"See yourself outside," I muttered, driving the lesson home to my heart.
"Yes," he said, and put a turquoise stone in my hand. "Keep this close. It is a piece of the sky that fell many, many years ago and it will remind you to look up and see yourself outside." Then he walked off.
I turned the stone in my fingers, then looked up at the sky. Who knows. I thought, maybe it was a piece of the sky. I put it in my pocket and felt myself regain my strength. My breathing eased and I started across the yard again. When I stepped into the barn. I saw Robin was sitting with Mindy on her cot and working with her on the math assignment. Gia was nearby, her books opened.
"It's better for each of us if we work together." Gia said. "We can break up the assignments and each take something we're each good at."
"I'm not a great reader," I admitted.
"Well, we already know you're not great at math either. What are you good at?"
"Making excuses for not being good at anything," I replied, and Gia actually laughed. It was as if a thin wall of ice had shattered between us.
"Okay," she said. "I'll partner up with you. Come on, we'll start on the social studies assignment."
I picked up my book to join her, then noticed Robin's cot. It had a mattress on it, a pillow, and a blanket. and Robin was wearing the same coveralls and shirt.
"You were rewarded." I said excitedly. "How come?"
She looked at me with joyless eyes and then looked down at the math text.
"Let's just get this done," Gia said, urging me to drop the subject.
She didn't need to. Robin's quick, subdued looks were enough. I understood. Whatever she was being rewarded for was not something she was happy to describe. What terrible things had been done to Robin and what had she given Dr. Foreman as a result? Was it something about me. something I had said? I ran back whatever I could remember saying, drawing in my thoughts and words like a fisherman reeling in fish. Many things would have angered Dr. Foreman. I thought, but from the way Robin looked, she wouldn't tell me even if she wanted to tell me. She looked the way I had felt right after I had given up Teal. I felt sure I was not the only one who betrayed.
And more important, perhaps, was what Dr. Foreman had been after right from the beginning. She would find ways to turn us against each other until all each of us had was herself and Dr. Foreman. She was the spider I had envisioned out there. I and the others were trapped in her web now.
I quickly put my hand into my pocket to feel the stone. Natani's words returned.
Think of the sky. See myself outside.
Yes, that would be my chant.
That was what would get me home. I thought, wherever home might be.
6
Group Therapy
.
Teal didn't return to the barracks for nearly four
days. Every time I started to talk about her and wonder aloud what was happening to her. Gia came at me, telling me to stop asking and to mind my own business. I wanted to suggest that Teal was my business and should be hers. too. We should all be each other's business. Whom else did any of us have here? But neither Robin nor Mindy spoke up in support of me. They avoided my eyes, looked away, went about their work. Teal could be gone for good and none of them would have asked after her. It would be as if she had never existed, the same if I had never existed.
I began to wonder if Teal hadn't been sent away, maybe placed in a f
ormal detention center or even a prison. I told myself she would be better off. We all would.
I mumbled this idea loud enough for Gia to hear, and finally she fixed her dark, steely eyes an me and said. "Don't ever believe Dr. Foreman when she threatens to send us back. No one gets sent back. Dr Foreman does not fail, does not give up. If one way doesn't work for her, she tries another and another. You either change to her liking or..."
"Or what?" I quickly countered. "Or you don't, but you don't leave unless it's an her terms."
"The buddies left."
"Did they?" Gia tossed back at me. "They're still here, aren't they?"
"Because they want to be."