The Place Where the Wall and the Floor Meet
I wake up to echoes reverberating around my head; a loud bang, a door slammed downstairs, the sound of something about to happen. Now, tinny chimes are pulsating from below. Each chime is like a shard of glass jammed into my ears. Being wrenched from a sleep this deep is physically painful.
As my brain gradually comes online, the chimes organize themselves into a pattern I recognize as the opening notes of Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror," which is blasting at an inadvisable volume on a low-quality boombox somewhere downstairs.
I'm laying as still as I can, and I sense that the girls around me are laying still too. We're waiting for what comes next.
We don’t have to wait long. A joyous voice blares over the music—male, unfamiliar, and all the creepier because it's coming from inside the house:
"Girls! Get down here! Beds made, fully dressed! You've got THREE minutes!"
Activity explodes from the bunks around me, with girls scrabbling at blankets and sheets. I sit up in bed, catching the eyes of the girl on the bunk across from me. She glances toward the door, then back to me.
“Hurry,” she mouths, still yanking her twisted sheets into place.
I get to work on my own bed. It's my third time waking up here, which means it's my third frantic attempt to wrestle my blankets into taut, military-style perfection in three minutes or less. Within a minute and a half, all of the other girls are already on the ground, getting dressed. I'll later learn that they sleep strategically so as not to mess up their beds, in hopes of helping this part of the morning run more smoothly.
"Are you DECENT?" booms the voice from downstairs.
The girls in my room momentarily stop. They look at each other, the silent question circulating in the room: should we answer? They shrug, then continue jerking pants past their hips and tugging shirts over their heads.
"I said, are you DRESSED?"
"...YOU CAN ANSWER ME!" he yells.
"Yeah, everyone’s dressed, but New Girl is still in her pajamas!" yells one of the girls from my room.
Footsteps thunder up the stairs and a face appears in our doorway. It's that guy, Chaffin. The Assistant Director. I'd firmly placed him as belonging to the office, to the part of the facility up the road. What's he doing in our cabin in the middle of the night?
Chaffin's face lights up when he sees me still wrestling with the sheets atop my bunk.
"New Girl, that's a warning! Now everybody has to wait for you. For each minute you make us wait, everyone in Destiny Family gets a warning!"
Though the girls around me remain quiet, it's like I can feel their silent groans rippling through the air, assaulting me from every side. Like any new kid anywhere, all I want is to make friends in this place.
“I'm sorry,” I want to shout, and then I want to lay face-down on my bed and scream forever, but I can't, so I just keep struggling to get my sheets into place.
The girl from the other bunk shoots me a look like, Stupid New Girl, I told you to HURRY. "Erica? Non-verbal communication? That's a warning, Erica."
Erica's face goes blank. She won't look at me.
"Joey, are you keeping track?"
A thin, blond boy appears beside Chaffin and nods.
"New Girl, Cat 1: NFSD, Erica, Cat 1: non-verbal communication."
It's taken me three days to figure it out, but warnings and Category 1 Rule Violations are actually the same thing, though they're most often just called warnings. In the outside world, a warning is a hint that if you continue with your bad behavior, bad things will happen to you. But judging by the girls' reactions to warnings, in this place they skip the actual warning, and just do the bad thing, while calling it a warning.
Warnings are high stakes, or at least that's what I've gathered from the other girls' reactions to them. I'm still very confused as to what a warning does to you—it's something about points and levels, which correspond to when you'll be allowed to go home, I think. Nobody has actually sat me down to explain.
"Oop, one minute down! That's a warning for the whole family!" shouts Chaffin, barely able to contain his glee.
I hear a sharp intake of breath from one of the other girls in the room, then a stifled sob from Erica. Two warnings in the first five minutes of her day. She is not okay. I keep my eyes on my work, cursing the new wrinkles that appear on the surface of the bed every time I manage to make a previous wrinkle disappear. My hands are shaking. It's an observation I make from a great distance.
"New Girl, the way you treat your Destiny Family here is the same way you treat your family at home. How's this a reflection of your life?"
A reflection of my life? What does that even mean?
"Uh oh! Another minute gone by!" shouts Chaffin, giddily. "That's another warning for the whole family! Good job, New Girl!"
Down the hall, there's a shriek of frustration and rage.
"Who was that!?" shouts Chaffin, and nobody answers him.
"Joey, go down the hall and find out who that was. They get a “Disrespect to Staff.” I think it was someone from the last room."
Joey dutifully disappears from the doorway, walking down the hall.
