the Program (2004)

by Gregg - Rackley 02 Hurwitz

  That she could maximize her growth by minimizing her negativity.

  That she needed to let go and Get with The Program.

  It was a great honor to be invited to join the Inner Circle up at the ranch, just twenty-two days ago, and she wasn't about to screw it up. She'd sacrificed way too much for that. She stared at the cottage-cheese ceiling of her shared bedroom, the wrinkles of concern smoothing from her face, her heart rate slowing to normal. The space resembled a state-college dorm room -- two beat-up wooden beds, drawers beneath, a single dresser, a closet with a splintering door that wouldn't close. Periwinkle paint covered the cinder-block walls, fading in patches where the sun hit it through the lone window.

  Her Growth Partner breathed heavily on the other twin bed crammed into the space. Janie was a perky, attractive twenty-five-year-old; Leah found it hard not to envy her ready confidence and womanly curves.

  The door creaked open, and the form of a man resolved from the dusty early-morning light. There were no locks on the doors up here, except, she had heard, in the Teacher's cottage. No phones, watches, clocks, TVs, or newspapers either. And no mirrors -- Leah had learned to fix her hair without the aid of her reflection. Or, as was increasingly the case, she and Janie primped each other.

  She had the luxury of working with computers, but always ancient ones with the modems excised or phone cords removed. Though she missed surfing the Web, it was unproductive to question and nitpick; besides, her computer skills landed her cushier specialized jobs that spared her Rec-Dute. The Recruitment-Duty shifts lasted eighteen hours or until one secured five sign-ups for a colloquium, whichever came first.

  The man eased forward into the room. Leah pretended she was sleeping, but she heard the floorboards creak. A large hand came to rest on her thigh, protected only by a thin sheet. "Leah. It's your time to rouse the Teacher."

  She opened her eyes. Randall, the bigger of the two Protectors, was sitting on the edge of her bed. He was almost entirely hairless -- bald, no eyebrows, no chest hair -- except for his arms; the dense mats of black hair caused the cuffed sleeves of his flannel to bulge.

  "Let me tell my Gro-Par," Leah said.

  But Janie was already up, fussing. Her bark-colored hair swayed with the effort; she wore it seventies style -- center-parted and waist length. "Oh, my God. That's so killer. I can't be one of TD's Lilies because I'm married."

  When it became clear Randall wasn't going to wait outside, Leah changed in front of him, made insecure by his beady eyes.

  Janie preened her, combing her hair, which had been cropped in a shaggy pageboy her first day here. "It might be nice if you wore a sleeveless shirt instead."

  "I'm a bit chilly. It's early."

  "Cold is a state of mind, Leah. Don't indulge your Old Programming."

  "I like this shirt."

  Janie sighed dramatically, rolling her eyes at Randall. "See what I have to work with?" She covered up the slight with a nervous laugh and kissed Leah on the forehead. "I'm so proud of you."

  Randall's throat rattled when he cleared it. "When you kiss someone on the face, you're sucking on a tube that's twenty-three feet long, the other end of which is connected to feces."

  Janie shivered and busied herself tying Leah's shoelaces.

  "I'll bear that in mind," Leah said.

  Randall led her down the hall, past the cluster of closed doors. The cottage comprised two identical halves, each with four bedrooms and two baths, joined at a modest common room with a kitchenette. Cramped little structures with pebbles strewn across their flat roofs, the poorly insulated units were barely a step up from prefabs.

  He headed outside, crossing the circular lawn around which the four other cottages were arrayed, Leah walking fast to keep up. At the edge of Cottage Circle, five enormous cypresses rose up, van Gogh shadows against the lambent glow of the horizon. The throw of land housing the little community was the sole stretch of flatness adrift on the thirsty brown mountains. The rest of the compound lay upslope on the precipice of a straight-drop cliff, except the Teacher's cottage, which stood to the west off a trail carved through chest-high brush.

  As they turned onto the trail, Leah looked up at Randall, who had to stoop to get his six-three frame under the occasional branch. She spoke mostly to ease her own tension. "How did you find the Teacher?"

  Randall kept on without pause. "He saved me."

  The rest of the walk to the Teacher's cottage was silent.

