This Might Hurt(78)
“I’m not denying the rules here are strange. Every system has flaws. Wisewood is no different. But we focus on the positives of the program.”
I’ve lost the will to fight my sister. She’s fallen under the spell of a group and an ideology I can’t understand. If she insists this place makes her happy, then fine.
“Understood.” I raise my hands in surrender. “I’m on your side, okay?”
A knock at the door makes us both jump.
“Ms. Collins, are you in there?” Gordon calls.
“I’m busy,” Kit says.
“Please open the door.”
She closes her eyes. This time her tone is icy. “I said I’m busy.”
A pause. “Very well. I’m taking the boat out, so you’ll have to—”
Kit leaps from the bed and opens the door. “We’re not supposed to leave.”
Gordon draws himself to full height. Even so, he’s shorter than she is.
“It’s snowing,” she says.
Still he doesn’t speak.
“Where are you going?” she asks.
His gaze swings toward me. “Are you sure you want that answer right here, right now?”
My sister glances at me.
“Kit, I have to tell you something,” I say, remembering my reason for being here. “We’re not done.”
“Yeah, we are.” She follows Gordon outside and closes the door.
33
Kit
OCTOBER 2019
WE WADED OUT of the water and put our shoes back on in silence. Debbie offered a towel she’d brought especially for me. Even after I dried off, my teeth still rattled so hard my jaw hurt. When he saw my knees knocking, Jeremiah handed over his jacket.
I shook my head, pointing to my soaked sweater and jeans. “It’ll get wet.”
He shrugged. “It’ll dry.”
I flashed him a tired smile and zipped the coat to the top. I was instantly warmer, though the ends of my hair had hardened to icicles. The members of the IC began heading single file into the forest. As I followed Sanderson, Jeremiah close behind me, I tried to work out what the Quest of Judgment might encompass. Were they going to list my sins and dole out punishments that fit the crimes? I imagined standing in front of a panel of my peers. For stealing candy from that convenience store when you were thirteen: ten blows against the knuckles with a ruler. For getting your high school best friend arrested: three days without a single meal. For being a negligent daughter: kneel on broken glass until your skin is speckled with blood.
I might have to pass judgment on someone else.
“It’s not as bad as you’re imagining,” Jeremiah said from behind. I nodded, stomach roiling.
A drizzle began to fall, forcing us to pick up our pace. Like a cabin-fevered child, Sofia rushed up the pine cone–strewn path, ducking and dodging wayward branches, shouting the entire way. The rest of the group was solemn, which did nothing to calm me.
Soon the woods smelled of wet bark. Our shoes squeaked in the mud. My lungs ached with every intake of cold air. I prayed whatever came next would be inside, ideally somewhere with a fireplace. Jeremiah whistled “Party in the USA,” maybe trying to ease my nerves, break the heavy silence.
He’d gotten through the first chorus when Raeanne said from the front of the line, “I swear to Christ, you musta swallowed the most tone-deaf canary that ever lived.”
He stopped whistling, and the group fell silent again. I didn’t like how edgy everyone was tonight, the way most of them were trying to mask it with false cheerfulness. I wanted to know what they knew.
After a while we came upon a small building. In the dark I couldn’t see much other than walls of weathered shingles. I strained for the roar of the sea, but it was gone. My cheeks were raw, windburned.
Sofia was waiting for us at the wooden door, hands on her knees. Ruth nudged me to the front of the pack.
“To think I once qualified for Boston,” Sofia wheezed.
I startled. Outside of class, the staff rarely brought up their lives before Wisewood. “The marathon?”
She nodded, composing herself.
After one more deep breath, she grabbed the door handle and pushed me into the pitch-black void of the building. I squeaked in protest at the same time the cold room flooded with light. I squinted, trying to adjust to the change.
We were inside what resembled an old schoolhouse. Teacher sat at the head desk at the front of the classroom, hair coiffed, clothes dry. Next to her desk was a tripod with an empty phone mount fixed to the top.
She rose, gesturing to a desk in the middle of the front row. “Please take your seat.”
I glanced over my shoulder. The rest of the IC had filed in behind me.
“Don’t worry about what the others are doing,” Teacher said.
I nodded and walked toward the front of the room, holding her gaze the entire way. I sat in the student’s chair, wooden and hard, and heard my peers slip into their own desks. I didn’t dare look away from those violet eyes until they’d released mine. My muscles twitched, heart palpitated.
Teacher walked up and down the rows, greeting each student with a squeeze of the hand. Some members bowed their heads; others grinned. Gordon approached the tripod, pulled an iPhone from his pocket, and settled it sideways into the mount so the back of the phone was facing us. He tapped the screen a few times, then stepped away, back against the chalkboard, watching the phone.