Chapter 4 - The Girl in Green

The road twisted and turned up the mountainside and ended in front of a long three-story building. The main part of the school was a pale stone, with spires and a central tower like someone wanted it to look like a castle from the old country. The left and right wings of the building were plain red brick with white trim and small, regular windows. The sun was fully down now, and the building was an imposing silhouette against the surrounding forest and a sky filled with too many stars.

Mom popped the trunk, and we got out my suitcase and backpack and put them on the ground.

A series of floodlights triggered as we lugged my stuff up the long shrub-lined path from the parking lot to the massive stone steps. The door was covered by a stone portico with three arched cathedral doorways, like someone had tried to steal a medieval church in France but got lazy and only took the front door.

More blinding floodlights came on as we climbed up the steps, and an intercom crackled to life.

“Yes?” a female voice said.

“I’m here with a new student,” Mom said in a loud voice. “Jess . . .”

The door buzzed and Mom pulled the door open. I expected a stone-faced hard case to go with the voice, but the woman who met us was anything but. She was small, with brown hair and pale eyes, and younger than I would have expected.

“Hi, I’m Kimber,” she said, extending her hand to Mom.

“Melinda,” Mom said.

“You must be Jess,” Kimber said to me. “Welcome.”

I looked around the space. We stood at the edge of an open foyer in front of a large wooden staircase with an ornately carved banister. The door frames and walls were trimmed with a matching dark wood. The floor was covered with small hexagonal white tiles interspersed with black rosettes. The edges of the walls and the stairs were bordered by two dark lines of tile with an interlocking inner line, like the border of a toga.

The place had a not unpleasant musty smell, and the ghost scent of dinner recently put away. Something baked in red sauce.

There was an open dining hall to the left, with students scattered around square dark wood tables, and to the right of the foyer was a very large, carpeted common room, where students chatted on couches or read in armchairs.

“Oh, this is nice,” Mom said.

“It really is,” I said.

There was something strangely beautiful about the building. When I heard it was an old hospital, I’d imagined antiseptic corridors sealed off from light. I hadn’t expected the vaulted ceiling, or the airy, open grandeur of the place. It felt more like a glamorous old hotel. So maybe it was a little down at the heels, but that just gave it a lived-in feel.

It didn’t have to feel like a prison. There was only one steep and winding road down the mountain. Sometimes geography is the jailer.

“It’s a very good school,” Kimber said. “Our students go on to some of the best colleges in the country.”

As we walked past the doors to the dining room and the common room, a long narrow hallway extended in both directions. The black tile border on the edge of both walls made the hallway seem even narrower than it was. I looked both ways and for a moment, I had the optical illusion of a mirror reflecting another mirror, a corridor of tile and regularly spaced closed doors stretching on to infinity. A girl appeared near the end of the right wing and I reflexively scanned the left looking for her reflection, but the other side of the hall was empty.

“Ms. Burton will want to see you,” Kimber said.

Kimber headed around the right side of the staircase. Mom and I both followed her.

Kimber stopped.

“Oh, Jess, she just wants to see your mother first,” Kimber said with a tight smile. “I tell you what—why don’t we get a couple of students to talk to you?”

Kimber backtracked to the dining room. There were a dozen or so students scattered around tables. She walked past a group of boys playing a board game and headed toward a table where two girls sat.

One of the girls had straight blond bangs and wore giant pink headphones. The other was small with a head full of tight curls. Her eyebrows were perfectly sculpted, and her skin glowed in a way that made me think she wasn’t wearing any makeup, or her makeup was so expertly done it was nearly invisible to the naked eye. Something about her was vaguely familiar.

“Kenzie, Star, this is Jess,” Kimber said. “She’s new here. I thought you could tell her something about the school.”

“Sure thing,” the girl with the curls said.

Mom gave me what I imagined she thought was a reassuring smile, but it metastasized into an awkward grimace. It occurred to me that Mom was probably nervous about meeting the headmaster. Maybe all this prep school talk had made her realize that the full scholarship offer was sketch as hell, and there would be hidden fees. Hidden fees she couldn’t pay.

I dropped into a chair opposite the girl with the pink headphones. She had an oversized pad of paper, and she was drawing lines with a mechanical pencil, tracing the edge with a strange three-sided ruler.

The other girl turned off her e-reader, school-issued by the sturdy look of it.

“I’m Kenzie,” she said. “And this is Star. Welcome to DC.”

DC. Danvers-Cutteridge. It made sense.

“Jess,” I said.

