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Meg shakes her head. “No, I’ve never met the guy. I’ve just heard some things about him, good things. Like how he refused to follow the rules at his Home School and tried to get other people to make changes, too. He’s part of why I think we should trust you.” She takes a step closer to me. “The main thing is that we want you to be part of us, to be in the Group.”

I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out.
What’s there to say?

Meg scans our perimeters, always on alert, but the only other people in the Great Hall are at least fifty feet away from us. “Want to see something?”

“Okay.”

Meg puts her head down and pushes the back of her hair away from her scalp. “See this, right here?” I look where she’s pointing and see a tiny happy face drawn in marker. “This is the sign. Anyone who has this under their hair in this exact spot is part of us, part of the Group.”

“But doesn’t it wash off?”

Meg grins, and suddenly she looks beautiful. “Indelible ink, honey,” she says. “So, are you in?”

I think about Noah, I think about Taylor, I think about James, and I realize I have only one answer I can give. I put my head down and let my hair fall towards my chest. “Here,” I say.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Civilization has little to fear from educated people and brainworkers.

—Sigmund Freud

Suddenly I find
the days at Harmony are going by too quickly. What if I get to go back to ISTJ before Taylor is herself again? And even if she is herself, what will she do once I’m gone? As I lay on the floor each afternoon during Group Relaxation, I try and come up with different solutions that all end up with Taylor and me being safe. Maybe if I somehow get the message out for my dad that my friend is really okay and doesn’t belong here? Maybe he could then talk to Dr. Anders and she could go to her own Home School? Maybe that would work?

That night after Lights Out I creep over to Meg’s bunk and nudge her shoulder. “Wake up,” I whisper.

“I’m awake, you goof,” she says. She lifts up her blanket for me to climb in. “Having a nightmare?”

“What? No! I never have a nightmare!” I say loudly.

Meg pinches me hard on the leg and then asks me again. “So, you’re wanting to sleep with me tonight because you had that bad nightmare again?”

“Oh, yeah! The one about the bear chasing me. It’s really scary!” I try and sound frightened.

“Good,” Meg whispers. She covers our heads with the blanket. “Now, what’s going on?”

“It’s about Taylor,” I whisper back. “I don’t know what to do!”

“Isn’t she still cheeking the pills?”

“Yeah, and she’s almost herself again. But then what?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m going to go back to ISTJ in just two weeks. What’ll she do then?”

“Oh shit, you’re right,” Meg whispers. She lifts the blanket off for air, then covers our heads again. “I never thought that far.”

“Me neither,” I whisper. “I think I have a plan, though.”

“What’s that?”

“What if I call my dad and explain to him about Taylor? Tell him that they’ve made a mistake about her, that she’s actually fine without her meds.”

“What would your dad do?”

“He could talk to Dr. Anders. I mean, they’re friends. Maybe he would listen.”

Meg shakes her head. “I know your dad’s your dad and everything, but how can you be sure you can trust him?”

“What do you mean?” I whisper.

“Well, he’s part of The Association, right?”

“Yeah. So?”

“And you just said that he’s good friends with Dr. Anders, right?”

“So what?” My stomach tightens and I don’t know why.

“Look,” Meg whispers. “I don’t know your dad. He could be great. I just think it’s better not to talk to anyone in The Association right now.” She pauses. “What do you think your brother would say?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since I was a little kid.” My eyes start to fill and I blink away the tears.

Meg lifts the blanket up one more time and then lets it fall back on our heads. “Anyway, I have an idea. Why don’t we break into Dr. Anders’s office and take the file on Taylor? That way we can know what we’re dealing with.”

“Break in? Like criminals do?”

“Sophie, I hate to tell you, but you’re already a criminal in the eyes of The Association. You’ve come too far to back down now.”

I feel my heart pumping harder and I find it hard to breath. I pull the blanket down all the way and gulp in air.

Meg grabs my hand under the covers and squeezes gently. “I’d do it with you,” she whispers. “You wouldn’t have to be alone.”

“But I’d still have to do something against the law.”

“All you’d have to do is be brave. Think of it that way. And think of Taylor, too.”

