by M. O’Keefe
“Is that true?” Mendoza asked, going on full alert like a sexual assault hound dog.
“No,” I said very evenly and clearly. “I am here because I want to be here.”
There was a loaded moment while Mendoza decided whether or not to believe me.
“Just clear out of the art room.” Mr. Mendoza sighed like we were just so disappointing.
Tommy, having put the artwork back on the counter, looked at me, eyes wide. And I knew what he was thinking—is that it? No punishment. No telling The Pastor? I started to smile, relief making me dizzy. Tommy grabbed my hand and began to pull me out of the corner, like he was saving me from a fire. And maybe he was because if The Pastor found out about us being together, it would be bad for everyone at St. Joke’s.
He’d punish all of us.
“Tommy,” Mr. Mendoza said as we got to the door. “This is against the conditions of your court placement. You know I have to notify your guardian.”
We both turned toward him, my stomach in my shoes, and Tommy’s face went completely pale.
“You know the rules,” he said. “Pastor Kendrick is explicit about not allowing the students at St. Jude’s to fraternize. You’re not allowed to be in the same classes much less…this.”
“It was a kiss, Mr. Mendoza,” I said, fighting down the blush I could feel climbing my cheeks. I tried to laugh like it was no big deal but all of this felt like a very big deal. Too big a deal. “And it’s not like Tommy did anything wrong. Teenagers kiss, Mr. Mendoza.”
“Thank you for the newsflash, Beth,” Mr. Mendoza said. “But if there’s a reason he’d like to give me for why I shouldn’t tell Pastor Kendrick, now would be the time.”
This was our out! I looked at Tommy, nudged him with my elbow. He could tell Mr. Mendoza what went on at St. Joke’s. How no one fed Tommy. And how Carissa barely talked. How Rosa had to pray on her knees every day, begging for forgiveness for her sins.
And the office.
Simon, Clarissa, Rosa and Tommy, they warned me…all the time. Don’t do anything that would get you taken to the office.
The office was where bad things happened.
Tommy got taken there the first night I’d been at St. Joke’s. And it was my fault he’d been punished, and he’d been left in bed for days afterward with his hands wrapped in bloody bandages.
“Tommy,” I whispered.
“There’s no reason,” Tommy told Mendoza. “Do whatever you’re going to do.”
Tommy said it in just the right kind of voice that made Mendoza shake his head, oozing disappointment. I didn’t get it. I didn’t get any of it.
“Please, Mr. Mendoza,” I said, feeling everything slip through my fingers. I’d just gotten happy. Please don’t take this away from us. “I don’t think you understand what it’s like there—”
“Beth,” Tommy said, his low voice cutting across mine. He shook his head, just a little. A hard no. But I remembered his hands, what The Pastor had done to him. On account of me. And I understood that none of us said anything about what happened there, because we were scared.
Scared of juvie.
Of The Pastor.
Of everything.
And it wasn’t right. Or fair.
“Tommy, Beth.” Mr. Mendoza stepped toward us. Mr. Mendoza dressed like a dad on TV. Khaki pants and button down shirts, but he always wore really crazy socks and when he stepped toward me I saw that they had emoticons on them. Little emoticon socks.
Surely, we could trust a guy who wore emoticon socks, right?
“Is there something you need to tell me? About St. Jude’s?”
He said it like he knew and I opened my mouth to answer, to yell, actually: Yes! Yes! There is! There’s something evil and rotten and none of us talk about it because we’re so scared.
But Tommy beat me too it.
“No,” he said in that serious, far-too-old-to-be-sixteen way he had. “There’s nothing we need to tell you. But when you tell Pastor Kendrick, tell him it was me breaking the rules, not Beth.”
“Tommy—”
The bell rang and he opened the door.
“We need to get to class.” He pulled me out into the hallway, into the river of other kids heading from lunch to their next class. We got caught up in the current and I wished, I wished so badly that we could just keep going. That these kids with their normal lives and regular problems could just sweep us up, out the doors into the world away from everything.
“Tommy,” I said. “Why didn’t you tell him?”
“Because who is going to believe us? He’s a pastor with a church and everything. He’s been running this foster home for years. All we are is fuckups. Trouble kids.”
That wasn’t what we were. Rosa, Carissa, Simon…Tommy. Especially Tommy. We weren’t fuckups. We were kids and everyone who was supposed to take care of us—didn’t.
“I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that at all. We should have told him. He knows something is wrong.”
“Carissa tried to tell a teacher once.”
I stopped, because his voice made the hair on my arms stand up.
“What happened?”
“She got sent to some hospital, came back on these meds that fucked her up, and she stopped talking.”
“Why?”
“Did she stop talking? Because talking got her in some serious shit—”
“No. Why did they take her away? Why didn’t they believe her?”
“You’re not like us, Beth. In your world, people believe you when you talk. The world doesn’t give a shit about the rest of us.”
Tommy was wrong. No one believed me.
I never told anyone what my mom did to me. It was a secret I kept because I was sick and untrustworthy and everyone knew it. It was the one thing my mother had taught me over the years. Not that I was loved. Or special.
