“Someone shot Harrison?”
She nodded, her expression darkening. “Yeah.”
“Do they know who?” I asked. I couldn’t believe that he was dead. That I never had to dread him again.
Cassie shook her head.
I had to tell her. As if sensing it, Merry came and sat next to me on the bunk. “Uh… you know, Harrison… anyway. I got pregnant.”
My sister looked appropriately horrified, then did the sweetest thing. She came and knelt before me and took my hands. “Oh, honey. I’m so sorry. That… that asshole.”
I’d never heard her use bad language before, even at her maddest. “Yeah. But a couple days ago I had a miscarriage. I got kicked really hard. And they operated on me to make sure it was all gone.”
“Someone kicked you?” My sister looked outraged.
I sighed. While that had been really, really bad, it was barely registering on my current list of awful life events.
“Cass. I’m really glad to see you, but trust me when I say that I would give anything for you not to be here.”
“I want to be where you are,” she said stubbornly.
“This is a prison,” I said carefully. “Full of kids from hundreds of different cells, including ours. Kathy Hobhouse is here, and I guess Livvie Clayhill used to be. But in here there are tests and training and fights.”
Cassie frowned. “What? Why?”
“How well you do at any of them decides how long you’ll stay,” I said, still pussyfooting around.
“So people get out?”
I hated seeing the spark of hope in her eyes. Slowly I shook my head. “No. This is… death row. The only way out is… to get executed.”
Cassie cocked her head to one side like a retriever. “What are you talking about?”
“Welcome to the crazy house,” I said.
56
CASSIE
BECCA HAS ALWAYS BEEN A big exaggerator. If we had a strong breeze, it was a tornado. If we caught a little trout, it gained ten pounds by the time Becca told someone about it. If Pa spoke to her sternly, then he had “taken her head off” or “skinned her alive.”
So at first I thought “executed” was an extreme description of something yucky, like having to mop these halls or whatever. Then Diego, Vijay, and Merry started backing her up, all of them speaking in low voices.
I still wasn’t convinced. Fighting until someone was knocked out? That was crazy. Push-ups over a board of nails? Who would come up with such an insane idea? Then Becca unzipped her jumpsuit and I gasped: her chest was covered with rows of unhealed dots of blood. She pulled her lip to one side and showed me the gap where her tooth had been. I stared at her, stunned.
They told me about their friend Robin. And a boy named Tomás. A girl named Little Bit. Becca blamed herself for that one.
By the time they were finished, tears were streaming down my cheeks. They were telling the truth. My sister had actually endured all this, and worse. Horror filled me—all this time I’d been searching desperately for Becca. Now that I’d found her, I’d never been so afraid in my whole life. I sat down on the cold concrete, unable to move, terrifying images spinning through my brain.
The lights went out at 10:00, just like back home. I curled up on the floor next to Becca’s bunk. She gave me her thin, ratty blanket. I pulled it over me and shut my eyes, then lay there shaking from cold and fear.
But I must have finally slept because a few hours later, the barred door slid open with a scraping sound.
“Cassandra Greenfield!” They were different guards than last night. “Get up!”
I saw Diego and Vijay were in their bunks, but Becca and Merry were already gone.
The guards handcuffed me and prodded me with their billy clubs. I tried to memorize the route, but soon gave up. All these hallways looked—and smelled—alike. When they undid my hands and shoved me through a doorway, I was only a little surprised to see a classroom. And the woman inside, staring at me with narrowed eyes, must be the legendary Ms. Strepp.