White Pines Sing

III. The Pines

Everyone soon discovered that the captured runaway was named Brendan. He was, at one time, a varsity cross-country runner out in California. On the evening that he bolted, Brendan had waited until just after nightfall and then slipped through an unlocked door in the kitchen of Hall C. His timing was unusual. New residents were prone to flee the camp after midnight, with the assumption that they could catch the staff off-guard. Most, at least initially, also believed that the Owls were nothing more than a myth to deter them. Brendan left much earlier and when he did, he never hesitated once or changed course. He sprinted through the fields on a direct line to the Pines and when reached them, the closest Owl was Cameron, over a hundred yards away.

Tyler knew that talking to a Lower for any reason, except to censure them, often raised unwanted questions. So when Brendan was finally released weeks later from isolation, Tyler found him alone in the bunks and censured him properly. He yelled for twenty minutes about how the kid was useless and guilty, how the kid had betrayed the program, and how others like Cameron had been left to suffer for it. Tyler thought it was probably the shortest censure in a long time at Gaines. Maybe ever. But when he finished, he lowered his voice and said, "Cameron didn't find you. Did he?"

The kid looked somewhat puzzled and Tyler said, "You had to be two miles ahead. Then you were walking back. What happened?"

Brendan hesitated, but then said he had been at least two miles ahead of them and maybe more. "I could hear people chasing me but not for very long", he told Tyler in a whisper.

"I started running west, but I think I turned more south at some point. Ran forever along the shore of this small river. Just kept on till I knew I was away. Then I rested a bit. I sat down and caught my breath and I waited for the adrenaline to wear off so I could think straight. I waited close to an hour maybe. Maybe two. Then at some point I looked down and it dawned on me. I said to myself, You dumb motherfucker. You ain't got a map and you ain't got a phone. Pretty soon it's gonna be ten degrees out here, and you don't have a jacket or a coat or nothing anymore. You are gonna die out here in these damn woods. Told myself I didn't have a chance. None. I never did. I said that out loud. Kept on repeating it until I knew I understood. Then I walked back."

***
FOUR WEEKS LATER

The Uppers were permitted to shower in the mornings, but as a Lower, Aubrey was forced to shower at night. He quickly discovered that showers were mandatory for every resident at Gaines Reform. Every single day. It wasn't a choice. The showers lasted between two and four minutes depending on your status, and anyone who took longer than that would be scrubbing both the shower and the toilets with a sponge for two hours straight. The boys' side of the Hall C building had three showers, and one was broken for Aubrey's entire first few days there.

In Hall C, everyone had already been informed about Aubrey. Everyone knew by now that he had stolen a pickup truck from his Uncle's house on the Sioux reservation. After he pulled onto the highway, he drove it for only half a mile before he slammed into the back of a state patrol car parked in the median.

"Half a goddamn mile", Anders howled in the bunks. "That crazy bitch Theo made it further in the Pines tonight. On foot. She didn't even have shoes on."

Anders started walking around between the bunks and was rattling them side to side while Aubrey stayed silent. "You are damn pathetic", Anders told him. "Half a mile. Straight to a cop. That's fucking disgraceful."

Aubrey laid back on the mattress and tried to avoid their focus while Cole demanded he say something in Sioux. Anders told him that he wanted Aubrey to step inside the makeshift boxing ring that was set up.

There was a commotion as everyone made their way over to the bunks. When the lights were turned off and they were covered in darkness, Anders and Cole would start to howl like wolves in unison, forming a pack. They were tracking their prey through the switchbacks beneath a bright paraselene, Cole would say. That's what he called it. And before long, someone would tell them to shut up and go to sleep, but the rest were content to cheer them on and join in. On Aubrey's first night, it got quiet much earlier than usual. When they called off the hunt and everything died down, JT sat straight up in the dark.

"Hey Anders", he said.

"What?"

"That bitch who ran off tonight."

"What about her?"

"She really didn't have no shoes on?"

"Nah."

"Jesus", he said. "You hear that Aubrey? Now that's an Indian."

***

They locked Theo in the Isolation Hall in the back of Gray Building just after midnight. The air was cold and it made her skin crawl. The floor was concrete and in the corner she could see a plastic bowl. The walls were covered in chipped paint and partially covered with old peeling wallpaper. The Uppers had left her alone, finally. She moved over to the corner to sit upright and closed her eyes. She could feel the air sliding from her lungs as she tried to control the tempo.

She knew what they thought of her. She had not just stepped out of line this time. She had stopped listening to the world around her. To them she was either dim or simply mad. In the silence she could hear their voices, high and shrill in a cacophony of jagged laughter and wailing screams. They laughed and sneered and told her she was worthless. Worthless. Theo you will be ripped out of reality like roots from the earth and buried in a shell of your own creation. When you left your sanctuary the birds flew. We were watching here. We saw unspeakable things. Sad.

She could feel it deep down, cutting off the space in her chest. In her mind she could see it playing over and over again, like a scene in a film. A slow scene. In an old film. A long shot of a red umbrella shading a young girl who kneels at the edge of a cliff with a smile on her face as her mother says, Jump now or you can't fly.

She laid still and shook for a while. She must have started to sleep sometime after three but she wasn't sure. When they woke her in the morning she could barely stand up, and she waited in front of the bathroom sink for several minutes. She wasn't sure if she was even awake, until the Uppers came in to motivate her. The dry heaves flushed everything else away. In the mirror, she could see that everything from her jawline down to her neck was a dark blue color, and it looked like she had been dressed in a tight silk scarf except for a few water spots where it beaded off.

"Theo" she said. "You look like an alien."