“Did you do the tour earlier?” Kenzie said. “I’m sure Ms. Burton told you that we’re nationally ranked and—”

“No, this is the first time I’ve been here,” I said.

Kenzie seemed surprised by that.

“Okay,” Kenzie said. “The common area is across the way, and this, obviously, is the dining room. The food is actually pretty good here. I’ve been to schools where the food is terrible.”

So have I. At the behavioral school I went to after Gardner-Betts, even the vegetables were suspect. The cook there liked to sneak chicken broth into everything.

“I’m vegetarian,” I said. “Does everything here have meat in it?”

Kenzie laughed.

“Surprisingly no,” she said. “I’m vegan. They do a pretty good job with vegetarian options. Though I wouldn’t swear that they use separate dishes and cookware. You know how it is.”

“Vegan is harder, especially when you’re living hand to mouth,” I replied. “Food pantries are cheese and more cheese.”

“Of course.”

Kenzie made a sympathetic face. I had the feeling that she’d never eaten government cheese in her life, but she was nice enough to pretend she had.

“The classrooms are on the right side of the building, and the dorm rooms are on the left,” Kenzie continued. “The girls’ dorm is on the second floor, and the boys’ dorm is on the third floor.”

Laughter came from the table of boys playing around a board. “Nat twenty,” one of them said. It struck me as odd that there were boys milling around here, unguarded. I’d been in all-girl schools for a while.

But I was less interested in the sleeping arrangements than I was in finding available exits. Just in case.

“What’s with the long halls?” I blurted out. “Where do they go?”

“You want to know about the halls?” Kenzie asked.

“I guess it’s an interesting building,” I said. “I’ve never been anywhere like this before.”

“It’s very old,” Kenzie said. “Star will be happy to know that you’re interested. She loves this place.”

Kenzie glanced at Star, who lifted her headphones.

“Jess wants to know about the building,” Kenzie said.

Star quirked a questioning eyebrow at me.

“What’s with the halls?” I repeated. “They seem to go on forever.”

“Ah,” Star said. “That’s because this is a Kirkbride plan building.”

“A what plan building?” I asked.

Kenzie laughed.

“Kirkbride was a psychiatrist who believed that every mentally ill person deserved a room with a window, clean air, and good lighting,” Star said. “All of the rooms have windows, which is why the building is so long and narrow.”

Mom had said the school was once a state mental hospital.

“Reasonable,” I said. “So why is this a school now and not a—”

“The Mountain Home Lunatic Asylum?” Kenzie said. “That was what it was called back then.”

“Brutal,” I said.

“You don’t know the half of it.”

Kenzie leaned over and lowered her voice.

“They had to shut this place down in the sixties after a string of disappearances,” she said. “People came looking for family members and they were just . . . gone.”

I thought of the graveyard below the mountain, rows and rows of nameplates with first names, or just dates. No one would ever know who was really buried out there—or how they died.

“What happened to them?”

Kenzie shook her head.

“No one knows,” she said. “There was a rumor that they were using patients for medical experiments here.”

“Unsubstantiated,” Star said. “You can’t blame the building for that.”

“So, is that when the school started?” I asked. “In the sixties?”

“No, after that the building was turned into a religious school,” Kenzie said. “For wayward boys.”

“Wayward boys?” I said. This place had a terrible name for everyone.

“That’s when the building fell into a state of disrepair,” Star said. “The government shut that school down in 2007.”

“Because of the building?” I asked.

“No,” Kenzie replied. “Two boys went missing. The school said they escaped, but neither of them were ever found.”

“So, what happened to them?” I asked.

Kenzie shrugged.

“No one knows,” she said.

Most schools have a ghost story or two, a tragic death tucked firmly away from view, but this was a lot. Then again, most people don’t care when a mentally ill person or a “wayward boy” vanishes. Out of sight, out of mind.

I pulled out my phone and typed in “missing West Virginia school boys,” but there was no reception.

“You know that they’re going to take that away from you,” Star said.

I dropped my phone hand under the table. “I’ve had my phone taken away in the other schools, but I thought it might be different here.”

“No, they’re pretty strict about it,” Kenzie said. “It doesn’t matter. There’s no cell reception anyway.”

I needed to keep my phone. I looked around for adults. There weren’t any. I pulled my shirt up and stuck the phone in my sports bra under my left breast. I didn’t have perky perfect breasts, but they were great for hiding small contraband. The phone was pushing it, but as long as the search was not too invasive, I’d be able to keep it.

Star shot a look in the direction of the entrance to the foyer before replacing her headphones.

I turned in the chair.

