13

A week after she'd talked to Chadwick, Mallory couldn't believe how much had changed. Once she'd allowed herself to go with the program, it had been like turning a boat downstream. Suddenly, she was racing.

Her team had finished the obstacle course. They'd built an entire new barracks for the next group of rookies—the first thing Mallory had ever constructed with her own hands. Then, yesterday, they'd graduated to the job of demolition. They'd been given sledgehammers and told to destroy the barracks they'd been sleeping in.

Like a snake shedding its skin, Leyland told them. Time to grow.

Mallory hated to admit it, but she loved knocking down the walls. She got in a few good smashes with the sledgehammer, and pretty soon she could loosen the cinder blocks enough to kick them down with her feet.

She didn't even mind sleeping in the open. The outdoors wasn't much colder than the barracks, and they'd earned new sleeping bags—good down ones, no more cheap cotton.

Tomorrow, they would start training for Survival Week. None of them knew what that meant, exactly, but the white levels talked about Survival Week like it was sacred. Their anticipation was contagious.

She still missed Race. She was scared for him, and angry with him, and worried that he might have lied to her. She was worried about her dad, too. But mostly, she was relieved she'd handed the problem over to Chadwick, the way Olsen had advised her to. Chadwick would take care of things. He'd make sure Race was safe. He'd check on her dad. Chadwick could even handle Pérez, if he had to, she was sure of that. The thought of Chadwick was like touching metal—it discharged the static energy for a while, let Mallory go about her day.

The nights were worse. She would wake up in the dark, the hills groaning, the raccoons fighting over scraps in the trash bin by the river, crying like mutant babies. She'd shiver in her sleeping bag, feeling every pebble under her shoulder blades, watching the black mesh of cypress branches cat's-cradle the moon, and she would feel absolutely certain somebody had been watching her while she slept.

She knew that was crazy. Her fears were as dumb as the ghost stories they used to tell at summer camp, back in the redwoods when she was little. There were no camp ghosts at Cold Springs. If there had been, the drill instructors would have put them to work busting cinder blocks. And yet she lay awake, thinking about Talia Montrose's torn body.

Chadwick's questions had dislodged something in her mind—something about Race's brother. She wasn't sure what. But it was there in the back of her skull, growing like a salt crystal.

When she fell asleep again, she would be back in the old Toyota, watching Katherine come down the steps of the Montrose house.

She would force herself to look at the figure on the porch—the one who'd said goodbye to Katherine before slipping back through the dark doorway.

Today, she had exhausted herself, throwing herself into the work, hoping that at night, she wouldn't dream, wouldn't wake up until the instructors rousted her out of her bag.

She spent the afternoon knocking down the last walls, pretending every brick was her mother's face—transferring all the anger she'd thrown at the program back to her mother, where it belonged.

She worked shoulder to shoulder with Morrison, but neither of them talked. That was okay with her, since the few times they got to talk they always got in a fight. When they were silent, they worked together pretty well.

She was getting stronger. The heroin shakes were gone now—the razors in her gut turned into an empty hunger that she could usually ignore. Her hands were like leather gloves, the blisters peeled away. She sweated a lot and probably smelled like crap, but there'd be the river tomorrow—the coldest bath in the world, and a chance to wash her clothes.

She was working so well she didn't realize it was time to fall in for evening sessions until Leyland started yelling at them.

Even Leyland's voice had changed over the last week. He sounded more like a PE coach, less like a demon. Not that Leyland wouldn't slap her down to size in a second if she didn't toe the line, but that didn't bother Mallory anymore. Leyland's voice had become an involuntary reflex inside her body.

The jog back to base camp was half a mile—from the destroyed barracks through a stretch of flat scrubland, wooded with soapberry trees and whitebrush and nopalitas, things Mallory wouldn't have known how to name a month ago. Now, from Leyland's survivalist lectures, she knew she could wash her clothes with those fat yellow soapberries. She knew the thorns on a whitebrush were all show—they didn't hurt a bit. And the white powder that collected in the joints of the nopalitas cactus turned red on contact with human skin—Apache war paint.

Another cold front was blowing in. Their stretch of mild sunny days was about to come to an end.

It still amazed Mallory that she could look up and see the weather changing—a curve of blue clouds like a seining net pulling south, blotting out the sunset. The sky in San Francisco was never so dramatic. The weather back home was more like her mother—mild and sweet and spineless.

“Rain tonight,” Leyland announced, jogging beside her. “Get to try your pup tent.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We're spoiling you, Zedman.”

“Yes, sir.”

They passed the stables and the pasture, and Mallory stole a glance at the horses—a bay filly, a sorrel mare, a black and white paint . . . she couldn't remember the name for that one's coloration.

