Dr. Begbie was humming lightly under her breath as she wrote, some song that I thought might have been by the Rolling Stones.
She’s with the camp controllers, I reminded myself. She is one of them.
But…in another world, she might not have been. Even though she was wearing the scrubs and white coat, Dr. Begbie didn’t look much older than I was. She had a young face, and it was probably a curse to her in the outside world.
I had always thought that people born before Generation Freak were the lucky ones. They lived without fear of what would happen when they stepped over the border between childhood and adolescence. As far as I knew, if you were older than thirteen when they started rounding kids up, you were home free—you got to pass Freak Camp on the board game of life and head straight on to Normalville. But looking at Dr. Begbie now, seeing the deep lines carved in her face that no one in their twenties should have had, I wasn’t so sure they had gotten off scot-free. They’d gotten a better deal than what we ended up with, though.
Abilities. Powers that defied explanation, mental talents so freakish, doctors and scientists reclassified our entire generation as Psi. We were no longer human. Our brains broke that mold.
“I see from your chart that you were classified as ‘abnormal intelligence’ in sorting,” Dr. Begbie said after a while. “The scientist that sorted you—did he run you through all of the tests?”
Something very cold coiled in my stomach. I might not have understood a great many things about the world, I might have only had a fourth grader’s education, but I could tell when someone was trying to fish around for information. The PSFs had switched over to outright scare tactics years ago, but there was a time when all of their questioning had been done in soft voices. Fake sympathy reeked like bad breath.
Does she know? Maybe she ran a few tests while I was unconscious, and scanned my brain, or tested my blood, or something. My fingers curled one by one until both hands were tight fists. I tried to work the line of thought through, but I kept getting caught on the possibility. Fear made things hazy and light.
Her question hung in the air, suspended somewhere between truth and lie.
The clip of boots against the pristine tile forced my eyes up, away from the doctor’s face. Each step was a warning, and I knew they were coming before Dr. Begbie turned her head. She moved to push herself away from the bed, but I didn’t let her. I don’t know what possessed me, but I grabbed her wrist, the list of punishments for touching an authority figure running through my head like a skipping CD, each scratch sharper than the next.
We weren’t supposed to touch anyone, not even each other.
“It was different this time,” I whispered, the words aching in my throat. My voice sounded different to my ears. Weak.
Dr. Begbie only had enough time to nod. The slightest movement, almost imperceptible, before a hand ripped back the curtain.
I had seen this Psi Special Forces officer before—Sam called him the Grinch, because he looked like he had stepped straight out of the movie, save for no green skin.
The Grinch cast one look at me, his top lip peeling back in annoyance, before waving the doctor forward. She blew out a sigh and set her clipboard down on my lap.
“Thank you, Ruby,” she said. “If your pain gets any worse, call for help, okay?”
Was she on drugs? Who was going to help—the kid throwing up his stomach lining next door?
I nodded anyway, watching her turn to go. The last glimpse I had of her was her hand dragging the curtain back around. It was nice of her to give me privacy, but a little naive, given the black cameras hanging down between the beds.
The bulbs were installed all over Thurmond, lidless eyes always watching, never blinking. There were two cameras in our cabin alone, one on each end of the room, as well as one outside the door. It seemed like overkill, but when I was first brought to camp, there were so few of us that they really could watch us all day, every day, until their brains were ready to burst from boredom.
You had to squint to see it, but a tiny red light inside the black eye was the only clue that the camera had zeroed in on you. Over the years, as more and more kids were brought into Thurmond on the old school buses, Sam and I began to notice that the cameras in our cabin no longer had the blinking red lights—not every day. Same went for the cameras in the laundry, the Washrooms, and the Mess Hall. I guess with three thousand kids spread out over a square mile, it was impossible to watch everyone all the time.
Still, they watched enough to put the fear of God in us. You had a better-than-average chance of being busted if you practiced your abilities, even under the cover of darkness.
Those blinking lights were the exact same shade as the blood-red band the PSFs wore around the upper part of their right arm. The Ψ symbol was stitched on the crimson fabric, indicating their unfortunate role as caretakers of the country’s freak children.
The camera above my bed had no red light. The relief that came over me at the realization actually made the air taste sweet. For just a moment, I was alone and unobserved. At Thurmond, that was an almost unheard-of luxury.
Dr. Begbie—Cate—hadn’t completely closed the curtain. When another doctor hurried past, the thin white fabric pulled back farther, allowing a familiar flash of blue to catch my eye. The portrait of a young boy, no more than twelve years old, stared back at me. His hair was the same shade as mine—deep brown, nearly black—but where my eyes were pale green, his were dark enough to burn from a distance. He was smiling, as always, his hands clasped in his lap, his dark school uniform without a wrinkle. Clancy Gray, Thurmond’s first inmate.
There were at least two framed pictures of him in the Mess Hall, one in the kitchen, several nailed outside of the Green outhouses. It was easier to remember his face than it was to remember my mom’s.
I forced myself to look away from his proud, unwavering grin. He may have gotten out, but the rest of us were still here.
As I tried to readjust my body, I knocked Dr. Begbie’s clipboard off my lap and into the crook of my left arm.
I knew there was a chance that they were watching, but I didn’t care. Not then, when I had answers inches away from my fingertips. Why had she left it there, right below my nose, if she hadn’t wanted me to see it? Why hadn’t she taken it with her, like all of the other doctors would have done?
What was different about the White Noise?
What did they figure out?