Burning Read online

  “Yeah,” Mateo says. He kneels in front of her door and pulls something from his pocket: a crumpled, half-full bag of M&M’S. He pours a few onto her food tray and lifts the flap.

  “Before you ask, this is also against the rules,” he says. “But the sugar helps her stay calm.”

  Bea shoves all the candy into her mouth at once and appears to swallow it whole. She keeps her cloudy eyes trained on me and strokes the glass door like it’s a cat.

  “Do you want to know the rest of their names?” Mateo asks, nodding down the hall.

  “You know them?”

  “Yeah,” Mateo says. “I made myself learn when I first started. If you don’t know their names it gets too easy to think they’re just these crazy, scary people.”

  My cheeks flush. That’s exactly how I’d been thinking of them. I clear my throat. “Um, sure. Tell me their names.”

  Behind us, Bea starts singing a slow, lilting song and tracing her finger along the glass. Mateo follows a few steps behind as I push my mop down the hall. He stops in front of every dorm and formally introduces me. Angela, meet Katie. Angela, meet Lauren. They all have such normal, girlie names. Sarah and Emily and Claire. They’re the names of girls who get asked to dances and apply to college. It doesn’t seem fair that they ended up here.

  “Are they dangerous?” I ask. We’ve somehow reached the second-to-last dorm. The one right next to Jessica’s. I glance down the hallway behind me, wondering how we reached the end so quickly. It seems like there are hundreds of dorms behind us. We couldn’t have stopped at every one.

  “Yeah,” Mateo says, crumpling the now empty M&M’S bag in his fist. “Some of them are very dangerous. We’re the only center in the county that has the budget for counseling, so we get all the girls who need psychiatric care.”

  I dunk my mop in the bucket, trying to ignore the pain still burning my fingers. Something flickers at the corner of my eye. I turn, and—bang!

  The girl in the dorm next to me throws herself at the glass wall. “Boo!” she shouts.

  I lurch backward. My knee buckles. I try to put my hands out to catch my fall, but I’m not fast enough. My elbows slam into the concrete and pain shoots up my arms. Black spots cloud my vision.

  I blink a couple of times, and when the black clears, I see Jessica huddled in a ball on her mattress in the cell in front of me. She uncurls her arms and stands.

  She looks so normal now. No black eyes, no humming and shaking. She’s separated her thick black hair into two braids, but she must not have a ponytail holder to tie off the ends, because they stick out from her head at odd angles, making her look like she has antennae.

  She touches the glass door with her fingertips. “Are you okay?” she whispers.

  Emotion ripples through me. Fear first, then curiosity. Pity. Without thinking, I lift my arm and stretch my fingers toward the glass. Jessica’s eyes crinkle at the corners, like she might smile—

  Then Mateo wraps his arms around my torso and drags me across the floor until I’m no longer in Jessica’s line of vision. I try to pull my feet beneath me so I can stand, but this throws us both off and we fall backward together, landing in a puddle of soapy water.

  “What the hell?” I’m lying against Mateo’s chest, so close that I feel his heart beating against me. I quickly push myself away from him, cringing at the water seeping through the seat of my pants.

  Mateo clears his throat and pushes himself back to his feet. “Sorry,” he says. His cheeks burn red. “God, I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

  “Peachy,” I say. Mateo looks like he’s about to offer his hand to help me up, but then his blush deepens and he pretends he was just brushing something off his pants. He averts his eyes as I stand. I glance down at myself.

  Water plasters my thin cotton scrubs to my skin, highlighting every—and I do mean every—curve of my fairly curvy body. I groan and try to pull the cloth away from my skin.

  This. Is just. Great.

  “You’re okay, right?” Mateo asks. “I didn’t hurt you or anything?”

  “No,” I say, glancing up at him. He’s blushing so hard that the tips of his ears are red and he appears very interested in a speck of dust on his shoe. “So, what was that about?”

  “I’m sorry,” he says again. “I overreacted. It’s just that some strange things have been happening around that girl’s cell.”

  My fingers sting when I remember my burn. “What kind of strange?”

  “Let’s just say that you weren’t the first person to run screaming down the hall after coming here.”

