Vanessa, who slept on the bottom bunk to the right of mine, had snuck up to Sam’s bed. When I came into view, they stopped mid-conversation to stare down at me. Eyes wide, mouths wider.
The sight of them together was still sickening to me, even after a year. How many days and nights had I spent perched up there with Sam, steadfastly ignoring Vanessa’s attempts to drag us into some stupid, pointless conversation?
Sam’s best-friend slot had been vacant for less than two hours when Vanessa had slithered in—and not a day went by that Vanessa didn’t remind me of that.
“What…” Sam leaned over the edge of her bed. She didn’t look haughty or hostile, the way she usually did. She looked…concerned? Curious? “What happened to you?”
I shook my head, my chest tight with all the things I wanted to say.
Vanessa let out a sharp laugh. “Nice, real nice. And you wonder why she doesn’t want to be your friend anymore?”
“I don’t…” Sam mumbled. “Whatever.”
Sometimes I wondered if there was a part of Sam that remembered not just me, but the person she used to be before I ruined her. Amazing how I had managed to erase every good part of Sam—or at least, all the parts I loved. One touch, and she was gone.
A few girls asked me what had happened between the two of us. Most, I think, assumed Sam was being cruel when she claimed that we had never, ever been friends and never would be. I tried to play it off with shrugs—but Sam was the only thing that had made Thurmond bearable. Without her, it was no life at all.
No life at all.
I fingered the packet of pills.
Our cabin was brown on brown on brown. The only color was the white of our sheets, and most of those had aged to an ugly yellow. There were no shelves of books, no posters, no pictures. Just us.
I crawled onto my low bunk, dropping face-first into the worn sheets. I breathed in their familiar scent—bleach, sweat, and something distinctly earthy—and tried not to listen to the conversation above me.
A part of me had been waiting, I think—desperate to see if I could fix what I had done to my friend. But it was done. It was over, and she was gone, and the only one to blame was me. The best thing I could do for her was disappear; even if Dr. Begbie was playing me and they really were going to get rid of me, they wouldn’t connect us. They wouldn’t question or punish Sam because they thought she had helped me hide, like they would if we had still been friends. There were over three thousand of us at Thurmond, and I was the last Orange—maybe in the entire world. Or one of two, if the boy in the Infirmary was like me. It had only been a matter of time before they found out the truth.
I was dangerous, and I knew what they did to the dangerous ones.
The camp routine ran itself through, as it always did, churning us through the Mess Hall for dinner, to the Washrooms, and back to the cabin for the night. The light was dim and fading outside, clinging to the first fringes of night.
“All right, kittens.” Ashley’s voice. “Ten minutes till lights-out. Whose turn is it?”
“Mine—should I just pick up from where we left off?” Rachel was on the other side of the room, but her squeaky voice carried well.
I could practically hear Ashley’s eyes rolling. “Yes, Rachel. Isn’t that what we always do?”
“Okay…so…so the princess? She was in her tower, and she was still really sad.”
“Girl,” Ashley cut in, “you’re going to have to spice this up, or I’m skipping your boring ass and going to the next person.”
“Okay,” Rachel squeaked. I rolled over onto my side, trying to get a glimpse of her through the rows of bunk beds. “The princess was in terrible pain—terrible, terrible pain—”
“Oh God,” was Ashley’s only comment. “Next?”
Macey picked up the loose story threads the best she could. “While the princess was locked away in her tower, all she could think about was the prince.”
I missed how the story ended, my eyelids too heavy to keep them open.
If there is a single thing I’ll miss about Thurmond, I thought as I edged toward sleep, it’s this. The quiet moments, when we were allowed to talk about forbidden things.
We had to find a way to amuse ourselves because we had no stories—no dreams, no future—other than the ones we created for ourselves.
I swallowed the two pills one at a time, the taste of chicken broth still on my tongue.
The cabin lights had been off for three hours, and Sam had been snoring for two. I unsealed the bag and dropped the little pills into my hand. The clear bag went back into my bra, and the first pill went into my mouth. It was warm from being so close to my skin for so long, which didn’t make it any easier to swallow. I popped the next one in before I lost the nerve, and winced as it clawed its way down my throat.
And then, I waited.
FIVE
I DIDN’T REMEMBER FALLING ASLEEP; only waking. Of course I did—my body was shaking so hard that I rolled right out of bed and hit my face against the next bunk over.
Vanessa must have jumped out of her skin with the sudden bang and movement of her bed, because I heard her say, “What the hell—Ruby? Is that you?”
I couldn’t get up. I felt her hands on my face, and registered she was now screaming my name, not just whispering it.
“Oh my God!” someone said. It sounded like Sam, but I couldn’t open my eyes.
“—emergency button!” Ashley’s weight settled over my legs; I knew it was her, even as my brain came in and out of consciousness, and a white hot light was burning behind my eyelids. Someone shoved something in my mouth—rubber and hard. I could taste blood, but I wasn’t sure if it had come from my tongue or my lips or…
Two pairs of hands lifted me from the ground, dropping me on some other surface. I still couldn’t open my eyes; my chest was on fire. I couldn’t stop shaking, and my limbs felt like they were caving in on themselves.
And then I smelled rosemary. I felt soft, cool hands pressing against my chest, then nothing at all.
Life came back to me in the form of a hard slap across the face.
“Ruby,” someone said. “Come on, I know you can hear me. You have to wake up.”
I cracked my eyes open, trying not to cringe as the light flooded in. A door opened and creaked shut somewhere nearby.
“Is that her?” a new voice asked. “Are you going to sedate her?”