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No.
I couldn’t get comfortable here. I wouldn’t be like the others. Becky had said we were stuck here so we might as well make the most of it. But I wasn’t going to be stuck here.

Chapter Six

S
tepping out into the hall, I found Jane walking at my side instead of Mason. He and Lily were behind us, chatting.

“That girl, Laura, acts like she’s an expert on this stuff,” I said, gesturing back to the classroom. “Like she’s actually a teacher.”

“That’s the Society for you,” Jane said. “They’re the future leaders of America—trapped inside a freak show of a school.”

“Has anyone tried to get out of here?” I said, covering my mouth with my hand. “I mean, really tried?”

Jane smiled. “There are microphones as well as the cameras.”

I nodded, wondering whether that meant she actually had something to tell me or whether she just didn’t want me to get in trouble. I doubted anything I said here could be worse than what I’d said in my introduction in class.

Jane led me to the cafeteria, which was down on the first floor, at the back of the school. I watched the ceilings while we walked and counted at least thirty-two cameras in the four minutes it took to get there. I didn’t see the microphones she was talking about, but I didn’t doubt her.

The others that we saw in the hall had lost any of the anger I’d seen in them when I arrived. No one was protesting conditions. No one was trying to escape. It looked almost the same as any other school I’d ever been in—some talking, some laughing, some flirting. I wondered how long it took before they’d given up. A month? A year?

The line for lunch was backed all the way out into the hall. Jane and I took our place at the end.

“The food here isn’t bad,” she said. “Havoc has the contract because food duty offers a ton of points. But part of their points is based on how we rate them. So, they have to make it good.”

“How long have you been here?” I said, leaning back against the wall and watching her. Jane had a very light sprinkling of faded freckles on her nose and cheeks.

“Oh, I was one of the first,” she said. She folded her arms across her chest.

“How long was that?”

“Two and a half years, I think. I don’t keep track anymore.”

“How many people were here then?”

She shook her head, her smile disappearing. “Not many. Fifteen. They’re all gone now.”

The line moved forward a few feet.

“Gone where?”

Her voice hushed, and she absently ran her finger along the wood panels on the wall. “Detention, most of them. No one got out, if that’s what you mean. People used to try harder to escape back then.”

A girl with black hair and a round face ran up next to Jane, giving me a quick glance before speaking rapidly in hushed tones. “Did you hear about the punishments?”

Before Jane had a chance to reply, the girl continued, “Curtis and Carrie got no food all day and hard labor.”

“What?” Jane looked stunned. “They never do that. Not together.”

“I know,” the girl said. “I don’t know what it is, but Dylan took them outside.”

Jane shook her head, and the round-faced girl hurried off to spread the story.

“Is that for running after the car?” I asked.

Jane nodded. “The punishments get worse every time. I keep telling Carrie to stop.”

I wanted to continue talking, to press her for details, but she’d turned away slightly, not looking at me anymore.

After a few moments we turned the corner and entered the cafeteria. I’d been expecting the usual arrangement—huge pans of sloppy food under sneeze guards, being dished up by bored people with ice-cream scoops. Instead, I found a wall with hundreds of tiny doors. It almost looked like rows of mailboxes in the post office, except that these boxes had small windows and lights.

Jane handed me a tray. “You get one main course, one side, and one drink. It scans the chip in your watch.” She was smiling, but looked tired and lost in thought.

I peered in the little windows and saw gorgeous plates of food: enchiladas, fried chicken, lasagna, and half a dozen other things. As others opened the little doors the smells of the kitchen poured out.

I tried to look through the doors to the kitchen behind but couldn’t see anything.

Jane opened one and pulled out a salad, heaped with chicken and blue cheese.

“Not bad, huh?” she said. “It tastes as good as it looks.”

I finally chose a plate of fettuccine Alfredo. I’d only ever had it as a frozen dinner, but even then it was good. A tiny display above the window lit up as I opened it and the words
benson fisher, 1 entrée
scrolled across.

I put the plate on my lunch tray and then followed Jane to the side dishes.

