Counting Backwards (3 page)

“They are?”

“Yes. Completely. You need to come get me.”

“Taylor, you just got there. Why don’t you try to make some friends, at least?”

Is she kidding me? I don’t want to make friends with these people.

“Mom, please. If you leave right now, we could be back home by tomorrow morning.” I wait, but hear only her breath. “Mom?”

“I know this is hard for you, Taylor, but your father thinks it’s for the best.”

Who cares what he thinks? When has she ever done what he’s told her to do?

“How about you, Mom? What do
you
think?”

I hear one long, endless sigh. “I think we should give it a try.”

I feel my anger rising. There’s nothing wrong with me, and even if there was, my mom’s been through rehab enough times to know it’s a waste of time and money. A waste of life.

“This isn’t
we
giving it a try, Mom, it’s
me
. Alone. Trapped in here with the crazies.”

“Give it a week, Taylor. And make some friends. Find strength in others.”

I suppress a groan. I hate it when she gives me her generic rehab slogans. “I don’t want to find strength in others, Mom. I want to come home.” I can’t make it any plainer. If she really loved me, if she cared about me at all, she’d come up here and bring me home.

But maybe she doesn’t want me back. She can do anything
she wants now. She no longer has to keep up the charade of being somebody’s mother.

“What about your episodes, Taylor?”

She’s talking about the feeling in my chest, the times when I can’t catch my breath, which is her fault as far as I’m concerned, hers and my father’s. But I could handle it if they’d just leave me alone. I know I could.

“There is
nothing
wrong with me,” I tell her.

She’s quiet after that, and I feel my whole body go rigid and cold, like a glacier. I’m a mass of impenetrable ice. Nothing can touch me. Not her, not anyone.

“I know you’re unhappy,” she says at last, “and I want you to come home, but . . . your father’s right. This is the right place for you, for now.”

“I guess he’s right about a lot of things, huh?” She knows what I’m talking about—all those times my dad tried to take custody away from her and I lied for her. For us. I never told him about all the nights she went out drinking or all the times she was late picking me up from school. How I learned to drive when I was thirteen, just in case she showed up somewhere and couldn’t drive home.

“Listen, Taylor . . . I just want to say . . . I love you.”

I say nothing because I feel nothing. Even if I did, I wouldn’t say it, because I know that’s what she wants to hear. Kayla clears her throat and points to the clock. I save
my mother the trouble of saying good-bye and hang up the phone. My hands are trembling. I shove them deep into my pockets.

“It sounds like your mother wants you to get help,” Kayla says.

I ignore her and walk out of the common room, back down the yellow hallway to the room that’s supposed to be mine. I drag my red duffel bag to the corner of the room where I can’t be seen from the hallway and dig around for the secret pocket I sewed into the inside of the liner. That’s where I keep the birthday money and allowance I don’t want my mom to “borrow.” When my fingers brush against the money—nearly five hundred dollars in all—my chest opens up a little and I take a deep breath. I might be trapped in this place, but I’m not helpless. I’ll make a new plan and leave Sunny Meadows just as I came.

Alone.

That night I have a nightmare. I sit up with a jolt to find myself in a stranger’s room. Then I realize it’s mine—Sunny Meadows. My pulse throbs in my throat; my hair is sweaty and matted to my skin. I kick off the covers and pace the floor to lift the fog of sleep.

“Shut up!” the girl from across the hall shouts. The night safety pokes her head into my doorway.

“Bad dream,” I say. She just points me to my bed.

I climb back in and cover my face with Tatters, my blanket from childhood that is just a square of faded material now. My grandmother sewed it for me when I was little, and I’ve kept it all this time. Its scent of home is swiftly fading, replaced by the institutional nothing smell of Sunny Meadows. I lie there and try to think of a better place, a safe place. I remember my grandmother’s porch in the nighttime, where we slept during the summer because it was too hot indoors. I can almost hear the rise and fall of her voice as she spun tales of our people: Panther—God’s favored one, and the Terrible Twins, Thunder and Lightning, and my favorite character, Rabbit, who used
his cunning and wit to outsmart the bigger animals who were always trying to eat him. I want to conjure up the night sounds on the reservation—the hoot of a barred owl, the buzzing of cicadas, yard dogs baying at the moon—but the only sounds here are the air conditioner cutting off and on and the crinkling of the plastic mattress liner beneath me. Even worse is the sad realization that I’ve forgotten more than I can remember.