“I don’t know,” I whisper back. I push off the blanket all the way and climb out of the bunk. “Thanks for helping me with my nightmare,” I call out, before rushing back to my bed. I lie back down but don’t sleep for the rest of the night. Break into a Head Psychologist’s office? Do something that’s truly criminal and could lead me to be stuck in Full all zombie-like, perhaps forever? Despite having my blanket pulled up to my chin, I can’t stop shivering. Unlike an ISTJ, I have no clue what the right or wrong thing to do is, no clue. The image of Aaron’s face enters my mind, but it’s quickly replaced by Noah.
Help me, I need you
.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

A person’s a person, no matter how small.

—Dr. Seuss

By morning my
mind is made up. There’s no way I can leave Harmony without at least trying to get Taylor to safety. The idea of letting my friend become a zombie again and possibly spend her entire life at Full is not acceptable to me. I might have made a lot of mistakes along the way, but a traitor I am not!

During our Morning Walk I catch up to Meg and put my arm through hers. “I’ll do it,” I say.

“I kind of figured you would.” She smiles. “I told the others I was right about you!”

“Who are the others, anyway?” I ask, trying to match my steps with hers. She has much longer legs than I do, so I end up kind of walk-jogging.

“You’ll find out, just be patient,” she says. “The less you know right now, the better. There are things I don’t know about the Group, either.”

We walk in silence for a while, going around the long path that circles the entire grounds of Harmony. It’s not such a bad walk, especially if you’re trying to come up with plans to break in somewhere. I figure that each of us will try and come up with ideas for how to break in and then maybe tell each other during Chores or possibly during tomorrow’s Morning Walk. I mean, I
do
still have two weeks left, so it’s not totally urgent.

That night after Lights Out, Meg comes over to my bunk and pulls up the blanket. “I think you gave me your nightmare,” she says loudly, before crawling in. “Do you mind if I stay with you for a while?”

“Sure,” I say. My heart starts pumping and I hope no one else in the dark room can hear.

Meg takes my hand under the blanket. Instead of squeezing it, she opens my fingers and slips something in my palm. It feels hard, with edges digging into my skin. A key. “Use this tomorrow during Morning Walk. I’ll tell Ms. Winston you felt sick and went to the Infirmary for a Tylenol. That’ll give you about fifteen minutes. Dr. Anders will be in a meeting at Serenity all morning, so as long as you can sneak past his secretary you’ll be in the clear.”

“But…how will I do that?”

“You’ll figure it out.”

“And how did you get the key?”

“That’s for me to worry about.” She now squeezes my hand tightly, before getting out of my bunk. “Thanks for calming me down about the bear,” she calls.

gh

Morning comes too soon. By the time it’s Morning Walk, I don’t have to fake being sick. My head feels like it could explode and I think I might really throw up. How did I get into this mess? And how can I get out of it? Once outside, I decide I need to tell Meg I just can’t do it, that she needs one of the other kids in the Group to break into the office instead of me. I then see Taylor, sitting in her lawn chair, looking my way. Her eyes are still dull but there’s life in them. Taylor is coming back, and if I don’t do what I need to do, she’ll be lost all over again. Taking in a deep breath, I head back to the building and sneak in the back door.

Walking the empty halls of Temporary feels strange. I’ve never been in the building before without lines of other kids or interventionists nearby. I head towards the front of the building, where the infirmary and Dr. Anders’ office is. Walking quietly, I glance into the reception area and find it’s empty. The secretary is normally always at her desk, so this seems really strange to me. Silently I thank Meg and the other kids of the Group for doing whatever they managed to do. I open the door to the reception area and tiptoe across the thick carpet. Taking the key out of my pocket, I try and put it in the lock, but drop it. I pick it up quickly and try again, my shaking hand making it hard to do anything right. Finally the key is in and the door unlocks.
Who knew it would be this easy
?

