“Hey. Hey. Wake up.” I shake Zindagee gently from over her covers.
“What? What is it?” Her voice is laden with sleepiness.
“Come into mine and Maggie’s room, we have to tell you something. Be quiet. Don’t let anyone hear.” My hushed voice is barely audible.
“Why? What is it?”
“It’s a mystery.”
“Okay, fine.”
She makes her way out the door while I climb up to wake up Aisha.
“Aisha. Dude. Wake up. Wake up.”
“Why?”
“I have something important to tell you.”
One by one Maggie and I wake up everyone. And we send them all to our room. Thankfully, they’re all quiet. Everyone is quiet. They go through the glowing halls without alerting any of the people who are supposed to be keeping an eye on us.
Eventually there are twenty girls crowded onto the bottom bunk of our bunk bed. I can barely make anyone out amidst the shadows. But I squeeze against Lumina towards the edge of the bed.
Maggie recalls her story first, voice breaking as she cries her way through all the experiences and emotions that broke her and formed her and made her who she is. The other girls don’t understand it at first. Just like I didn’t understand it at first. But slowly, surely, they come around. They feel Maggie’s pain and her love and her restlessness and her yearning.
“A thing like that, it could really teach you a lot of things,” Ishani comments.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that, Maggie, you deserve better,” Valentina comforts.
“I know. But it taught me so much. I don’t think I ever could’ve gotten truly close to my brother if he hadn’t died.” There is anguish in Maggie’s voice, but there is also a strange sense of gratitude.
“I … I think I understand.” Bik’s words are subdued and thoughtful, almost like a lullaby in the nighttime.
“But Maggie,” Cara speaks solemnly, “How can we help you get over this?”
“I don’t need to get over this,” Maggie replies, “I need to keep the memory with me always. It set me free. It set me free and I have to honour my brother and all he did for me and all he gave me. I have to honour him by setting all of you free as well.”
“But they won’t let us be,” Chin points out. “They brought us here, and they’ll keep us here, and we won’t be free.”
“No,” Nora opposes, “we have to take freedom. We have to take freedom however we can, with whatever means necessary.”
“But is it really so bad here?” Lavinia’s voice is unsure. She isn’t fully brought over to our side yet.
And so I tell them my story. I tell it from the beginning, from finding that notebook in my school hallways. I talk about all the alienation, the disillusionment, the entrapment that I felt. I talk about how superficial and hollow I saw everything as. I talk about how I was ever so determined to get free.
I talk about the nights and days I spent roaming the hidden alleyways of the city. I talk about all the thoughts I thought, all the emotions I felt. Everything I experienced. I talk about the strangeness and the familiarity that overtook everything then. About how purposeful and wandering I was. I talk about the wind on my arms and the dryness in my throat. And I talk about how I just kept going, how everything inside of me was calling out to me to keep going, how everything around me was singing the same song.
I talk about how at the forge of death, at last, for the first time in my life I felt like I was a part of something. For the first time in my life I felt wanted. For the first time in my life I felt like I belonged. I talk about how I lost myself entirely and how I was more myself than I ever had been. And I talk about how I was one with the wind and the cold and the sky.
I end with the story of how I was taken in chains to the hospital, and had my mind drilled into against my will.
“So what are your guys’ stories?” I ask the girls gathered all around me, straining to listen.
One by one they all take turns remembering what they can from their past, from their time before the rehabilitation centre. Their memories come in bits and pieces, but all of their memories come back, eventually.
Nora was a runaway, living on the streets and begging for food and water. She had been there for two or three years. It was a hard life, it was a hungry life, it was a life full of need and want and glaring violence. She often did not know how she would keep on going, keep on making it through. But she says that it was a better life than the one she had lived before, a life in the lap of luxury. Eventually the police found her, and they took her to the hospital, screaming all the way.
Nora was a lot braver than I ever could be. She is brave. She is bold. But most importantly she’s good, so good. Much better than I ever could be.
Delores got into a fight with her mother and father about what she wanted in her life. They were insisting that she go to preparatory school, which would be a tightly regimented and closely surveilled thing just as the rehabilitation centre is. She insisted that she did not want to go, and the resulting fight was horrible. It was ugly. It lead neighbours to call the police and the rest is history.
