Burning Read online

  Cara tries to catch my eye. I avoid looking at her this time. Officer Crane climbs down from the ladder, and Sterling hands her a letter. She turns the envelope over in her hand and squints down at my mother’s tiny, even handwriting. I knit my fingers together to keep from ripping it out of her hands.

  That doesn’t belong to you, I think.

  “They’re all addressed to her,” Officer Sterling says, dropping another envelope back onto the pile. “I don’t think she stole them.”

  Officer Crane sniffs. “Take this,” she says, handing the letter back to Sterling. “And those items, as well.”

  She points to a small pile of things we’re technically not allowed to have: the pictures Cara tore out of library books, a book on tape I never returned, half a crumpled bag of M&M’S Issie’s brothers snuck in for her.

  “And you,” Officer Crane says, fixing us with her steely eyes. “Start getting ready. You’ll be expected for morning chores at 8 a.m. sharp.” She strides back into the hall, the other two officers at her heels.

  “What the hell was that about?” Issie says when the sound of the officers’ footsteps has faded.

  I barely hear her over the thud of my heart beating in my ears. I kneel next to my bed, grunting as I push my mattress back into its frame. I gather my mother’s letters, but my hands tremble so badly that an envelope flutters from my fingers and drifts to the floor. Jessica kneels beside me.

  “I’ll help.” She picks up a letter and holds it out to me. I hesitate, staring at her ragged thumbnail.

  “I have to go.” I rip my mother’s letter from her hand and stumble out of the dorm. Cara shouts my name, but I don’t turn back around.

  My shift in Seg doesn’t start until after breakfast, but I head for the staircase anyway. My head feels balloon-light and tears threaten my eyes. Juvie girls don’t cry. Tears are targets, and I’m too smart for that shit. But some wounds are always tender. I’ve barely made it to the landing when a sob bubbles up in my throat and I know there’s no use fighting anymore. I press my body into the corner and I breathe and I don’t bother swiping at the trails of tears rolling down my cheeks.

  My mother is acrylic nails and red push-up bras with underwire poking through the lace. She’s lipstick prints on cigarettes and high, sharp laughter in the middle of the night, followed by deep, strange voices in the living room. I never particularly liked living with her but I always took it for granted that I could, that she’d take me in. That she had to.

  I glance down at the letter in my fist. My mother’s name stares out from between my fingers. She started writing two months ago, right after my release was approved. Her handwriting is small and cramped and slanted. It took me more than an hour to figure out what the first letter said, but she always writes the same thing. I slip my finger into the envelope and tear it open, dumping the letter into my hand. I unfold the paper and stare down at the angry, hateful words that I’ve long since memorized.

  Don’t ever come back here.

  You are not welcome.

  Leave your brother alone.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I stay crouched in that corner until my breathing returns to normal and my tears have hardened into salt-crusted lines on my cheeks. I fold my mother’s letter and slip it back into the envelope.

  You can’t leave juvie unless you have someone to vouch for you—someone who can pick you up and sign all the forms and promise you’ll go to school and eat your vegetables and stay out of trouble. Without that, the system keeps you until you turn eighteen and can officially take care of yourself. I don’t turn eighteen for another nine months.

  I had a plan, though. Ex-boyfriend Jake has this older sister who could sort of pass for my mother if she wore sunglasses and left her hair down. He was going to steal my mom’s wallet (wouldn’t be the first time) and get me as far as Brooklyn. After that, I’d stay with some old friends and lay low until I turned eighteen and could get a place on my own. Jake even mentioned a friend who made fake IDs, but I wasn’t sure about breaking the law again.

  I close my eyes. Those letters contain my biggest, most painful secret. They can ruin everything. And now the guards have one of them.

  “Davis!”

  My eyes pop open, and I scramble to my feet. Officer Sterling hurries down the stairs. She’s gritting her teeth, trying to make her Cabbage Patch face look hard, but her expression softens when she sees me. I swipe at my cheeks, but my palms come away dry. My puffy eyes must’ve given me away.

  “Where are you supposed to be?” she asks.

