Chapter 4 - Miss Pinsky-Waters

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After what I'd heard about Henry, my mind wouldn't stay still. I continued trying to blend in and keep to myself, talking only when I had to and looking at people only when they expected me to. In our room, we didn't mention Henry again, and in Dr. Scarpoli's class, I didn't hear anything else of interest from the two sitting behind me. I couldn't stop thinking about him, though. He was the one, Tobias had said, that people tried to escape through. That Mara girl, and others. And something else was in my mind. What Roxie had said that one night, when she'd thought I was sleeping. About getting out. Was it possible that she had been contacted by this Henry person? And what about the man who had been in rectangle head's office? What was his business with Henry? And, more importantly, what had that man known about me?

There was so much I wanted answered, but who could I ever expect to listen to me let alone satisfy my curiosity? There was nothing I could do. At least . . . not yet. Not while I was still trying to navigate my surroundings. Of course, that was getting more boring by the day. I hated Oliphant--the work they gave us and the stupid classes we had to attend. There was still the fact that I couldn't even remember what I'd done to deserve being there, and that bothered me more than anything else. Why was I labeled a criminal when no one could even tell me my crime?

I learned about Roxie. She told me what she'd done to get stuck in Oliphant. At her high school, she'd started up this sort of gang with some other girls. They sold cigarettes and pills she stole from her mother and other neighbors to classmates at games and dances. She swore she never touched the stuff, but getting caught selling them got her thrown in Oliphant. When I asked why the other girls hadn't gotten in so much trouble, Roxie said it was because she'd been the ringleader, and I could picture her that way. She was definitely a leader. No one could tell her what to do. Then there was Tobias, who'd helped rob a convenience store and a guy ended up dying. But Jason . . . well, he wouldn't tell me what he'd done. Not like I asked him; he just never brought up his story the way Tobias and Roxie had willingly spilled theirs. I got this feeling about Jason. I couldn't help sensing that he didn't like me. Not just a little bit of dislike, but a lot. Like he hated me, although I couldn't think of why. Whatever his problem was, he never talked to me. If there was something he wanted me to hear, he talked around me, to Roxie or Tobias, and I got the point.

I could never talk about my own story, though, and after a while, my roommates stopped trying to weed it out of me. They realized I honestly didn't know it.

Something weird happened to me about a month and a half after I'd first woken up at Oliphant. I hadn't been having strange dreams or visions of my past or anything of the sort. Nothing even remotely interesting had been going on in my head to help me remember, and then suddenly, totally out of nowhere, something happened at my Sunday therapy session that freaked me out more than I could've guessed. It actually made me wish I hadn't remembered whatever it was I'd seemed to remember.

I was lying on the brown leather couch in Miss Pinsky-Waters's office. She was our therapist. She was forty-two and had been divorced three times (she'd blabbed about herself a lot more than I had at our sessions), but she still liked to be called a Miss. Whatever. When you're in Oliphant, you don't go against rules. So Miss Pinsky-Waters it was. Anyway, I was on the sofa, even though I didn't feel like lying down. She always wanted us to lie down. Sitting up was for normal classes, she said, and therapy was supposed to be relaxing. I thought our sessions were anything but relaxing--all I ever felt was anxiety and frustration about all the things I couldn't remember. Still, Miss Pinsky-Waters wasn't a mean person. She was the only person there who actually tried to be nice to me, so I didn't want to do anything to upset her. I didn't exactly like her, you know, but I didn't want to give her a reason to dislike me. She was sort of flighty—like, she talked too much too fast sometimes. Her thin, short, wavy blond hair was always frazzled all around her face, always encroaching on her too-wide smile, and for as high-strung as she seemed to be, she seemed to think she was a soothing presence. She'd pat my shoulder and tell me to take deep breaths--stupid stuff like that. I often wondered if maybe she were the one who needed the therapy.

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