Burning Page 2

  I turn back around a moment before the facility doors whoosh open, and the girl disappears inside.

  Chapter Two

  “What are you waiting for? Move.” Peach jams her shoulder into me on her way to the door, sneering again so I know it’s personal.

  “That girl’s gonna get her ass kicked,” I mutter.

  “Not by you,” Issie says.

  I shrug and glance over my shoulder at the white bus. Another couple of girls dart past me to get to the door. Cara jabs me in the back with her book, and I tear my eyes away.

  “Watch it!” Ellen snaps, weaving around me, her hands clasped in front of her. Issie mouths the word “mouse” and points.

  “Another one?” I whisper. An involuntary shudder moves through me. Gross.

  “I saw her catch it at the edge of the field,” Issie says. I grimace. The last creature Ellen snuck in was the size of a small fist and made clicking sounds inside her sweatshirt pocket. It escaped in the bathroom a week ago. I never figured out exactly what the thing was, but I picture something like the snake creature from my dad’s old stories. I bet it lives in the shower drains and eats our discarded hair.

  I move forward, trying not to think of tiny mouse feet and twitching mouse noses. Brunesfield’s smell hits me as soon as I step inside: stale air and mold and lemon-scented floor cleaner. If I lived for a thousand years, the smell of this place would haunt me until the day I died. Smudged handprints line the walls, and the floor gleams with off-brand polish that will never remove the scuff marks thousands of shoes have left behind. I wonder if the girls who left those marks still remember this smell.

  I wrinkle my nose as the rest of the girls line up according to offense, their hands behind their backs. The low-security girls stand near the front. There are around forty of them now, mostly white girls who clump together, looking at the rest of us like we’re monsters. They’re all runaways and kids whose parents dumped them because they “couldn’t deal anymore.” I don’t even bother learning their names; they’re in and out so quickly it’s not worth it. I watch two girls pass a clear plastic bag behind their backs, and roll my eyes. The low-security offenders are always the ones sneaking in drugs.

  Peach and the fifty or so crackheads and other druggies shuffle in behind them. They’re all here for possession or intent to sell. Peach spots the girls passing drugs and bares her teeth at them. It’s technically a smile, but the girls shift away from her, freaked. I don’t blame them.

  Theft and destruction comes next. Twelve girls huddle in that group. They’ve been here as long as I have, so by now this is second nature for them. I know them all okay, but they’re mid-security, so we don’t socialize a lot. Ellen awkwardly moves her arms behind her back, still trying to hide the mouse hidden in her hands. I try not to cringe. Ew ew ew.

  Issie and Cara wait at the end of the line, with me. They’re the only other girls in high security. High security is for the baddest of the bad girls, one step below Segregation. The violent-offenders group. My group.

  I move in next to them and twist my arms behind me, touching my fingertips together to create a diamond with my hand. It’s procedure, Brunesfield’s way of keeping us in line without using handcuffs.

  “Orange line, people,” Officer Crane barks, moving down the hall to make sure we all have our toes on the orange line painted across the floor. A million years ago someone devised this system of colored lines to keep us in check. Basically, if you want to go anywhere you have to walk on one of the lines. Blue leads to the bathroom, black to the cafeteria, etc. It’s completely stupid, and most of the lines have worn off, so none of the other officers enforce it anymore. But Crabby Crane is an old-timer. Rumor has it one of the Seg girls attacked her years ago, and that’s where she got the thick red scar that twists over one eye and across the side of her face, giving her a permanent snarl. She’s hated the Segregation Block ever since.

  She stops when she gets to Cara, Issie, and me, and she stares with one real eye and one shiny glass one.

  “Go on—black line,” she says. We weave past the rest of the girls without a word. Issie hurries down to the basement, but Cara stops me at the top of the staircase.

  “Who’s that?” she asks, jerking her head toward the end of the hall. I turn to look.

  A tall blond woman stands near the front entrance, a stiff black coat swinging from her shoulders. A girl with shiny, college-kid hair and straight teeth stands at her shoulder, a black binder tucked under her arm. The girl meets my eyes, then looks away.

