The Next Forever (9 page)

A woman wearing the same brown uniform as Square Head was waiting for me in the middle of an open field. The uniform hung on her skeletal frame. She looked like a Brownie—like a very tall Brownie. The girl not the food. Her graying-black hair was in a braid, and the skin on her face was so tight it was like she was in a wind tunnel.

“Welcome, Wick,” she said. I was noticing a pattern: last names were first names here. I also noticed she was wearing shiny black combat boots Her name tag read:
Rawe
. With a name like that she must have had a horrible experience in high school. No wonder she was here trying to make other teenagers’ lives miserable.

I dropped my duffel bag on the ground and waited. It was dusk, and I could already feel the mosquitoes starting to swarm, starting to jump on my arms like they were trampolines.

“You know why you’re here and you know what you’ve done. It’s my job to make sure you never do it again.” She was standing so straight I thought she might tip over.

I nodded. I had learned how to nod in court. Nodding was easier because I could be sure I wouldn’t say something I might regret.

I slapped at a bite on one arm then the other. A buzz got close, filling my ear, and I smacked the side of my head. This wasn’t rehab. Rehab was supposed to be like a spa where you woke up in your nurse-made bed each morning and pretended to give a shit. This was my nightmare.

“I’d pick up your duffel if you don’t want fleas,” Rawe said, looking down at it.

Fleas
. I pictured them crawling like ants on a giant hot dog. I picked my bag up and smacked at it like it was on fire.

“This won’t be easy,” Rawe said, making the words heavy with meaning. “This program is part wilderness survival skills, part personal rehabilitation.”

All torture
.

“We are the first group to be housed at this particular camp, so we get the unique privilege of rehabilitating it as well.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means you’ll be fixing up the grounds and structures for future participants.”

Slave labor.

“It will be hard work. A lot of times you’ll want to quit, but you know what will happen if you do, right?”

I nodded. It didn’t matter what they were going to put us through—I couldn’t quit. Quitting would send me right to the jail time I’d avoided. She didn’t need to remind me about that—it wasn’t so much that I afraid of going to jail; I dreaded the way my brother would look at me the morning I went in.

“We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow and another long day after that and so on,” she said. “Any questions?” Her diamond-hard eyes looked me up and down, seemingly wondering whether I had what it took to make it through.

I was pretty sure the answer was no.

“Is it just the two of us?” I flashed forward, this straitlaced woman with boot-eyeholes up to her chin and me for twenty-nine more days. It would be enough to turn anyone back into an addict—not that I was an addict. I knew I’d been sent
here
for a very different reason. They say Karma is a bitch. I guess mine was turning out to be a bitch with fleas and a bony slave driver.

“Nez and Troyer are in the cabin,” she said, walking toward what I thought was a storage shed.

I followed her. From behind her hair kind of looked like a skunk tail.

The “cabin” looked like a shack built by a homicidal maniac—you know, the place he keeps his blood-splattered murder tools and rotting corpses. The door creaked as Rawe opened it—that
a room you enter and may never leave
creak. It was small, had three cots and an open door that led into a room at the back of the cabin, which I hoped was the bathroom. I hadn’t peed since I’d left Collinsville.

“Nez,” Rawe said, pointing to one cot. A dark-skinned girl, either Indian or Native American, was smacking out a sleeping bag. Her uniform fit her way better than Rawe’s did; it was clear she was the kind of girl that everything fit better. She had dark eyes that seemed to have no pupils and hair that fell down her back like spilled black paint.

“Troyer,” Rawe said, pointing to a girl sitting up on her cot with her eyes closed. She was all Barbie-doll blond bangs. Her skin was covered in goose-bump-sized acne. At least, I hoped it was acne.

Troyer was also wearing the same uniform that Rawe wore. I looked at the empty cot, where a folded brown uniform lay—probably already crawling with fleas.

“Wick,” Rawe said, pointing at me.

I guess those were our introductions. Rawe turned off the one dirty, naked lightbulb that stuck out of the ceiling like a nose. Both Nez and Troyer clicked on their flashlights.

“I’d like you to diary for thirty minutes about why you are here,” Rawe said, “an introduction to your leaving that part of your life behind.” She handed me this notebook and a pencil, then walked to the small room at the back of the cabin and closed the door behind her. I guess it wasn’t the bathroom.

“Diary?” I said. I wanted to ask where the bathroom was, but considering what the place looked like, I was also afraid to.

“Assessment Diary,” Nez said. “Write whatever, they don’t read it. It’s for
you
.” She mooed the word, then lay on her stomach and started to write.

I looked at Troyer. She was still sitting upright in the middle of her cot with her eyes closed.

“She doesn’t talk,” Nez said, chewing on her pencil. “Do you?”

“Usually,” I said, sizing up Nez. If she was worse than me, I wanted to know it.

“Thank cheese and crackers,” she said, her legs scissoring behind her. “I was going crazy. Not that we’re allowed to talk, but it’s nice to know you’re not mute.”

“She’s mute?” I said, looking back at Troyer, still motionless on her cot. The way we were talking about her, I wondered if she was deaf, too.

“Hasn’t said a word in the last six hours, not even to Rawe,” Nez said.

“Diary and lights out in thirty,” Rawe bellowed from behind her closed door.

Nez stuck out her tongue and went back to writing. I guess she wasn’t worse than me, because that definitely wasn’t what I would have done.

This is going to be a very fucking long twenty-nine days.

About the Author

LISA BURSTEIN is also the author of
Pretty Amy
and
Dear Cassie.
She received her MFA in Fiction from the Inland Northwest Center for Writers at Eastern Washington University. She lives in Portland, OR, with her very patient husband, a neurotic dog, and two cats. Visit her online at
www.lisaburstein.com
or
@LisaBurstein
.