Then I hear faint music . . . a guitar. I sit up in bed and glance around the room, trying to figure out where it’s coming from. I slide out of bed and search the room for a speaker or a radio but find none. In the hallway all is quiet, save for the snores of the other girls.

Back in my room I trace the music to its source, the floor. No, an air vent in the floor. I drop down to my knees and put my ear to the vent, where I can hear it better; the music drifts up through the metal duct like a ghostly lullaby.

I hear a man’s voice, quick and severe, and the music’s gone, leaving behind only the hum of the air conditioner. I kneel there a moment longer. Maybe I imagined it.

I pull my pillow off the bed and drop it next to the vent. I lie back and stare up at the moonlight filtering through the foggy window. In a groggy, half-dream state I watch the square of window turn from black to blue to pink and finally the white dawn of a new day. Shortly after there’s a loud,
jarring buzzer, and the safety comes by to make sure I’m up and getting ready for breakfast downstairs in thirty minutes.

Monday morning. My first day at another new school. My mom had this pep talk whenever I’d be getting ready for my first day at a new school:
Just think of all the new friends you’re going to make, Taylor. All those people who can’t wait to meet you. . . .

It worked when I was young, but by middle school, I got tired of making friends and having to leave them behind every time we moved because we couldn’t pay the rent or my mom decided it was time to move on. If you don’t get attached in the first place, there’s no one to say good-bye to. My freshman year of high school I started hanging out with this group of guys who were already out of school. They were in a band—Choleric Kindness. I was kind of like their kid sister or groupie, showing up at the warehouse where they practiced. They never seemed to mind me being there, and the music and the constant stream of people coming in and out made it so I never had to talk too much about myself.

They’re probably wondering what happened to me. I haven’t seen them since before I tried to run away.

I open my closet, bypassing the pleated navy skirts and going straight for the pants. The starched fabric is itchy against my skin and smells like industrial laundry detergent. The shirt collar feels too tight around my throat, so I undo
the top two buttons—it’s a little better. I run a comb through my frazzled hair and try weaving it into a French braid, but it comes out loose and lopsided, so I unravel it and throw it into a regular old braid, then line up along the hallway with the other girls. The safety calls roll, and I learn that Brandi is the name of the girl in the room across from mine. She gives me a dirty look when my name is called.

Down in the dining room there’s a continental breakfast waiting. The food looks washed out—the fruit not quite ripe, the breads dry and stiff as cardboard. I grab a bagel and an individually packaged strawberry jelly, then notice the Sunny Meadows guys for the first time. They’re in their own dining room, separated from ours by the kitchen, doing the same morning shuffle. I glance around the room for Margo, but don’t see her anywhere. She can’t
still
be locked up. Meanwhile most of the other girls have all settled into their table groupings. There’s an empty table across the room, and I head for it.

A few minutes later Charlotte comes over and sits down across from me. I’m a little nervous that she might start screaming at me, but I tell her good morning anyway. She nods without looking up from what she’s doing, which is cutting her toast into tiny bits and then delicately placing them into her mouth one piece at a time. Like the knocking, there’s a pattern to it. After two bites, she takes a sip of water,
then wipes her mouth with the napkin. And each time she wipes her mouth, she folds the napkin over so that her lips never touch the same spot twice.

I’m so fascinated by her curious behavior that I don’t realize Brandi and her friends are at the table next to ours until they start launching bread crusts our way, aiming for Charlotte. A piece gets stuck in her hair, and they practically scream with laughter. I glare at Brandi while Charlotte stares at her toast, trying to ignore them, but her face is red and splotchy and I’m afraid she’s going to start crying at any moment. I tear off a piece of my bagel and throw it back at them. It hits Brandi’s shirtfront, then drips to the ground, leaving behind a pink jammy smear.