  “Does that girl look familiar to you?” Cara asks. I shake my head.

  “I bet they’re from the university,” I say. Syracuse isn’t too far away. Every now and then an abnormal-psych student will come in to “observe” us.

  “Maybe,” Cara says.

  We turn and make our way down the narrow flight of stairs, following the black line through the double doors to the kitchen.

  Two guards stand outside the doors. They’re both new, and I can’t remember their names. The one on the left has a Cabbage Patch face—big cheeks, small eyes, button nose. She would have been pretty except for the mole on her forehead that looks like a third eye. “Officer Sterling,” I think her name tag reads. Or “Stanley.” I’ve never been good at reading.

  They don’t look at us as we walk past, but the new ones never do. It’s like they get some kind of training: Don’t look the inmates in the eye. Don’t think of them as people.

  “I’m. So. Cold,” Issie says once we’ve made it through the double doors. She jumps in place, sending a tremor through the pots and pans hanging from the peg wall. Officer Stanley or Sterling raps her knuckles against the window on the door.

  “Keep it down,” she calls.

  “Stop it,” Cara warns Issie, glancing at the door. “You can’t be that cold.” When the guard turns around, Issie goes straight to the oven and twists the knob to high, hovering near the door while it heats up.

  I turn on the faucet and shove my hands under the stream of hot water, sighing as my icy fingers begin to thaw. Being cold is a small price to pay for looking up and seeing actual sky instead of cracked plaster, but even I have to admit it’s been miserable out. It’s always cold here, but the past two months have been worse than ever, with blizzards blowing in every other day and wind cutting through your skin like a knife. Like most of the girls at Brunesfield, I’m from New York City—Brooklyn, to be exact. I hadn’t realized the northern part of the state would be freezing all the time.

  “Come on.” Cara nudges me with her arm. “I’m hungry.”

  I turn the faucet off with my elbow and dry my hands on a rag hanging from the fridge door. Cara, Issie, and I are kitchen staff, which probably sounds strange given what we’re in for. You wouldn’t think they’d let the violent offenders near hot stoves and knives, but it makes sense, kind of, if you know how things run inside. See, we’ve all been here longer than any other girl in Brunesfield. We know the rules better than the runaways who were admitted last week, and we’re less likely to do something crazy, like the heroin addicts still going through withdrawal. Most of the guards figure that if Cara, Issie, or I were going to start something, we’d have done it a long time ago.

  It’s lasagna night, so we pull three slabs of preprepared noodles and meat out of the fridge. Gas hisses inside the oven, quickly heating the long, narrow room. A thin line of sweat gathers on the back of my neck as we get to work. The kitchen is always about ninety degrees, and a thin layer of grease covers everything from the black-and-white tile floor to the top of the freezer.

  The temperature inside Brunesfield has never made any sense. Some rooms stay boiling hot year-round while others get so cold I swear my toes turn to ice. It drives the guards crazy. The law says they have to keep the building above and below certain temperatures, so they’re always cranking the rumbling, spitting radiators up to high or hauling industrial-size fans into the hallways. It never does any good. Brunesfield sets its own temperatur
e.

  I peel off my sweatshirt and toss it on the counter. Cara hums under her breath; if you didn’t know her you might actually think she was a pleasant person. The heavy scent of meat and cheese fills the air around us. It’s almost cozy.

  “Who do you think the new girl is?” Issie asks, tugging the tinfoil off a can of tomato sauce. Cara’s humming falters.

  “We’ll find out at dinner,” I say, dumping a bag of carrots on the cutting board. I can’t think about that little girl without seeing her dark eyes and hearing her chains scrape along the concrete driveway. Cold fingers walk up my back. Brunesfield is a top-security detention center, but I’ve never seen anyone else wearing shackles.

  I walk back over to the double doors, pushing the strange girl out of my mind. “Knife,” I call to the guards. Stanley or Sterling comes in, removing a thick key ring from her belt. She unlocks a metal cabinet in the corner of the room and hands me a paring knife. She hovers in the corner, watching me force the knife through the skinniest carrots I can find. The blade’s practically dull, and my arms burn as I chop.

