I carefully put the leaves in my pocket, Beks holds out her pile.
“For me?” I ask, shocked.
“I don’t have any use for them.” She shrugs. “It was fun to feel close to my grandmother for a few minutes.”
I take the leaves, and we fall in line behind the other girls. Before we go inside, I turn back to Beks, plucking a red leaf from my pocket.
I hand it to her. “To remind you of the sun,” I say and hope it gives her a fraction of the comfort Logan’s leaf gave me.
I fold a leaf in half and roll it into a tight cylinder. Taking another leaf, I wrap it around the cylinder. Fold and wrap, again and again, until the creases resemble the petals of a rose. I tie off the bottom with a sturdy stem, repeating until I have enough “roses” to form a bouquet.
Biting my lip, I survey my handiwork. Fallen leaves are fragile by nature. I lift the bouquet gently, praying it holds. The action opens a floodgate and questions rush in, one on top of the other. Did they call my mother yet? Does Jessa miss me? Who does Marisa joke with in class?
I shouldn’t care. I’ll probably never see them again. This is my life now. These walls. A tray of glop. A loose brick with an eye on the other side. The sooner I get used to that, the better.
“Nooooooo!”
My fingers close over the roses, and at the last second, I stop myself from crushing them. That noise. High-pitched. Keening. The wail of a soul being separated from its body.
I hear it again, louder this time, coming from the hallway. “You can’t make me!”
I lurch to the front of my cell and press my face against the bars.
It’s Beks, being propelled down the hall by a burly guard with whiskers. Her hands are caught behind her in a pair of electro-cuffs. He pushes her with the butt of his baton. She pitches forward, and he yanks her back up. The whole process starts all over again.
“I won’t do it!” She curls into a fetal position on the ground. “I won’t!”
The guard lifts her by the arm, and her body unfurls. Up and down the hallway, I see elbows poking out of the cells. I imagine the girls from the courtyard, all with their faces straining against the bars. All with their hands pressed against their chests.
The guard prods Beks with the baton. She flies forward, landing on her stomach in front of my cell.
She looks around wildly before locking onto my face. I can’t be sure she recognizes me, but she reaches through the bars and grabs my ankles.
“You have to stop them,” she says hoarsely. “You can’t let them do this. To me. To any of us. You’ve got to stop them!”
I crouch down. I want to touch her face, but I can’t reach it.
“Please.” Beks’s eyes reach right inside me and yank. “Help me.”
Before I can respond, the guard wraps his arm around her stomach and lifts her up. He flings her over his shoulder and carries her down the rest of the hallway. He stops in front of the mysterious door at the end, the one that’s always been shut until now.
“I’m sorry,” he says gruffly. “But you have no choice.”
He tosses her inside the room beyond. The next few moments are a blur. I hear a rush of footsteps. The screech of a table as it’s being pushed to one side. A man yells, “No!”
And then, a gunshot sounds.
11
I rock back on my heels. What happened? Was Beks…shot? For what?
My stomach heaves. I want to crawl to the darkest corner of my cell, curl up into a ball, much like Beks did, and stay there until my ears stop ringing, until the image of her wild eyes fades from my mind. Until I forget everything that happened.
But I can’t. I press myself against the bars, straining to see. The elbows begin to disappear. One by one, the other girls retreat into their cells, to nap or sleep or cry. To dig their fingernails into their arms until they break skin. To do whatever it is they do to make this mockery a life.
I don’t. I stay by the door. Because she asked me to help her.
Me. Poor Beks. You got the wrong girl. What could I have done?
Hours pass…or maybe only minutes or even seconds. Time doesn’t make sense anymore. What is future and what is past? Did I