They kept jogging, past the solitary confinement shed, then the damn gravel clearing where she'd been initiated into Black Level a zillion years ago. Each time she passed the place she felt ashamed and angry about that first day. She was pretty sure that's why the instructors took this route.

Another hundred yards, and she could see the counselors gathered at the base camp, on a ridge overlooking the river. The wind was swirling spear grass and dust across the granite, and the temperature had dropped.

Mallory tried to prepare herself for seeing Olsen.

With her short blond hair and her pale complexion, Olsen didn't look anything like Katherine Chadwick. Didn't even act like Katherine. But when she talked to Mallory about turning her life around, she got the same hungry look in her eyes that Katherine had had, the moment she unhooked the clasp of her necklace.

That scared the hell out of Mallory.

She was afraid of liking Olsen—starting to trust her, then waking up one morning to find Olsen gone, replaced by some other counselor who didn't give a damn.

But so far, Olsen had stayed with her, even after Mallory attacked her with the knife. Once or twice in group therapy, Mallory had been tempted to tell Olsen about her dream, to see what she'd say.

No, Mallory told herself. You open up your head, they'll see how crazy you are. They'll keep you back.

She listened hard to the other kids' stories. She'd learned about Morrison getting beat up by her stepfather. She'd learned from Smart about the drug scene in Des Moines—unbelievable that they had meth labs there, not just farmers and corn. Smart had been busted when his bedroom exploded while he was at school. Mallory had learned about Bridges, who'd been to two other boot camp schools before this one—“A kid died at one of them, so I had to leave.”

Then, last night, Mallory had shared for the first time.

It was a stupid thing to do, telling her life story to kids who didn't even know her. But it was hard to explain—like she was on the light end of a scale, getting higher and higher the more the others put out, so the whole camp felt uneven, and Mallory felt like she stuck out, like she was rising above everybody.

Maybe the program was starting to get to her—all the talk about how she was responsible for what happened to her, how it was whining to blame everyone else. She hadn't let go of the anger toward her parents. Not at all. But San Francisco did seem another life—two thousand miles away.

So Mallory had told them a little about herself. She'd told them about Race—how they'd gotten to be friends in the second grade, how they found a lighter once in the Presidio, and set an acre of grassland on fire while the rest of the class was playing capture the flag. Did they get expelled? Of course not. Her mom was the goddamn headmistress.

It was a stupid little story, but the team had liked it, which was such a relief to Mallory that she almost told them what was really on her chest, the thing that had been sitting on her heavier than any of the damn cinder blocks—her suspicion that maybe, just maybe, she'd slept with a murderer.

The base camp was set up on a shelf of red granite, pocked with erosion pits as big as dinosaur footprints. The largest depression, about the depth of a bathtub, served as the team's fire pit, but there was no fire yet. The team would have to make one from scratch—and they only got to do that after the counseling session was over.

Their rolled-up sleeping bags sat in a neat row in front of an easel with a chart board—the program's four big concepts, each written in a different color marker:

Accountability
Competence
Honesty
Trust

Below that was a line, then the night's two activities, in what Mallory knew was Olsen's handwriting:

1. Take responsibility for a lie you got away with.Tell what the truth was.

2. Postcard.

The second item made Mallory nervous, because she didn't understand it.

Olsen stood next to the board, waiting for them, a clipboard tucked under her arm, her hands hidden in a huge beige overcoat that reminded Mallory of Chadwick. The other counselors were a few feet away, counting out pens and postcards from a plastic sack.

The team fell out to their sleeping bags. They sat cross-legged, backs straight, hands in their laps. First, Olsen asked them to brainstorm on the word accountability, which was old-hat now, automatic stuff. Then she asked for volunteers to tell about a lie they'd gotten away with.

Silence.

“Anything,” Olsen said. “Even something small.”

She was looking at Mallory.

“I don't know,” Mallory murmured. “I can't think of anything.”

Smart and Bridges and Morrison looked equally glum.

Wind curled the chart paper, tugging at the paper clips that held it in place. A drop of rain splattered the y in Accountability.

“Never lied, huh?” Olsen sat down with them, motioned for Bridges and Morrison to scoot in and make a circle. “You want me to start?”

The black levels stared at their shoes.

Mallory felt sorry for Olsen, having to deal with them. Mallory would never be a teacher. She'd never work with kids.

Olsen grabbed her ankles, pulled in her legs. “I never knew my dad, okay? I grew up with a stepdad, and he left my mom and me when I was eight. When I was in college, I hired someone to look for him.”

Bridges asked if Olsen meant her real dad or her stepdad.

“My stepdad,” Olsen said. “I wasn't interested in finding my biological father. Never have been. I don't know why. Anyway, I found out what had happened to my stepdad, but when my mom asked, I just told her he had died. She believed me. I think she was relieved to know that's why he had never come back. But I was lying to her.”