Kimber walked toward us. She looked both weary and determined, like she had a checklist of things to accomplish before she could finish her day, and I was top of that list.

“Ah, Jess,” Kimber said. “Follow me. I’ll show you to your room.”

I followed Kimber up the stairs to the second floor.

“The girls’ dorm is on the left side,” she said. “There are classrooms in the other wing.”

“And the guys?” I asked. Kenzie had said they were on the third floor, but I wondered how they kept the boys and girls apart. Gardner-Betts was so locked down it wasn’t an issue.

“On the third floor,” Kimber said. “Strictly off-limits. You’re not allowed off the second floor after lights-out.”

She led the way through a fire door and down the narrow tile-lined corridor, past a room with an open door. Three girls sat on a bed playing a card game. I’d played plenty of Hearts and Speed in my time: if you aren’t allowed a phone, cards will do.

“You’re in room twenty-six,” Kimber said.

At what looked like the end of the hall, there was a right-angle turn, and another hall offset from the first one. We turned the corner and the final hall only had rooms on the backside. The front of the hall was a bank of tall windows with ancient bubbled glass that looked over the front lawn of the school and the forest beyond.

“Here’s your room,” Kimber said. “The bathroom and shower are at the end of the hall.”

She stopped and knocked on the door. When no one answered, she went in.

Inside were two identical twin beds with bleached white bedspreads and scratchy-looking plaid blankets. A set of elderly desks separated the beds, each with a bent-neck lamp. In contrast to the elegance of the main part of the building, everything here was bootcamp plain and gunmetal drab.

“Here you go,” Kimber said.

As I stood in the doorway, Kimber gave the front pockets of my jeans a pat and both cheeks of my butt a quick search.

“Where’s your phone?” she asked.

“I lost it,” I replied.

ADHD plausible.

Kimber straightened. She stared at me for a moment, perhaps envisioning the places I could hide a phone. Her eyes had a certain weary acknowledgment, like she suspected I had my phone on me somewhere but didn’t want the trouble.

She made an internal calculation and decided against a more invasive search. We both breathed a sigh of relief.

“I’ll be back with clothes and toiletries for you,” she said.

And then Kimber was gone, her brisk footsteps vanishing down the hall.

Once she was gone, I pulled my phone out of my bra. I took a video of my depressing new room while I poked into the closet and drawers. Mom needed to see that the historical elegance of the first floor did not extend to the dorm rooms. I tried to text her the video, but it wouldn’t go through. Still no reception.

I shoved the phone back in my bra in case someone else tried to search me.

Mom would be back soon.

I sat on the bed to wait. Without my phone, my brain had nothing to chew on, and the feeling of being trapped took over.

In spite of being exceedingly tired, or maybe because I was so tired, I felt twitchy and unsettled.

I had to get out of here.

I leapt to my feet, unable to stay still a moment longer.

I cracked open the door and stuck my head out. There was an exit at the end of the hall, but it had a fire alarm bar. If I went out that way, everyone would know.

Same with the big front stairway. I’d seen the security camera on the way in.

I went back into the room and looked out the window. I was on the second floor, but it didn’t seem like that big of a drop to the ground below. The mid-century brutalist desk was built into the wall, with two ugly front legs that looked more than thick enough to support my weight. I could tie my bedsheets to the leg, shimmy down, and then it would be a small drop to the ground, assuming I could get the window open.

It was an old sash window, with a clasp between the bottom and the top. It had been painted over so many times I couldn’t move the locking clasp. I threw open the top drawer of the nearest desk, looking for something I could use as a tool, and found an ancient ballpoint pen.

I pulled the pen apart and used the thick plastic casing to dig out paint from around the clasp. I fell into a satisfying work-trance that only happens when I’m doing something physical, and my heart rate calmed. I used to get that same feeling pulling espresso.

“So you’re a feral” came a girl’s voice from behind me.

She startled me. The pen slipped, and the top of the pen casing dug into my hand. I immediately put my hand in my mouth and tasted blood.

I turned.

“What do you mean, feral?” I demanded.

Behind me in the doorway leaned a girl with dark hair, shocking pink lipstick, and cat-eye eyeliner. Her voice was a husky drawl, a slight accent I couldn’t place.

“Searching for an escape, licking your wounds,” she said, looking from the window to my hand. “Feral.”

The girl threw herself onto one of the beds. She was wearing flannel plaid pajama bottoms and a black camisole.

“I’m Ava, by the way,” she said.

