Variant

He stood up with a grim smile and moved to the window. “Wow. You really are more nosy than most of us. I’d been here a lot longer than you by the time I learned that.”

Curtis didn’t make much sense to me. He ran after Ms. Vaughn’s car. I thought that would mean he was trying to escape, like I was, but most of the time he didn’t seem like he was even interested.

“What about total numbers?” I asked.

“It’s never been very high.” He glanced at me over his shoulder. “You’re wondering why the school is so big?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know. We’ve all wondered.”

On a corkboard above his desk were a dozen pencil drawings-the school building, still lifes, faces I didn’t recognize.

“You do these?” I said, leaning over for a better look.

“No. Carrie.”

“They’re good.”

“I’ll tell her.”

I stood back up and turned him. “Who’s the oldest here? I mean, who’s been here the longest?”

“That’s easy. Jane.”

“Really? But she said there were people here before her.”

“That’s the big mystery,” he said with a shrug. “She explained it to Carrie once. Fifteen were here before Jane came. One morning they were gone. I guess it was some kind of mass escape.”

“Did they get away?”

Curtis shook his head and lay down. “No one escapes. If any of us ever got out of here they’d tell the police and this place would get shut down. Anyway, those fifteen were the only link to the past, and none of them confided in her. She was all by herself until more students were brought in.”

I nodded, but my heart fell into my stomach. She would have been young-thirteen-going through all the same things I was going through now, only completely alone. She must have been scared all the time. It was no wonder she kept saying things weren’t so bad. They’d been so much worse.

Looking back up at Curtis, I tried to push thoughts of Jane away. “So,” I reasoned, “for all we know, this school’s been like this for years-decades.”

“Maybe. That’s why I’m not Society.”

“What do you mean?”

“Some people say that we need to just ride it out. Follow the rules and keep our heads low. I agree a little with that, I guess.” He smiled. “I mean, I don’t think we need to try crazy escapes and fall out of trees. But I do think that, sooner or later, we’re going to have to try something.”

“Right,” I said. “They’ll never just let us leave because we’d tell the police. So, what does the Society say about that?”

“I think they’re scared,” he said. “I know it doesn’t look like it, but I think they’re just too afraid of punishment. Probably because they know better than any of us what the punishments are like.”

Curtis was right-it didn’t look like it. Maybe Becky was scared, but Dylan? Isaiah? They couldn’t be enforcing the rules just because they were too scared to break them.

I looked out the window, trying to guess where the wall was, but all I could see was trees.

“One last thing,” I said, touching the glass and peering into the dark. “Have you ever seen smoke in the woods?”

“The campfires, you mean?”

I turned my head enough to look at him with one eye.

He nodded. “You can see them from the girls’ dorm better than here. Just little trails of smoke-sometimes one and sometimes eight or ten. We think they might be guards.”

“Or a campground,” I said. Could help be that close?

Curtis laughed. “Campgrounds. Now that’s an optimist.”

Back in my room, I stayed up late on my little computer, scrolling through catalog pages of clothes, gear, jewelry, and games. There was nothing for sale that gave any insight into the outside world. No books, no magazines. Even the music we could buy for the dance was fifty or sixty years old.

“You know anything about computers?” I asked Mason, close to midnight.

“A little, but not really.”

“Anyone in here a hacker?”

He laughed tiredly. “People have been trying that for as long as I’ve been here. Oakland looked into it. He knows computers. He said there’s no consistent connection. The network is only up and running for a few seconds a day-that’s when the school downloads our purchases and records our bids. He says there’s just not enough time to hack it.”

“Oakland?”

“He’s not as dumb as he looks.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

I browsed through the contracts. Each one listed the chores to do, the requirements to fulfill, and each showed the current bid. As usual, none of the gangs’ bids were contested. They were all at the max points’ limit. I could have entered one if I wanted to, like everyone used to do. I thought about doing it to make Havoc mad, but then all of the V’s would be stuck with extra work.

I toggled back to the items for sale. The main page featured a wide array of dresses and a few suits.

Who was crazier? The school, who was putting us through all of this, or the students who were spending their hard-earned points on silk gowns, cummerbunds, bow ties, and flowers?

Chapter Ten