  Cara clears her throat. “Did you bring the letter, Ang?” she asks.

  I slip Charlie’s letter out of my back pocket. He’s drawn snowflakes along the edges of the paper. The thick, clumsy lines make my chest go tight.

  “Here,” I say, handing it to Cara. She hops onto the counter next to my cutting board and unfolds it, taking care not to rip the creases. She pulls off her orange ski cap, and more hair than you could possibly imagine frizzes around her face in a curly brown halo.

  “Dear Angela,” she reads. “Hi, how are you? I am fine. It’s almost Thanksgiving but it hasn’t snowed yet so instead of sledding I play Call of Duty. Is it still snowing where you are?”

  “Yes it is, Charlie boy,” Issie interrupts, snatching a piece of carrot from my cutting board. I glance at the guard, but she’s watching me, not Issie. Her beady Cabbage Patch eyes follow every movement I make with my flimsy knife. I swallow and try to ignore her. I still haven’t really gotten used to being watched all the time.

  “Did he ever tell you whether he got that hockey stick?” Cara asks, looking up from the letter. Cara’s the one who figured out I have dyslexia. I’d never even heard of dyslexia before, but she said she knew a couple of kids with it at her old high school. She’s been reading Charlie’s letters out loud to me for so long that she and Issie talk about him like he’s their little brother too. It’s nice. It’s been a while since I’ve seen Charlie, and he’s starting to feel more like a character from a book than my actual brother.

  “He hasn’t sent anything new since before Christmas,” I say. Issie hauls a giant sauce pot into the sink and turns on the tap. Most of “hats” has rubbed off her fingers. Now it reads “ha.”

  “Your release is only three months away,” Issie says, her back to me. “You’ll ask him then.”

  I look down at the cutting board, gritting my teeth as I saw through another carrot. Twelve more weeks. That still seems insane. I’ve been in Brunesfield for a year and a half now. I spent my sixteenth and seventeenth birthdays here. I even got my GED inside. It took me three tries, but I got it.

  But at the end of March, I’ll be out. I’ll be able to use the bathroom without asking permission, and shower all by myself. I won’t have to face another boring day where every hour of my life is planned. Eight o’clock: breakfast. Nine o’clock: chores. Ten o’clock: morning classes. In three months, I’ll be able to spend all day outside if I want to, just staring up at the clouds.

  Cara flips Charlie’s letter over, like she’s hoping there’s something on the back we’ve missed. Her family never writes, and Issie’s letters are always in Spanish. Charlie’s are the only ones we all share.

  The oven timer goes off. Issie grabs a pot holder and removes a pan of bubbling lasagna while Cara finishes rereading stories of how Charlie got grounded for accidentally kicking the DVD player, and about the girl in his class who keeps throwing balled-up pieces of paper at his head. (“Ooh!” Issie squeals. “That means she likes him.”) I dump the freshly chopped carrots into a pot of water to cook, then lean past Cara and snag a piece of cheese off the lasagna.

  “Angela Davis,” someone barks from behind me. Officer Brody steps into the kitchen, letting the double doors slam behind him. “Did I just catch you stealing food?”

  Brody narrows his watery eyes. He reminds me of one of those ugly little pug dogs. His eyes sit too far apart, and his nose turns up at the end, like he’s making a face. Only he always looks like that.

  I called him Officer Grody my first week here. Not my best pun, I admit, but I’d try to look all innocent and say it really fast, so he’d think he heard me wrong. But then the other girls started doing it too, and they weren’t as subtle. Somehow, word got back that I’d started the whole thing and Brody’s had it out for me ever since.

  I swallow, and cheese burns the back of my throat. “No, sir,” I say.

  “That’s a demerit right there. You think I’m stupid, Davis?” Brody asks. I’m smart enough not to answer that but dear God how I want to.

  Brody leans against the counter next to me, his eyes traveling down Cara’s body.

  “Need you to make a tray,” he says, adjusting his belt.