  He glances up at me, then immediately looks at the floor. “You, um, should probably go get changed,” he says. “I’ll call Crane to walk you back to your dorm.”

  He clears his throat and makes his way down the hall to the metal stool sitting near the security door. I follow, but I can’t help casting one last glance at Jessica’s cell.

  She’s pressed against the glass door. Watching us.

  Chapter Five

  I head to the library during free period that afternoon. My morning in the Seg Block has put me in a strange, jittery mood. I take the steps to the basement two at a time, going so fast that I don’t notice Officer Sterling standing around the corner. Her entire body tenses when she sees me coming.

  “Davis, walk,” she barks, and I skid to a stop. She grips the nightstick at her belt so tightly her knuckles turn white. The mole stares out at me from her forehead.

  “Jeez, sorry,” I mutter. Sometimes I forget how freaked we make all the new guards. It’s like they think one of us is going to start a riot or burn the place down.

  Officer Sterling loosens her grip on the nightstick. “That’s a demerit. I see you running again and you’re getting a visit to Wu’s office,” she says.

  “For running?” I try and fail to keep the shock from my voice. I thought Brody was being an asshole for dragging me into Wu’s office after the thing with the tray, but this is insane. “No one gets a demerit for running.”

  Officer Sterling straightens her new uniform. “Things change,” she says.

  “Apparently,” I add. Then, just to be obnoxious, I walk to the end of the hall so slowly my muscles burn.

  I nod at Issie when I round the corner to the pay phone. A line of annoyed girls twists down the hall behind her. Aaliyah releases an exaggerated sigh and pretends to study her cuticles. Peach shoots a green rubber bracelet at her back.

  “Hey, Angela.” Issie tucks the receiver beneath her chin. Aaliyah gives her a dirty look. “You say hi to my boyfriend this morning?”

  “Oh yeah,” I say. “We talked about you the whole time.”

  “Hurry up, bitch!” Peach yells. Issie flips her off over her shoulder. An angry-sounding voice echoes from the receiver.

  “Un momento, Mamá!” Issie says into the phone. I start down the hall, but Issie grabs my arm. “Where you going?”

  “Library.”

  “Issie, come on,” Aaliyah says.

  Issie rolls her eyes. “Chill, girl. You don’t have nowhere to be.”

  “Catch you later, Is,” I say. Aaliyah shouts something in Spanish and she and Issie start arguing. I hurry down the stairs to the library before it gets out of hand. I can’t afford to get in another fight.

  Calling the dank basement room a library is borderline delusional. Air ducts twist across the walls, and pipes hiss in the corners. The ceiling’s collapsing. There are areas where it droops so low that I have to crouch to keep from smacking my head against moldy plaster. And then there’s the heat. The radiator down here hasn’t worked in years, but the temperature still manages to creep past eighty-five degrees. Two industrial fans whir in the corners, making the books’ pages flutter.

  Ellen crouches over the rickety desk in the corner, cooing at something in the top drawer. I cringe, trying not to think about the mouse’s tiny pink hands and twitchy nose.

  “Hey,” I call. Ellen’s head snaps up. She slams the drawer shut.

 
; “Oh. Hi, Angie. You checking something out?”

  “Maybe.” Metal carts stacked high with books line the room. I run my hands over their broken spines as I walk past. Cara used to read them out loud to me, but her throat gets scratchy when she talks for too long, so she doesn’t offer anymore. I tried reading one myself. I only got twenty pages in before I threw it across the room in frustration.

  “Anything new this week?” I ask. We sometimes get donations from church groups and thrift stores, but Ellen’s not always good about unloading the boxes right away.

  She shakes her head. “Not since before Christmas. Hey, Carla said you’re cleaning the Seg Block. That true?”

  I don’t think I know who Carla is, but Ellen’s in for destruction of property, so Carla’s probably another vandalism freak. I try to picture her, but I can’t. I don’t even know if she’s black or white. “Just for a week,” I say.

  Ellen shudders. “That place is creepy. They make me take the library cart through once a month, and I swear the shadows whisper to me.” Her eyes widen and she nods solemnly, like we’re sharing a secret.

