Part of the closet floor swung upward with a groan of rusty hinges, a bar of moonlight from the main room illuminating a vicious smile in the inky black below. A hand slid through the gap, nails clutching at the boards, and whoever it was hissed “Heeeere’s Johnny!” in a deep, gravelly voice. It made Brady scream and recoil so ferociously he fell backward off his bunk, so that by the time Gabe and Shelby pulled first Nadine and then Felix and Jo up into the cabin he was nursing a lump the size of an egg while John waved a finger back and forth in front of his face to see if the dazed boy could focus on it.
For a terrible moment Shelby felt sure that Nadine would ignore her, would pretend nothing had happened between them in that rank bathroom stall just like Tyler had pretended every day that she was just part of the furniture, an embarrassing stain he was too lazy to scrub out of the upholstery. Then the other girl smiled at her, warm and wide and kind of smug, and a few minutes later Shelby found herself on the floor with her head in Nadine’s lap as they passed the bottle of Absolut around their little circle. A flashlight stood on its head and draped with a washcloth in the center of their group gave off the only light.
It was real, she thought, looking up at the hollow of the other girl’s throat, at her long collarbones and the spill of her dirty blond hair falling over her shoulders. Nadine was stroking Shelby’s scalp as she took a shot from the clay mug Gabe had dumped their toothbrushes out of and rinsed in the bathroom, and the other girl’s touch seemed almost to burn. A fingernail catching the edge of Shelby’s ear. The pad of a thumb at the nape of her neck. It really happened.
Gabe took the mug and poured more vodka. “So she was crawling in the garden. So what? My mom used to crawl for primal therapy or something.”
“No,” said Nadine. “Something’s really wrong, and you all know it. I’m not crazy.”
“They’re just Mormons or something,” Gabe slurred, spilling a little on his shirt. He snorted, then giggled, snuggling into John’s side as the fat boy poured himself a fastidious shot. “They fuck their kids. Maybe she’s inbred.”
Jo looked thoughtful. “That Black kid, Malcolm, said he saw a dog under one of the cabins the other day while Betty and her little shit-eaters were beating him up.”
Across the circle, Felix snorted. “He’s a loudmouth.”
“He mentioned dogs to me at the first bonfire night here,” said Gabe, his brow furrowing. He was so pretty, long and slender and elfin like one of the characters on Sailor Moon or the bootleg Escaflowne tape Stel had brought back for Shelby from her business trip to Singapore. All the folds and bumps and bulges ironed out. “He said he saw eyes outside the firelight.”
I wish I looked like you.
The mug and bottle rounded their little circle again. Shelby had never had a drink before, except a little wine at Thanksgiving, and her head was already swimming when Nadine bent down to kiss her with a mouth full of vodka. Shelby’s face burned. She struggled not to cough as Nadine’s tongue slid over her teeth. If you throw up on this girl she will turn around and disappear back down that hole, she thought. And the next time she looks at you, it’ll be like she’s noticing she stepped in something.
“He is a loudmouth,” said John, “but I don’t think he’s a liar. He’s just nervous. Imagine being Black out here, especially if Pastor Eddie really is a Mormon. My dad told me they didn’t even let Black people inside their churches until a few years ago.”
“No,” Nadine repeated. Even flushed and tipsy she had that quality that made everyone in the circle sit up straighter when she spoke. “It’s not Mormons—not just Mormons, anyway. It’s these fucked-up classes, it’s those weird fucking plants in Mrs. Glover’s garden, it’s…” She paused to catch her breath, and when she spoke again it was like someone had jabbed them all with a hot needle. “Has anyone else been having nightmares?”
The cabin fell silent. Vague unease stirred in the pit of Shelby’s stomach, splashing in the bitter pool of vodka that had gathered there. The sound of Felix pouring another shot seemed suddenly as loud as a waterfall. I can’t remember my dreams, Shelby thought. I wake up, and my hands hurt. I can’t remember where I am. Tyler was there, and Ruth …
“I keep having the same one,” said Brady suddenly, his voice cracking. “I’m digging a hole, like when they make us put up fences, but it’s really deep. I’m in it up to my neck.”
Nadine’s grip on Shelby’s shoulder tightened.
