Numbly I followed the others into the big auditorium where Tim had beaten me to a pulp. The raised ring was still there, but this time there were two gurneys parked on the canvas surface, and two monitoring machines, like the kind they had Pa hooked up to at Healthcare United.
Strepp was standing in the ring, wearing—get this—a white medical coat. Like she was a doctor. Didn’t doctors promise to do no harm?
Our prison block sat in one section of wooden bleachers. I felt like I was going to be sick. I clung so tightly to Vijay’s hand that he pulled it away and shook his fingers to get the feeling back. But the four of us—Diego, Vijay, Merry, and me—Robin’s roommates and friends, sat together, pale-faced and with tears streaming down our cheeks.
Guards pulled Robin up into the ring. On the other side, two guards pushed a boy toward the gurney. He was small, young, and clearly terrified. Robin’s dark skin was ashen. I saw her scanning the bleachers, looking for our section. I jumped up and yelled, “We’re here!” only to have Diego and Merry grab my jumpsuit and slam me back onto the bleachers.
“Shut up!” Diego hissed. “Do you want to get us all tased?”
Guards were patrolling the aisles, Tasers out. I’d been so freaked I hadn’t noticed them. Now I huddled down between my friends, my fist pressed to my lips so I wouldn’t get them in trouble, too.
In the ring, Strepp’s nurse minions fastened Robin and the boy onto their gurneys, locking their ankles and wrists into thick leather straps. The lit billboards on either side of the auditorium flashed: ROBIN WELLFLEET. TOMáS RIVERA. ENEMIES OF THE SYSTEM.
I wanted to scream that they weren’t enemies! That it was the system that was the enemy! Instead I bit my knuckles so hard that I broke the skin.
My breath stuck in my throat as an assistant pushed a needle into a vein in Robin’s arm. They attached monitors to her chest, and the small screen showed my friend’s scared, rapid heartbeats racing from one side to the other.
“This can’t be happening,” I whispered, and Merry clenched my hand tightly. She, Diego, and Vijay had all known Robin longer than I had. This was hurting them, too.
Tomás was hooked up as well, his heartbeats flying across his monitor.
This had to be a bad dream. I couldn’t be sitting here in some secret prison, about to watch my best friend die right in front of me.
Strepp dropped her hand, as if starting a car race. Many prisoners around us were stone-faced, silent, or even bored-looking. I saw one girl chewing her thumb, another playing with her hair, not watching the scene at all. They were coping. I didn’t judge them.
The assistant pushed a button on the IV machine. It took only two breaths before Robin’s eyes closed. Almost immediately the green blips of heartbeats slowed and lengthened. Merry’s nails dug into the back of my hand. I grabbed Diego’s jumpsuit so hard the fabric almost ripped.
It took less than twenty seconds. In just moments the green blips had flattened into a straight line, repeating over and over. Robin’s chest quit rising and falling. Her lips went slack.
Robin was dead.
37
PAIN IS HAVING YOUR MA disappear for a mood-adjust and never come back. Pain is your pa propping his rifle up between stacks of farmers’ almanacs and pulling a string tied to the trigger.
Watching your good friend be murdered right in front of you is worse.
Robin, who had whispered instructions that helped me survive; Robin, who had been the first friendly face I’d seen in this insane freak show; Robin, who was strong and brave and loyal and beautiful—was actually dead. Really and truly dead. I had seen it.
“Prisoners! Report to the chapel!”
I winced as the crackling, fuzzy words assaulted my ears. Kids around me stood up and shuffled into the aisles. Diego took my arm and pulled me to my feet.
“Report what to the huh?” I whispered through my tears.
“The chapel,” Vijay whispered back. “Sometimes we go to the chapel after an execution.”
This was the most outrageous thing of all. The guards marched us across a barren expanse of hard-packed gray dirt, and then suddenly an incredibly beautiful church rose out of the bleakness like a peony blooming in a salted field.
I was still crying, but once inside the church a hush fell over all of us. I blinked in amazement—our plain, serviceable little church at home was nothing like this. This was… grandeur, a ridiculous flight of fancy, with stone carved into elaborate arches overhead, large stained-glass windows, and behind the white marble altar, a rose window so ornate and stunningly beautiful that my mouth went dry.
“What is this?” I managed to whisper to Diego. “Where did this come from?”
He shrugged slightly—he didn’t know.
Line after line of prisoners filled the polished wooden pews, our dusty feet almost silent on the deep-red carpet. I saw Kathy again. She met my eyes for a second, then looked away. I remembered that she said she’d seen Livvie Clayhill, but that she was gone now. Did that mean Livvie was dead? Who else from our cell had ended up here? Every kid that had disappeared? Only a couple of them?
The air was still and faintly scented with something spicy. My sobs slowed to hiccups as I looked around, taking in every miraculous detail.
Then Strepp stood in front of the altar and began to speak.
“‘No one wants to die,’” she said. “‘Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.’”
She paused, letting the words sink in. “A man named Steve Jobs said that. And he was right.” Her eyes raked the rows of prisoners, teenagers in grubby yellow jumpsuits, some spattered with blood.
I was numb, trying to process that Robin was actually gone. Gone forever.
“Death is necessary. Death is the means of change that is necessary for every society to achieve its full potential.” Strepp paced back and forth, her heels sounding like crickets on a summer night.
“There is good and there is evil in the world,” she went on. “Evil will always try to suppress good. ‘When good people in any country cease their vigilance and struggle, then evil men prevail.’ A woman named Pearl S. Buck said that, and she was right, too. What choices have you made against evil?” She stopped suddenly and stared right into the crowd. “I’ll tell you! None! You have made no choice against evil! You have supported evil, you have facilitated evil, and you have excused evil, every day of your lives!”
My eyes widened at this crazy diatribe, but no one else seemed surprised. No doubt they’d heard it all before. The Strepp went on like this, sprinkling in quotes to support her whole good versus evil schtick. I mean, good versus evil. Had she looked in a mirror lately? Irony much?