The Story Sisters

Before long Elv was able to be in both places at once. It was a great triumph and an even greater relief. She was able to speak to a teacher and at the very same time be in the black garden. She made an Arnish promise, one she planned to keep. She would get through this, then she would make them pay for what they’d done to her. She and the demons would take back Arnelle from the rebels who were after her still. The faeries and their human coconspirators were scooping up demons in butterfly nets, then releasing them into the waking world, in New York City, in Paris, right there in the New Hampshire woods. Each of these demons had been betrayed just as she had, cast out and reviled. Each one was utterly alone.

The brochure said Westfield was a therapeutic school, but as far as Elv could tell, it was simply a holding tank for spoiled, drug-addicted brats with personality disorders. Most of the students came from middle-class families. Those who did not were there via court orders that ensured that the state or county or town where they’d lived would pay the academic fees. By the end of the first month Elv had come to understand the school’s philosophy. They swiftly broke you down until you were nothing. They destroyed you, then built you back up again. Only they did it their way, the Westfield way. What they wanted were clones, people without minds of their own who had the Westfield agenda imprinted on their souls. They hammered at people, tearing them apart in therapy groups. During the first month, Elv had a piece of cardboard strung around her neck that proclaimed I AM A LIAR. She had told a teacher she had missed class because she felt feverish, but when her temperature was taken it had been normal. Well, she’d hated that class. And if she was a liar, at least she was good at it. They’d have to do a whole lot more than dangle a sign around her neck if they wanted to humiliate her. Thankfully, she wasn’t in the group with the therapist who insisted his patients strip naked and stand in a circle so they couldn’t hide their inner selves. They would have had to tear her clothes off, and even then she wasn’t about to reveal anything.

ELV HAD HEARD about the worst Westfield technique from her one and only ally, Michael. Michael came from Astoria, Queens; he’d dodged jail time for car theft in exchange for a year at the school. For those students who didn’t improve and continually refused to cooperate he told Elv they did something called blanketing. They wrapped you up and wouldn’t let you move for hours, no matter how you might struggle, until at last you were reborn with a fresh, compliant ego. It was meant to be a rebirthing, but it was total control. Sometimes they held you immobilized for hours. If Elv had thought the straitjacket was bad, Michael said, this was a thousand times worse. When you could barely breathe, when you were choking on your own fury and bile, you had no choice but to give in. That was the way in which you were converted to their world.

Demons were said to be cruel, but a demon would never have been so brutal as this. A demon merely called you by name, threw his arms around you, whispered his plight, understood yours, then took you for his own. The extent of human cruelty continued to amaze Elv. If you wanted to survive in this place, you had to let them think you had given in. The harder you fought, the harder they broke you. You had to hide yourself away. She understood that. She had once talked a goblin into setting her free. She had spoken so sweetly he had untied the ropes, turned his back on her, left her alone to fetch her a cup of water. The window was open. Even at the age of eleven she had known that there were no second chances.

FOR THE FIRST three months Elv had level-one privileges—no phone calls or visits. She was given latrine duty, meant to break her down. It was filthy, disgusting work. She didn’t complain. She wasn’t going back to solitary under any circumstances. Every day she took a mop and a pail of soapy water and did her job. There were beetles in the bathrooms. Elv was supposed to kill them with bug spray, but she let them live. She wished she could slip them into envelopes and mail them to Meg. Thank you for betraying me, she would write on her note. She was a fairy-tale girl, scrubbing away at the first break of light, but she had fur and teeth and wings. She didn’t mind getting up at five thirty. She loved the dark blue color of the sky at that hour. She treasured the feeling of being alone in the world. You’ll be repaid for what you’ve done to me.

The girls at Westfield didn’t like Elv. She wasn’t surprised. People were jealous and petty and mean. She didn’t care what they thought. She was already alone. When a volatile girl named Katy came after her, calling her names, shoving her, it was hard for Elv not to fight back, but she stuck to her plan. Play them all and you had a better chance of getting what you wanted. Let the person in power think you were on their side.

“Did anyone ever tell you you were a bitch?” Katy said. She’d had it in for Elv ever since Elv had suggested she had an anger management issue during group therapy.

Elv had already decided that the more trouble Katy made, the better off she herself would be. When Elv turned to walk away, Katy grabbed a glass vase on the reception table and slammed it into Elv’s head. There would only be plastic vases allowed after that. The glass shattered into hundreds of jagged pieces. For weeks afterward tiny star-shaped bits of glass were swept up.

When the counselors ran into the room to separate the girls, anyone could clearly see Elv was the victim. Shards from the vase were threaded through her hair, where they shimmered like beads of ice in a thin trail of blood. Her face was pale. Her eyes closed. She was in the garden in Arnelle as they carried her to the nurse’s office. Reveal nothing, say nothing, and you’ll get what you want in the end.