School all by myself at 2:30 in the morning was not a situation guaranteed to bring out my good side.
“Sit!” A woman—not the Strepp, but definitely of the Strepp breed—frowned at me and pointed to the rows of desks. I chose one and sat down.
“Your math scores were abysmal!” she snapped, pacing at the front of the room. “Since your English scores were also bad, I’ll explain that abysmal means very low! As if they’d been found at the bottom of an abyss!”
I nodded, wondering how the hell I was going to stay awake through this.
“Now tell me,” she went on, “what kind of word is abysmal?”
This had “trick question” written all over it. “Um, depressing?” I guessed. “Or… embarrassing?”
A vein in her neck started throbbing, and her face got red. If she had a heart attack, it would definitely perk me up for several minutes.
“No!” she shouted, and threw a marker at me. It glanced off my shoulder and fell to the floor with a clatter. “What part of speech is it?”
Part of speech—I’d definitely heard something like this before. Verb? No. I tried to channel Cassie, who would be trotting out this info like there was no tomorrow. Verb, adverb, present perfect, no—
“Adjective!” I said.
The teacher nodded reluctantly, then started writing on the whiteboard, stuff about nouns and pronouns, blah blah blah. A couple of minutes later she must have noticed my eyelids drooping because she suddenly yelled, “Give me thirty!”
“Thirty what?” I asked.
“Thirty push-ups, right now!” she shouted, pointing to the floor. “Drop and give me thirty. That will help you stay awake.”
Well. Push-ups are actually really, really hard, even for a farm girl. Push-ups when every muscle was already close to its breaking point are just crazy. But she had a fervent, take-no-prisoners expression, and I got down on the chilly linoleum floor. My arms were shaking after ten. Sweat beaded on my forehead, and I gritted my teeth as I somehow got out another five.
After twenty my arms felt like noodles, and at twenty-two I paused, panting.
Thwack! I yelped and bolted up as a thin wooden cane whipped the backs of my legs.
“You’re weak!” the teacher yelled in my face. “Let’s see if this will help.” She nodded at the guard, who kicked a board in front of me. A board covered with fine, sharp nails. Pointing up.
“Now finish those thirty, before I change my mind and ask for fifty.”
Oh, my God. Slowly I lowered myself right above the board. My arms shook and the sweat on my face was as cold as pond ice. If I fell, if my arms didn’t hold me, I would be a Becca-kabob in about two seconds. Shit.
Okay. Goddamnit. Goddamn this stupid freaking place to hell, I screamed inside my head as I grimly pushed back up. I hate these freaking assholes! I hope they all burn in hell forever! I hope they all get run over by a disk tiller!
I lowered myself carefully again and again, trying not to look at the sharp nails right below me. These assholes would get churned right into the ground! I would drive the disk tiller! I’d be laughing! I’d love to see their terrified faces getting sucked beneath the tiller’s churning blades! These scum-sucking goddamn sons of bitches, yellow-bellied shitwads, stupid douchebags!
Annnnnd, that was thirty. My chest heaving, I sat back on my heels and looked at the teacher. Her eyes narrowed, and all I wanted was to shoot the bird at her.
Without a word she turned back to the whiteboard. She wrote “Active Voice” and “Passive Voice,” and drew a line beneath them. Determined not to cry, I practically crawled back to my desk and took my seat.
29
THAT WAS HOW IT WENT for the rest of the night. After the English teacher with anger issues, there was a guy, then another woman, then a guy. They had clearly been recruited from some asylum for the criminally insane, and lectured at me about various types of math, more language and writing, and a couple of different sciences. When I looked the slightest bit less rabidly alert, they made me do heinous physical training.
Math, then a hundred sit-ups. I almost threw up after those. Chemistry, then jumping rope for fifteen minutes. Again, nausea inducing. More push-ups, and let’s just say they did not end well. Physics, then punching a heavy bag, which was the most fun I’d had since I got here. I worked out a lot of aggression, slamming the bag again and again until my knuckles bled.
By 8:00 in the morning I was seriously fatigued and starving—but the fun really began when Ms. Strepp showed up. And by “fun” I mean a soul-crushing nightmare of pain and fear. Turned out those were all just practice classes, practice warm-ups. She had a whole program of her own, and she was eager to get started.
As soon as she wrote, “I’ve got a woman’s ability to stick to a job and get on with it, when everyone else walks off and leaves it.” - Margaret Thatcher, I knew I was in for a rough time. Who asked this Margaret Thatcher, anyway?
Finally, at dinnertime, Strepp let me go. “You’re a disgrace,” she said sharply. “You’re one of the worst kids I’ve ever seen—and I’ve seen a lot.”
It was amazing, but I managed not to scream back at her. Somehow I staggered toward the mess hall, almost delirious. A tiny buzzing sound filled my ears and I shook my head to clear it. The buzzing was still there. Blinking wearily, I looked up and saw evidence that the outside world still existed: a dragonfly. My dragonfly. It was a tiny harbinger of freedom, and I suddenly loved it fiercely—this insect who could come and go at will.
“Hope,” I murmured to it. “Your name is Hope.” I smiled as it flitted away.
“Becca!” It was Vijay, looking concerned. It was the first instance of empathy I’d seen all day, and it almost destroyed me. “Go sit down,” he said. “I’ll bring your tray.”
Diego pulled out a chair for me. I sat down so hard I almost tipped over. Robin and Merry were already eating their watery bean soup and wilted vegetables, and gave me furtive, understanding smiles. Nobody said a word about the hundreds of pinpricks in the front of my jumpsuit, each one outlined by blood.
I was too tired to eat, could barely feel my hands. My four friends—and they had become my friends—took turns carefully pushing food into my mouth, funneling water into me. Amazingly, the food and water revived me, and after a while I took my own spoon and finished the meal myself.
“Thanks, guys,” I managed.
Robin looked apologetic. “I wish you could go back and just sleep,” she said. “But we have to read this tonight—all of us.” She held up a battered paperback book. It was called The Beautiful Struggle by someone named Ta-Nehisi Coates.
“Oh, just kill me now,” I moaned.
Merry shook her head. “If only it were that easy.”
30
“LET’S GO OVER THE PLOT again.” Diego’s voice was barely audible—his face was buried in his arms as he stretched out on his bunk.
Robin made a fist and punched his leg.