by Nora Price
The reverse side of the apricot looked exactly the same to me: like a piece of scrap rubber. Like something you’d see in the gutter.
“Notice where the light shines on the apricot,” Devon said. “Notice where the fruit is dark in shadow.”
There was no shadow, only wetness. My palms had grown clammy, and when I tried to pinch my fingers together they slid off each other like peeled grapes.
“Smell the object,” Devon said. “While you are doing this, notice any thoughts that come to mind.”
The girl next to me held her apricot between two fingers, like an insect. She dangled it one inch from her nose and inhaled. The girl who glared at me was hinged over so that her face was several inches away from the apricot, which lay on the table before her.
I wondered if we were being hypnotized.
“Bring your full awareness to the fruit,” Devon continued. “Do you like apricots? What do you like about them? Notice the smell of your apricot.”
Play-Doh, I thought. It smelled like Play-Doh.
“Gently place the object in your mouth without chewing it.”
I looked around. Five girls held the apricot aloft, watching it with the intensity of a chemist mixing formulas. The apricots levitated, but nobody ate. “On three, girls,” Devon said, a bit more firmly this time.
What the hell was going on? I raised my hand.
“Yes, Zoe?”
“I’d prefer not to eat this,” I said. Five pairs of eyes whipped toward the source of the comment.
“Are you allergic to apricots?” Devon asked.
“No.”
Her look was quizzical.
“I don’t like apricots,” I explained.
“That’s fine. But you need to taste it for the purpose of this exercise.” Her tone was stringent. Glancing about me in search of understanding, I saw that each of the stares directed at me was an accusation. Had I said the wrong thing again? It wasn’t fair—the others had gotten here before me. They knew the rules and they also knew that I didn’t know the rules. It wasn’t fair of them to punish me.
Devon counted up to three. When she got to the final digit, each of the five girls robotically inserted the apricot into her mouth. I put mine down on the table instead. Nobody, I decided, was going to tell me what to do.
“When you feel ready, consciously bite into the apricot,” Devon said. “Notice the tastes that it releases.”
Five bony jaws sank their teeth into five dried apricots. My apricot remained intact on the table in front of me. I crossed my arms and stared at it. The smell of cookies baking spilled forth, meanwhile, from behind closed oven doors.
One of the girls raised her hand.
“Yes, Brooke?” Devon said.
The girl pointed at me and said, with a mouth full of apricot, “Zoe isn’t participating.”
My stomach shriveled into a raisin.
“Focus on yourself, Brooke,” Devon said. “Everybody with me? Slowly chew the apricot. Notice how it changes consistency. Notice how the tastes change. When you feel ready to swallow, follow the sensations of swallowing down to your stomach.”
When the ovens beeped, I glanced up and found Devon eyeing the untouched apricot sitting in front of me. Everyone else, it appeared, had successfully ingested hers. Only one apricot—mine—remained uneaten.
“Good work, girls,” Devon said. “You can all test your cookies to see if they’re done. Remember to use the mitts; pans are hot.”
A scuffle of chairs and murmurs accompanied the other five girls as they rose to fetch their cookie trays. I sat alone, like a child waiting to be punished, as Devon took the empty seat next to me.
“Today is your first day,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I allowed you to skip the Mindfulness exercise only because I don’t like to single girls out right off the bat. The exercises, however, are non-optional. You’ll be expected to comply with every step, starting now.”
My tablemate returned before I could reply, her tiny arms trembling to support a baking tray laden with glistening brown lumps. “Thanks, Zoe,” Devon said, patting my shoulder as she vacated the stool. Thanks for what? I wondered. I hadn’t agreed to anything. My partner set her tray down on the table, grimacing with the effort.
“Those look perfect.” Devon told her. “You’re setting a great example for Zoe.”