Closing the door behind me, I head over to row after row of filing cabinets, all meticulously arranged in alphabetical order. What’s Taylor’s last name again? Finally I remember, and head over to the cabinet marked I. I figure it must be locked and I’m right. I quickly walk to Dr. Anders’ desk and look in his drawers. After opening three of them I find a key chain and pull it out. I go back to the filing cabinet and try key after key. This time my hand isn’t shaking.
You’ll have fifteen minutes
. How much time has already passed? I open the cabinet and quickly flip through the files until I come to Irving. Irving, Daniel. Irving, Jonathon. Irving, Maxwell. Irving, Samuel. Irving, Sara. Finally I see it. Irving, Taylor. I pull out the file and almost drop it on the floor.

Suddenly I hear footsteps down the hall and I duck down, stuffing Taylor’s file under my sweatshirt. Where can I hide? To my surprise, the footsteps get further away again. I take a deep breath and then another. I probably have about two minutes left. Just as I’m about to go, something stops me, and I head back to the filing cabinets. J. The first key I try unlocks the cabinet and I quickly flip through the files before I find it. Jenkins, James. Without thinking, without knowing exactly why I’m doing what I’m doing, I pull it out and stuff it under my sweatshirt too. I lock the cabinets back up and stuff the key chain in the drawer. When I hear nothing in the hall, I quickly race out of the office and lock the door behind me. I then run to the empty dormitory and shove the files under my mattress, before heading back outside to meet the others for the end of Morning Walk.

“Feeling better, Ms. Jenkins?” Ms. Winston says as I approach her.

“Yes, thank you, ma’am,” I say.

“And did the nurse need to give you any medication?”

I shake my head. “It turns out I just really needed to use the washroom. Um, not enough fibre yesterday, I guess.”

“I’ll tell the cook to give you an extra helping of greens at lunch,” she says, nodding at me. She turns away and blows her whistle. “Hurry up, girls!”

Meg walks towards me, her face blank. I nod at her, my whole body shaking, and she gives me a small nod back.
Mission accomplished
.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

In the continuum of symptoms that runs from major depression to sadness, or from schizophrenia to eccentricity, psychiatry pushed the boundary of pathology steadily to the right, away from the unwell and toward the commonplace.

—Edward Shorter

For Chores that
night Meg volunteers us to put out the garbage. “We’ll have no interruptions that way,” she whispers to me.

Once we’re in the Recycling Room, I pull out the two files from under my sweatshirt.

“You’ve got two,” Meg says. “Who’s the other one about?”

“It’s about James,” I say. “I just want to know how he is.”

Meg nods. “Why don’t you start looking at his and I’ll read Taylor’s? We might not have much time.”

“Okay,” I say. I sit down cross-legged on the floor and open the file. The first page is the summary of his Assessment. “Oh my god, it says that he’s an ENTJ, just like my dad . I wonder why I never knew that?”

“How old is he?”

“Um, nineteen now,” I say.

“Maybe you just don’t remember?” Meg asks. “Now keep reading!”

I keep shaking my head to myself. My brother, an ENTJ? The more I think about it, though, the more it makes sense. I remember what I learned about ENTJs.
Confident, assertive. Like to challenge ideas. Make natural leaders
. Maybe that’s why they butted heads so much when he was growing up! I smile to myself for a moment, remembering my dad and James when I was little. They did seem so much alike, but only in the good ways. I flip to another page. This one is from his Home School and has the title
Infractions
on the top.
Breaking curfew. Smoking. Not completing homework as assigned. Questioning authority. Unauthorized access to the internet. Two stays at Temporary to learn appropriate coping skills.
The list goes on and on. “It looks like he was kind of a trouble maker,” I say, listing all of the infractions to Meg. “I don’t see why any of this would make him come to Harmony, though.”

“Accessing the internet is considered a really big deal, Sophie,” Meg says. “You know no kid is allowed to use it under the age of eighteen, and then only with a special permit.”

“But that’s so stupid,” I say. “I know the Social Media Era was horrible and all that, but what’s the big deal about trying to find out stuff with a computer? How’s it any different than the set of encyclopaedias I used in Primary?”

“It sounds like you’re questioning authority, Sophie,” Meg jokes. “Watch out, or you’ll be sent to Harmony!”

I stick out my tongue, then keep looking through my brother’s file. After a minute or two I look up again. “I don’t understand why he didn’t just go through Temporary like me, then go back to his Home School. I mean, I don’t see anything here about mental illness at all.”