In the morning, after the lights snap on and I lurch up from my bunk, after I stumble behind Angel to the cafeteria for a breakfast of mushy oatmeal in a blue plastic cup that I have to tilt into my mouth, after the other girls noisily gather their books and binders for school, I walk back to my cell alone. A guard stands down the hall monitoring my progress, but I risk a moment to tilt my head toward a small, wired window in the cinder-block wall. The glass is reflective and I only see my own face: my sunken eyes, my hair tumbling down my shoulders like a frayed brown shawl.
I arrive back to find a man sitting in my cell. I can tell by the silence on every side of me that there isn’t another soul on this level but me and the man sitting on a low stool beside my bed, like he belongs there. One hand holds a pen racing across a yellow pad of paper in his lap.
With a buzz, my door opens.
The man stands up. Immediately, the taste of artificial fruit fills my mouth, and into my head comes the memory of the trial day when I met him.
“Morning,” he says, gesturing toward the bunk. “Take a seat.”
I walk slowly forward and sit cross-legged on my mattress. He sits back down, sandwiched between the toilet and my bunk, with his knees pushed high from the lowness of the stool. I stare at the ink-covered notebook he holds on his knees. I can’t read a thing.
“I know you,” I say.
“Starburst,” he says.
I nod.
“That was a hell of a day,” he says. I grimace at the word, remembering all the Prophet taught us about Hell, the hollowed-out middle of the planet where bad people are tortured in darkness forever, hearing but not seeing the droves of others shrieking in every direction.
“A hell of one,” I agree.
“My name’s Doctor Wilson.” He holds out a plastic-coated ID card. His picture makes him look stuffy, necktie cinched high, his mouth an unsmiling line. In the corner, even with my level of illiteracy, I can distinguish three letters: FBI.
I’m about to question why the FBI cares about what I did to Philip Lancaster when I recall that there’s another crime, a bigger one. Even with the Prophet lying in a frozen drawer in some state morgue or whatever it is that happened to him after the fire, he isn’t gone. Maybe he’ll never be. Maybe he’ll hover behind my ear forever, speaking his bile and clinking his chains until he’s succeeded in killing me like he wanted.
I look from the card to the man’s face. His brow is folded in an accordion of wrinkles. I can’t tell how old he is. People look so different here than in the Community, where hard winters and blasting sun made the young look old and the old look dead. “You’re, what, a detective?”
“Forensic psychologist.”
I squint. “What’s that?”
“Whatever I want it to be. Usually I talk to people.”
“Like a counselor.”
“Kind of.”
“I don’t need a counselor.”
He smiles. “Good thing I’m not here to be your counselor.”
“Because I don’t like talking about feelings.”
“God, me neither,” he says. “Anything but feelings.”
It sounds like a joke and for moment I draw in a breath and concentrate on the feeling of that. Jude used to try to make me laugh, and when I’d crack a smile he’d keep the joke going, like breath on an ember, making it grow into a fit of giggles that’d echo around the whole forest and make all the birds in the trees quiet. I’d go back to the Community at night afraid they’d somehow detect the smile hidden in the muscles of my face.
I shake Jude out of my mind. The man in my cell is looking at me. “What’s the FBI want with me?”
“The local police are no longer handling the investigation into the events at the Community. That’s been passed off to the FBI.”
“So . . . this,” I say, waving between him and me with a stump, “is about the Community? The Prophet?”
“It’s about what’s right for you. We’re most familiar with your case at the FBI. The warden and my bosses discussed it and they decided you warrant special attention. I’ve been appointed as your mental health coordinator while you’re in juvenile detention.”
“Is that really why you’re here?” I ask. “My mental health? Or are you here to collect evidence about me? I’ve been through a trial; I know what people like you do for a living. You want to figure me out.”
He laughs. “Oh, I already have. I knew everything about you the minute you walked into the courtroom with that candy in your mouth.”
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