Crazy House (Crazy House 1)
And I slept about twenty minutes that night.
10
BECCA
I LOOKED AT MY FOUR roommates with equal amounts of curiosity and caution. There were two brown people, one tan person, and one cream-colored person like me. They were all staring back at me, but maybe they’d never seen quite so many bruises on a girl.
Did we all introduce ourselves now? Shake hands? Was there a prison etiquette? If there was, I was sure I’d be forcibly educated in it momentarily. As it was, I was left being me.
“What the hell is this crazy house? And who was that evil woman?” I demanded.
The kids seemed startled, one of them laughing nervously, and then the dark-brown girl glanced up and to the left, very quickly. I followed her line of sight and saw a tiny camera mounted high on the wall on the other side. As I watched, it swung in an arc, then swung back.
A surveillance camera. We were being watched all the time. How prisonlike.
“My name is Becca,” I said. “I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t know what this place is. I don’t know how to get out of here. Like, can my fam—can my sister come bail me out or something?” Despite our differences, I knew that Cassie wouldn’t hesitate. If it was possible, she would already be working on getting me out. I hoped it was possible.
This time all four of them looked solemn.
“I’m Robin,” the dark girl said.
“I’m Diego.” The tan boy bit his thumb and then dropped his hand, as if he was trying to break the habit.
The tall dark boy with straight hair stepped c
loser. “I’m Vijay.”
I’d barely noticed the other girl, except to see she had the same color skin as me. Now she nodded at me shyly. “I’m Merry. Like Merry Christmas. Not like Virgin Mary.”
Vijay pressed his lips together and Robin held up a warning finger. “Don’t even,” she said.
“She’s got to find some other way of describing it,” Vijay said defensively. “It leaves her set up perfectly, and it’s unfair that I have to suppress every humorous instinct I have.”
“Not this again,” Diego muttered, while Merry crossed her arms over her chest and gave Vijay a look I recognized: fed-up impatience. Having often been on the receiving end of that look, I sympathized.
“Maybe just spell it?” Vijay suggested helpfully. “Leave the Virgin out of it?”
“What is this crazy house?” I said again, a little louder this time to get their attention. “Why are we here? Why are you here? What’s going on?”
Their faces fell again. I sure was a killjoy.
“This crazy house, as you call it, is a maximum security prison for enemies of the system. Strepp is the deputy warden.” Vijay had a dry, precise way of talking, as if he’d been picked for higher schooling.
“To answer your other questions,” Robin said, “we don’t know why we’re here. We don’t know where ‘here’ is. And there’s only one way out.”
“In fact,” Diego said, his voice tense, “kids get out that way all the time.”
“What is it?” I asked eagerly, ready to sign up for good behavior or whatever.
Merry sighed. She was younger than me, with light-brown hair we call “mouse-colored” in our cell. “Diego is… kidding,” she said. “Sort of. What he means is, this isn’t just a prison, and we’re not just prisoners. This is death row. We’ve all been sentenced to die. And that’s the only way out.”
11
CASSIE
AT 6:00 A.M., I WAS awake and dressed, gritty-eyed and shaking with panic, perched on the edge of a kitchen chair. The moment curfew was over, I tore outside and plugged in the moped. It had rained during the night, and even now fog and mist shrouded the world, blurring outlines and muffling sounds.
My old bike was leaning against the house—I hadn’t ridden it since Pa had let me use his truck. Pa. I knew I had to tell him about Becca. I also knew he wouldn’t hear me. Wouldn’t understand me. Those days were over.