The Program (The Program #1)(6)

The question chokes me, and I press my lips together to keep myself from crying. There is no chance—The Program is thorough. The Program works. But I can’t bear to tell him that, so I shrug. “You never know,” I say, fighting the feeling of loss. “And if not, you can always reintroduce yourself when her aftercare is over. Start again.”

Once she’s healed, Lacey’s allowed to carry on with her life without interference—at least that’s what The Program brochures have told us. But I’ve never seen a returner go back to their old life. Or even want to. Whole sections of their lives have been erased; past relationships mean nothing to them. In fact, I think the past might even scare them.

Miller sneers at the thought of this new Lacey, the hollowed-out one. He wants her to remember him, what they built together. Both Miller and James think The Program is a fate worse than death.

Lacey had thought the same. The reason her own parents turned her in was that they found a bottle of QuikDeath in her room. She’d been planning to kill herself and had bought the drug from some burnout after school. Miller hated himself for not knowing. James and I often wondered if he would have killed himself with her.

When Lacey was sent away, Miller broke into her bedroom because he knew he’d be erased from her life—that we all would be. But when he got there, her pictures were gone, and so was her clothing and personal items. The Program had wiped the space clean. All Miller had was a notepad that Lacey had left behind in his truck. He kept it, hoping it held some small piece of her.

We sat by the river one afternoon and looked through Lacey’s handwriting, laughing where she drew pictures of our teachers in the margins. But soon, the notepad changed. The math problems dissolved into black spirals scratched into the paper with pen. Her mind was infected, and it was apparent through the pages how quickly the depression had taken hold. It’d only been about two weeks.

I hate The Program and what it does to us, but I also know that I don’t want to die. I don’t want any of us to. Despite everything, our school district has the highest survival rate in the country. So in some sick and twisted way . . . I guess The Program works. Even if the result is a life half lived.

James pulls up beside my window in his father’s beat-up Honda. He smiles when he sees me, but it’s too wide, too normal. He nods at Miller.

“Your boyfriend looks worried,” Miller mumbles as we watch James pull ahead to park. “That’s never a good sign. James never worries about anything.”

I don’t answer because I know it’s not true. But I’m the only one who gets to see that side of James. Otherwise he’s our rock. Our steady.

Miller opens the door and climbs out, leaving me sitting for a moment in the warming sun that’s filtering through the windshield. Outside, a bell rings, signaling the end of the returners’ day, and I swallow hard.

I open the passenger door and walk toward where James and Miller are talking, and I glance over my shoulder at the school as a few students and handlers begin making their way to the parking lot. Sumpter is small, with about two hundred students altogether. But that number grows every week, with five schools filtering kids through The Program. And since doctors claim a fresh returner’s brain is like Swiss cheese, with holes where memories used to be, patients need continued aftercare in a safe environment. Now returners stay here until graduation, which makes me doubt their “life without interference” claim.

Back when the treatments first started, returners were sent into the general population to start over. But after they started having meltdowns—like total brain-function-drooling-on-themselves meltdowns from the overstimulation—they opened Sumpter and assigned them a temporary babysitter with a white coat and a Taser.

Even so, handlers aren’t the only thing to fear. Fresh returners are a threat in themselves. In their confusion, they might inadvertently turn you in for harassing them, getting you sent away. So no one goes near them.

At least, not until now.

The minute I reach the guys, James smiles at me reassuringly. It’s time. Miller lowers his baseball cap and puts his phone to his ear as he wanders away, pretending to talk. My heart pounds in my chest as people walk past us. I used to know some of them.

Other than at Sumpter, returners aren’t seen around town much. Our community opened a Wellness Center a few months ago in order to create a “safe environment” for returners and normals to interact. It’s The Program’s belief that assimilation is the key to a full recovery—only it has to be on their terms, like watching us closely at a rec center that’s really just an extension of treatment. But while all students in the district are forced to complete three credit hours a semester there, most of the returners want to go. Obviously they don’t know any better.

James forges passes and skips the Wellness Center, calling it all Program propaganda—a science fair with returners as the main exhibit. Really, I think the Wellness Center was set up to prove that returners aren’t freaks. That they can blend with society post-treatment. But no amount of commercials showing kids with smiling faces playing foosball is going to ease our fears.

I haven’t completed any of my Wellness credits for this semester yet, but from what I’ve heard, returners go to the center with their handlers. That alone highlights how different they are. They’ve been reset—both emotionally and socially.

James must sense my anxiety because his fingers find mine and intertwine for a second before he lets me go. “Whatever happens,” he says, “just play along.”