She turned her head far enough for me to see one cat-eye through a fringe of dark bedroom hair. She was very pretty. I don’t like to judge, and usually I find attractiveness tied closely to personality, but Ava was objectively something.

I rubbed my fist with my other hand, hoping the bleeding would stop. I was only partially successful.

Ava shrugged.

“Do you always compare people to cats?” I asked.

“People are cats,” Ava said. “They either curl up in a cozy spot and accept captivity, or they hurl themselves repeatedly at all available exits, mindless of bodily harm.”

She gestured toward my hands and I looked down. The pen had stripped off a long piece of cuticle, and I resisted tearing it off with my teeth. And of course, there was the scab on my middle finger where I’d sliced off the tip. My hands were a mess.

“So, which are you?” I asked. “Feral or tame?”

Ava laughed. “Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? I do a good job of pretending I’m tame.”

“Yeah, I’m not good at pretending,” I said.

“Neither was Layla,” Ava said.

“Who is Layla?” I asked.

“She was my roommate before you.”

Ava frowned, pink mouth twisting in all varieties of angles. I had a feeling there was a story there, and not a good one. If there was something wrong with the school, I wanted to know before Mom got through talking to the headmaster.

I sat on the bed across from Ava.

“What happened to her?” I asked.

Ava looked at me and glanced over at the window I’d just tried to open. She didn’t entirely trust me, but I had the feeling that my escape attempt weighed in my favor. One feral to another.

“I woke up two days ago and she was gone,” Ava said. “She didn’t even pack her clothes. Kimber came up the next day and put everything she owned in a trash bag.”

“So she didn’t have luggage,” I replied. “It’s not that unusual.”

Throwing your clothes into garbage bags was not a new idea to me. I’ve known foster kids who traveled from house to house, stuff in garbage bags. An unfortunate metaphor, the trash bag existence.

Most of our things were in Mom’s trunk in black trash bags.

“Burton said she had a family emergency,” Ava said.

“Burton?”

“Have you met her? She’s the headmaster.”

“Not yet,” I said. “My mom is with her right now.”

I thought of Mom on the floor below me, talking to the headmaster about my bright and shiny future here at DC. It wasn’t going to happen. Vanishing patients, two missing boys, and now Layla? There was something wrong with this place.

“So you don’t think she had a family emergency?” I asked.

“No,” Ava replied. “Layla didn’t really have much family. Just her mom, but her mom had given up custody of her. She was given a choice—foster care or here. She chose here.”

“What if her mom died?” I asked. “Wouldn’t they have to notify her?”

“Layla would have told me if her mom died,” Ava said.

“True.”

Ava was right: it was weird. If it really had been a family emergency, Layla wouldn’t just disappear.

It seemed more likely that Layla had escaped. If there’s one thing I know about being feral, it’s that when the cage door inexplicably swings open, you don’t stop to say goodbye. The opportunity to bolt won’t come around again.

I slumped back on the bed. Mom had been gone for a while.

I pulled my phone out of my bra to ask Mom what was taking so long.

Ava stood suddenly, her eyes bright.

“You have your phone. Kimber didn’t search you?”

“She tried,” I said.

Ava looked me up and down.

“Can I see?” she asked.

She held out her hand and I handed my phone over. She stared at my phone, holding it overhead as though there might be internet two feet higher.

“Anything?” I asked.

“No,” Ava replied. “I think they have a signal jammer somewhere in the school. I’ve never been able to get a phone to work here.”

“Signal jammer? Isn’t that illegal?”

Ava rolled her eyes.

“Burton doesn’t care.”

Ava got down on her hands and knees and crawled underneath the desk on her side of the room. She flipped onto her back and reached up for something. Curious, I leaned over and watched as she slid free a board on the underside of the ancient desk. She stuck my phone in a small space in the back of the desk and slid the board in place.

“It took me hours of searching to find this hiding place,” Ava said.

“So you’re just taking my phone?” I said, incredulous.

Ava crawled out from under the desk and faced me.

“There’s no cell reception on the mountain and if they find it, they’ll just take it from you. It will be safe here until we can find cell reception.”

Before I could demand my phone back, there was a sharp rap on the door. Ava had just enough time to bound up from the floor and sit in the chair by the desk.

“Who is it?” she yelled.

The door opened and Kimber stepped into the room.

“Jess, the headmaster would like to see you,” Kimber said.

Good. I still had time to convince Mom that we needed to get out of here.

I doubted Mom knew about the no phones policy.

She wouldn’t like not being able to text me.

“I’ll be back,” I said pointedly to Ava.

I’ll be back for my phone before I leave.