Dylan tried to take my hands, but I fought him and after a moment he backed up. I saw him draw something from his belt, but he was obscuring it in his hand. Pepper spray?
“Resisting security,” Laura continued, her face red and wild, “is also punishable.”
“What is wrong with you people?” I said, fighting for air to speak.
“We follow the rules, Benson,” Laura said.
“Don’t you want to get out of here?” I gasped. “We—us four—could knock down a tree and be gone.”
“That is not true,” she said. “Now, Dylan.”
Dylan took another step forward, and this time the other boy stepped around behind me. Dylan raised the canister in his hand.
Another voice rang out. “Stop.”
Dylan’s head shot up.
“He was trying to escape,” Laura declared indignantly.
I rolled over again, rocks cutting into my sides. Five others were standing in the woods. Curtis, Mason, Jane, Lily, and Carrie.
“He wasn’t trying to escape,” Curtis said. “He was going for a jog to try to keep warm.” His dirty face was red and tired, and he was panting heavily.
Dylan let out a loud mocking snort, and Laura spoke. “He tried to jump from this tree. He was trying to get over this wall.”
Curtis motioned for Mason, who hurried over to me and helped me up. Dylan and the other Society boy seemed unsure of what to do. They wanted to fight—I was sure of that—but they were outnumbered.
“Benson was jogging,” Curtis repeated.
“He was going to meet me out here,” Jane said. “We’d arranged it. He was in the tree watching for me.”
I put my arm around Mason’s shoulder and hobbled slowly back to where the V’s stood.
“The fact is,” Curtis said, “that’s what we’re going to say when we appeal his detention. And you know the rulebook, Laura—what’s the punishment for making a false accusation for detention?”
“He was trying to escape,” Laura said. Her voice was shrill and furious. “Everyone here knows that.”
Curtis walked toward Laura and lowered his voice, so quiet I could barely hear him. “And everyone here also knows what detention means. Do you really want that?”
Laura’s eyes looked black in the dim light. She was clutching the metal baton tightly with both hands. “If we let him break the rules then everyone here is in danger. Do you want to go back to the way things were before the truce?”
“So you’ll kill him to keep the peace?” Curtis asked. He turned and walked back toward the V’s. Laura was still fuming, but there was nothing that she could do. There were three of them and six of us. Even with the pepper spray and baton, the odds were on our side.
We hiked in silence for several minutes, picking our way through the uneven forest floor in the quickly dimming light. I hurt all over, but I tried to not let it show.
Curtis moved next to me. Keeping his gaze straight ahead, watching the forest, he whispered, “That’s the last time. Don’t do something stupid like that again.”
I didn’t reply.
I knew things now. I knew how Society security guards were armed, and I knew how fast they could respond. The next escape would work.
Chapter Seven
The doors never did unlock that night. We slept outside.
It had been an experiment, just like Mason had said. While I was at the wall, ten sleeping bags had dropped out of the windows of the school. Someone had been in there—must have come up through an elevator, like our clothes did—but no one saw anyone. Just the sleeping bags. Ten of them for more than seventy people.
And, since Curtis had been in the forest with me, the V’s didn’t end up with any of the bags. In fact, the Society claimed them all, and for whatever reason, Havoc didn’t fight them on it. Instead, they tried to cram their whole gang into the two small groundskeeping sheds.
The V’s climbed down into one of the deep window wells on the side of the building—deep, broad holes that gave light to the large basement windows. It was fifteen feet wide and maybe eight feet down; we needed help getting in and out. Someone jokingly suggested that we just break the window, but no one looked like they were seriously considering it. I wasn’t sure what they were afraid of. Damaging property wasn’t one of the Big Four rules, and the punishment couldn’t have been worse than sleeping outside all night.
I didn’t know where the Society decided to gather. Once we were down in the window well I couldn’t see anything. The four-wheeler engines didn’t stop running all night, though, and before we all had climbed down I’d seen Isaiah arguing with Curtis about something. I’m sure it was me.
None of the V’s said anything about my escape attempt. They all had to know—they saw us come out of the forest, and they saw my bloodied knees and scraped arms and elbows. Maybe escaping was something that all the students tried when they first got here. Even Becky and Isaiah—maybe even Laura. Maybe their devotion to the rules and the Society was something that came from months and years of failing to escape.
I looked down the row at the other V’s. Curtis and Carrie were awake, softly talking, though Curtis’s eyelids were drooping low. Mason was asleep, his head hanging forward, chin against his chest. Lily was next to him, snoring just loudly enough that I could hear it a few feet away. Jane was beside me, eyes closed. I could feel her body move with each slow breath.
There were hundreds of stars in the rectangle of sky above us. Thousands maybe. I stared at them. I’d always heard about stars like this. I heard that you could see lots of them once you got out of the city, more than just the few dozen brightest ones that could break through the city lights. It seemed like I’d maybe seen a view like this once or twice, though I couldn’t really remember where. Maybe it was just on TV.
As I looked upward I felt a surprising thrill of freedom. I could see so many things in the sky that I never got to see back home—things I’d only heard about. If I got out of that well and got a better look I could probably see the Milky Way. Maybe a planet or two.
“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”
Jane’s voice was soft, barely a whisper.
“Yeah.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Sore. Do you think I’ll get detention?”
She took her eyes off the sky for a moment and looked at me. “I don’t know. It depends on whether the school believes Laura and Dylan.”
I wanted to turn to her, but we were so close together that our noses would probably touch, so I kept my face toward the sky. I also wanted to ask her more questions. How had others gotten over the wall? Did they plan ahead? Take supplies? But I felt guilty. Jane and the others had come into the forest to rescue me. I didn’t know if that was a risk—maybe they’d get punished for it. To ask more questions about escape didn’t seem the best way to thank her.
“It’s cold,” she said. She reached out her hands and flexed her fingers open and closed a few times, and then folded her arms again.
“We could start a fire. Would that be against the rules?”
She smiled. “We don’t have any matches.”
“We don’t need them,” I said.
Jane raised an eyebrow skeptically. “You were a Boy Scout?”
“No,” I said with a little laugh. “But I’ve seen lots of movies.”
“There are movies that teach you how to start fires?”
“Sure. Didn’t you ever see Cast Away?”
Jane shook her head.
“Never? What about the Discovery Channel—Man Vs. Wild, or Survivorman? Heck, I think they even had to make fire on Lost.”
“I don’t think I’ve seen any of those.”
“What?”
“I’ve been in here for two and a half years.”
“Those are all older than two and a half years. Cast Away is way older.”
Jane shrugged and, much to my surprise, rested her head on my shoulder. Her hair smelled good—a little like honey. I thought maybe she wanted me to put my arm around her, but I didn’t.