The girl’s eyes were glued to the tray, but not even a faint smile curled her lips. The smell of spices and caramelized brown sugar was intoxicating, and I wished I could shut my nostrils the same way I could close my eyes. Devon moved among the stools, hands clasped, evaluating the handiwork of each pair. Dozens of cookies lay steaming on their trays, and the sight seemed to mesmerize the other girls, who ran their fingers over the ridges of the cookies, bent down to smell them, and closed their eyes deeply upon inhaling. Cookies remind most people of home and comfort, but it had been a long time since they reminded me of anything good.
I sat still as Devon handed out fresh copies of the recipe—“For you guys to keep,” she said cheerfully. I flattened the recipe page and began to read it, hoping to avoid the stares of the other girls. They were beginning to transfer their interest from the cookies back to me, and despite my best efforts, I felt the stares reddening my cheeks. I felt my back start to buckle under the scrutiny of five girls whose names I did not know and whose histories couldn’t possibly be as grisly as their appearances suggested.
One of these girls, it occurred to me, would be my roommate.
* * *
It turned out to be Caroline. Caroline Tilley of Boston, Massachusetts: a girl otherwise known as the hollow-eyed cricket whom I sat next to during cooking class. The empty stool next to her was no coincidence. “You’re Zoe,” she said to me after we’d folded our recipes and put them away. I couldn’t tell whether her remark was a statement or a question, since her tone contained elements of both.
“Yes,” I said.
She bit her lip. “You’re not what I expected.”
“Neither are you,” I bluffed. The truth—that I’d been dipped blindly into my situation, and could therefore have no expectations of any kind—was irrelevant. I did not want to reveal my ignorance.
“Hmm,” Caroline said, her eyes a pair of bright blue marbles. The conversation ended there.
As we sat waiting for the cookies to cool, I flipped the recipe page over and took notes on the blank side of the paper, hoping that the task would function as armor against the stares that were continuously trained upon me.
CAROLINE, I wrote down on the paper, shielding it from her eyes with one hand. Blond hair. Blue eyes. Cartier watch on left wrist. Nails bitten to the quick.
I looked around the room to see what other information I could gather. BROOKE, I wrote down, cautiously looking in the direction of the brown-haired girl who’d pinpointed me. That was another name I knew. For the others, I simply waited and listened until their names came up—until Devon asked Jane to stack the cookie trays, or until Victoria and Haley were sent to get more paper towels. I wrote down their names and descriptions on the recipe sheet, planning to transfer it in to my journal as soon as I had the opportunity. It would be essential, I knew, to assemble a list of this place’s inhabitants and as much biographical information as possible. Only by recording every detail and oddity of what goes on here will I be able to devise the best possible plan of escape. And if nothing else, the contents of my journal will serve as evidence. Nobody believes anything without evidence.
The first installment of my notes follows this entry. I will more add information as it comes.
Angela Birch
Program director. Not much known.
Age: 50?
Devon
Program coordinator; instructor of cooking and gardening classes. Strict. Supervises meals and activities.
Alexandra
Staff therapist.
Brooke
The girl who called me out for not eating the apricot. Pointy-chi
nned and shrunken. Thin as a flower petal. Eyes the color of black crayon. Uses dark hair as a crutch: hides behind it, pretends not to hear or see what goes on around her, though I suspect she is observing closely.
Haley
Squeaky voice. Hails from Arizona or Atlanta or some place that begins with A—couldn’t hear. Red hair, freckles, etc.
Caroline
Hair the texture of straw. Attends St. Agnes Preparatory School for Girls, judging by circumstantial evidence: a St. Agnes Field Hockey T-shirt on the floor of our room and ten picture frames embossed with the St. Agnes crest.
Each picture frame contains a photograph of a baby boy. Identity of baby unknown—Caroline’s brother or nephew? Ten seems extreme. To be investigated.
Jane
Ghostly pale. Face the shape of a Mento. Smells of something sour—cat pee? Have not seen any cats on the property.
Victoria
Southern accent, curly hair.
Zoe Propp
Me.
Reviewing my list, I can see only gaps, not answers. There are no men at Twin Birch—why? Why six girls? And why the six of us in particular? The other girls are fearfully skinny and depressed-looking—if it weren’t for my unexplained presence, I’d suppose that Twin Birch was a place for girls who want to be this way.