  “It’s probably one of the Seg girls,” I say. “They say things when you walk past their rooms.”

  “No.” Ellen shakes her head. “It’s the shadows.”

  I offer a weak smile. Something squeaks inside the desk. Ellen flinches and turns her attention back to her mouse. I think of what Mateo said, about how we’re the only center in the area with money for counseling.

  Clearly we need more.

  I make my way to the folding table in the back of the room, where we keep all six audiobooks that the library owns. A girl huddles in the corner behind the table, giving herself a homemade tattoo with a ballpoint pen. Blood winds around her wrist, and stringy hair hangs over her forehead, hiding her face.

  She looks up when I approach. “Badass, right?” she says, showing me her arm. It says “satin” across her wrist in crooked blue letters. The skin below is red and inflamed.

  “Looks infected,” I say. “And you spell ‘Satan’ with two a’s.” I’m dyslexic and even I know that.

  “Fuck off,” the girl mutters, bending back over her arm. I cringe and turn around so I don’t have to watch.

  Sweat trickles down my back as I flip through the audiobooks. I’ve listened to them all at least five times, but a book I’ve heard before is still better than no book at all.

  “There you are,” someone calls from behind me. I turn as Cara gallops down the stairs. “Mail call!” she says, waving two envelopes.

  My heart flip-flops inside my chest. “Charlie?”

  “Yup.” Cara holds out a white envelope covered in Charlie’s familiar, clumsy handwriting. “And one from someone called Patricia Parks. Who’s that?”

  I freeze halfway through ripping open Charlie’s envelope. My mother’s handwriting stares up from the envelope clutched in Cara’s fingers. Patricia Parks.

  She was always Patricia to me. She never wanted to be called Mom, especially in public. I take the letter from Cara and shove it into the back pocket of my scrubs without looking at it. I already know what it’s going to say. Then, before Cara can ask about Patricia again, I tear Charlie’s envelope open and tug out the sheet of notebook paper inside. I unfold it, carefully.

  A silly drawing takes up most of the page. Charlie always illustrates his letters to me, knowing that the words can be hard for me to read. In this one, two stick-figure dinosaurs eat waffles in a diner. The smaller dinosaur (a stegosaurus with tiny triangles for scales) has ten candles in his waffle. His eyes are shut to make a wish, and Charlie drew wiggly breath lines coming out of his mouth to blow out the candles.

  I run a finger along Charlie’s messy waffle sketch and wait for the familiar prick in the corner of my eye. This was our birthday ritual. Every year, I’d wake Charlie up an hour before school and take him to get waffles at Neptune, the diner down the street. Last year was the first time I ever missed it. His birthday’s at the end of March, and I thought for sure I’d be out in time to take him—I promised I would be. But, once again, I messed up.

  If I were ever going to cry about anything it’d be this, but instead I just feel a kind of dull, familiar disgust with myself. After years of failing to live up to people’s expectations you get really used to the crushing guilt that comes with screwing up. Again. My little brother is the one person in my life who still believes me when I make a promise. Or, he used to be.

  “Did you want me to read it?” Cara asks. I move my eyes from Charlie’s sketch to the loopy, childish handwriting below.

  “Later,” I say. I fold the letter and shove it into my pocket with the envelope from my mother. Cara frowns, studying my face.

  “They’re delaying your release, aren’t they?” she says finally. “You aren’t getting out in March anymore.”

  I try to keep my voice casual. “Nothing’s final.”

  “All because of a stupid tray?”

  “All because of stupid Grody,” I say, but I don’t elaborate. Cara has a misguided sense of loyalty. It’d be just like her to start something with Brody as payback for what he’s doing to me.

  I clear my throat. “Did you find a book you want?”

  Cara had been shuffling through a rack of oversize nonfiction books. She holds up an ancient hardcover with a photograph of something large and hairy on the cover.

  “I don’t think I want to know what that is,” I say. I grab the first audiobook I can reach off the folding table—Tuck Everlasting, which I’ve heard eight times—and follow Cara to Ellen’s desk to log our books in the spiral-bound notebook she uses to keep track of who has what. A stack of glossy brochures sits next to the notebook. I pick one up, staring at the photograph of a teenage girl with a chemistry set.