  “On my way to Seg, ma’am,” I say. She must know that I’m lying, that breakfast hasn’t even started yet. She glances behind her, like she’s worried someone’s watching. Then she nods.

  “I’ll take you.”

  I shuffle down the last few steps, moving so slowly that it’s almost a surprise when I find myself at the end of the hall, standing in front of the Seg Block door. Mateo crouches over his crossword puzzle. His uniform’s more wrinkled than usual, like maybe he dug it out of a pile on the floor. Hair falls over his forehead, hiding his expression.

  I stare at the toes of my shoes. He’s the last person I want to see right now, with my cheeks all red and puffy and my chest heavy from the weight of my mother’s words. But Sterling stands behind me, blocking any chance of escape, and teleportation hasn’t been invented yet. So.

  Mateo hooks his pen onto his folded newspaper. “I’ll take it from here, officer,” he says, looking at Sterling instead of at me. If he’s surprised that I’m here early, he doesn’t show it.

  “Very well,” Sterling says. Her boots thump against the concrete as she walks back to the stairs.

  I study the blackened rubber soles of my slip-ons. A small part of me thought he wouldn’t act all weird about what happened last night. But old Mateo never said “officer” and he always smiled when I came down the steps and his voice didn’t sound robot-stiff.

  New Mateo acts like all the other guards in this hellhole.

  He leans over and jabs the security-door button with his thumb. A loud, irritating buzz echoes down the hall.

  “Thanks,” I say. He nods. It’s one of those curt nods where you lift your chin a little instead of moving your entire head. This infuriates me for some reason. I want to slap him, just to get him to make an expression. How can he be this mad at me for breaking the rules? He breaks the rules all the time. I don’t even think he knows the rules.

  I swear under my breath as I shuffle past him. He sits up straighter on his stool.

  “What was that, Davis?”

  So I’m Davis again. Wonderful.

  “Nothing. Sir.”

  I let the security door slam shut behind me. The hall smells foul today, like some small animal crawled into a hole in the walls and died. Bea presses her face against the glass wall of her dorm, whispering to me. I ignore her and pull my mop out of the bucket of greasy water and slop it onto the floor.

  The security door opens behind me. Metal screeches against concrete as Mateo pulls his stool into the hall. I tighten my grip on my mop.

  “What are you doing?” I ask without looking up.

  “Guarding,” he says. I can see him out of the corner of my eye. He straightens his newspaper and squints down at the tiny black print.

  I dig my teeth into my lower lip and push the mop in small, tight circles. The silence between us feels like another person. I hate it, but I also don’t want to be the one to talk first.

  Don’t talk first, I tell myself. Bea slaps the glass wall of her cell, leaving greasy handprints behind. I stare at the wooden grooves in the mop handle. Don’t talk first. Don’t talk—

  “I thought you were all about the rules now,” I say. Dammit.

  Mateo glances up at me from beneath the hood of his dark brows. “Some rules,” he says. “Sometimes they’re important.”

  “And you get to decide when they’re important and when they aren’t?”

  Mateo hesitates. “Wel
l, yeah. I’m a guard.”

  “No shit.” I slam my mop back into the bucket and a river of sludgy water leaks onto the concrete. Bea giggles, distracted by her own shadow. A new scar stretches over half of her face. It’s left’s her skin all red and puckered, like a burn. I grimace and look away.

  More silence. Mateo moves, and the stool creaks beneath him. He writes something on the crossword, the newspaper crinkling beneath the weight of his hand.

  Finally, he looks up. “You don’t smoke.”

  I pause, leaking greasy mop water onto my shoes. “What?”

  “You don’t smoke,” he says again. “You said you left your dorm last night to have a cigarette.”

  “We all smoke.”

  “No.” Mateo stands, placing the folded crossword puzzle on his stool. “Not you. You said your grandmother died of lung cancer and that no one would ever smoke if they had to see someone they loved hooked up to a hose to breathe.”

