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ONE

SAM

I DON’T forget faces

I don’t forget anything my eyes have landed on--not the shbors’ house, not the cursive letters written on my classroom’s whiteboard, not the numbers that flashed on the screen as the man in the white coat adjusted ns on the towering fence as our bus pulled in for the first time DANGER! HIGH VOLTAGE, AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, NOT A LOADING ZONE, STAY ALERT

Its sone hazy; I think, sometimes, that I can rerass in our backyard I think it smelled sweet I think I can just about re in a patch of sunshine There was laughter, too, fro to cli into the bushes What I remember most is the cloudless powder-blue sky I couldn’t take my eyes off it I haven’t seen one like it since

This place has reduced ets filed away inside my head, neat and tidy, until I need it Soht card out of the deck each time I test myself all the tiers and sneered words, toldmy freak catchall of a memory would somehow overload it, and I’d be as dead and stiff as the kids already buried They tried that lie on all of us, I’ it, drawing out thosewith thick panic Stop it, you’ll die, you’ll die, Sam--

For the next three, it was like a dare Each success was a sht exhilaration to pepper forever sunless days Every ti I had each time I snuck over to the Orfeos’ house on the Fourth of July, and they’d secretly save me one of their sparklers to run around with before one I’d think of Dad preaching from Job, Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward

NowI just don’t care A fewinto forever, and there’s no getting out It used to be enough to live inside the gray, to accept the things I couldn’t change even if that s about a possible second wave of deaths, like an axe over our heads, as long as I’ve been here Using our abilities will trigger it Acting out will trigger it Speaking or reading or thinking too hard about anything will trigger it Only, they’ve done such a good job ofthis place hell that I wouldn’t be surprised if the real one turned out to be a much nicer place

Salvation will be found in obedience Dad’s parting piece of advice when he walkedI’ve dismantled the phrase a thousand ti I read in the Bible He spoke in parables and proverbs, and when he realized what I was, he barely spoke at all Some part of me still thinks he would have loved me more if I’d died, because it’d mean I was saved

Moht that hat I wanted, too, until I saw my bunkmate actually die in front of o, as hard as it is to believe now And it was nothing like those men in suits with the dead-eyed s to sleep and never waking up But that night, I’d stood over her and watched death co, stupid and stunned and exhausted, This can’t be right, because IAAN wasn’t supposed to make your body thrash, wasn’t supposed to h that not even clenched teeth could contain the sound I thought it would be quiet, and authoritative--like a steady, warh the darkness to lift you out of this world

Dad always spoke of God with ry He ith us, always disappointed as we fell short of His plan In Sunday school, every lesson and teaching had been softened for us He wasn’t an angry God, but a loving God He was there for us when no one else was We could lean on Hi There’s no mercy, not in life, not even in death

I’h the speaker in the far corner of the rooover the side of the bunk bed My bare toes land on the edge of the wooden frame beneath hten out my sheets My shoes and sweatshirt are under the bottom bunk, but the space next to them is empty and has been since they took Ruby away

No one is talking this , but the cabin is filled with sirls sleeping up top juround Yawns stretch tired faces wide open Joints crack as stiffness is worked out I slipnumber scrawled there in black per ain, the bareover this, but I can’t help it Cli down, I can’t avoid the empty space; it sucks the air out of my chest, makes my head ache I don’t understand how so tears to the surface faster than thinking about irls I’ve lived with for the last seven years It’s like sitting in front of a nearly co only one piece--but that piece, the one that coone Not in the box