  Woods encroached on the rear of the building. Skate Daniels, the other Protector, tilted back on a rickety chair on the front porch, working at a hunk of wood with a hunting knife. He wore a boxer-style sweatshirt, the collar ripped and cross-threaded with a shoelace. The severed sleeves showed off arms massy with thick, undefined muscle. At his throat hung a crude necklace -- two twisted copper wires threaded through tiny earth-tone beads, vaguely Native American in effect. Dangling from it like a pendant was the notorious tiny silver key.

  Skate's two Dobermans bolted over to investigate, snarling and barking. Leah recoiled, terrified, but Skate backed them down with a snap of his fingers, and they scrambled off through the underbrush behind the narrow shed where Skate and Randall slept. Barely wide enough to accommodate two cots, the shed leaned like a wind-battered bait shack, exhaling a perennial spiral of smoke from a black pipe of a chimney. Once when Leah had to deliver a file to the Teacher, she'd seen Skate in there, shuddering against the cold and stoking the fire in the potbellied stove with a stick.

  The shed, Leah had learned, was absolutely off-limits, as was the modular office a few paces behind it. The mod's door sported a profusion of locks, protecting its consecrated interior -- the Teacher's private office space. Leah respectfully averted her eyes from the mod.

  She stepped up on the porch. "What are you making there?"

  Skate flicked the point of the blade against the wood, his flat eyes never leaving his task. "Jes' whittlin'."

  Randall gestured to the door, and she stepped inside, nearly tripping over a white plastic tub brimming with mail. The ranch had been a bigwig director's retreat in the twenties; the Teacher's cottage was the only building not since supplanted by a lowest-bidder abomination. Beautiful stone exterior, slat-wood doors, a lazy fan overhead. Wagon wheels from a bygone movie shoot still lined the walk and framed the porch, sentimentalized by the adolescent residential treatment facility that occupied and further degraded the ranch before The Program acquired it.

  Randall closed the door behind Leah.

  Alone in the Teacher's cottage. She did her best to calm the storm of panic and excitement rising in her chest.

  She prepared as she had been taught, first picking up and folding the Teacher's clothes, which had been left in the front room. She removed a ginseng mahuang smoothie from the tiny fridge, strained it into a glass to remove excess pulp, then arranged the vitamins in a grid on the serving platter. The napkin she folded into a crisp triangle.

  After washing the hair from the shower soap, she ran the water so it would be hot when he was ready. She removed a fresh toothbrush from the cabinet and squeezed onto it a straight worm of Aquafresh. She plucked a premarked Dixie cup from the stack beneath the sink and poured mint mouthwash to the indelible-ink line drawn precisely an inch and a half from the bottom. She rested a new razor on the towel beside the sink and wiped the excess from the nozzle of the shaving-cream can.

  You have been chosen, she told herself. You have been singled out. You are special.

  The door to the Teacher's bedroom creaked slightly as she pushed it, balancing his breakfast tray with her other hand. His slumbering form lay beneath the king duvet. She set the tray on the nightstand and knelt at the side of the bed. She slid her hand inside the Egyptian-cotton sheets and gripped his erect penis.

  "Wake up, Teacher," she said softly. Then she repeated herself, a little louder, barely recognizing her own voice. "Wake up, Teacher."

  He stirred and stretched, arms shoving up against the massive headboard. He s
ettled back, hands laced behind his head like Huck Finn. His facial skin was youthful, even taut, stretching his lips into thin strokes. A slender man with sharp, intelligent features, he had no wrinkles at all. His closely set eyes were hypnotic, captivating, prying; when he spoke to her, she tried to watch his hands or forehead instead. Now she kept focused on the task at hand, the silky duvet rising and falling a foot and a half in front of her face.

  "Now, not too firm," he cautioned, his voice low and soothing. Then, a bit more sharply, "Relax."

  At once her mind went blank, her breathing smoothed, and her hand moved of its own volition, butterfly soft, doing what it somehow knew to do.

  "There, now," he said. "There, now."

  His hips rocked slightly on the cushioned mattress, and then he shuddered and it was done. She withdrew her hand, wiping it on the sheets. Still she avoided his eyes, but the energy coming off him was approving, and her insides went warm with relief and gratitude.