“Who was it?” I hear him say from down the hall. I’m plucking pieces of lint off my blanket as fast as I can, because you can get a warning for lint, too. I’ll later learn that's the reason why a lot of the girls won’t wear socks to bed, even on a cold night. Apparently an entire night of curling into a ball to keep your feet warm is preferable to receiving a warning in the morning.
“Come on girls, someone made that noise. You may as well tell me now because we’re going to find out,” says Joey.
“Give them all a warning!” thunders Chaffin. “The whole room!”
“...It was Sarah!” Joey shouts from down the hall.
Chaffin rolls his eyes.
"Sarah, Category I rule violation: Disrespect to Staff!" Joey’s voice ripples from down the hall, along with a choked sob from Sarah.
I hoist myself to the ladder of the bunk bed, leaning my entire body over the expanse of blanket, which is looking pretty good now. I give it one more pull and reach through the bars to tuck the edge of the blanket under the thin mattress.
Then I lower myself to the ground, pull one of my laundry baskets from under the bed, grab my clothes, and raise my hand.
"Yes?" says Chaffin.
Our eyes meet, and the recognition of who and what he is floods my mind. He’s like an overgrown puppy with razor sharp teeth, and sharp little puppy claws, and no sense of his body in space, and no concern for how his movements influence others. A puppy who hasn't been properly socialized; one that forgets to stop biting when you yip. Clifford the Big Red Dog, but mean. I'm pretty sure that he perceives all of these qualities in himself as an adorable and fun-loving mischievousness.
"May I cross to the bathroom?" I ask, because I've learned enough in the last three days to know that I'm not allowed to walk through a doorway without asking permission.
"You may," says Chaffin with a flourish, and because I'm not allowed to close the bathroom door, he and Joey head to the landing so the female nightwatch can supervise me. I go into the bathroom to change.
Have you ever changed so fast that your shirt collar gives you a bloody nose as you rake it across your face and over your head? I grab a piece of toilet paper, roll it up, and stick it up my nose, hoping it will staunch the flow before I finish peeing. The nightwatch sees the blood and she bites down on her lip, forehead wrinkled in concern, but says nothing.
This is the first of many little injuries I'll give myself in the program. In these invented high-pressure situations, it's like I forget the dimensions of my body. I'm a sea anemone waving alien appendages that seem not to belong to me, a neonate unwittingly clawing at my own face.
When I'm finished changing, we all line up at the front door downstairs. We're counting off our numbers, marching down the muddy road toward…toward where? We don't know, none of us know, only Chaffin knows, and he's all lit up with his solitary knowing. Chaffin takes great pleasure in his job.
It's sleeting and cold, being September in the middle of the night in Northern Montana, but we've been instructed that we wouldn't be needing our jackets. So we march on, bare arms prickling against the night, trying hard not to let much space open between ourselves and the girl ahead of us. There have been enough warnings so far today, and the sun isn’t even up yet.
Suddenly the line stops and I run into the girl ahead of me. Everyone is staring at Chaffin, who's stopped beside the line.
He blows a whistle loudly, though we're all lined up about two feet away.
"Divide yourselves into groups of three. Choose wisely. Your group will have a profound effect on your performance tonight," says Chaffin.
Jen, Sarah, and Melissa quickly band together, then Erica, Laura, and Lisa link arms. I’m surprised that Lisa is participating—she’s a Jr. Staff, which as far as I can tell, means she’s a God.
The other new girl's cold fingers dig into my arm. I wish I knew her name, but I've only heard it once, and ever since,everyone has just referred to her as The New Girl, and since I got here, I've become the NEW New Girl.
"One of you needs to take Shareen," Chaffin says.
Shareen is the girl with multiple sclerosis. She's wobbly on her feet, and not very fast. I reach out for her arm, and she turns to smile at me. Nobody wants to be picked last for the team, but it's better than not being picked at all.
"Okay, here's the rules," Chaffin shouts, "Whenever I blow this whistle—" He pauses to blow it, and an ear-splitting shriek fills the space behind my eyes with white light.
"Whenever you hear that sound, you have exactly three seconds to be touching your buddies. If you're not touching, then there will be consequences..." he waggles his hand at us, "for everyone."
The other new girl's hand tightens on my arm. I pat her hand without looking at her. It's hard sometimes to know what will get you a warning for non-verbal communication.
"So your task," Chaffin says, pumping his hands with excitement, "is for each group to build a rock wall, right here, that's six feet tall by six feet long by six feet...wide, I guess. Remember, when I blow the whistle…"
Here he favors us with another ear-splitting blast. The girls to either side of me flinch, but none of us reaches up to cover our ears.
