All These Things I've Done (Birthright #1)(33)

Mrs Cobrawick considered the question. ‘We’re not entirely sure of that yet. Let’s say long term to be on the safe side.’

I have no idea what short term might have been like, but long-term orientation was one of the most humiliating experiences of my life to that point. (NB: This is foreshadowing, dear readers – more and deeper humiliations to come . . .) ‘I do apologize, Miss Balanchine,’ Dr Henchen had said in a polite if curiously emotionless voice. ‘In the last several months, we’ve had a rash of bacterial outbreaks so, in order to avoid this, our intake procedure has become rather intense. Especially for long-term residents who will be exposed and expose themselves to the general population here. This won’t be very pleasant for you.’ Still, I was unprepared for what came.

I was made to strip and then I was hosed down by the male attendant with scalding-hot water. After that, I was soaked in an antibacterial bath that stung every part of me and then what I’d guess was a delousing solution was placed in my hair. The final part was a series of ten injections. Dr Henchen said they were mainly to protect against flu and sexually transmitted diseases, and to relax me, but, at that point, my mind was elsewhere. I’ve always been able to do that – separate my brain from the awful thing happening at the moment.

Whatever they gave me must have knocked me out because I woke up the next morning in the upper bunk of a metal-framed bed in an extremely stark girls’ dormitory. My arm hurt where they had repeatedly injected me. My skin was raw. My stomach, empty. My brain, fuzzy. It took a moment to even remember how I’d gotten here.

The other inmates (or whatever term Mrs Cobrawick had invented for us) were still asleep. There were narrow windows – not much more than slits – along the sides of the room and I could make out a bit of predawn light. Of my many concerns, the most immediate was breakfast and what it would consist of.

I sat up in bed and was glad to find that I was clothed as, last I remembered, I had been naked. I was wearing a navy-blue cotton jumpsuit – not particularly stylish but better than the alternative. In sitting up, I became aware of an odd pain on my right ankle, almost like a fire-ant bite. I looked down and discovered that I had been tattooed. A tiny bar code that presumably linked my person to my nascent criminal record. (This was common practice. Daddy had had one, too.)

An alarm went off, and the room became chaos. A stampede of girls charged towards the door. I got out of bed and debated whether or not to follow. I noticed that the girl in the bunk below me wasn’t joining the frenzy so I asked her what was happening.

The girl shook her head and said nothing. She held a notepad towards me. The notepad was suspended from a leather cord that was tied around her neck. On the first page was written My name is Mouse. I am mute. I can hear you but I will have to write my reply.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’ I didn’t know why I was apologizing.

Mouse shrugged. The girl was certainly tiny and quiet – Mouse was a good name for her. I’d guess she was about Natty’s age though her dark eyes made her look older.

‘Where’s everyone going?’

Shower room, she wrote. 1 x per day. H2O on for 10 sec. Everyone at once.

‘Why aren’t you going then?’

Mouse shrugged. I would later learn this was her all-purpose way of changing the subject, especially useful when a subject was too complex to be expressed concisely. She let the notepad drop and held out her hand for me to shake, which I did.

‘I’m Anya,’ I said.

Mouse nodded and picked up her notepad. I know, she wrote.

‘How?’ I asked.

On the news. She held up her pad, then wrote some more: ‘Mob Daughter Poisons Boyfriend with Chocolate.’

Wonderful. ‘Ex-boyfriend,’ I said. ‘What picture are they using?’

School uniform, Mouse wrote.

I’d been wearing school uniforms as long as I’d been going to school.

Recent, she added.

‘By the way, I’m innocent,’ I said.

She rolled her dark eyes at me. Everyone here’s innocent, she wrote.

‘Are you?’

Not me. I’m guilty.

We hadn’t known each other long enough for me to ask her what she had done so I changed the subject to matters more pressing. ‘Anywhere to eat in this place?’

Breakfast was oatmeal. It was surprisingly edible or maybe I was just hungry.

The cafeteria at the girls’ reformatory was pretty much like the cafeteria at my high school: i.e. a hierarchy of seating with more influential cliques/gangs occupying the ‘better’ tables. Mouse seemed to be gangless as she and I ate alone at what must be said was the least desirable table in the place – back of the room, as far away from the windows as you could get, next to the garbage.

‘Do you eat here every day?’ I asked.

Mouse shrugged.

Aside from being mute, she seemed normal enough. I wondered if the reason she was alone was out of choice or because the others were ostracizing her on account of her handicap or simply because she was new to Liberty like me.

‘How long have you been here?’

She put down her spoon to write 198 down. 802 to go.

‘One-thousand-day sentence. That’s a long time,’ I said, though this really was an idiotic comment to have made. One look in Mouse’s eyes and you could see exactly how long a thousand days was.