New Horizons (4 page)

“That hurt,” I groaned. There wasn’t a way to catch myself, and my bones felt the shock of being slammed into the ground. I dropped my face into the dirt because there was no point holding up my head any longer. I could feel the dirt sticking to the sweat on my skin.

Guy yanked me back up. He was rough and I could feel the bruises already forming. That was something I probably had to get used to. Being pushed around and doing things by force. There was no waiting around for me to get up—the counsellors were there to drag me. Dad always said I needed a good kick in the ass.

Guy seemed to think he had me under his control—that I had given up. I realized it was my chance to teach him that the most interesting people in life were the people you didn’t trust. And I was one of those interesting people.

I bolted.

The scene must have looked amazing. It was me sprinting with my hands taped in front, and Guy chasing after me. I had never run anywhere like that before, and it felt so funny. If I died and went to heaven, I would ask God to replay that moment for me to see from a bystander point of view. That had to be a thing. All our moments in our lives should be on tape somewhere up in the clouds. What else was the point of doing crazy things? You had to be able to see it again.

There wasn’t really anywhere to go. I slowed down, and Guy tackled me to the ground. He landed on top of me, and I was back to square one again, with my face pressed into the ground, and my elbows and knees scrapped up.

“There had to be a better way to stop me,” I said.

Guy ripped me up even more aggressively. Next time I’m sure it would be by the bun of my hair. And I would pretend I felt nothing, because that was the plan. If you held it in, sometimes, it really did disappear. I almost believed that how you imagined your bad experiences, determined how they affected you. That’s what I was going with.

Guy pushed me ahead of him, but held tightly onto my elbow. He instructed me to walk toward the dirt path in the distance.

“Sure thing.” I turned and looked at him. Behind him, Larry was watching us. I tried to give him the finger, but with how my hands were taped together, it looked like I was praying. Maybe I needed all the help I could get, even from the sky.

3:
CABIN 519

Guy wasn’t just taking me on a walk.
I mean, I would have loved a good walk. What couldn’t a walk cure? That was what Granny always told me to do when I was complaining about something.

“Oh Val, you sound like you could use a good walk,”
she’d say.

Granny died of a broken hip. Actually, she died of a lot of things. But the broken hip added to it. I would like to say she died mostly of old age, but that wasn’t really a thing. She had a lot of other ailments that living a long time seemed to do to a person. That was the beauty of the twenty-first century. There were too many options to die from that you couldn’t just burn out from one thing. It was amazing. She could sit on the toilet wrong and die. She could get the flu and somehow manage to die. Being old must be brutal.

If I could have one thing in life, it would be to die of something normal. Like a car accident. Maybe I would die at New Horizons. A death in the program would surely set someone straight.

Guy took me to the ward. The ward was a small building off of the mess hall that was full of rooms with cots, and medical equipment for when we tried to kill ourselves. There were several small offices too, for the paperwork of our deaths.

The ward was pretty uncomfortable. It was a medical room, and it had equipment that made me want to cross my legs. With my recent history, the ward made me think of my last little visit to the hospital, and how badly it had gone.

At least there were real walls.

Guy left me in a room with a cot that had medical stirrups at one end. I didn’t know where to put myself in the room. It had to be a safer option to sit in the chair. But sitting in a chair meant there was nothing physically the matter with you, and that you were there to fix the emotional side of things. The cot was a lot safer, and it ended up being my final choice. I crossed my legs, and chewed on the inside of my cheek. I wasn’t going to talk about anything to anyone.

A nurse came in and introduced herself as Nurse Janice. She had big, fluffy hair and lots of eyeshadow. The first thing she did was cut the tape off of my wrists and peel it from my skin.

I screamed as the hairs were ripped from my arms.

“Come on, it’s just like a bikini wax,” she said.

“Never had one.”

I was forced to abandon my sports bra and boxer shorts, and then I put on a paper dress to cover up after a strip search. It opened from the back, and you could see the new underwear and new sports bra I was given to wear instead of my own. The underwear was white cotton, and it was weird because they covered my entire ass. It had been a while since I wore full underwear like that, and they felt pretty good. It made me question why I had ever worn anything else but full underwear. At least I was out of my other garments. They were soaked from sweating all night in solitary confinement.

“Do you have any tattoos?”

“No, not yet. But I’m planning on getting a koi fish when I’m done this program. Just as a reminder to always persevere and achieve my goals. Or maybe I will get an anchor. As a metaphor. Just so I know I can never be held down. Maybe I could put it on my shoulder. That way it could also be a symbol of how much I carry. How strong I am. Yeah, I’ll get an anchor on my shoulder.”

“Do you have anything on your person?” Nurse Janice asked.

“I don’t have a person.”

“Do you have anything on yourself?”

“This dress. And these underwear. And this uncomfortable sports bra.”

She patted me down, as if she were searching for anything sharp or hidden. When she pushed in my hips and ribs, I smiled because it tickled. What was she looking for under my skin? All I had under there was my skeleton.

“Are we done?”

“I’ll need that hospital bracelet.”

I touched the white bracelet on my wrist. I had kept it there to see how long I could wear it. No other reason. I really didn’t want her to take it. I liked seeing all the important information about me. My birthday. My gender. Apparently the important things in determining who you were in life.

“You can’t have it on you.”

“Are you serious? It’s just a hospital bracelet. It’s nothing that can hurt anybody.”

She grabbed my wrist. I didn’t pull back, and I let her take a pair of scissors to it. She cut the bracelet off me.

“That sucks.”

“It had to come off. It’s the rules. You’re not allowed anything on you or in you.”