  “Why?” Cara asks. Only girls in Segregation get dinner trays, and we make those before going outside for rec. There are always three or four girls assigned to take the trays down, and they make this big show of trading good-luck charms and throwing salt over their shoulders before they head out. It’s dumb. But I get it. If anywhere in Brunesfield is haunted, it’s the Seg Block. Not that any of us would say that out loud.

  “We have a new girl in Seg.” Brody spits on the floor, then rubs it into the tile with the toe of his boot. “Or were you the only three who didn’t notice?”

  “The little girl?” I can’t keep the disbelief from my voice. Only the craziest, most violent inmates go to Segregation. We’re talking girls who really should be in mental facilities, only they get sent here because their families are either too poor or too stupid to hire a good lawyer. Most of them can’t sit next to you for a second without pulling out your hair or jabbing you in the eye with their fingers. They’re too dangerous to be around the rest of us so they get locked up alone, which only makes them worse. The worst punishment Brunesfield can come up with is sending you down there with them.

  “You’re joking,” I say.

  Brody removes an aluminum tray from the stack in the corner and tosses it onto the counter next to me. “Why don’t you see for yourself?” he says.

  I’ve been to the Seg Block before. I was on tray duty last fall, before Issie and I got assigned to the kitchen. For a week, it was my job to carry the food to the guard (Crabby Crane, at the time). We’d load the trays onto a rolling cart, and Crane would follow me down the hall as I slid the food through the slots in each door. Crane kept a hand on her nightstick the entire time, and her shoulders wouldn’t loosen until we stepped back into the main hall. And Crane’s not afraid of anything.

  I think of this as I climb down the narrow stairwell, listening to Brody’s boots echo off the concrete walls behind me. When you aren’t actually there, it’s hard to remember why the Seg Block is so creepy. They’re small things. Sounds don’t behave like you expect them to. Light never seems to reach the corners where light is supposed to reach. You’ll hear something skitter across the floor, but when you turn to look, you only see shadows and cobwebs.

  Officer Mateo is bent over a crossword puzzle at the door to the Segregation Block. He looks up at the sound of Brody’s boots, and a smile crosses his face so suddenly that it takes me by surprise. No one smiles in Brunesfield. Especially not guards. Especially not down here.

  “Something wrong?” Mateo asks. Brody loops his thumbs through his belt.

  “Miss Davis was getting mouthy back in the kitchen,” Brody says, nodding at me. “Thought a walk down the Segregation Block would help adjust her attitud
e.”

  “Is that right?” Mateo has the kind of smile you could only describe as lazy. It lounges across his face, reminding me of summer and hammocks and sun-drenched days at the beach. He glances at me, and for a second I’m convinced that he doesn’t believe a word Brody said. But that’s impossible. Guards always take one another’s side. Always.

  Mateo jabs a button with his thumb, and a buzzer blares down the hall. The security door shudders aside. The smell of urine wafts out from the hall, and I wrinkle my nose. Brody steps into the Seg Block and leans against the cinder-block wall. He crosses his arms over his chest.

  “She’s in the last cell on the left,” he says. I glance down the long, empty hall and feel my first flicker of fear.

  “You aren’t coming?” I ask.

  Brody cocks an eyebrow.

  “Right,” I say. I’ve heard rumors that Brody’s too scared to walk down the hall himself, so he always sends one of us alone. I straighten my shoulders. It’s just like any other hall, I tell myself as I walk. The girls down here may seem scary, but there are people who think I’m pretty scary too. They can’t be much worse.

  Narrow rectangular windows sit inches below the ceiling, each allowing only a sliver of gray light into the hall. Walls the color of Pepto-Bismol stretch out before me, separating cagelike dorms. The Seg Block dorms remind me of the reptile exhibit at the Bronx Zoo. The front walls are made entirely of thick glass, so you can see what’s happening inside. The doors are off to one side, thick glass surrounded by a sturdy metal frame. I shuffle forward, tightening my grip on the tray of food. The urine smell grows stronger. Sweat gathers between my fingers even though it’s so cold I can practically see my own breath. A radiator hisses uselessly at the end of the hall.