  “Where’d these come from?” I ask, flipping the brochure over.

  “That doctor,” Ellen says. “The tall, pretty one.”

  “Dr. Gruen?”

  “Yeah. She’s really nice. She said I should go to veterinary school. And she gave me this.” Ellen flashes her wrist. She’s wearing a bright green rubber bracelet with the word “SciGirls” written across it.

  “What’s SciGirls?” Cara asks.

  “It’s a club where you do all these science experiments and things,” Ellen says. “Dr. Gruen’s here to recruit new members, but it’s really hard to get in. You have to take a test. I think there are more bracelets. Wait here.” Ellen scurries back to the storage room before Cara or I can stop her. Her desk drawer squeaks.

  “We’re leaving.” I grab Cara’s arm and steer her toward the door. Cara takes a brochure and shoves it into her book.

  “You want to join SciGirls?” I ask, raising an eyebrow.

  “I want to search their brochure for secret government messages,” Cara says, flipping her book open. “Did you know there was this creature thing living in the woods around upstate New York for a while and the government covered it up and—”

  Peach comes out of nowhere and throws her elbow into Cara’s gut. Cara doubles over, and her book hits the floor.

  “Told you to watch your back, bitch,” Peach snaps.

  I hurry to Cara’s side, glancing at the library door as I crouch next to her. Officer Sterling won’t be able to see inside from her place out in the hall, but she’ll definitely investigate if she hears yelling. She was going to send me to Director Wu’s for running. Who knows what’ll happen if I’m caught fighting?

  I look back at Peach, trying to find any sympathy in her angry, twisted face. “Not now,” I say.

  “Not now?” Peach says. “Funny, I don’t remember you asking me if it was a good time when you threw a basketball at my face.”

  “I threw the basketball at your face, bitch,” Cara says. She picks up her book and jumps to her feet. Peach pulls back her arm to slap her, but Cara’s faster. She whips the book across Peach’s face, and Peach staggers backward, gasping.

  One thing I’ll say about all those nutsy conspiracy
-theory books Cara reads—they’re heavy.

  Cara starts to swing the book again, but Peach spits in her face and Cara hesitates for a fraction of a second. Peach darts forward, raking her nails across Cara’s cheek. She leaves behind three thin red lines on Cara’s otherwise smooth brown skin.

  A low buzzing starts in the back of my head. I’m not the kind of girl who sits out from a fight, especially when my friends are involved. I act without thinking. I grab Peach by the shoulders and slam her against the wall like a rag doll. Peach is mean, but she’s skinny and she mostly fights like a little girl.

  “You want to take both of us on?” I grab her arm and curl my hand into a fist. I don’t fight like a little girl.

  Peach looks at my fist. To my surprise, she starts to giggle.

  “You want me to scream, Angie?” she says. Blood oozes out of the cut Cara made when she hit Peach with the book. A tiny trickle dribbles onto her lip.

  “What are you talking about?” My anger has started to cool, leaving me all too aware of what I’m doing. Peach stares at me, her eyes hard and cruel. I look at the door—still no Sterling. I could stop this right now. Just walk away. But Peach doesn’t look like she’s about to let up. And there’s no way I’m leaving Cara here alone.

  “You think I haven’t heard you all talking?” Peach says. “You can’t get into any more trouble, or you won’t get released when you’re supposed to.” She slides her eyes to the door, and her bloody grin widens. “I could start screaming right now. Get Sterling in here to see what’s going on. Is helping your little girlfriend really worth that?”

  “No one’s going to scream,” Cara says in a calm, even voice. Nerves crawl over my skin. I drop Peach’s arm and turn.

  Cara holds a tiny silver knife close to her body. It’s not something she fashioned out of a toothbrush—it’s an honest-to-god pocketknife, the blade glinting under the fluorescent lights. I stare at it for a beat, almost expecting it to fade away, like a hallucination. But it doesn’t go anywhere. It’s real.

  “What the hell?” I whisper. Possession of a weapon—any weapon—isn’t something they take lightly in here. Carrying a knife could get you sent to real prison.