“You little bitch,” Brandi snarls. She stands and takes a step toward me. I lay my hands flat on the table. My muscles tense, and I estimate it will take about two seconds for her to reach me. Do I fight her or do I run?

“Clean up this mess,” a safety says. She gets between me and them, blocking them from my view.
Never take your eyes off your assailant.
The echoes of Andy—one of my mom’s ex-boyfriends, a security guard—plays in my head.

Charlotte sits there tensely, like she’s afraid to move, while I pick the crusts off the floor. The other girls shoot me scathing looks as they pass by, and I notice they’re all wearing the same large, gold hoop earrings.

“Sorry about that,” Charlotte whispers to me in a tiny voice.

“Don’t be. They’re the jerks, not you.” I throw the bundle in the trash, then take my place at the end of the line, where I can keep an eye on the girls. During walkover the safeties lead us in a herd to the school and I see the guys again, coming from the opposite direction, being driven across the lawn like cattle.

The school building is just one story and looks much newer than the dorms, with one carpeted hallway down the center and classrooms on either side. The safeties take up positions against the wall and keep a close watch, calling out whenever someone makes physical contact or gets too loud.

I go to the office to get my pack of ballpoint pens—our approved writing utensils—along with some folders, a backpack, and a class schedule. They put me in all average classes, probably based on my poor performance at the end of tenth grade. My two weeks in juvie probably set me back even more. I used to care about things like perfect attendance and GPA. I used to make really good grades, but not anymore.

I find my way to first period, American history, where there are about twenty or so kids already there. My stomach drops as I see Brandi and her friends among them. This is not how I want to start the day.

The teacher, Mr. Chris, introduces me to the other students while the girls giggle obnoxiously. Brandi seems to be
the alpha female. When she stops laughing, the rest quiet down. Of course the only empty seat is the one behind her.

Mr. Chris says we’ll be assembling our Revolutionary War mobiles and then goes through this long talk about “sharps,” how they’re learning tools and it’s important that we respect them as such, that if anyone misuses “sharps,” they’ll be escorted to the front office, and he’ll be counting “sharps” at the end of class. If there are any missing, there will be “serious consequences.” I remember my razors and wonder if that’s what sharps are, so I lean across the aisle and ask the guy next to me.

“Scissors,” he says with a smile, and draws one finger across his neck, like he’s slicing his own throat. I face forward, thinking the next time I have a question, I’ll ask the teacher.

The male safety comes around with a box of scissors—sharps. They’re the old-fashioned metal kind with rounded tips and dull blades. Still, with enough force they could definitely break skin. I glance around the room and wonder if they’re worried about us cutting ourselves or one another. Maybe both.

I get my worksheet and cut out these strips of paper with facts on them, which are supposed to be ordered on construction paper like a time line. I’m arranging my facts and pasting—with actual paste—and it’s not bad, a little Zen even, when the same kid from before strikes up a conversation.

“You Mexicana?” he asks with a Spanish accent I didn’t hear before.

“No.”

“Puerto Rican?”

“No.” This could go on all day. “I’m American Indian—Seminole.”

“You got a boyfriend?”

I glance over, and he licks his lips suggestively.

“You don’t want to mess with her, Sulli,” Brandi says. “You don’t know where she’s been.”

“Jealous, baby?” Sulli says to her with a slimy smile. Brandi shoots him a death stare.

“Trust me, Trailer. You’re
not
his type.” With a flip of her ratty hair, Brandi turns back around. I glare at the back of her head and wish I could think of something biting and clever to say, but my comebacks always come too late.

Mr. Chris calls for us to clean up, and the safety comes around to collect the scissors. I drop mine into the box. At the front of the class Mr. Chris counts them—out loud. Why out loud? Maybe to build suspense.

“We have one sharp missing,” he announces, shaking his head sorrowfully, like someone has died. Everyone glances around the room. Brandi smiles wickedly at me.

“Let’s assume this was an accident,” Mr. Chris says. “I’m going to turn my back. If the missing sharp doesn’t appear
after one minute, we’ll be forced to search your properties.”