I know what it’s like fighting with your parents. It’s hard. It hurts. It never leaves you. It makes you who you are. It breaks through the veil of illusion and it makes you stronger.
Labonita also ran away one day, just like me. Unlike me she was not trying to kill herself, though she didn’t particularly care about living either. What she was trying to do was go beyond the city, and find out what was out there. She kept walking and walking and walking. And just when she thought she almost made it, just when she thought that the edge of the city was close, the police caught up to her. And they dragged her to this accursed place.
I never thought there could be anything beyond the city. It seems to stretch every which way in every direction. I’ve never heard anyone talk of anything beyond the city. Labonita’s really creative, thinking that something is out there. Really creative or really hopeful. I hope she’s right.
Brigely tried to kill herself in a more concrete way than the rest of us did. Her story is a really rather ghastly one. She put a noose around her throat, made of strong, coarse rope she bought in secret and kept under her floorboards. She got as far as tying it to a tree, and jumping off of the branches with the horrible, beautiful promise of a rope around her throat. She remembers pain, incredible pain. She remembers feeling like she was drowning on dry land. And she remembers waking up in the hospital.
Brigely is brave too. Though I wish so very much that she didn’t have to ge brave. I wish we all didn’t have to be brave. I wish we could all live in a kinder world, where life and tenderness and joy were not things that were forever denied to us, denied to everyone.
Zeinab once stopped talking. She stopped talking entirely. She didn’t talk to her parents, or her classmates, or her teachers, or her counsellors. She tells us that she just didn’t see the point of it anymore. That every time she time used to talk, no one would listen, no one would understand, no-one would try to see it from her point of view. And so one day she just gave up. She tells us about how lonely she felt, how forlorn. How she clawed and bit when the police came to take her away. How she fought them with everything her small body had. How she could not win against their superior forces.
It paints a really disturbing picture, seeing her there with a swarm of police officers, fighting with violence unbecoming of any human being, yet silent through it all. It paints a grim picture but it’s a picture I can understand too well. Disturbingly well. Beautifully well. Magnificently well.
Zindagee used to cut herself. She would do it all the time. She said that watching the blood pour out of her body was one of the only ways she could make herself feel alive. One day her parents found out. They found her sitting in her room, in a pool of her own blood. And they started yelling at her, screaming at her, berating her, condemning her. She pleaded with them, promised that she’d stop, promised that she’d do anything as long as they don’t call the police. But they did call the police. And that’s that.
I cringe at thinking of the pain she must have been going through. Must have gone through for so long. To sit in a pool of her own blood. She must have really been desperate. But it’s a desperation that I can understand. It’s a desperation that we all can understand.
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Lumina jumped into the river cutting through the city. She knew how to swim but she also knew that no-one could swim forever. She did not know if she was trying to kill herself or if she was trying to get away from the city. She didn’t know what she was doing. All she knew was that the river seemed to be calling to her. And so she answered its call. She was down there in the frozen waters and rushing currents for hours and hours, until the sky turned from dark to light. But eventually she was fished out with cutting wire nets and now she’s here.
I also often felt called to the river. In all the artificiality of all the city, the river seems somehow just a little bit more real than everything around it. It feels like the tiniest spark of an oasis.
Lavinia wasn’t a martyr like the rest of us were. She was simply a writer. But no, that’s not true either. Writers are fantastical and imaginative and polished. They make great stories with grand words. That was not what Lavinia was trying to do at all. She was simply a girl writing in a notebook. She was writing in a notebook similar to the notebook I once found, the one that had started everything for me. Unbeknownst to her, her teacher was looking over her shoulder watching her write. And that was what lead to her coming here.
I ask her if she was able to save the notebook. She looks at me sadly and confesses that she wasn’t. I tell her that it’s okay, she’s sharing the contents of it with all of us right now, and just simply talking as friends is much better than any written word written anywhere.
Cara hid in a secret root cellar she found in the basement of her house. She did not know how long she hid for or how long she intended to hide for or whether she wanted to die down there. All she knew was that in the darkness and coldness all around her, dark like a blanket and cold like the water’s embrace, she cocooned herself and waited for whatever was to come. She remembers that she got hungrier and hungrier, and thirstier and thirstier, until one day she felt nothing at all. It was then that she woke up in the hospital, chained to the bed just as I was.
