New Horizons (24 page)

“You’ve lost your mind.”

“I have?” I looked over my shoulder at Brooke and Tracy and then the twins. There were so many issues spread out around me to choose from. I looked back at Logan. “No. You guys have lost your minds. You’re all going with this little system of being butterflies and shit. Why? You’re gonna get out soon either way. What is the fucking difference if I get out being a rock or whatever? There is no point to anything. We all go home. Our lives are waiting for us. What is the difference?”

“The difference is this place is our last fucking chance at something different before we go back,” someone else said.

I looked over my shoulder. It was little Tracy who had spoken up. Little Tracy, who had found a voice.

“I know that you come from somewhere that makes this place seem hard, and that’s why you’re such a bitch,” Logan said. She stood up. “You're that privileged, snot rag with parents that love you and that’s your only story—and that isn’t even a real story. That’s your
problem
.”

“Guys, quit it,” Sharon said.

But I stood in front of Logan, straight on, and I listened to what she had to say. Even though it was starting to hurt.

“We will never know anything about you because there is nothing about you to know. You’re a normal, fucking person. Nothing is
wrong
with you, and you’re absolutely miserable about it. You’re just like everybody and that’s going to fucking kill you.”

I didn’t know what to say. Logan was red in the face and that was normally Brooke’s job. But there she was, fists balled and she wasn’t even throwing them at me.

“New Horizons isn’t a terrifying place,” Logan whispered. “What’s terrifying is knowing you have to go back. You have to leave one day and go back to the way of the world. Schedules and hours of shifts with minimum wage and a mum that beats the life out of you without even raising her hand. And it’s shit here but it’s kind of nice too if you think about it. Because it’s bullshit. But bullshit is so much better than actually living with things.” Logan grabbed me by the throat.

I closed my eyes and waited for her grip to tighten.

“Separate now,” Sharon said.

Separate. Because when you separated from someone, that solved all the problems. But that was what people who didn’t get along did. That was what people who hated each other did. That was what Mum and Dad did, and then they were able to be happy. There was nothing left for me to separate from that would get me happy again.

Logan dropped her grip from me.

I smiled.

“Yeah, keep smiling, Valerie. It’s all you’ve got.”

“No, it’s just funny that you think this place is a safe little place. If this place offers such a chance for us fucked up kiddos, why is somebody missing from it?”

“What are you saying?” Logan said.

Sharon came up between our bodies and held out her hands to put some distance between us.

“I bet you know what I’m talking about, Sharon. A girl got out.”

“There is no girl missing, I assure you,” Sharon said.

“No. You’re wrong. There’s a girl that got away. She
escaped
. I saw it happen when I was at the ward. And she’s out there now.”

“There is nowhere to go out there,” Logan said. She picked up 72. “We are locked in here. She’s just hiding.”

“No, she’s not the one hiding. We are. She’s out there and she’s free.”

“Get out of here,” Sharon said. She pointed over my shoulder at the stairs where Guy was waiting for me.

I walked up to the stairs and headed to the mess hall. Guy was ahead of me, and I thought I was alone behind him until a little voice hollered at me.

“Wait up,” Tracy said.

I turned around and she was jogging up to me. She had her shirt over her head, and when she put her shirt on, New Horizons was across her chest instead of her back. There were a few counsellors walking around with walkies, watching our interaction, and I turned to keep walking to the mess hall. I wondered where Jenny Shoulders was—if she was on the other side of the fence or not. If she had climbed it or found that hole that Lisa Hatcher was preaching about. Maybe she was still inside with us. In the pretend facility.

“Is that all true?”

“Yeah.”

“Where is she then?”

“Out there—Murray says there’s cottages all around here. I imagine there are more roads all around. If she gets to a road, she’s gone.”

“We should do it too.”

“Do what?”

“Get out.”

I laughed.

“What?”

“Why?”

“Because, I don’t want to be go back to my aunts.”

“That doesn’t solve anything leaving like that. It just shows that something is wrong. You’ll get home and see it’s not a big deal. In the meantime, you can survive here.”

“No I won’t. I want to get out of here.”

“Okay, crazy.”

She stared at me.

“What?”

“She probably didn’t even get out.”

“I saw it.”

“Anyone else see it?”

“Yeah.”

“Who?”

“Another girl. And I bet I could ask Guy. He’d tell me.”

“Yeah?”

“I think so.”

Tracy and I sat down at our group table. We weren’t allowed to get up and get food until everyone was present. So we waited. I stared at the stage that was in front of the mess hall, and the walls all around the place, covered in prints. There were colourful hands of the campers from the past. Most of them were tiny because they were prints from children enjoying their summers. But there were all different sizes of small, weird shapes, all sorts of colours, and no matter where I looked, there was one in every spot around the mess hall.

“It’s surprising that someone hasn’t painted over those prints by now,” Tracy said.

“Yeah, they’re kind of childish in a place like this.” I got up and walked toward the back wall to get a closer look at the handprints there. I went along the wall and dragged my finger against the paint and felt the difference between leaving an imprint and not. My stomach felt weird because I knew where mine was. The approximate area, at least. My print was in green, and it jumped out at me after a few seconds.

It made me miss everything I was missing out on, and I could have crumbled to the floor. I remembered wanting a red one though. But there had already been red ones around the area I was told to place my print, and my camp counsellor at the time said there couldn’t be two red ones next to each other on the wall.

“It won’t look right,”
she had said.