  Keeping her head bowed, she said, "Good morning, Teacher."

  He reached down and stroked her hair gently, forgivingly. "Please," he said, "call me TD."

  Chapter ten

  When Tim woke up half an hour later, Dray was on her side, leaning over him, hand near his face. He jerked, startled by her proximity, and she quickly rolled out of bed and headed to the bathroom.

  "What the hell was that?"

  The shower flipped on. "Nothing."

  Tim went in and leaned against the counter, arms crossed, watching through the glass as Dray pretended to be absorbed in the lathering process. Finally she glanced up. "Look, I put my hand in front of your mouth sometimes when you're sleeping to feel you breathing." She stepped back into the stream. "So it's kind of freakish...."

  "You're worried I'm gonna die in my sleep?"

  Furiously lathering a knee, Dray fought an embarrassed smile from her lips. "No. Yes. I don't know."

  "We have a deal, remember?"

  "Die in our sleep when we're ninety. The same night."

  "Right. So cut me a break until then, huh? You're overloading my pacemaker."

  The shower door slid open, and a sudsy washcloth hit him in the face before he could get his hands up to block it. He pulled it off, laughing and coughing.

  Dray poised her leg on the tub's edge and ran a razor up its slick length. "I wouldn't have to do it if you'd just snore like a real husband."

  Dray, standing behind Tim, punched a fork into a hunk of his Eggo and mopped it through a pool of residual syrup. She had to angle her head to get the bite in and even still wound up dripping on his sweatshirt. Particularly after their morning runs, Dray ate like a Jurassic carnivore, but her current performance was more arresting than usual. Tim watched two links of sausage disappear in the same direction. He listened for chewing but heard none.

  He'd freed up his morning to sit with the case file, but on his walk down the hall, the sight of Ginny's room empty had pulled him up short. He'd taken a moment leaning on the jamb, gazing in. He'd hoped to offset the shock with productivity but was having a sluggish go at it. Thus far he'd done little more than fail to defend his breakfast plate.

  He glanced back down at his notepad, in which he'd listed the lingo he'd gleaned from his conversations with Reggie.

  Pro, Neo, Common - Censor / Common Sensor? Trigger, Orae/Oray? Gro - Par / Grow - Par? Lilies, Inner Circle.

  "You gonna eat that?" Dray's fork flashed past before he could respond. Staring at his sole extant sausage, he realized he'd better stop thinking and start eating.

  "Sounds like it's gonna be tough to get to the girl."

  "Yes."

  "And then, when you do, she won't even want to be rescued?"

  "Yes."

  "No crime has been committed here, right? That you know of?"

  Tim tapped his fork absentmindedly against his orange-juice glass. "No."

  "And this would be a bad time for me to revisit why the hell you're doing this to begin with?"

  "Yes."

  Dray paused midchew. "Just checking."

  Tim's cell phone rang, and he rose to grab it before it sambaed off the kitchen counter.

  "Hi, Deputy, this is Katie Kelner, Leah's former roommate. Listen, you said to call if anything came up...?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, I was going through one of my books -- well, I thought it was my book, but I guess it got mixed up with Leah's, since she was taking Shit Lit, too."

  Tim watched helplessly as Dray swooped down on his last sausage. "Uh-huh."

  "She left a card in it, like an appointment card, for a bookmark, you know? And it was from the Student Counseling Center. I guess she was seeing a shrink." This last word Katie whispered severely -- odd that anyone in Malibu would believe the term required a lowered voice.

  "Does it have the date of the appointment?"

  "Yeah, it says December seventh at two o'clock."

  A little more than a month before Leah had disappeared from campus.

  "You said, you know, to call if I thought of anything."

  "And I'm glad you did."

  "Some of the stuff I said when you were here...I'm, uh, I'm not an awful person, you know."

  "I don't think you're an awful person."

  "What do you think?"

  He thought that life hadn't smacked her around enough yet for her to realize she didn't know everything. "That's irrelevant."

  She let out a dismissive little laugh. "Well, you don't know me. Who cares what you think?"