  I stare at Mateo. I feel like someone’s grabbed me by the shoulders and spun me around in a circle until the walls all switched places. I did say that—but not to him. I was in the kitchen with Issie. She was bitching about how badly she wanted a cigarette so I told her the story of how my favorite grandmother got lung cancer when she was only forty-seven.

  “You weren’t even there,” I say, slowly.

  “Sterling got called to Director Wu’s office, so she asked me to stand in for her.” Mateo loops his thumbs through his belt buckles. “I was right outside the door.”

  Nope. This still doesn’t add up. “I said that like two months ago. How do you remember . . . ?”

  “Who cares how I remember? You lied to me about why you were out of your dorm last night.”

  “You’re mad because I lied to you?”

  “I’m mad because you’re smarter than this, Davis!”

  Again with calling me Davis. Anger flares inside me. “Look at where we are,” I snap, motioning to the Seg Block with the handle of my broom. “This is where they put stupid girls who smoke cigarettes and sneak out of their dorms and fuck up their lives. What the hell makes you think I’m smart?”

  “Because you are smart! Dammit. Why are you even here?”

  He stares at me, wrinkles creasing the skin on his forehead. When I don’t answer, he takes a step closer. “Well?” he asks. “Why are you here?”

  Sweat gathers between my fingers and the mop handle. I’m here because a woman fell down the stairs and broke her collarbone in three places. I’m here because I trusted a mean boy with a nice smile.

  But I will never tell him that. Never.

  I dig my thumbnail into the wooden handle. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  “You should be in school.” His eyebrows hitch in the middle. “All I can figure is that somewhere along the line someone convinced you that you were a bad person.”

  Monsters are more interesting than heroes.

  “You don’t know shit about my life.” I lean my mop against the wall but it wobbles and crashes to the ground. “You have your crosswords and your detective grandfather and your perfect girlfriend.”

  Mateo parts his lips, like he’s going to say something.

  “You don’t know what it’s like to be . . .” I stop talking, not sure how I planned to finish that sentence. He doesn’t know what it’s like to be stupid? Bad? Unwanted?

  Mateo takes another step closer. I smell the soap on his skin and the cottony detergent he uses on his uniform. It does something to me, softens something I didn’t know could be softened.

  I stand up straighter and thrust the mop between us. Juvie girls can’t get soft. It’s suicide.

  “What do you think my life’s going to be like when I leave here?” Anger gives my words sharp edges. “You think I’m going to go to college? You think I’m going to get a nice little job?”

  “Why not?”

  “That’s not how things work.”

  “It could be. You could try.”

  “Try to what? Get my degree?” My short, bitter laugh bounces off the pink walls. “Become a veterinarian?”

  The word slips out on its own, and it’s only because I was thinking about perfect, beautiful Stacy. I’m always thinking about perfect, beautiful Stacy.

  “That’s the second time you brought her up,” Mateo says in a low voice.

  Heat climbs my neck and flares through my cheeks. “I should go,” I say.

  “Wait.” Mateo grabs my arm. I jerk back, and my mother’s letter rustles against my waistband. It seems to burn through the fabric of my scrubs, her hateful words searing themselves into my skin. Don’t ever come back here.

  I think of my sad, small future, and suddenly I want to scream. Something ugly flashes through me. All at once I understand why the girls in here claw at the walls and peel the skin away from their fingernails. I want to punch something, just to watch my knuckles bleed. I want to hurt Mateo like I hurt.

  “You’re just like the rest of them,” I say. “You’re just another guard.”

  “Angela.” His voice is barely a whisper. “Stop, please.”

  “Is that an order?” I ask. “Sir?”

  Mateo hesitates, then moves out of my way. “No,” he says.

  For a second I want to know what he was going to say, but more than that, I want to be far, far away from here. I push through the security door and hurry back up the stairs to my dorm.

  Mateo doesn’t call after me again.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I take the steps to the first floor two at a time. This is Dr. Gruen’s fault. I wouldn’t be in this stupid fight with Mateo if I hadn’t been wandering around at night playing superspy. Dr. Gruen told me to watch Jessica, she convinced me we were helping her. But Jessica begged me not to let them take her, and she hid the damn bear Dr. Gruen wanted me to bring her anyway. She doesn’t want our help.