Even Smart, the goddamn ADHD poster child, was paying attention now.

Morrison said, “What was the truth?”

Olsen raised her eyebrows. “First you guys tell me your lie.”

They all looked away.

Smart-Mouth mumbled that he'd been taught liars went to hell, so he never did it, seriously. That brought a groan from Morrison. Smart snapped at her to shut up.

Bridges gave them some lame story about a time he'd told his mom he was going to a sleepover, but he was really with a girl. Mallory knew the biggest lie was that that had ever happened.

Mallory found herself watching Olsen. She didn't know why, but she felt a cord of understanding between them—small but warm. She wanted to hear what had happened in her story.

“Last week on Thanksgiving,” Mallory said. “I lied to Chadwick.”

Olsen tried to keep that standard counselor expression on her face, but her eyes had gotten nervous. “What did you lie about?”

“My friend Race.”

Bridges said, “The guy helped you burn down that park?”

“Yeah. I told Chadwick I was with Race at this . . . really important time. I was kind of like Race's alibi. I kind of lied.”

“I don't get it.” Smart was shaking his head. “What do you mean kind of?”

Mallory looked at Smart—with his newly buzzed orange hair and that ugly gash on his lip where he'd hit the obstacle course bar, and his glazed eyes—IQ 89, maybe, with the wind at his back. She looked at Morrison, and Bridges. All of them waiting for her to spill her guts.

Suddenly she felt ashamed, angry, as if she'd exposed herself. She'd betrayed Race to get Olsen's favor. “Of course you don't get it, Smart. You're an idiot.”

“Hey!”

“Whoa,” Olsen intervened. “Mallory, stop. Time out.”

Mallory counted silently back from twenty. A drop of rain hit her eye and made her blink.

“You want to finish your story now?” Olsen asked.

Mallory shook her head. She was mortified they'd think she was crying.

Olsen let the silence build, waiting for her to fill it, but she wouldn't.

“Anybody else, then?” Olsen asked.

But the possibility of openness had evaporated. Smart and Bridges and Morrison all stayed mute.

Mallory waited for Olsen to stop the session. She could've called over the instructors, told them the team wasn't cooperating, gotten them all put to bed with no fire, no dinner. Instead she said, “Let's move to the last activity. Break out, one-on-one.”

The other three black levels scrambled up and found their counselors. Mallory stayed where she was.

Olsen asked, “You sure you don't want to tell me anything?”

“I'm sure.”

“About Race?”

“Forget it. I was like digging for something to say, okay? It was stupid.”

Olsen let it pass. She pulled a postcard off her clipboard and gave it to Mallory. The computer-printed label read:

Mrs. Ann Zedman
200 Coit Dr.
San Francisco, CA 94611

The left half of the card was blank.

“This is your first chance to write home,” Olsen said. “It'll also be your last chance until you finish Black Level. You don't need to say much. Just tell her you're okay.”

Mallory stared at the blank half of the card.

Six square inches of white had never seemed so huge.

She pictured her mother the last time she'd seen her—eyes swollen from crying, hands over her temples to push back the headache, screaming at Mallory to stop. And Mallory, in a haze, taking the hammer from the kitchen cabinet, breaking dishes and coffee mugs, following her mother down the hallway, smashing her framed childhood pictures on the walls, turning pots into shrapnel, yelling that the last person her mother should be scared of was Race.

It was like something that had happened to another person, but the memory didn't make her feel sorry. All that anger was still inside her. Her mother was never there for her. She was always running away—from her father, from Mallory, from everything except her precious fucking school.

What did Olsen expect her to do? Dash off a quick note, Hi, Mom. I Love You. Smiley faces and little hearts on the i's—something that her mom could file away in the office, in that fat manila folder labeled Zedman, Mallory?

Over by the fire pit, Bridges was crying. Mallory would never have figured it—but there he was, bawling like a two-hundred-pound baby.

Smart was sitting at the edge of the cliff, hunched over his postcard, writing every word like it was part of his obituary.

Morrison sat stone still, her face pale, her pen frozen over the card.

Mallory handed Olsen back the postcard.

“I can't do it,” she said. “Lock me up.”

There was something in Olsen's eyes Mallory hadn't seen in so long she didn't recognize it at first—sympathy.

“Come on,” Olsen said, gentle but firm.

They walked back down the path in the growing dark, the rain sprinkling their clothes, until they got to the split-rail fence of the horse pasture.

Mallory knew there was a white level tailing them, ten or twenty feet behind—there was always an instructor on duty, keeping an eye on things—but somehow that didn't matter. It felt like she and Olsen were alone.