"...you have to be touching the people on your team within three seconds. Ready, set, GO!" he yells, then he blasts the whistle for good measure, which leads to some confusion among us girls. Did that last whistle blast mean "Go!" or did it mean we're supposed to be touching our buddies?
We cling to each other for a moment, terrified, until Jen, Sarah and Melissa seem to make a decision. They start running around, gathering rocks. The only problem is, there are few rocks bigger than a small human's fist, and most are only gravel-sized.
Chaffin wants us to build six-foot cubes made of gravel, which is an extraordinarily silly task, but every girl here is taking it as seriously as death, and I'm supposed to work alongside them acting like it's normal. Perhaps you could make a six-foot cube out of gravel by using mud as a kind of binding agent, but only under perfect conditions. It's damn well impossible to do it on a rainy night like tonight. I can't say that to Chaffin, of course. I may be the new girl, but I'm not an idiot.
The other new girl isn't an idiot either—she's down on the ground, using her entire upper body, including outstretched arms, as a plow, creating a modest mound with the muddy gravel. Shareen, wobbly as ever, is bending and tossing armfuls of gravel onto the mound as quickly as she can. I leap into action, following the other new girl's lead, plowing a soupy mixture of mud and rock toward the mound.
Soon, there's no more gravel near our mound, so I have to go a bit further afield. I try to signal the other girls in my group that I'll be moving thataway, so should the whistle blow, they'll know where to find me. I manage to bring back a heaping armful of gravel. I run for more, and return with another armful. On the third time, I get cocky, and go a bit further. Chaffin, who's been watching me, blows his whistle. I run desperately toward Shareen, gravel scattering in my wake, noting that Other New Girl is probably too far to make it back to us in time.
"ONE, TWO—"
Other New Girl is diving headfirst toward Shareen, and her hand makes contact with Shareen's ankle just as Chaffin, disappointed, shouts the number three.
I grin at Other New Girl, and she brandishes her arm, which sports several long scrapes. The blood is just beginning to find its way to the surface. I grimace.
Chaffin blows the whistle again. We scatter, trying desperately to find rocks.
This goes on until Chaffin tires of his game, or maybe until he realizes that we’re prioritizing the instruction of ‘don’t get a warning’ over ‘build a rock wall,’ and he’s not sure how to punish us appropriately.
So Chaffin instructs us to lie on our backs. He's going to tell us a bedtime story, he says. If we listen carefully, we'll hear numbers in the story. When we hear the number one, we need to—
"I said lay on your BACKS!" he interrupts himself.
We look at the ground at our feet, which, absent of the gravel we've so dedicatedly heaped into mounds, has become a mud puddle. Melissa, always game, lays down atop her group's mound. Sarah immediately follows suit, laying on Lisa, Erica and Laura's mound, and Jen takes ours.
The rest of us gingerly lower ourselves into the mud. I was already wet, but now I'm so much more than wet, my cotton t-shirt sodden. Whatever heat I'd managed to generate over the building of the mound has dissipated entirely. The cold makes it hard for me to pinpoint the location of the rocks under my back and butt. I know it hurts, but I don't know exactly where, and I don't know if I'm allowed to try to move the pointy rocks from under me.
"Good. So what I was saying..." says Chaffin.
He goes on to explain that every time he says a number in his bedtime story, we're to raise or lower our legs to a height that corresponds with the number. We have to keep our legs perfectly straight.
"ONE day," Chaffin says, and all of us, still laying on our backs, raise our feet to about six inches off the ground.
"Keep those legs straight, Laura!" he shouts cheerfully.
"Anyway, ONE day, I decided I wanted to buy TWO ice creams." The other girls and I raise our feet to about a foot off the ground.
"Laura, that's too high, you gotta keep them about here," he wrestles her feet into place as Laura begins to sob. As soon as Chaffin turns away, I see Lisa scoot closer to Laura. It looks as if she’s using her feet to help Laura hold up her legs.
"...So I wanted to buy TWO ice creams, but the guy at the grocery store told me it would be FOUR dollars, and I said, 'FOUR dollars is way too much, it should be more like THREE!'" Chaffin pauses, then turns to Joey, whispering something in his ear. Around me, girls are whimpering as we struggle to keep our feet about a foot and a half off the ground.
"KEEP THOSE LEGS UP!" Chaffin shouts. "So we haggled over the price for a while, and finally he told me I could only get a discount if I bought TEN ice creams."
