You Never Know Who to Trust

Dr. Begbie

When the white noise went off, we were in the garden pulling weeds. 
We always reacted badly to it. It didn’t matter if I was outside, eating in the Mess Hall, or locked in my cabin. When it came, the shrieking tones blew up like a pipe bomb between my ears. Other girls at Thurmond could pick themselves up after a few minutes, shaking off the nausea and disorientation like the loose grass clinging to their camp uniforms. But my sister and I? Hours would pass before we were able to piece ourselves back together. 

This time should have been no different.

But it was.

I didn’t see what had happened to provoke the punishment. We were working so close to the camp’s electric fence that I could smell the singed air and feel the voltage it shed vibrating in my teeth. Maybe someone got brave and decided to step out of the Garden’s bounds. Or maybe, dreaming big, someone fulfilled all our fantasies and threw a rock at the head of the nearest Psi Special Forces soldier. That would have been worth it.

The only thing I knew for certain was that the overhead speakers spurted out two warning blares: one short, one long. The skin on my neck crawled as I leaned forward into the damp dirt, hands pressed tightly against my ears, shoulders tensed to take the hit.
The sound that came over the speakers wasn’t really white noise. It wasn’t that weird buzz that the air sometimes takes on when you’re sitting alone in silence, or the faint hum of a computer monitor. To the United States government and its Department of Psi Youth, it was the lovechild of a car alarm and a dental drill, turned up high enough to make your ears bleed.

Literally.

The sound ripped out of the speakers and shredded every nerve in my body. It forced its way past my hands, roaring over the screams of a hundred teenage freaks, and settled at the center of my brain, where I couldn’t reach in and rip it out. I was feeling the pain from others around me as well, something that was very, very, uncommon for the others.

My eyes flooded with tears. I tried to ram my face into the ground—all I could taste in my mouth was blood and dirt. A girl fell forward next to me, her mouth open in a cry I couldn’t hear. Everything else faded out of focus.

My body shook in time with the bursts of static, curling in on itself like an old, yellowing piece of paper. Someone’s hands were shaking my shoulders; I heard someone say my name—Rose—but I was too far gone to respond. I heard Ruby's name too. Gone, gone, gone, sinking until there was nothing, like the earth had swallowed me up in a single, deep breath. Then darkness.
And silence.

I woke to cold water and a woman’s soft voice. “You’re all right,” she was saying. “You’ll be fine.”

I let her bring the wet towel up to my face again, savoring her warmth as she leaned in closer. She smelled of rosemary and past things. For a second, just one, her hand came to rest against mine, and it was almost more than I could take.

I wasn’t at home, and this woman wasn’t my mother. I started gasping, desperate to keep everything inside me. I cried, I know Ruby would be disappointed in me, but I didn't care.

“Are you still in pain?”

The only reason I opened my eyes was because she pulled them open herself. One at a time, shining an intense light in each. I tried to throw my hands up to shield them, but they had strapped me down in Velcro cuffs. Fighting against the restraints was pointless.

The woman clucked her tongue and stepped back, taking her flowery fragrance with her. The smell of antiseptic and peroxide flooded the air, and I knew exactly where I was.

The sounds of Thurmond’s infirmary faded in and out in uneven waves. Some kid crying out in pain, boots clipping against the white tile floors, the creak of wheelchair wheels…I felt like I was standing above a tunnel with my ear to the ground, listening to the hum of cars passing beneath me.