I turned and had almost touched the doorknob when she spoke.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “About Jane. All of us in the Society aren’t like Laura and Dylan.”
A flare of anger sparked, but I tried to keep it down.
Without turning around, I nodded.
“Don’t…,” she began, but stopped. I waited, my hand tightly gripping the doorknob and squeezing it until my knuckles were white. She was still one of them. Anna had become a V. Others had joined Havoc. But Becky was still in the Society.
She stammered out her words. “I’m only trying to… I just… I just want everyone to be safe.”
“Okay.” I opened the door and left.
For the next few days I tried to find a way to talk to Rosa, but nothing presented itself. We’d stopped eating lunch on the bleachers—it was too cold—and lots of the girls retreated to the dorms to eat, rather than be in the cafeteria.
I was lonely.
Every day was getting worse. I’d spent my entire life without anyone I could talk to—that was normal. I was almost always in a foster home with six or seven other kids—all of whom were as screwed up as I was—and I never stayed longer than a few months. By the time I was twelve or thirteen I’d stopped unpacking my bag altogether. I was never part of a team, never in a study group or a clique. I was always the new guy.
But at Maxfield I’d had friends. I’d had people who talked to me. Jane was a weird case—she’d never actually been my girlfriend, and I’d only known her for a few weeks, but we were definitely friends. We talked all the time. And now she was gone.
She was never real. I don’t know why I had so much trouble remembering that.
My other friends seemed to be drying up, too. The same distrust that was ruining things with Mason had wrecked my friendships with the rest of the V’s. I was just there, in the background.
I missed people. I missed Jane. I missed Mason and Lily. I missed being able to sit in a group and think they were my friends. Now, every time I was in a class or the dorms or the cafeteria I was looking around at the faces. Was that leg movement mechanical? Do people really blink like that? Is she breathing?
I’d spent my whole life alone, but I’d never felt as alone as I did now.
I finally had my chance to seek out Rosa. As we filed out of the classroom, the TV screen in the hallway was running announcements—contracts were going to be renewed that night, so everyone would have the afternoon to finish job responsibilities. When the V’s met, I was once again assigned to garbage duty, but I kept listening when Curtis doled out the assignments. Rosa was sent up to the third floor to fix a broken radiator.
I kept to my routine, starting with the dorms on the fourth floor, with plans to work my way down to the classroom where she was. I wanted it to look normal, not like I was stalking her. As I picked up each garbage bag, I planned what I’d say to her when I got down there.
Unfortunately, Isaiah was in the dorms, too, and as I passed his door he came out to talk.
“Benson,” he said. “Question.”
“What?” I didn’t look back at him but continued with my job, opening each door and taking the trash.
“I heard that you and Mason went to the wall.”
“We did indeed,” I said, dumping a basket into my large can.
“That’s against the rules.”
I glanced at him for a moment and then looked back at my work. “It is not against the rules, actually. I would think that you of all people would know what the rules are.”
“True,” he said. “Going to the wall is not against the rules. Attempting to escape is against the rules, however. And, as you know, the V’s lost the last paintball match and have increased punishments.”
I feigned innocence. “Did I attempt to escape?”
“I think you are, even this very minute. Planning is part of the attempt.”
I pushed the can down the hall to another door. “Then you’d better lock up half the school.” The painful part was that it wasn’t true. Isaiah knew as well as I did that hardly anyone was seriously trying to get out.
“So you admit it?”
I opened the next door and stepped inside. Isaiah had to be a robot. He was too strict, too obedient. Was anyone actually like this?
When I reemerged from the room I was looking at him, and he stared back at me. “What if I were to tell you,” I said, dumping the basket, “that Jane was an android?”
Without waiting for his response I went back into the room and set the basket down. I wasn’t worried. If he was an android, part of the school experiment, then he’d already be aware that I knew about Jane. If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t believe me anyway.
“What?” he said as I reappeared.
“She was an android,” I said. “A robot. C-3PO.”
He stared at me. I took another basket and then another.
“There’s no insanity defense here,” he finally said. “You can’t wear a dress and get sent home for being crazy.”
“Okay,” I said. “But if you ever want to talk about it, you come see me.”
I opened another door and stepped inside to get the basket.
“I don’t think you know what you’re dealing with here,” Isaiah said, still standing in the hall by the large trash can.
I came out of the room and rammed my finger into his chest. “I’m the only one in the whole damn place who knows what he’s dealing with.” I tossed the garbage in the bin and then yanked it down to the next room. The last thing I needed right now was to deal with Isaiah and his self-righteous Society. It wasn’t about keeping anyone safe—it was about keeping himself safe. He did what the school wanted so that he’d be fine, not so that other people would be. I picked up a few wadded papers off the floor and stuffed them into the small can before heading back to the hall.
Two other guys were with Isaiah now. I quickly dropped the trash in the large can and went back into the room, trying to think of something to do—some way to get past them or talk my way out of this—but it was too late. They’d followed me in.
“This is what the Society is all about, huh?” I said, as the two thugs walked toward me.
I took a swing at one, missing, and then tried to run past them. But there was no way. In an instant I was on the floor. My good arm was being twisted behind my back and someone’s knee was pressing down on my spine. The more I struggled, the more pain shot through my body.
Isaiah calmly knelt down beside me. I tried to swing at him with my bad arm but the angle prevented anything more than a weak swat.
“If you want to escape,” he whispered, his lips almost touching my ear, “then do it and die already. I keep this school healthy, and you’re a cancer. Jane was a cancer, too. And Lily. Two down, one to go.”
I threw my head against his, but didn’t have enough power behind it to hurt him and the pain in my own head flared. I struggled against the two on top of me, but it was useless.
Isaiah stood, and in a moment he calmly ordered the two thugs to do the same. “Let him up.”
“The cameras saw all of this,” I said, trying not to show how much pain I was in. “You’ll be punished.”
He smirked and moved close to me, his face only inches from mine. His voice was barely a whisper, not loud enough for his guards to hear. “This school has four rules and one punishment—detention. All other rules and all other punishments are dispensed by the Society. The school has learned it can trust us.”
“What?”
“You can try to tell the others,” he said, “but they won’t believe you. Very few in the Society know.”
I was stunned. When I could finally find strength to say something I murmured, “I bet the school loves you.” I looked at the guards. “Did you guys know he’s the one who makes up the punishments?”
His goons’ faces didn’t change at all.
Isaiah walked toward the door.
“The school can still love you, too. Or it can hate you.”
And with that, he was gone.
I ignored the rest of the garbage on the fourth floor and headed down to the third. I didn’t know what to ask Rosa, if I should ask her anything at all. Maybe I should just forget about trying to find out who was an android. No one would believe me. No one else was trying to get away. Everyone seemed so maddeningly complacent. Granted, they’d been here a lot longer than I had, but if a month of my prodding hadn’t spurred any of them into action, I doubted that another month would, either.