“In me? Like what. A tampon?”

“If you have anything in you, now would be the time to hand it over. It’s for the safety of you and other residents at this program.”

“I didn’t know I was coming here, so how the hell would I have time to shove something up me? What would I shove up there?”

“I don’t know. But we have to ask.”

“Do you think I have like a bottle of vodka up there? Or a pack of cigarettes? I don’t even smoke that often to be that dedicated to carrying anything on me. And my vagina definitely doesn’t have a cigarette up it. I only ever smoked because I was bored. Just the occasional joint since I’m not a plain cigarette kind of person. There’s no point to it.”

“We ask everyone that question. You’re not special.”

“Even the boys?”

“The boys don’t have vaginas.”

“You know, you can’t be saying stuff like that these days. It’s the twenty-first century, and even though you’re old, you should really join us. Besides, even the boys without vaginas have other cavities that they can stuff, I’m sure.”

I regretted not sleeping with something up me because I could have snuck it in if I wanted to. Like an iPod or maybe a lip chap. I would kill for a lip chap.

“I could probably have something up there and you wouldn’t know.” I showed her my teeth like someone who would smile would do. But it wasn’t a smile.

“Well, that’s as far of a search we do. But we’re not done yet.” Nurse Janice held up a box.

I looked at it. On the side of the box was a girl with shiny, brown hair. She was smiling at me. Maybe she was really proud to be a brunette—empowered by it.

“Is that hair dye?”

“No colourful hair at New Horizons.”

“That’s a little racist.”

She pushed my head down into a sink and washed out the pink chalk that I had added a day ago. The bright pink fell into the sink and went down the drain quickly. I thought that was where it ended—a quick rinse of my personality. But it had to be more permanent than that. She brushed on some goop from the dye box. My highlights and random red strands disappeared, and when I looked in the mirror a half hour later, I was all one colour.

“I’m actually a dirty blonde in real life. So you’re not bringing me back to normal or anything. I’m still not who I am.”

“That’s fine. You have to be one solid thing at New Horizons.”

“Oh lovely.”

Next off was the nail polish. I had each nail painted in a chipping purple. It wasn’t just any purple. It was a dark purple. I liked dark purple because it looked black. And when people thought you had black nail polish on, you knew it wasn’t black. It was dark purple. There was a difference. Nurse Janice handed me the polish remover and a cotton ball and my nails went from chipping dark purple to yellow.

“I have the grossest nails.”

“You won’t be the only one,” she said.

New Horizons’ outfit was the biggest change for me. Each day we were all required to wear the same thing. The cargo shorts were loose and beige. They felt like someone else had worn them before me. The white t-shirt was thick and scratchy, and I felt like I played for a baseball team. On the back, across my shoulders, was ‘NEW HORIZONS’, in case anyone needed a reminder where they were. The brown work boots were way too tight. The socks felt like they were meant for winter. They were thick and hot.

“These boots don’t fit me. They’re tight and they hurt.” I tried loosening the laces of the boots. “I can’t feel my feet.”

“You’re a size nine aren’t you?” Nurse Janice asked.

“Yes. There’s no way these are a size nine though.”

“That’s what a size nine feels like in this program.”

When I stepped out of the ward, I saw that there was a line of other girls getting their outfits too. All of the girls had shocking looks, with skin that was either blurry with acne, dry and flaking, or covered in specs of freckles. Maybe their looks were strange because they were all new people to me. They didn’t seem to care that their hair wasn’t curly or straight anymore, and that their eyes weren’t traced with layers of black circles. Everything about them was in between, and lifeless. I wondered what I looked like to them—if I stuck out too.

Before New Horizons, my hair had been highlighted and bleached and coloured and chopped up and going in every direction. I wasn’t even sure if I had bangs or not depending on how I wore my hair. Suddenly, I was a brunette. At least I still had my blue eyes.

We were shown around the place after we dressed. A counsellor showed us where we ate, and the classroom where we would be learning about ourselves, and the mudroom where the washers and dryers were kept. The best part was that we weren’t allowed to use them until we were Dandelions.

“Dandelions.”

“Yes. That’s what you want to become. You’re a Stone right now. You’ll learn all about the levels at New Horizons. Certain levels have certain responsibilities and privileges. That’s to motivate you to do well. Otherwise, what is the point to having levels?” The counsellor pointed at us. “The clothes you have on are the only ones you get, so take care of them. They’ll get pretty dirty. Clothes are a privilege, and clean clothes are a luxury.”

I was almost excited about it all. I was in my childhood camp. The bones were there, except the guts were missing and filled with something different.

Even though I had only been at New Horizons a short amount of time, I already had a huge taste of the place. I had spent a night in solitary confinement, and had a personal meeting with the head of the program, and next was a classroom setting—my number one hatred in life.

A counsellor dropped me off to an empty room full of desks and a chalkboard. One by one, a new resident entered the room, fully clothed in their new uniform. I sat in the front row because no one else wanted to. It was the easiest place to be left alone.

A counsellor was sitting at a desk near the corner. It was turned toward us, watching what we were doing. Out in the hallway I could hear the disobedience of a girl who didn’t want to take her clothes off. She wasn’t giving up, and it was almost nice to hear. There was still life in some of the others. I wondered how long it would take for it to get sucked out.

It felt like hours had gone by before the door opened. I didn’t bother looking over my shoulder to see who it was. The quiet sniffles of defeat told me enough.

We were changing.

I got a headache just thinking about being told the things that were wrong with me. The girls around me whispered to each other, while some of them sat stiff in their chairs, already scared straight by just being there. That was the point, I guess.