I think of how strange it must have been, enveloped in darkness all around you, so dark that you do not know whether you are awake or asleep. It must be unreal. But at the same time it must be so hyper real. It must be liberating in its own strange, inexplicable sort of way.
Avalon did the same thing, except she hid in the root cellar of a long-abandoned house down the street from her house. It was dilapidated and dusty and the paint was all chipping off and all the lawn ornaments were in ruin. But, more importantly, it was easy to break into without leaving a trace and the secret root cellar could be hidden from the inside by a barely-working control panel. She fully intended to die, Avalon. She intended to not be found. And it was a good plan. Very well thought out, but unfortunately the police have their ways of finding people and they found her.
I think of how she almost did it. She almost escaped. But even the best of plans made under the best of situations still was not enough to guarantee victory. Not when fighting against this society and its power systems.
Nocta’s story is a lot like Maggie’s. Except instead of losing an older brother she lost a younger sister. And instead of losing her slowly, she lost her all at once in a traffic accident. After her sudden and too-early death, Nocta felt like she had never gotten to know her sister, she had never spent any real time with her, they had never connected. This drove Nocta to search for the something more that all of us were searching for, so that when she herself died her life might not be a life wasted, a life without meaning.
It must be so hard, losing a sibling like that, all at once. When you’re not expecting it. When you’re expecting life to just go on as it normally does. But it’s probably less cruel than expecting it. Than living with the constant fear. Anyways, let’s hope she can make her sister proud in her life and in her death and in whatever comes next.
Bik had broken through the illusions society cast upon everyone. And she was determined to help other people break out of their illusions as well. She talked to people, to everyone that would listen to her, at her school. Tried to tell them that there was something more, something better than constant entertainment and constant interest. She tried to tell them that there was more to life than what was on the surface. But she couldn’t make them see. All that her very many conversations lead her to was frustration and further feelings of alienation. And they lead her to the police showing up at her doorstep one day.
Bik has a lot of confidence in order to be able to tell other people. I totally lack such confidence. I lack the ability to tell my truth to people who are unsympathetic. Because, it’s absolutely pointless, as she herself found out in her life. All it will lead to is yourself getting ridiculed.
Aisha had a small wood near her neighbourhood. It was a rather simple thing. But it was big enough to get lost in. And it was big enough to hold a clear stream of sweet water running through it, and entire bushes of berries. She disappeared into that wood, a few years ago. And she had no idea how to survive in the wilderness but she weathered the hunger and the cold, and she made for herself a life in which she was content. A life in which she could live. The police eventually scanned the woods with their thermal cameras and she was dragged kicking and screaming from her chosen home.
It’s strange, how Aisha had found some semblance of contentment, some semblance of happiness. That’s so much more than what most of us find. Yes, she didn’t actually know how to survive in the wilderness. Yes, those woods were too small to support her properly. Yes, she was hungry and cold and her health was slowly wasting away, due to the ill health of the woods. But still. Still.
Ashlee had gotten pregnant. Her parents berated her and punished her. And that broke her illusion of who they were. But, more importantly, she grew to love the life growing inside of her. She loved the baby more than she had previously thought was possible. She loved it deeper than anything she had ever felt before. And she began to worry about the baby’s future. She knew that the child would have no life worth living growing up in this society. She didn’t want the child to suffer through that. More than anything, she didn’t want the child to suffer through that. And so she sent the child to the next world with a large piece of wire. She almost died and the hospital sent her here.
I am amazed by her story. By the love she showed her child. A mother’s love. A mother’s protection. And to think that she would be vilified and isolated for such a thing.
Chin had climbed a radio tower one day. She was not sure why she did it, or what she was fighting for. She just knew that she lost control of herself that day. She lost control and she took herself wherever her feet lead her. And she for some reason ended up on top of a radio tower. She stood there for a long time, hands gripping the cold bars. And she stared up at the sky. Only up at the sky. It was a cloudy, overcast day. Eventually the police hovercrafts came to her, and when she saw them, she let go and let herself fall down, down, down. But they caught her with a net and now here she is.
I don’t understand why she climbed a radio tower either. None of us do. But that doesn’t change the fact that it happened. No amount of wondering or pondering can ever change the past. The past lives within all of us always.