There are immediate sounds of relief when we put our feet straight up in the air. "And I was like, HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO EAT TEN ICE CREAMS? I'M ONLY ONE MAN!"
We lower our feet to six inches again, and several of the girls around me cry out. I’m shivering uncontrollably now, and it’s hard to even be aware of where my feet are hovering in space.
"Joey!" says Chaffin, gesturing toward us.
Joey comes over and gently pushes down on my feet. I struggle to keep them above the ground.
"Don't let those feet touch the ground, New Girl, that would be a mistake!" Joey moves on to the next girl, pushing her feet down.
"Where was I?" says Chaffin, sounding genuinely confused. "Oh yeah, so I was like, I'm only ONE man, and I can't eat TEN ice creams, I only want TWO! And the guy was like, then you'll have to pay FOUR dollars!"
"Legs STRAIGHT, Kelly!"
Oh, yes, that's the other new girl's name! Kelly!
"Okay, now, get into a push-up position!"
The same storytelling motif is applied to push-ups. The girls around me all seem to be crying. I feel a little bloom of pride, because I'm not crying, and I'm not going to cry; in fact, I'm rather enjoying this. This New Girl is finally being given a chance to prove herself, and she will triumph.
Next, we're meant to run up and down a steep slope, maybe fifteen feet up, ten times, and slap Chaffin's hand each time we reach the top. This wasn't a natural slope, with roots and foliage to hold it in place, but the man-made edge of a pit, all gravel wedging itself between shoe and skin and loose wet dirt that crumbles under your body weight.
So, it's the bodies of eight girls eroding the dirt wall in a mad scramble to the top. Laura pauses at the bottom to throw up, heaps some dirt over the spot, then continues climbing, all while sobbing. On my way back down, I see that Lisa is behind Laura, holding her up and pushing her along. Shareen is only on her second climb, making a valiant effort, but getting caught behind her is torture. Erica throws up too. I'm on climb number nine, and ahead of me, I hear Melissa shout "Ten!" as she slaps Chaffin’s hand to signify her final climb. Then she stands at the top with her hands on her knees, breathing hard.
"Good job, Melissa," says Chaffin, and my heart lifts. There's praise in this place?
I barrel toward the bottom like a downhill skier, narrowly missing Shareen, then ascend for the last time, slapping Chaffin's hand and shouting "Ten!" and taking my place next to Melissa.
"Are you sure that was ten, New Girl?" says Chaffin sharply.
"It was ten," Joey says, "I counted."
"Do one more," says Chaffin, gesturing down the hill.
"She really did ten—" says Joey, but then he falls silent when Chaffin shoots him a look.
I scramble down the hill, but a little more slowly this time. By the time I get back to the top, I'm the fifth girl to finish.
The rest of the girls make it to the top and line up behind me. Shareen is heroically climbing from the bottom, but mercifully, Chaffin tells her to stop.
"You don't have to do this next part, Shareen," he says.
All of the other girls seem to be sobbing. I am not, which is a welcome change from the past three days, when it feels like all I’ve done is cry. The movement feels good to me, like I’m shaking off all the anxiety that has built up in my body.
"Now, you're all going to follow Joey,” Chaffin yells. “Joey, take these girls on a tour of the gravel pit! Shareen, you stay here."
Joey takes off running at a good pace, still fresh because he's mostly just been standing idly while the rest of us were building mounds, doing push-ups, and climbing the embankment. Melissa takes off after him. He scrambles down the hill, so we all scramble down the hill, he runs in a figure eight, so we all run in a figure eight. He climbs back up the hill and we all run back up the hill, winded.
We carry on like this for a while in a tight line, but when I leave a little space between myself and the girl ahead, the girl behind me overtakes me. So we're allowed to pass people? I pass that girl, then the next girl, then the next. This is my strength, navigating outdoor spaces with roots and bushes underfoot. I've been running around up and down forest hills and creek beds since I was small.
Soon, I've passed everyone except Melissa, and I feel like I'm gaining on her. That's when Chaffin shouts to Joey that he can stop.
Apparently, it’s over. I was just getting warmed up, just starting to feel confidence in my body and my strength. The girls behind me are heaving and sobbing, and ahead of me, I think I catch Melissa giving me a wry smile.
That’s right, Melissa, you’ve met your match, I think, smiling a little myself.