“There are people watching me dig. Sometimes it’s camp people, Pastor Eddie and the staff, and sometimes it’s my family. People from school. My friends. I keep digging until I’m all the way underground, and they’re all talking but I can’t really hear what they’re saying.”
There were tears on Nadine’s cheeks. Shelby sat up, the room swimming slightly as she took Nadine’s hand and looked around the circle. John was white as milk. Felix looked as though he was about to vomit and Gabe’s bottom lip was trembling.
“Eventually I find something, but when I go to pull it out of the dirt, it’s … me. It’s my face.”
I’ve had this dream.
Felix ran for the bathroom, wrenching the curtain aside. Knees hit wood with a hollow thump. The seat clattered against the tank, bright and clear, and then he was puking, his dry heaves echoing through the cabin. A bubbling splash of vomit. Jo scrambled to her feet and went in after him.
“I’ve had that dream twice,” said Nadine.
“I had it last night,” John squeaked. “The face in the dirt.”
More heaving and splashing from the bathroom. Jo’s voice, soft and low and comforting.
“The lessons don’t make any sense,” John piped up suddenly. “I thought it was just religious stuff, but it’s not. The whole book is insane, and is anyone else getting—”
“Headaches,” Jo finished from the threshold of the bathroom. She was rubbing Felix’s back.
“Maybe it’s the bariatric pressure or something,” Shelby ventured, knowing it wasn’t. She could hear the fear in her own voice, could understand on a level just above the churning surface of her subconscious that she’d had a blinding headache during class the day before, black spots swimming in her field of vision, white auras flickering around the other students in the mess. “Like when migrating birds get confused because of, like, magnetic fields, or storms…”
“Barometric,” said John.
Jo came back out of the bathroom, Felix leaning heavily on her. Shelby realized with a delayed jolt of something like homesickness that she’d never actually met another transsexual her own age. The only ones she’d known in New York were the big blocky woman who did Charlie’s accounts at the cathouse and one of the girls there, pretty Saffron with her sharp cheekbones and heavy eyeshadow, who she’d been too frightened to talk to. She felt an overwhelming urge to take Felix in her arms.
“It’s like there’s this … light,” said Brady. “It starts burning right between my eyes, inside my head.”
“Like a point of white light,” Jo said grimly. “Like a cigarette burn? Does that make sense?”
Shelby’s stomach clenched around the sour churn of the Absolut. Her hand in Nadine’s felt suddenly lifeless, the whole arm like a dead hunk of meat someone had sutured to her living body. Ruth only smoked when she was drunk, and it had only happened once. The lit butt pressed to Shelby’s arm. The smell of burning flesh. You cannot do this to yourself, Andrew. You cannot do this to me. They’d gone to therapy about it. Tears. Apologies.
“I saw it, too,” Felix croaked into the silence. He sat with his eyes closed and his head resting against John’s bunk. “Like you said. The hole, in my dreams.”
“So, what?” Gabe was sweating. He poured another shot, the neck of the bottle clattering against the lip of the mug. “We’ve been digging holes, for like, a week. Someone’s beaming shit into our heads like Professor X? I mean, come on.” He let out a nervous bleat of laughter.
“Yeah, maybe,” said Nadine.
No one laughed.
“Whatever’s happening here, I want to get out.” Nadine let go of Shelby’s hand and leaned forward. To Shelby it felt like the sun going behind a cloud. Nadine’s lean, hungry face with its fading bruises looked so grown-up in that moment, a shadow cast through time of the woman she’d grow into. “Mouth off however much you want, but you know this place is fucked. You know it is. You see the kids who’ve been here longer than us. The way they stare, like they’re fucking brain damaged. You want that to happen to you?”
“We don’t know where we are,” said Felix, his voice hoarse. “We don’t know where the nearest town is. We don’t know how many ranch hands there are hanging around. These people aren’t playing. What do you think they’ll do if they find us drinking? What do you think they’ll do if we try to run away?”
“You guys are so serious,” Gabe giggled, pouring himself another shot. His face was flushed. She thought maybe from the way his eyes were glistening that he was holding back tears. “Can we just have a good time before tomorrow gets here?”
Nadine’s expression softened. She leaned back against the bunk. “Yeah,” she said. Shelby thought her heart would explode when Nadine casually took her hand again. “Just, you know … keep an eye out. I don’t have so many friends I can afford to let you guys get brainwashed.”