I dunked my hand in green and barely left it on there long enough to make a print. I was mad. My fingertips stayed, and some of the heel of my hand did as well, but it wasn’t a full print. There were spaces—holes that didn’t make it onto the wall. I signed below in loopy handwriting only because they told me too.

Val Campbell

I placed my hand over the print. The camp counsellors said when we’d come back some day we would be able to find our hand and compare the change. Every year I came back and it still fit. It was funny how change could come quick and all at once. How my hand completely hid its old print. I wouldn’t know it was mine if it didn’t say so in messy writing below it.

My group was looking over at me when they entered the mess hall. Logan glared at me from across the room. I tried not to look at them and headed over to get in line to fill my plate with food.

Lisa Hatcher was two people down from me in the line. She seemed to stick out now that I knew her. I never would’ve picked her out before because she didn’t matter to me. Now she did. Lisa Hatcher noticed me in line and slowly slithered her way so she was right in front of me.

“Tell your little group about Jenny?”

“What about her?”

“Her dedication.” Her eyes found mine.

“Dedication to what?”

“Getting out.”

“She really didn’t get out, did she? She had to have broken her leg. She probably got shipped home, just like she wanted.”

Lisa Hatcher laughed.

“It’s true.”

“No, why would someone like her want to go home?”

“I don’t really care. I just know that there’s no way out of here. You’d have to be pretty desperate to try and find a way through the fence.”

“She never came back that night. You know it and I know it. We would’ve seen her right back in the ward with us, and we didn’t. Facts are facts.” Lisa Hatcher raised her eyebrows. “Who’s your friend?”

“Excuse me?” I turned around.

Tracy was right behind me. I had no idea how much she’d heard, and if it even mattered. It was all a bunch of crap.

“Where would she go if she got out?” Tracy asked.

Lisa Hatcher shrugged. “Maybe ask your cabin mate.”

Tracy, for once, had a smirk on her face. She looked relieved to hear the news.

I got out of line with my plate and sat down at the table. Breakfast was pancakes. There was nothing to put on top. No condiments. No sauce to dip into. And that was the definition of New Horizons. I took a huge bite of dry pancake and pretended there was butter and syrup to make it moist, and when I swallowed, it felt like I was chewing sand.

When the girls got back to the table with their own plates, I put so much food in my mouth so I wouldn’t have to talk to them. I chewed and shovelled the food and pretended to be busy with eating while they watched me from their own sides of the table.

"You’re acting different," Brooke said. She was looking at me.

“So what?” I said. It wasn’t something new. I tried to chew my food as much as I could so I wouldn’t have to talk.

“You’re so mean.”

“Guess I’m not acting any different then. There goes that theory.”

“I think she’s homesick,” Twin said.

“I’m sorry—who are you to talk?” I swallowed everything in my mouth. “You’re nobody, so shut your teeth.”

Lisa Hatcher had her eyes on her plate and was picking at a pancake. Her group members were ignoring her and talking among themselves. She was sitting at the edge of her table and seemed like she wasn’t part of things. When she looked over at me, she picked at her front teeth and then wiped it on her shirt.

“Which one of you pulled me out of the water yesterday?”

“Kenzie did.” Brooke pointed across the table. At Twinner and the holes in her face.

I raised my eyebrows. “Kenzie?”

“Not really. I just pulled you out. I didn’t give you mouth-to-mouth or anything. I just dropped you on your back, and you started spitting up water.” Kenzie played with her pancake on the plate in front of her. She cut it into very small pieces. And then smooshed it. It was nearly a paste.

I didn’t remember any of it—that she had saved me. I just remember waking up and spitting up water and Larry taking me to the ward, where Nurse Janice patched me up. It was weird how much you could miss when you blacked out. That people could do crazy, good things in the matter of seconds. In tiny, split seconds. Even people you didn’t think twice about. Like Kenzie.

My reflection was looking different. Maybe that was because I was gaining the tools on how I judged myself and the world. Or maybe it was because I was just looking like shit since arriving at New Horizons.

My face was thinner, and my nose looked huge on my face. Why couldn’t my nose lose weight like the rest of my body? My bones were sticking out of my skin and my eyes were carrying dark bags beneath them. Hopefully they were designer.

“You still look the same.”

I glared at Twin.

“What, you do.” She peered at herself in the glass. She was two inches from it. “I saw you the first day you arrived before you got your hair changed. It was just as messy and gross. And you’ve always been underweight too.”

It was true. I probably did look like shit all the time. I was just finally seeing it. My weight always seemed to get low when I was stressed or nervous or scared. It had been hard to keep my weight up. And it was showing. It didn’t help that we weren’t exactly getting fed the most appetizing meals either.

“But if anyone looks like shit, it’s Logan.” She pointed at Logan through the glass. She was sitting just inside, talking with Sharon. Logan was someone who nodded a lot when someone was talking to her. She was so full of crap and I admired that about her. That she knew how to play pretend.

I knocked on the glass. Both Logan and Sharon looked over at Twin and I. Logan gave me the finger while Sharon waved for me to get away from the glass. I waved the most enthusiastic wave of my life, like I was excited to see them.

Logan smiled. Sharon shook her head at me.

“You’re like a pro at being charmingly annoying,” Twin said.

I finally moved away from the glass and looked out onto the property. I was next to go and talk to Sharon about life and things, and everyone else in my group was down on the grass, doing yoga positions. Kenzie was doing the downward dog, and Brooke was on her back. She seemed like she was used to that position.