But that I was broken. And I needed to be fixed.
But that Tommy thought people would listen to me made me feel like a superhero. Even if he was wrong.
“I should have told him then,” I whispered, turning back to the art room, where Mr. Mendoza stood watching us from the door.
“No way.” Tommy pulled me away. “And then you’ll get sent to a hospital. And you’ll get put on some kind of fucked-up medicine.”
I stumbled along after him, scared because my mom was the kind of doctor that put kids on fucked-up meds and I never told Tommy, but I’d been on my share. And I never wanted to do that again.
“I’m scared, Tommy.”
“It’s going to be okay,” he said. And he tried to be convincing, he did and I would love him forever for it. “We’ve got each other. We’re gonna be okay.”
But he was lying.
2
That Night
St. Jude’s School for Court-Placed Delinquents
Beth
We were in the kitchen after dinner. The girls cleared and washed dishes while the boys sat with The Pastor as he picked his teeth and asked them questions about school. It didn’t seem like Mr. Mendoza had said anything. Everything tonight had been normal.
Except they let Tommy have the same food as us. As much as he wanted.
Which should have made me happy. Should have made me ecstatic but it only made me feel like someone was stepping on my stomach.
Rosa was washing, I was drying and Carissa was clearing the table, bringing in stacks of dinner plates and setting them down on the counter without a sound.
“What the hell is going on with you two?” she whispered. We were good at whispering at St. Joke’s, we were practically telepathic, that was how quiet we were.
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit. They fed him and you didn’t eat barely anything.”
“I’m fine,” I said, because that was what I was used to saying. It was what people liked to hear from me. That I was fine. When inside I was a black hole. Negative space. I was worry and I was fear.
And I was so much anger. I wanted to shatter every fuc
king dish in my hand, just smash it against the counter until the floor was filled with glass shards and The Pastor and his wife would be cut to ribbons.
But I didn’t do that. Instead, I wiped dry every bowl and put them in the cupboard where they belonged.
Carissa came in with the bowl of cooked carrots and a stack of plates scraped clean.
“Here,” Carissa said, handing me a miniscule piece of folded-up paper. Tommy must have tucked it under his plate. The note-passing system at St. Joke’s was next-level.
I opened the paper and read his tiny block letters.
Tell R and C. Everyone needs to be careful.
I put the note in the garbage and Rosa leaned over and dumped the water that had been in the bottom of the bowl of carrots over the note, pretty much destroying it.
“Something happened today,” I whispered.
“No shit,” Rosa said.
“At school Mendoza caught Tommy and I kissing.”
Carissa put her hands over her face and Rosa turned away to the sink, her head bowed. In the heavy echo-y silence I realized again how serious this was. And I felt like my head was going to explode from the tears and the fear I was holding back.
“You should never have started shit with Tommy,” Rosa said. “For real. This is gonna hurt us all.”
I swallowed back my apology, unwilling to be sorry for how I felt. Tommy and I were the only good thing I’d had in my life, I wasn’t sorry. But in the end I was just the kind of person who had to apologize. It was second nature. “I’m sorry. I just…I really like him.”
Rosa said, real quiet, “I get it. I know what it’s like to not be able to keep your hands off someone.” She turned sideways as if making her point with the bump of her stomach.
“Girls?” The Wife came into the doorway, her face backlit by the light from the hallway behind her. I thought, as I had for probably the hundredth time that her disguise was so complete. She looked nothing like a monster.
“Is there a problem?”
“No problem,” Rosa said, smiling over her shoulder, her hands back in the soapy water.
“Good, once you’re done, you have homework in the church.”
“The church?” The words fell from my mouth without thought, and Rosa stiffened next to me. Usually after dinner we all did homework together at the table, but questioning The Wife was a bad call.
“Rosa,” The Wife said, “I think Beth can finish washing and drying the dishes on her own, don’t you? Go get your schoolwork. Carissa, finish clearing the table and meet us in the church.”
Rosa left, shooting me a for god’s sake keep your mouth shut look over her shoulder.
I stared down at the heap of dishes I was going to have to do on my own, and I had a report due in World Studies. Shit.
Carissa came back in with the platter and all the cutlery.
“Maybe nothing will happen,” I whispered, hope making my voice crack.
Carissa laughed, low in her throat. “Something will happen,” she said and it was so shocking to hear her talk my mouth fell open. “And when it does—” she leaned forward right into my space, her eyes glittering and hard, “—fight.”
3
That night
St. Jude’s School for Court-Placed Juveniles
Tommy
The dream was Beth. The dream was always Beth.
We were under the crab apple tree at school. Our tree.
I mean, dozens of kids sat there but it was our tree. And she had her sketchbook and I had her.
That was all I needed. Ever.
In the dream, her hair was loose, which was how I knew it was a dream. I’d never seen her hair loose, she always had it pulled back in really tight buns or ponytails.
“What are you looking at?” she asked and then she smiled, revealing the way her two front teeth leaned just slightly against each other. Not crooked, but not straight either.
“You,” I said.