Valentina also spent years on the streets, trying to get whatever money she could from wherever, trying to get by, trying to stay under the radar. The police never found her, because she always wore new clothes and acted like any other teen. She stole, often, and she was very good at it. She had to be, it was the way she survived. But one day she got caught, and though she fervently pleaded, though she promised that she would do anything and everything, the store owner did not let her go. He called the police, and the police pulled her into this rehabilitation centre.
I feel so bad for her, having to spend all those years on the streets. Having no home to go to. Not that any of us had homes. But still, just to have somewhere to be, to stay sheltered from the weather, that was important. And she didn’t have access to it. It’s not fair. It was her choice, but it’s still not fair nonetheless.
Ishani was another confident soul, who told others what she had learned. She had an assignment for her music class. She had to compose a song and sing what she composed to the class. The song she created was really a shoddy work. But in it she spoke plainly all the feelings that she had kept hidden from all of them for so long. Her classmates were shocked, and her teacher was appalled. He called the police immediately. Ishani took off running, but she couldn’t get far enough. They caught her and tranquilized her and she woke up chained to a hospital bed.
That was a noble attempt nonetheless. It was an attempt to share what she knew. Even if it was a shoddy, clumsy, poorly thought-out attempt. It was an attempt nonetheless.
Clara also didn’t know why she did what she did. Clara also did whatever her next impulse was. She also lost control. She walked into the middle of a busy hallway at school, she closed her eyes and covered her ears. And she screamed. She doubled over herself screaming. She screamed until her throat was raw and jagged, like millions of tiny pieces of glass had sunken into its soft flesh. She screamed until her lungs ached. When the police finally came for her she kicked at and clawed them. And she promised that she was alright. Though of course she wasn’t.
Sometimes I just want to do that as well. Scream until my body gives out on me. But the problem is that people would hear me. A problem that Clara had to face upfront. She was brave about it at least, and she fought as much as she could.
What we all have in common is this. We all spent a long time being completely strangled by, smothered in, the glitter and glamour and music and sound of the would. We all feel like it’s far too much and not nearly enough, both at the same time. We all see a hollowness everywhere around us, a hollowness inside us. We all feel entangled and trapped in society, trapped in our lives. We all long for something more with every fibre of our being. And we all can and want to sacrifice anything and everything in order to get that something more, whatever the fuck it happens to be. Wherever the fuck it can be found.
We all feel lonely, alienated. We feel as if nobody understands us. As if we have no-one to turn to.
“But we understand each other, don’t we?” Avalon’s voice is low and confident and kind. “We know how it feels to be each other. And we can help each other.”
“That’s right,” Clara breathes, “we have each other.”
“It feels like we’re a family, all of us together here.” Ashlee has a warm note in her voice. And a bewildered note. As if she’s experiencing something incomprehensible, inexpressible, magnificent for the first time. Though I am too. Though I think most of us are, if not all of us.
“That’s right. We are a family.” Nora’s voice is smiling. She’s right. The camaraderie that I feel here, the intimacy, the tenderness, the belonging, it’s like nothing I have felt before. I feel as if I am a part of all the girls around me and they are a part of me. I feel like we owe each other, and we can relax around each other. I feel like life finally has something good in it.
“We should keep in contact after this whole thing is over. We should share each other’s addresses.” Chin is pragmatic.
“Yes,” Ishani agrees. “And we have to help each other not get brainwashed by this facility. They’re obviously trying to indoctrinate us.”
“I thought that these last few days were fun,” Nocta’s voice is drenched in piercing anxiety, “but thinking back on them with open eyes, with a clear mind, they feel so hollow.”
We all voice our agreements with her in a messy chorus.
“We should meet up here each night,” Delores suggests, “and talk about our pasts and our futures. Help each other to remember.”
We also all agree with Delores. That’s an amazing plan. Maybe, together, if we all help each other, we can all get through this. And we can get through whatever comes after.
“But why was it so easy for them to brainwash us in the first place?” Bik asks.
“Because,” Valentina answers, “they literally washed our brains. Remember when they drilled that needle through our skulls? That must have done something to stop the natural flow of our minds.”
Damn. She’s so right.
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