  "To be honest, not too many people."

  Getting information out of therapists was generally an exercise in futility, but since Tim was already planning to visit the Pepperdine registrar's office, he figured he might as well pay a courtesy call to the Student Counseling Center afterward.

  He'd parked and was crossing campus at a good clip when the cell phone chirped.

  A high male voice: "Mr. Henning wants to see you."

  "Who's this?"

  "He'd like an update on your progress."

  "Who's this?"

  "I work for Mr. Henning."

  Tim had encountered enough Mr. Hennings in his life to recognize a power play shaping up. "If he wants to talk, have him call me himself. I don't deal with intermediaries." Tim snapped the phone shut. About a minute later, as he negotiated a river of students flooding from the Thornton Administration Building, it rang again. "Yeah?"

  "I'm a very busy man, Mr. Rackley."

  "You and me both, Will."

  "Yet you insist on a personal phone call."

  "This isn't a budget meeting. I'm protecting your confidentiality. And your daughter's. That's how this goes."

  "Fine." The line went dead.

  Tim's phone sounded a third time. "Hi, Tim, this is Will Henning. I'd like to see you."

  Without the sarcastic tone, it might have been funny. "Where are you?"

  "I work from home now." He added defensively, "I get more done here."

  "I'll get to you sometime this afternoon."

  "When?"

  "When I get there."

  Tim followed the signage to the registrar's counter only to find himself in line behind ten or so students. He waited with them so he could watch the proceedings. Dropping a class proved to be a protracted negotiation involving substantial paperwork. It took a good half hour for the line to dissipate, during which Tim noted nothing to indicate a recruitment ploy like the one Reggie had described.

  The registrar, an octogenarian with a kindly demeanor and prodigious eyeglasses, informed Tim that she'd run the office for the past thirty-five years and assured him that no funny business had gone down under her tenure. For confidentiality purposes, she didn't permit student workers in the office, and the two women she oversaw had been there for years. A brief talk with both of them was enough for Tim to put the flimsy lead to bed.

  He zagged back across campus in the car, following the blue signs. The Student Counseling Center proved to be a beige and brown modular home sandwiched be
tween a parking lot and a scrubby hill. It seemed more like a school nurse's station in a welfare mountain-state town than the therapy center for a high-tuition Malibu university.

  The potted plants lining the ramp brushed Tim's jeans on his way up. With its blue carpet and paneled walls, the interior typified modular decor. Seemingly out of place was the well-dressed woman behind the petite reception desk, whose cheery, first-name-basis nameplate announced her solely as ROBBIE.

  Her pert face tightened a bit when he introduced himself. "Confidentiality is absolute here, Mr. Rackley."

  "Please, call me Tim."

  "We adhere to the guidelines of the American Psychological Association."

  "Are all the therapists psychologists?"

  "No, Mr. Rackley. Most are licensed social workers, but the same confidentiality guidelines apply to them."

  "Do students need to be referred here?"

  "They can come directly if they're an undergraduate or a student at the law school, GSBM --"

  "GSBM?"

  "Graziado School of Business Management."

  "Would you be allowed to disclose when a particular student first came in?"

  "Absolutely not."

  A girl emerged from a back room, the floor creaking with her steps. She shuffled to get around Tim, but there wasn't much room. "I'm sorry to interrupt."

  "That's okay," Robbie said. "We were just wrapping up. Maybe you could show the gentleman out." She busied herself clearing her desk.

  When it was clear Robbie wasn't going to acknowledge him again, Tim followed the girl out. She held the door for him but stumbled over a potted plant when she turned. Tim caught her arm to steady her, and she let out an embarrassed giggle. "Sorry. I'm such a klutz. I get nervous, you know, when people see me here. I always think they're wondering what's wrong with me --" She blushed. "God, shut up, Shanna."

  "You should see me waiting at the clinic for my results to come back."

  Shanna stared at him, eyebrows raised, and then her face broke into a smile and she hit him lightly on the arm.

  They walked down the ramp together. Two girls sat talking in a Range Rover parked in the first row of the lot beside Tim's Acura, not ten yards from the trailer's entrance. The therapy rooms emptied out directly into a major campus parking lot.