Tiger Milk Cookies for Silent Observers
1 cup brown sugar
½ cup vanilla soy protein powder
½ cup wheat germ
1½ cups oats
½ tsp. vanilla
½ tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
¼ tsp. ground cloves
2 eggs
½ cup canola oil
½ cup chopped dried apricots
Mix all ingredients well. Form into large dollops on a cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 13–15 minutes. Remove cookies from the sheet before they completely cool; otherwise they will be stuck for eternity.
These cookies are soft and chewy, not crisp. In theory, a person could eat them without producing any noise. If—in theory—a person did not want her whereabouts to be known, for instance, she could eat these without fear of detection.
Later in the day we were given a small amount of time to ourselves. I must have drifted off after I finished transferring the notes from cooking class into my journal because I awoke to a strange yet familiar noise. It seemed to originate ten or twenty inches from my head, and I kept my eyes closed, feigning sleep while I tried to determine what, exactly, I was hearing. It was like the sound of a clogged kitchen sink or an uncoordinated toddler eating soup. But it was neither one of those things.
When I could take it no longer, I opened my eyes to find my roommate Caroline perched bolt upright on the bed next to me, her thumb in her mouth. I stared. She was sucking her thumb. A thatch of straw-like yellowish hair and a set of spindly limbs were the only physical characteristics that registered in my mind, aside from the steady in-and-out motion of her thumb. As Caroline noticed that I was awake, her eyes scanned the length of me, moving from face to neck to torso and back up again without revealing the slightest reaction.
“Hi,” I said. My tone was not friendly but nor was it unkind.
Caroline jumped, as though my hesitant greeting had broken a trance. She removed her thumb from her mouth and wiped it on the bedspread, where it left a faint trail of saliva.
“What are you doing?” I asked. A simple question.
“Nothing.” Her voice was thinner than a napkin and her skin the color of waxed paper; she looked like a girl built from faded scraps of fabric. Her thumb inched its way from the bedspread back into her lap. I could tell she wanted to keep sucking on it.
I decided to try another tack. Perhaps a dash of faux friendliness would help me get some information out of her.
“I like your photos,” I said, commenting on the first thing that caught my eye. This was a lie, and as I looked at the photos, I took note, internally, of how creepy they were. Each frame gleamed from a recent polish, and the ornate St. Agnes crest marked the bottom of each.
“Is that your brother?” I asked.
“No.”
“A cousin? Or—”
“We’re late for dinner,” Caroline interrupted, standing abruptly. “It’s dinner time.”
She walked out of the room, mute as a goldfish. Left without a choice, I followed the sound of her footsteps down the hallway, around a corner, up a demi-staircase, and down a second passage until I arrived at the endpoint of her journey.
This can’t be it, I thought.
Caroline, who’d arrived a few paces before me, took one of the empty chairs that remained at the center of the room. From the safety of the doorway, I gazed about. Potted palms anchored the periphery of the space, which rippled with the smoke and flicker of candles clustered over two tables. The decor reminded me of the Titanic, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to find a dotty heiress pouring herself a raspberry cordial with gloved hands, or a robber baron tabulating ill-gotten profits on a cloth napkin. What stood before me was not a dining room at all. It was a time capsule.
And yet, if the ambiance was that of a costume drama, the room’s inhabitants were unmistakably of the present. Brooke’s thick hair had grown wilder over the course of the afternoon, and it fell in frazzled pieces over the shoulders of a frumpy, stained dress. Jane sat next to her, her straight black hair scraped into a ponytail and her clothes a uniform of anonymity: black cigarette pants, a plain T-shirt, and a pair of low-top Converse shoes. Caroline, who sat with the two of them, wore the baggy pink men’s shirt she’d worn all day.
