Day Sixteen

Day Sixteen

It's 2:04 a.m. and we are all still awake in our beds.

We haven't left since this afternoon. No one is allowed to leave their room unless a staff member accompanies them, even to go to the bathroom.

The police came and questioned us.

What was she wearing?

All black, like always.

How did she seem? Happy? Sad?

She's always sad. Look around at where we are. But she seemed hopeful. Her people were coming.

(They did not come.)

Did she ever mention any friends or places she liked to go?

She scored drugs on First Avenue and Fort Lowell.

Did she say she was planning to leave?

She said we'd be friends when she got out. She was going to draw us.

Can you describe her mental frame of mind in the past few days?

She's been upset. She's had a bad life. Read her file, man.

(Tell, but just enough to not tell. )

They took her suitcase, her bedsheets (I don't know why), her pillow, her blue wool blanket, her toiletry bag.

(She's coming back, don't take those.)

Miss, let us do our job.

Gideon finally speaks.

"It's really cold out there," she says. "The last I saw her in the activity room, she was just wearing her long jersey shirt."

It's cold out there.

My insides feel like they're caving in. She's so thin and frail.

"The police will find her," Brandy says. "She can't get far. She's not that sturdy."

I press myself against the wall.

"When are they going to tell us what's going on?" I ask Gideon. "When will they let us leave the room?"

Gideon is silent.

"They'll keep us cooped up until tomorrow," Charlotte says sleepily. "Probably. And restrict us to indoors for a day or two. Just to make sure nobody copycats."

"We should do something," I say. "We should go look for her."

"There are people doing that," Gideon says. "They'd never let us, anyway. They say if you run, good luck to you, but we're minors, so they sent people out. The police were here. They didn't come for that one guy because they caught him right away."

"Just everybody go to sleep," Brandy says. "Okay? That's the best thing to do right now, I think."

But I can't.