“No.” Her voice was firm. She stared at me for a long time, not saying anything. I didn’t know what she was thinking, but her eyes bore into me, and I couldn’t read the emotion on her face.
“What is it?” I insisted. “What’s stopping us?”
A tear boiled up in Becky’s eye, but it didn’t drop. She spoke barely above a whisper, and she had turned her face away from the cameras. “I don’t know. Something. Back in the spring four Society kids tried to escape. They were working together, on guard duty. They didn’t make it.”
“What stopped them?”
She wiped her eye with the back of her thumb and then turned away. “Let me take you to the infirmary,” she finally said. She tapped the computer screen with her fingernail. “According to the schedule, Anna is on call.”
Becky stood and opened the door. She was all Society. When logic and reason conflicted with obedience, she just ignored them.
I followed her down the hallway. She passed the basement stairs without a look. I’d thought that was the way to the infirmary.
“I think you’ll like Anna,” Becky said. “She’s from Pennsylvania, too. Maybe you guys know some of the same people?”
Yeah. Because it’s really small.
She turned a corner and opened a small door. It was another set of stairs, old and narrow. She held the door for me as I went in, and then let it close behind her. As soon as it shut she put her hand on my arm.
“There are no cameras in here,” she whispered.
I waited for her to continue—she wanted to say something, but looked scared.
“What?”
“I—I just wish you would stop,” she said. “I don’t know a lot of what goes on here. But there are two things that I wish you’d understand.”
She took a deep breath. “First, detention is death. We don’t know much about it. There’s a room downstairs for detention. You get put in the room for the night. In the morning, no one is left in there.”
I cut her off. “Then how do you know they kill you? What if it’s like the closets in the dorms—like they’re secret elevators or something.”
Becky was trembling now, and she folded her arms to stop from shaking. “I haven’t ever seen it. But there’s blood sometimes.” Her voice was wavering. “On the floor.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but couldn’t. She was watching my eyes.
“What’s the other thing?” I finally said.
Becky shook her head, like she was trying to clear a thought. “No one ever escapes. People make it over the wall sometimes—the security guys have seen people do it. But they’re still caught. Like the ones I told you about. I don’t think we’re the only ones who guard the wall.” She stared into my eyes. “That’s why I’m Society. I want to stop people from going to detention and from trying to escape. This place isn’t so bad. Why risk…” Her voice trailed off.
“What?”
“No,” she said, stopping me with her hand. “That’s enough. The cameras will notice if we’re in here too long.” She pushed past me and hurried down the stairs.
“We’ll have to get out of here eventually,” I said, calling after her. “We’re not going to live the rest of our lives in this school.”
She refused to turn and look at me. As she reached the bottom of the stairs she threw the door open, seeming almost relieved to be back with the cameras. I had to jog to catch up with her as she sped to the infirmary.
“Here we are,” she said, her voice cheerful but her eyes not yet recovered.
“Becky,” I began, but she put her finger to her lips.
“I have to get ready for class,” she said. She turned to the girl sitting behind the infirmary desk. “Anna, this is Benson.” Before I could say anything else, Becky was out the door.
Anna didn’t even bother inspecting the welts. She hardly even glanced up—just pointed to a basket of individual packets of medicine on the desk. She said she always had a constant stream of bruises and aches on the day after paintball.
I took the pills and swallowed them with water from the infirmary drinking fountain. When I stepped back into the narrow basement hallway, Becky was nowhere to be found.
Returning to the old stairway, I plodded up the rough cement steps, taking a tiny amount of pleasure in knowing I was out of the school’s sight for a few minutes. When I reached the door I paused, not wanting to go back out in front of the cameras.
I was wrong when I talked to Becky. It wasn’t seventy-four anymore. It was seventy-two.
I walked slowly back up to class on the third floor. At least it wasn’t going to be as hard to stay awake this time; I had something to think about. Why kill people in detention? It wasn’t as a warning to others—if that was the goal then wouldn’t they display the bodies? Wouldn’t they call it something other than detention?
Or maybe the school liked that it was all rumor and hushed conversations. Maybe that kept people more scared than a dead body ever would. A dead body might make people mad, make them rebel.
Back in Pittsburgh I’d always been around gangs. Real gangs, not these cocky wannabes. There was always fighting, always violence. But it wasn’t until a kid got shot in the grocery store parking lot on a Saturday afternoon that the community really rallied. People had been dying for years, but it was always in alleys and back lots, in the middle of the night. When people actually saw it with their own eyes, that’s what made them want to stop it.
Maxfield Academy wanted us to be afraid. They didn’t want us to ever know why we were here.
I’m going to find out.
I was almost to the classroom door when I heard my name.
“Benson!”
I turned just in time to see Jane inches away. She threw her arms around me.
“Oh my gosh,” she said. “Are you okay?”
Confused, I hugged her back. I didn’t want to tell her that the only thing causing me pain right now was her squeezing my bruises.
“I’m fine.”
She pulled back and looked into my face. She was smiling, but her eyes were red like she’d been crying. “I heard what happened. What were you doing out of your room?”
“Just looking around,” I said.
It took a minute for me to realize we were standing in the middle of the hall holding each other, and I quickly let go of her.
“Don’t do that again,” she said, shaking her head and laughing nervously. Her voice hushed. “What if Isaiah caught you?”
We turned toward the classroom door.
“There’s nothing in the rules about being out at night,” I said.
“Unless he thinks you’re trying to escape.”
I nodded. She grabbed my arm and gave it a squeeze. “Just be careful, okay?”
“Okay.”
Laura was teaching again, smiling as brightly as she had before, but she never made eye contact with me. We halfheartedly discussed the aesthetics textbook that we were supposed to have read, although no one—not even the Society kids—really got into it. I hadn’t even thought about the book since I’d gotten it.
As the bell rang for lunch, Laura read a note from her computer.
“We have an announcement from the school,” she said happily. “There is going to be a dance in ten days. As contracts will be renewed next week and points awarded, please note that dance attire is available for purchase. You will also be able to purchase music that you wish to have played during the dance. Whoever gets the janitorial contract this month will be responsible for setup and decoration.”
Lily slumped in her seat. “That’s more work for the V’s.”
“The contracts are being changed?” I asked.
“They’re being renewed,” Jane corrected, turning back to look at me. “Nobody negotiates anymore. We have a truce.”
I nodded, listening to the rest of the room chatter about the dance. After my conversation with Becky, this all felt so wrong. I understood what she had meant—that it was safer to follow the rules—but could I really go to a dance knowing what I did about the school? That the same people who were letting us buy tuxes and music were also murdering kids in the basement?