“When I heard that Havoc ran the cafeteria I’d thought they would spit in my food or something.”

“They probably would if they could see who was taking it,” she said, standing on the tips of her toes to look in a high window.

I opened a door and took a small plate holding two bread sticks. “They don’t seem worried about breaking rules.”

“A lot of people break rules,” she said. “But some of the rules are more serious than others. If you try to escape, you’ll get detention. On the other hand, if you don’t wear your uniform, your gang will just lose points.”

She picked a bowl of fruit and put it on her tray, and then motioned with her head for me to follow her. Around the next corner was a row of vending machines with drinks.

“The gang will lose the points?” I asked.

“Yep,” she said. “They do that so that the gangs will keep their members in line. If one of the V guys wasn’t shaving, then the rest of us would tell him he has to. Seriously, the school has this all figured out. They make us obey.” She popped a crouton in her mouth.

“I saw that shaving rule,” I said with a forced laugh. “Do girls have that one, too?”

“Worse than a rule.” Jane grinned and gestured to her legs. “We have to wear skirts. Every day.”

There wasn’t as much selection in the drink machines—just juice and milk. Still, there was no way I was going to complain about my lunch. If it tasted anything like it smelled, it would be the best meal I’d had since two foster families ago.

I chose a bottle of orange juice, but as we turned to leave I noticed a panel of darkened windows on the far wall. The word
discipline
was on a sign above it.

“What are those?”

“More fun,” she said. “Sometimes the punishment is like what Curtis and Carrie got—no food at all. Sometimes it’s just that you’ll only get certain kinds of food. They don’t use it much.”

“Have you ever been punished?”

Jane laughed. “Everyone gets punished.”

I followed her outside. The cafeteria’s back wall was floor-to-ceiling windows, and a door was propped open letting in the cool autumn breeze. Jane told me that the V’s always ate on the bleachers unless the weather wouldn’t let them. I liked to think it was because they were getting a few steps closer to freedom, leaving the confines of the building whenever they could. But it was probably just for the fresh air and to get away from the Society and Havoc. Even so, I loved being outside, and my mind instantly flew back to the wall.

A grappling hook might work. There had to be rope here somewhere.

But first I was going to eat.

I walked next to Jane who, despite her skirt, didn’t seem to mind the chilly November air. She’d been here for two and a half years—how old had she been when she came? Fourteen? Fifteen? I thought of Mason. He was young, too. This was bad enough for me—it must have been a lot worse for the younger ones.

We were the last of the V’s to get to the bleachers. The girl from the window was there, her brown hair pulled into short pigtails. She gave me a little wave as she chewed her food.

I counted sixteen V’s—eighteen including Curtis and Carrie, who were still off somewhere working. Mason told me that it was the smallest of the gangs; the Society was biggest by far—about double what we were—and Havoc made up the rest. Jane said there were sometimes a few holdouts who refused to join any gang, but they didn’t last long. People needed their gangs.

I was the center of attention for a while, answering questions about where I was from and what my life was like before Maxfield, but for the most part the group kept up a normal lunch conversation—how much they hated class, how one girl was excited for winter, how another wondered when we’d get another school dance. No one talked about escape. I tried to bring up the subject once, but it died out fairly quickly.

The whole time we sat there I kept an eye on the trees. There were Society kids out there. One was at the tree line, patrolling on the back of a four-wheeler. I could hear a second one, but couldn’t see it.

What would make them act like that? Why wouldn’t they just make a break for it?

As I watched them I thought about what they’d need to have to keep the four-wheelers running: gasoline, oil, tools. All of that could help my escape.

After lunch we sat through another class on aesthetics and then had a break. The schedule on the TV screen called it study hall, but Mason told me that no one ever had homework other than reading the textbooks—which we were never tested on anyway—so most people just hung out in the dorms or took a nap.

I explored. Aside from the dorms, the fourth floor had a long common room with heavy wooden tables and leather couches. It smelled like dust and was completely empty.

