Take the Key and Lock Her Up

“How far?” Noah asks.

Megan checks the phone she stole from her mom. She swears it’s untraceable, unhackable, and generally unbeatable. We’re choosing to believe her.

“It should be close, but I don’t see anything.”

Alexei pulls off the narrow road. There’s no one coming for miles, but we park near a bunch of trees.

“What is it?” I ask. “What’s wrong?”

“We walk,” he says, and no one argues. We’re on Alexei’s turf, in a place that speaks Alexei’s language. My body aches as I crawl out of the backseat of the car, but I know better than to complain. Alexei’s already up ahead. His long legs eat up the ground and the rough terrain as he climbs a steep hill, and the rest of us follow, leaving the car behind.

“I thought we were going to Binevale,” Rosie says, trotting alongside Alexei, not even a little bit winded.

“We are. We’re here.”

We crest the hill—and that’s when we see it, a building on the horizon, nestled into the valley below. But it’s not a building, really. It’s a complex—a large, three-story structure made of cinder blocks and stone. It’s as cold and gray as the sky, surrounded by a few smaller buildings and a tall chain-link fence. Though where anyone would run to, I can’t really tell. It seems like an island set down in the middle of an ocean of cold, hard land.

“Is it a prison?” Megan asks as she reaches into her backpack, removes a camera with a huge telephoto lens, and starts snapping pictures.

“Of a sort,” Alexei says.

“This can’t be it,” I say. “Why would my mom come here? It doesn’t exactly scream antiquities.”

“Technically, it’s not here.” There’s a look in Alexei’s eye as he studies the compound below.

Rosie and I turn back to the building as if maybe it was some kind of mirage that was going to flicker and fade before our eyes.

Noah just studies Alexei. “Girls like it when you’re cryptic, don’t they?” he asks, then turns to Megan. “Should I start being cryptic?”

But Megan shrugs him off. “Alexei, what is this place?”

Alexei gives a sad smile. “It’s where you send the people you want to disappear.”

I can feel him looking at me, blue eyes honing in like lasers, but I can’t take my gaze off the building. It feels too big. Too eerie. Too familiar.

“I’m not sure what it is,” he says. “Not exactly. It was built by the Soviets not long after the Second World War. Many believe it is a prison …”

“Of course it’s a prison,” Rosie says with a roll of her eyes. “I mean look at it. What else could it be?”

I’ve often wondered what Alexei knows about me—what stories Jamie’s told. How many of my brother’s worries has he passed on to his best friend? I’m almost afraid of the answer. But as I stare down at the cold, institutional buildings below us, I know.

“A hospital,” I say, and, suddenly, instead of a chilly fall, it feels like the middle of winter. “It’s a hospital.”

“No way.” Rosie is shaking her head. “Look at that place. How are people supposed to get better in there?”

“They aren’t,” I say, but everyone looks at Alexei.

“People who go into Binevale do not come out.”

I only notice that I’ve started rocking back and forth when Noah puts an arm around me, pulling me in like I’ve just made a game-winning goal or something. I’m grateful for his steadiness, for his warmth.

“Are you sure, Alexei?” Megan takes a break from her camera and looks at him. “I’ve never heard of it. And, I don’t like to brag, but I read a lot. I mean a lot. And most of it is classified.”

She’s perfectly serious, but Alexei gives a cold, dry laugh. It’s like the joke’s on us, like we’ve never been more un-Russian in our lives.

“I’m sure,” Alexei says, then looks at the gray building in the distance and says something low, under his breath, and in Russian.

“What does that mean?” Rosie asks.

“It is hard to translate, but it basically means Troubled children take a train. They take a train to Binevale.” He laughs again, then shrugs. “In Russian, it is very clever. And it rhymes.”

“What is it? What does it mean?” I ask.

“It’s something parents say to naughty children. It is the Russian version of Be good or the boogeyman will get you.”

“I don’t get it.” Rosie throws her hands up. “Why would bad kids get sent to a hospital? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It does. If it’s a mental hospital,” I say. “You don’t have to be bad. You just have to be crazy.”

Saying the words is enough to make my wrists burn, my legs twitch. I want to move—to run—just to prove that I can. I have to remind my body that I will never get strapped to a bed, restrained, or held against my will ever again.

“I never knew it was real,” Alexei says. “Even driving here, I kept thinking that it couldn’t possibly be real. But there it is.”

“I hate to say it, but Rosie’s right,” Megan says.

“Hey!” Rosie spins on Megan, but Megan isn’t deterred. She just clicks through the images displayed on the little screen on the back of her camera, showing the place close up for the first time.