“What happened last night?”
She didn’t turn to look at me, but walked to her desk and straightened some of the loose papers.
“What do you mean?”
I rolled my eyes. “You know what I mean. Wallace and Maria.”
“Why don’t you sit down?”
“I don’t want to sit down,” I said. “I didn’t sleep for a minute last night and I’m sore from paintball and I watched a guy get dragged on his back down to detention.”
Becky turned, but stopped herself before our eyes met. She was fiddling with the cuff of her sleeve, trying not to look at me.
“I don’t know any more about it than you do,” she said simply.
“Come on. You have the contract.”
“No,” Becky said, glancing up at me but only for an instant. She sat on the couch and crossed her legs. She was wearing flip-flops instead of the dress-code shoes and socks.
“I meant the Society has the contract,” I said, leaning against the cabinets on the opposite wall.
“I don’t do security,” she said, finally looking into my eyes. “I promise. I have a deal with Isaiah. I do new- student orientations, and I don’t do the other stuff.”
“Dylan does both. He’s medical and security.”
She looked back down at her cuff. “I’m not Dylan.”
I rubbed my eyes. I was exhausted, and I didn’t have the energy to argue with Becky.
“But the others talk to you, right?” I asked. “You must have heard what was going on.”
“We got the message on our computers in the evening,” she said. Her gaze had moved from her cuff and now she was picking invisible lint off her skirt. “It told us what time to take the two students downstairs.”
“What rule did they break?”
“It didn’t say.”
“What?” I stood up from the wall, agitated, but the room was small and there was nowhere else for me to go, so I just stood there, arms folded. “It just said to haul them to detention, no questions asked?”
“That’s how it works.”
I thought of the howling glee that the Society guys had when they’d dragged Walnut down the hall. They didn’t even know what rule he’d broken. It wasn’t hard to guess, of course. There were only so many rules that got someone sent to detention. But still, for the Society to relish the job that much while being completely unaware of what rules they were enforcing? It made me sick.
I finally sat on the couch, slumped down next to her. “That’s ridiculous.”
“I don’t like having that contract.”
We sat in silence for several seconds. Becky had stopped pretending to pick lint, and I just stared at the wall.
“I don’t suppose you have any ibuprofen here,” I said. “I don’t want to go to the infirmary.”
She gave a look that was half smile and half frown. “No. You’d have to go see Anna or Dylan.”
My hand went to the bruise on my side. “They actually pretend like Dylan is supposed to heal people?”
Becky looked uncomfortable. “If you want, I can see when Anna’s on call instead of Dylan. You could go then.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Okay.”
She reached over to the desk and picked up her minicomputer.
“I have to get out of here,” I said, staring forward. “This place is crazy. It’s a crazy school full of crazy people.”
Becky’s tour-guide smile appeared, and she cocked her head to the side. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do mean it,” I said. “Nothing here makes sense, and the place is run by thugs and… whatever Laura is.”
Becky folded her arms. “Laura’s my roommate.”
“She wanted to send me to detention.”
“Because you were trying to escape,” Becky snapped, and then glanced up at the cameras self- consciously.
“Look at you,” I said, raising my voice. “You’re afraid of people you’ve never even seen. Do you think this school could run without our consent? What would have happened if you Society guys just refused to take Wallace and Maria?”
Becky opened her mouth, but I kept talking. “What if all of us tried to leave—all seventy-four of us? Let’s just build some ladders and go. No one is keeping us in here except us.”
Becky sat down at the desk. “It’s not that simple.”
“It is that simple,” I insisted. “That’s all there is to it. Maybe the only real person on the other side of those cameras is that woman who dropped me off. She’s just some rich crazy lady, all alone, screwing with our heads.”
“No.” Her voice was firm. She stared at me for a long time, not saying anything. I didn’t know what she was thinking, but her eyes bore into me, and I couldn’t read the emotion on her face.
“What is it?” I insisted. “What’s stopping us?”
A tear boiled up in Becky’s eye, but it didn’t drop. She spoke barely above a whisper, and she had turned her face away from the cameras. “I don’t know. Something. Back in the spring four Society kids tried to escape. They were working together, on guard duty. They didn’t make it.”
“What stopped them?”
She wiped her eye with the back of her thumb and then turned away. “Let me take you to the infirmary,” she finally said. She tapped the computer screen with her fingernail. “According to the schedule, Anna is on call.”
Becky stood and opened the door. She was all Society. When logic and reason conflicted with obedience, she just ignored them.
I followed her down the hallway. She passed the basement stairs without a look. I’d thought that was the way to the infirmary.
“I think you’ll like Anna,” Becky said. “She’s from Pennsylvania, too. Maybe you guys know some of the same people?”
Yeah. Because it’s really small.
She turned a corner and opened a small door. It was another set of stairs, old and narrow. She held the door for me as I went in, and then let it close behind her. As soon as it shut she put her hand on my arm.
“There are no cameras in here,” she whispered.
I waited for her to continue—she wanted to say something, but looked scared.
“What?”
“I—I just wish you would stop,” she said. “I don’t know a lot of what goes on here. But there are two things that I wish you’d understand.”
She took a deep breath. “First, detention is death. We don’t know much about it. There’s a room downstairs for detention. You get put in the room for the night. In the morning, no one is left in there.”
I cut her off. “Then how do you know they kill you? What if it’s like the closets in the dorms—like they’re secret elevators or something.”
Becky was trembling now, and she folded her arms to stop from shaking. “I haven’t ever seen it. But there’s blood sometimes.” Her voice was wavering. “On the floor.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but couldn’t. She was watching my eyes.
“What’s the other thing?” I finally said.
Becky shook her head, like she was trying to clear a thought. “No one ever escapes. People make it over the wall sometimes—the security guys have seen people do it. But they’re still caught. Like the ones I told you about. I don’t think we’re the only ones who guard the wall.” She stared into my eyes. “That’s why I’m Society. I want to stop people from going to detention and from trying to escape. This place isn’t so bad. Why risk…” Her voice trailed off.
“What?”
“No,” she said, stopping me with her hand. “That’s enough. The cameras will notice if we’re in here too long.” She pushed past me and hurried down the stairs.