“Well, stop. You’re supposed to be looking over there.” She pointed with her bitten pencil to the lunch tables on the far side of the quad.
“I want to look at you.”
Beth had freckles scattered like stars across her creamy skin, caught even on her lips and eyelids. She didn’t like them, I knew. Her red hair and her many freckles. They made her feel different in a way that was uncomfortable. But I wanted to put my lips against every one of them and whisper thank you, thank you for being here.
“You said I could draw you, remember? And I can’t draw you like this.”
“I think I lied.” I felt the smile spreading across my own mouth and I still wasn’t used to it. Smiling felt weird. I was sixteen and I don’t think I’d ever in my life smiled as much as I did with Beth.
I leaned in to kiss her, but she put her free hand against my chest, burning through my shirt.
“Did you hear that?” she asked, looking over my shoulder. Her smile was gone and I wanted to tease that smile back. The sun was suddenly gone too and we weren’t under the crab apple tree, we were in the art room and I shook my head, fighting with everything in me to stay in the dream.
“Tommy. Wake up. You heard that.”
I did. I heard that. But I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to wake up. I wanted to stay in this art room forever.
“Tommy,” she whispered. “Please.”
I opened my eyes, the dream shattered, my skin trying to hold onto the sensation of her hair against my palm. The taste of orange Skittles on my tongue. My brain to the sound of her voice. But it was gone.
I lifted my head from the thin pillow that smelled like someone else’s sweat, and listened.
The house was the same eerie quiet it always was.
But that sound… Something woke me up. Pulled me away from the magnet of Beth.
I glanced over my shoulder to see the lamp on over the desk. Simon was sitting there—of course—all his books open in front of him but he was turned, looking at the door.
“Did you hear something?” I asked.
Simon’s glasses caught the lamplight and I couldn’t see his eyes, so I couldn’t see what he was thinking. Not that I ever knew what that guy was thinking. He could cut open his head and show me his brain and I’d still be fucking clueless about that guy.
“You,” he muttered. “Having a wet dream.”
“Fuck off.” But I put my hand under the covers, checked to make sure. Hard dick. No come. Phew. I hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but my stomach had been full for the first time in months. It wasn’t sleep as much as a food coma.
“You heard something in the hallway.”
“No,” he said and turned back to his books.
“Did someone knock? One of the girls?”
“It…wasn’t a knock.”
“Was it Beth?”
“Jesus,” he muttered. “What is it with Beth?”
Everything was the answer. It was everything with Beth.
“You’re going to get all of us in trouble,” he said.
I felt like shit that he was right.
They let me have dinner, as much as I wanted. Which was ominous as fuck. And then—after dinner—we’d been split up all night.
Also ominous as fuck.
But the worst thing was The Pastor… The Pastor had that look in his eye.
The look that made me cold in my skin. The look that made me want to find safe places for everyone to hide. That look made me want to be a million feet tall, and wide and strong enough to stop him from hurting anyone.
But he would come after me. He liked coming after me the most.
I made sure of that.
“She might be having another nightmare.” I put enough scorn in my voice to make sure Simon understood he was being an asshole.
She had nightmares. Every night. She and Rosa shared the room next to ours and we could hear her screaming sometimes, crying others. Rosa always knocked on the walls—three short fast knocks—letting us know she was okay, that nothing bad was happening. Well, n
othing worse. Because being here was pretty bad.
Beth said she didn’t remember what was so awful in her dreams, but mostly I think she didn’t want to talk about it.
None of us wanted to talk about the shit that came to us at night.
I lay there listening, trying not to feel all the walls in this place. All the walls between me and Beth.
There was a knock on the wall from Carissa, who had the room on the other side of us. Two fast knocks.
I knocked back three times.
Everything okay?
Fine.
But not really. And we all kind of knew it.
Any minute the Pastor was going to come for me.
Simon closed one big heavy textbook and opened another.
“It’s after one, dude,” I said, picking a fight because I had to do something. “What are you doing studying?”
Simon didn’t say anything. He didn’t say shit. Ever. He studied and he kept his head down and he didn’t get in trouble or get involved in any of the scary business that went on in this place.
His dad had been an immigrant from Pakistan, married his mom, had Simon, was living the American Dream, but then a few months ago he lost everything in some shady business deal. His dad killed his mom and then shot himself.
Murder suicide for real.
It was fucked-up and I was ready to cut the guy some slack on it, but Simon looked away when some pretty heinous shit went down in this place. And that I cut no slack with. No one here was going to take care of us—we had to do it ourselves.
But Simon walked around like he didn’t see any of it. And worse—didn’t care.
Also—he was some kind of genius, so on principle I hated him.
“You know we share a room,” I said. “How am I supposed to sleep with your fucking lamp on all the time?”
“You were sleeping just fine—”
The sound came again and I could identify it now because I wasn’t sleeping.
Not a scream.
It was the sound of a scream cut off before it could get started. It was a sound a thousand times worse than a scream, and all the hair on my body stood up. A door shut and there were footsteps walking down the hallway away from our room. Away from the girl’s room next to ours.
