.

  It takes me back to the field of wildflowers the day Rose’s mom married her stepdad, Tom. After the ceremony, we sat in the shade and watched Rose’s new dad wrap his arms around her mom, Janeane, while the photographer clicked away. The only time Rose smiled that day was when someone with a camera reminded her to.