Something Wicked - By Lesley Anne Cowan Page 0,18

up because of his hard-on. I don’t feel sorry for him. He can go jerk off to some internet porn later. He’ll get props for having been with me anyway. In the end, it will probably get him more action.

“Aren’t you going to thank me?” I ask from the doorway, smirking. He looks at me out of the corner of his eye, shakes his head, and then pulls his gaze away. Usually I would finish with something even more obnoxious just to make him feel even shittier than he does right now. But instead, I’m the one who feels bad because I recognize in me the unfeeling and empty person I used to be, before meeting Michael. And I don’t want her back.

“Good night,” I say nicely, knowing it’s too late to make a difference, and shut the door behind me.

Twelve

So I make a choice.

It’s my first day at the Delcare Day Program. I stand outside the side entrance to the church, staring at the school door like it’s an opponent I’m about to get in the ring with. I smoke a cigarette, pacing back and forth between the parking lot and the church, wondering what the fuck I’m doing. It’s the hardest thing I’ve had to do. Go to a special school? It’s like admitting you’re a total failure. I feel sick to my stomach.

I suck in the last bit of cigarette wishing it would never end. It’s the last in the pack. Finally, I butt it out.

Breathe.

I put my hand on the door.

Breathe.

Push.

The day program is in a church basement. There’s something blasphemous about having a school for screwed-up teenagers in a church. It taints the holiness of the building or something. The sacred should be untouchable. It’s like Metallica playing a concert in the Roman Coliseum, or relocating our crappy school band practice to the library due to flooding. I feel like me being here puts an embarrassing brown streak on God’s clean white underwear.

I head down the stairs to the classroom. I saw it yesterday at my intake meeting. There are a bunch of little elementary school desks scattered in uneven rows, a few larger round tables, and a teacher’s desk in the corner. Along one wall are painted blue and yellow “cubbyholes” where we can leave our jackets and stuff. On the other walls are old laminated posters of Michael Jordan, Martin Luther King, and people climbing mountains. Across the hall is “the couch room,” which is a windowless room full of mismatched, worn couches and a big square table in the centre full of pamphlets on STDs, drugs, Kids Help Line.

The teacher, Miss Something, a middle-aged woman with the kind of hippie beaded necklace my mom’s friend Crystal would wear, meets me outside the classroom and reviews our conversation from yesterday’s meeting. “Now remember, Melissa, you’re here to work on what’s keeping you from being successful in the regular school system. It’s a transition program.We are committed to help you work on your personal challenges. Okay?”

“Okay,” Echo answers.

“The program is for the hardest-to-serve, highest-risk students in the school board. I tell you that because some students think they’re here just like regular school, and they’re surprised when we challenge them. We need to make sure you’re ready to work hard with us in making some long-term changes. We want to inspire you to change, Melissa. Are you ready?” she asks, with a big smile, like I’m about to be shown the prize behind curtain number three.

“Ready,” Echo answers.

Miss puts her arm on my shoulder and escorts me into the room. She shows me to my seat. It’s about ten o’clock, so the other students are already there, working. I sit down at a desk at the back, but it’s so small I can barely squeeze my legs underneath. Talk about regression back to childhood. I think it’s intentional, the desks, the cubbyholes. I think they want you to recall your pure kid self, a time before you got ruined.

Miss puts a sheet of paper on my desk and tells me I have one hour to complete the orientation exercise. “Do you have a pen?” she asks me.

“No,” I lie, because I don’t want to look like a keener.

“She can have my pen,” a skinny guy two desks away says, and flings the pen at me so I have to duck to avoid it.

“Tyler!” Miss shouts.

“What?” The pimple-faced shit smirks, and his hands go up in the air. “Just offering.”

“You don’t throw things across the