  So I’m done. If that means spending a few more months in this place—fine. It’s not like there’s anything waiting for me on the other side.

  I stop in front of Dr. Gruen’s office door. Mary Anne’s chair is empty, so I knock, banging so hard my knuckles hurt.

  “Come in.” I barely hear her voice through the thick wood. I push the door open and step into the office.

  Dr. Gruen’s eyes widen when she sees me. “Why, Angela,” she says. “This is a surprise.”

  I hesitate for a second and try to steady my breathing. I’d forgotten how clean Dr. Gruen keeps her office. The surfaces all shine in the way that only very expensive furniture shines. Everything I’d been about to say seems stupid now that I’m standing here. Dr. Gruen never told me to sneak out. All she’s ever done was try to help.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to barge in.”

  Dr. Gruen raises a hand to stop me. “Please, don’t apologize. Take a seat. Mary Anne, will you excuse us for a moment?”

  I look over my shoulder. I hadn’t noticed Mary Anne when I came in, but now I see her perched on a chair in the corner of the room. She looks more like a shadow than a person. She stands and slips through the door without a word.

  I slide into a leather chair.

  “What’s on your mind?” Dr. Gruen asks.

  “It’s about Jessica’s bear,” I say. Dr. Gruen tilts her head to the side, studying me with those clear, beautiful eyes.

  “Are you having trouble finding it?” she asks. I nod. It’s not even a lie, really. I don’t know where Jessica hid it.

  “I’ll keep looking,” I say. “But it’s not in our dorm, and I haven’t seen her carrying it around. Maybe she lost it?”

  Dr. Gruen purses her lips. “Maybe,” she says, but her voice turns the word into something sharp. A cold feeling fills my chest.

  “I’ll make sure to let you know if I see anything,” I say, rising halfway out of my chair.

  Dr. Gruen considers me, one finger tapping her chin. I realize, for the first time, how cruel she looks when she doesn’t smile. All the shapes that make up h
er face seem harder, sharper.

  “Sit down, Miss Davis.”

  The cold feeling moves into my lungs. I sit, suddenly aware of just how stiff the leather chair is. Like Dr. Gruen wants her visitors to be uncomfortable.

  “Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear,” she says. Even her voice sounds different—lower, harder. She removes something from the top drawer of her desk. “I’m not the kind of person who entertains incompetence.”

  She holds up a white envelope. I immediately recognize the small, even letters of my mother’s name. I can’t breathe. Can’t speak.

  Dr. Gruen opens the envelope and pulls out a folded slip of paper.

  “Dear Angela,” she reads.

  “Don’t,” I say. Dr. Gruen’s eyes flick from the letter to my face. She smiles, but this smile is a different species from her warm, comforting one. This smile is a weapon.

  “Does it hurt?” She folds my letter, making a sharp crease with her perfectly manicured nails. “Knowing that your mother doesn’t want you.”

  “You were behind the raid this morning, weren’t you?” I say in a low voice. “You were looking for Jessica’s bear.”

  Dr. Gruen slides the letter back into its envelope. “If you refuse to cooperate, then I’ll be forced to hand this letter over to Director Wu,” she says. “And you’ll stay here until your eighteenth birthday. What would happen to your poor little brother then?”

  “Stay away from him.” Even as I say the words I realize how meaningless they sound. I’m in no position to make a threat.

  Dr. Gruen steeples her fingers below her chin. “Then bring me what I want,” she says.

  Chapter Twenty

  I head straight for our dorm. Girls’ voices echo down the hall after me. I’m used to hearing laugher during free periods, but today everyone seems to be arguing. A few girls glare at me as I hurry past. Twice, I see people crying.

  They’re all upset about the raid, I realize. I wonder, dimly, if Dr. Gruen found things to threaten them with too. I walk a little faster, suddenly uneasy. Issie and Cara will only be at morning chores for another ten minutes, tops. This might be the only time I have the room to myself.