Olsen leaned against the rail, pulled a plastic bag out of her overcoat—apple slices. She pointed to one of the horses, the bay filly. “I bet that brown one would come over if you offered it something.”

Mallory felt her cheeks get hot.

One of the pictures Mallory had smashed at her mother's house had been a kindergarten drawing of a horse. The panel she'd done for the auction quilt that year—that had been a horse, too. She'd been obsessed as a little girl, and probably would've continued to be obsessed, if it hadn't been for Katherine's suicide.

After that night, Mallory was the girl-who'd-touched-a-dead-body. And girls who touch dead bodies don't get to play with toy horses. They sit in the corner of the classroom and draw dark pictures, while the teacher hovers over them with concern. Those girls grow up fast, learn bad habits, make bad friends with the kids everybody else snubs. They start dating early, and set things on fire. And of course their parents divorce. That goes without saying. Girls who touch dead bodies don't have time for horses.

“No thanks,” she said.

“Come on,” Olsen said. “These apples have been in my pocket for hours. Who else is going to eat them?”

Olsen plopped the bag on the fence, split the zip-lock, and the filly immediately pricked up its ears. Its mane and tail were silky black, its flank so velvety brown it was almost red.

“I'm not writing the postcard,” Mallory told Olsen, “if that's what you're thinking.”

But she dug her fingers into the bag and fished out an apple slice—warm, slippery, marbled with brown. She held it over the fence and the horse clopped toward her, its velvety nose snuffling.

The filly was huge, its shoulders higher than Mallory, its hooves the size of steam irons. It was nothing like the cute little drawings Mallory had made as a kid. The real horse was all muscle and twitch. Dangerous, powerful. The thing's snout was warm with mucus and saliva, and it breathed steam on Mallory's palm as it lipped up the apple. Mallory told herself it was disgusting.

She fed it the rest of the apple slices, one at a time, stroking its muzzle between bites.

Olsen propped her foot on the bottom fence rail. “You know about Gray Level, Mallory? You choose a ranch skill to master. One of the options is horsemanship. You could do that, if you wanted.”

The filly nuzzled the empty plastic bag, then bopped Mallory gently under the chin.

“Why're you telling me that?” Mallory asked. “You into horses, or something?”

“The truth?” Olsen asked.

“Yeah.”

“I don't know a damn thing about horses. They scare me. I wasn't even sure they liked apples.”

A smile tugged at Mallory's lips. “I suppose I have to write that postcard now.”

“After I brought you to see horses and didn't even freak out? You pretty much owe me, yeah.”

“Why is it so important I write my mom?”

“It's not important to me. It's important to you. The people in your life never go away, Mallory—not when you run, not when they hurt you. You have to find a connection with them that works. You have to start somewhere.”

She brought out the postcard and the pen, offered them to Mallory.

The horse sniffed to see if this was another offering of food, and then, disappointed that it wasn't, snorted into Mallory's hair.

Mallory took the postcard, suddenly liking the idea of sending her mom something that had horse snot on it.

She wrote, Dear Mom, I'm fine. I'm sorry for trying to hurt you.

She signed her name and gave the card back to Olsen. Her hands only trembled a little. Olsen dabbed the raindrops off the card, then slipped it into her coat pocket.

“So where was Race?” Olsen's question was as unobtrusive as the patter of rain on the grass. “If he wasn't with you, where was he?”

“I told you, I was just talking. It's nothing.”

Olsen crumpled the plastic bag and stuffed it in her pocket along with the postcard. “It's the fourth thing to master, Mallory, the last of Dr. Hunter's concepts. Trust.”

“Yeah? What's the end of your story?”

Olsen stared at her.

“The thing with your stepdad,” Mallory said. “The lie you told your mom. That's got something to do with why you're counseling me, doesn't it? I remind you of something that happened to you.”

Olsen's eyes were blue, but they reflected the blackening sky. “You'd better get some sleep, now, kiddo. Big night tonight.”

“Don't you mean big day tomorrow?”

Olsen hesitated, and for a weird moment, Mallory thought she knew about her dreams, knew how Mallory sometimes woke in a cold sweat.

“Just get some sleep. We'll talk again soon enough.”

That night after rations, Mallory was allowed to build the fire.

She set tinder around the brace, trying to keep it dry from the cold drizzle that was falling.

She thought about Katherine, and wondered what she'd be doing now if she were alive. Maybe Katherine would be here at Cold Springs, helping kids the way Olsen was.

She got the fire to smolder, then flicker, then finally blaze.

Mallory cracked a branch of mesquite that looked like a wishbone. She tossed the short end into the flames, stared at the red outline of the other piece, which now resembled a crutch.

Accountability.

Competence.

Honesty.

Trust.