The next table featured Victoria, with honey-colored hair and a white cotton dress with scalloping on the hem. Her shoes, like Jane’s, were Converse. Next to her sat Haley, whose red braids mismatched terribly with a long-sleeved red shirt. Except for the zombie-like quality emitted by each one, they looked like any handful of teenage girls plucked from my high school.
I took the chair next to Victoria, sinking into a tuft of pea-green velvet upholstery. At the center of the table stood a pitcher of drooping peach roses and a carafe of ice water wrapped in a cloth napkin. One by one, Victoria and Haley poured themselves glasses of water. The silverware was antique but well-shined, with each piece elaborately engraved. The dining room combined things that I knew very well with things that I’d never seen before, and in this way, it was not unlike a nightmare.
I took a closer look at the two girls who sat at my table. Haley was bony and hollow-eyed, with a dusting of painful-looking acne. She methodically extracted rose petals from the centerpiece of the table and shredded them into tiny pieces. The seat next to me remained empty. I poured myself a second glass of water and sipped, waiting to see if anyone would talk to me. The smell of food hung in the air like an oppressive smog. I methodically spread my napkin in my lap. Time seemed to pass very slowly.
“Girls!” called a voice at one end of the room. Devon.
The six of us turned to face the speaker, whose enthusiasm was the opposite of infectious. On the contrary, it seemed to make everyone in the room more stone-faced than before.
Devon clapped twice. “Everyone hungry?” she asked. It was a rhetorical question, and there was no pause to allow an answer. “Most of you know the drill by now,” Devon continued. “Dinner is on the sideboard. Line up, load up your plates, and I’ll come around to check up on you. Table one, you go first.”
Brooke, Caroline, and Jane stood, gripping empty plates while they floated over to a table at one end of the room. Devon took the empty seat next to me.
“You’re going to like tonight’s meal,” she said, her smile bordered by twin dimples. “Ginger tofu and wild-rice pilaf.”
Christ, I thought silently.
“What’s pilaf?” Haley asked.
“It’s a salad made of rice,” Devon said. “Lots of whole grains and healthy fats. I think it turned out pretty great, not to toot my own horn.”
Hearing this, Haley turned gray. Maybe it was my
imagination.
The other table returned with their plates. “Our turn,” Devon said, hopping up. Her voice, her motions, her very way of being was at odds with the rest of the group. She was a streak of neon yellow in a sea of charcoal: too loud, too bright, too noxious. Each time she appeared in my sightline, I wanted to look away.
Dishes were arrayed across the sideboard, each in its own silver receptacle: the pilaf, a mound of orange substance, a tray of blanched broccoli, and a loaf of bread coated so thoroughly in seeds and grains that it resembled a porcupine. The ginger tofu was a pile of steaming brown slabs. “I’ll serve you tonight,” Devon said, taking my plate, “so you get an idea of the right portion size.” I watched her place a scoop of pilaf on my plate, a tofu slab, two scoops of orange substance—smashed butternut squash, it turned out—five broccoli florets, and two pieces of bread. Then she handed the plate back to me. I stared at it.
“I’m not hungry,” I told her. The food in my hands weighed about the same as a mid-sized toddler.
“Do your best,” Devon said. “You’re going to have to eat everything on your plate. Seconds and dessert are optional.”
I looked at the girl next to me—Victoria—for confirmation of this fact. She gave me a helpless shrug and rolled her eyes. This, I decided, would not do.
“No, thank you,” I said, turning back to Devon. I straightened my shoulders and set my plate back down on the side table with a decisive clang, then returned to my table with as much indignation as possible. My act of rebellion, I could tell, sent a ripple through the room.
Privately, my disobedience had plunged me into nauseated unease. A gulp of ice water didn’t help to soothe my stomach, so I poured myself a third glass. The three girls at the other table had returned to their seats, where they sat motionlessly in front of their food. Nobody ate.
When Devon returned to my table a moment later, she carried two plates: her own, topped with a mountain of food, and mine, topped with a mountain of equal altitude. She set one of the plates down in front of me as though nothing had happened. The smell of nutmeg wafted up from our table.