The third floor was all classrooms—there had to be thirty of them, all almost identical. I tried to do some math in my head. There were seventy-four kids in the school, and my classroom held about twenty-five. So only three or four rooms were being used. Did that mean more kids were on the way? There was plenty of room for them.

Mason had told me that for a while, about a year ago, there were new students every week, sometimes two or three at a time. But then it tapered off. I was the first one in four months—Lily was the last before me.

The second and first floors were more interesting: the library (which didn’t seem to have a single book written in the last hundred years), the cafeteria, the trophy room, a few large multipurpose rooms, a tiny theater, and a dozen small rooms that had no furniture. All of the architecture in these rooms was amazing, with stained wood, painted plaster, and carved stone. But why was there so much space unless they planned for more to come? Or had more been here and left?

Had they all been killed?

I pushed on every door and window, but they were all locked. The sensors didn’t make a sound. The V’s didn’t have a contract that let us outside.

I wanted to check out the basement, too, but the last period of the day was about to start—gym—and I needed to run upstairs to change clothes. As I entered the boys’ dorm and headed toward my room, I counted the doors. Sixty-four in the main hall. I didn’t know how many others were in the halls that branched off—I wasn’t interested in running into either Isaiah or Oakland—but I guessed there were at least that many, if not more. So, 128, and they could fit two guys in each room . . . about 250 guys? And it was probably the same for the girls’ dorm?

Were they all going to be filled?

Mason was already dressed when I got to the room. He looked at his watch and grinned. “I almost thought you’d run away.”

I took my gym clothes from the closet—a white T-shirt and red shorts. “Maybe I would have if the doors unlocked.”

Clouds had rolled in, but it didn’t look like they were going to do anything. There was a bit of a breeze, and everyone was cold.

Gym didn’t have any set curriculum—it was essentially a free exercise time. Most people were out on the track, jogging or walking. A couple Society kids had a soccer ball. I didn’t really want to exercise, but it seemed like the best way to stay warm. The V’s didn’t have any sports equipment, so we mostly kept to the track. Mason and I started walking together while a group of V girls jogged. After about twenty minutes Lily left them and joined us.

I was making a mental map: the layout of the track, the distance to the tree line, the groundskeeping sheds. I tried to correlate it to what I’d seen from my window—hills in the forest and rocky outcrops that I couldn’t see from here. If I was going to run, I had to know this place perfectly.

I watched Havoc. They were clustered in what looked like a sculpture garden—upturned logs carved into faces and shapes, piles of rocks, flowers planted in patterns. Every once in a while Skiver looked in my direction, pointing and saying something to another guy, but they never stood up.

A cool breeze blew past, but it carried forest smells that brought up vague memories. Had I ever been camping before? I couldn’t remember.

“I really should be liking this,” I said, more to myself than Mason. “Look at this place. It’s nicer than any school I’ve ever been to. There’s no homework.”

“No one telling you what to do,” he added.

Lily snorted. “Well, no one except whoever is running the school
. Someone
is telling us to walk out in the cold.”

“You know what I meant,” Mason said. “When we go back to the dorms, we can do whatever we want.”

“Except leave the dorms,” she said.

I checked my watch. It was past five, and getting colder. “Shouldn’t we be heading back in?”

“A bell rings when gym is over,” Lily said. “We have to wait for that. The doors don’t unlock until it does.”

“Why isn’t there a schedule?” I asked. “Why don’t we just know that gym ends at whatever time, every day?”

Mason spoke. “You know that schedule that was posted on the screens this morning? It changes every day, and there’s no pattern to it. Sometimes class starts at nine and sometimes it starts at seven. Sometimes there’s no class at all and sometimes we’re there till ten at night.”

“Why?”

“Why does anything happen here?” Lily answered. “It’s all random and stupid.”

I had to smile. At least there was someone else who was as annoyed as I was.

We made a few more loops around the track. The wind was beginning to pick up, and a group was already huddled by the doors, waiting to go inside. Curtis and Carrie appeared around the corner of the school. They sat by the doors. Jane and a few of the other V’s left the joggers and ran over to them.