There are videos and books in her room to entertain her, but Miracolina has to laugh, because just as the harvest camp van had only happy, family-friendly movies, the titles she has to choose from here have a clear agenda as well. They’re all about kids being mistreated, but rising above it, or kids empowering themselves in a world that doesn’t understand them. Everything from Dickens to Salinger—as if Miracolina Roselli could possibly have anything in common with Holden Caulfield.
There are also drawers filled with clothes in bright colors—all her size, and she shudders to think that they took her measurements and prepared a wardrobe while she was unconscious. Her tithing whites have become dirty, but she won’t give them the satisfaction of changing out of them.
Finally a bald middle-aged man comes in with a clipboard and a name tag that just says BOB.
“I used to be a respected psychiatrist until I spoke out against unwinding,” Bob tells her after the obligatory introductions. “Being ostracized was a blessing in disguise, though, because it allowed me to come here, where I’m truly needed.”
Miracolina keeps her arms folded, giving him nothing. She knows what this is all about. They call it “deprogramming,” which is a polite term for undoing brainwashing with more brainwashing.
“You used to be respected, which means you’re not anymore,” she tells him, “and I don’t have respect for you either.”
After a brief psych evaluation, which she refuses to take seriously, Bob sighs and clicks his pen closed. “I think you’ll find,” he says, “that our concern for you is genuine, and we want you to truly blossom.”
“I’m not a potted plant,” she tells him, and hurls her glass of flat root beer at the door as it closes behind him.
She quickly discovers that her door is not locked. Another trick? She goes out to explore the halls of the mansion. She can’t deny that even in her anger at having been abducted, she’s curious about what goes on here. How many other kids have been torn from their tithing? How many captors are there? What are her chances of escape?
It turns out there are tons of other kids. They hang out in dorm rooms or public areas. They work to repair the unrepairable damage and rot around the mansion, and they have classes taught by other Bob-like people.
She wanders into a social area with a sagging floor and a pool table propped up with wood to keep it level. One girl glances at her, singling her out, and approaches. Her name tag says jackie.
“You must be Miracolina,” Jackie says, grabbing her hand to shake, since Miracolina won’t extend it. “I know it’s a tough adjustment, but I think we’re going to be great friends.” Jackie has the look of a tithe, as do all the other kids here. A certain cleanness and elevation above worldly things. Even though no one wears a stitch of white, they can’t hide what they once were.
“Are you assigned to me?” Miracolina asks.
Jackie shrugs apologetically. “Yeah, kind of.”
“Thanks for being honest, but I don’t like you, and I don’t want to be your friend.”
Jackie, who is not a formerly respected psychiatrist, but just an ordinary thirteen-year-old girl, is clearly hurt by her words, and Miracolina immediately regrets them. She must not allow herself to become callous and jaded. She must rise above this.
“I’m sorry. It’s not you I don’t like, it’s what they’re making you do. If you want to be my friend, try again when I’m not your assignment.”
“Okay, fair enough,” Jackie says. “But friends or not, I’m supposed to help you get with the program, whether you like it or not.”
An understanding reached, Jackie returns to her friends but keeps an eye on Miracolina as long as she’s in the room.
Timothy, the boy she was kidnapped with, is in the room as well, with a former tithe who was apparently assigned to him. The two talk like they’re already great friends. Clearly Timothy has “gotten with the program,” and since he was not too keen on being unwound anyway, all it took to deprogram him was a change of clothes.
“How could you be so . . . so shallow?” she says to him, when she catches him alone later in the day.
“If that’s what you want to call it,” he says, all smiles, like he’s just been given a new puppy. “But if it’s shallow to want a life, then heck, I’m a wading pool!”
Deprogramming! It’s enough to make her sick. She despises Timothy and wonders how anyone’s lifelong faith could be traded for corned beef and cabbage.
Jackie seeks her out later in the day—after Miracolina has determined that her “freedom” ends at a locked door, which keeps all the ex-tithes in a single wing of the mansion. “The rest is still uninhabitable,” Jackie tells her. “That’s why we’re only allowed in the north wing.”
Jackie explains that their days are spent in classes designed to help them to adjust.
“What happens to the kids who fail?” Miracolina asks with a smirk.
Jackie says nothing—just looks at her like it’s a concept she hasn’t considered.
- - -
Within a few days, Miracolina has all she can stand of the classes. The mornings begin with a long emotional group therapy where at least one person bursts into tears and is applauded by the others for doing so. Miracolina usually says nothing, because defending tithing is frowned on by the faculty.
“You have a right to your opinion,” they all say if she ever speaks out against their deprogramming. “But we’re hoping you will eventually see otherwise.” Which means she really doesn’t have a right to an opinion.