Then Chaffin tells us to line up and we find ourselves marching back up the road toward the cabin. The sun is rising somewhere beyond the trees, and I'm feeling exuberant. The last three days have been utter torture. This outdoor workout stuff is hard too, but it’s hard in a way I can handle. Give me a goal! Let me suffer! After three days of near total silence, silence in the classroom, silence in the cafeteria, silence in the cabin, silence in line while walking back and forth from these three places—after all that silence and confusion, I'm thrilled to be throwing myself into an activity. I'm thrilled to have a tangible goal. Hopefully, this “being on silence" thing has all just been a temporary challenge, and not a feature of this program. Maybe it will end tonight. Maybe now I can get to know these girls. Maybe now the “therapeutic” part of this therapeutic boarding school would start to happen.
Eventually, someone took up a call-and-repeat song. I shout along, happily.
"We are Destiny! Mighty mighty Destiny! Everywhere we go-o, people oughta kno-ow, whooo we a-are, soooo we tell them, we are Destiny, mighty mighty Destiny...!"
I'm the New Girl, and that was hard, but I came in second place. I'm jubilant.
We arrive at the cabin. I figure it's time for showers, clean, dry clothes, maybe a hot drink to warm up. Will they let us sleep in, since we were up half the night running around in the dark? Probably, maybe. I can picture myself up in my room giggling and chatting with my roommates, finally getting to know them.
Things will get better now. They'll get more normal now. Oh thank God, thank God, thank God. It’s going to be okay.
We pile into the living room with smiles and laughter, until Chaffin says, "Alright, girls, circle up."
Instantly, the energy in the room pivots. The girls, suddenly subdued, sit down in a circle on the floor, everyone still damp and shivery. I find a spot next to Kelly, and sit as well.
"Jen, you're up first!" says Chaffin, and Jen stands and takes her place in the middle of the circle.
One by one, the girls around the circle give their impressions of Jen's performance at the gravel pit.
"I really saw your natural leadership skills out there."
"Boy, I couldn't believe how fast you scrambled up that hill."
"I think it really shows that you took the silence challenge to heart, and you've been internalizing the lessons you learned."
I tell her I admire her athleticism.
One by one, each girl steps to the middle of the circle, and similar things are said about her performance in the gravel pit. I'm getting excited for my turn. I've been living with these strangers for three days, and besides the brief introductions on the first day, Erica is the only one who's verbally addressed me, and only to tell me when I’d inadvertently broken a rule.
Other New Girl, or Kelly, now stands and enters the center of the circle. At first, the girls are going along the same vein, telling her how good she did, telling her she worked hard. But then, something shifts. One girl who’s been here the longest looks Kelly in the eye and with a cold stare, lets it slip that she thinks she’s an “attention whore.” Then, the next girl steps up and tells her that she’s “always going out for male acceptance.”
Kelly’s smile fades and her eyes go wide. She appears to be in a strangely subdued panic. I couldn't see why she was getting that kind of negativity; her performance in the gravel pit was as good as any of the other girls—better, in fact, than many of them—and though she didn't run as fast as me at the end, she gave a solid effort.
I tell her she was a good teammate and that I could see her dedication when she pushed the gravel with her entire upper body. She beams at me. She has the most expressive, sweet face. I can tell that when, or if, we’re allowed to talk, Kelly and I will become good friends.
When her turn in the middle is over, Kelly sits down next to me. She flashes me a glance and, while her look is overwhelmingly one of relief, there's an edge of anxiety there too. Later I'll realize that while she was relieved for herself, she probably knew what was coming for me.
It's my turn. Blood thrumming in my head, I stand, and enter the center of the circle. Will they recognize how hard I worked? Were they impressed? Were my efforts enough?
"Let's have everyone stand for this one," says Chaffin, smiling. "Should I start? No, I'll let you girls start. Oh, no, no, I'll start."
Chaffin steps into the circle. His face is very close to my face. I have to work hard not to step away.
"Your name offends me," he says softly, and though his face is impassive, my stomach lurches before the words even register. "You know why your name offends me? Because my brother's name is Cameron, and sometimes we call him Cam. And my wife's sister is named Cami, and it just seems wrong that someone great like her has to share a name with someone like you."
He steps back. He looks at me.
“Put your arms down,” he says.
“Huh?”
“You shouldn’t cross your arms in front of your body when you’re receiving feedback. It’s closed body language. It showsyou’re not taking what I'm saying in. You have to take it in. You have to accept it.”
“Oh,” I say. Reluctantly, I lower my arms.
For the rest of our struggle session, I have to consciously remember not to cover my stomach. The room is silent, but only for a moment.
Lisa steps forward.
"You're from the Bay Area, right?" she asks, and I nod.
"Well, so am I. And I can just see you out there on the streets, listening to gangster rap, thinking you're all hard."
I open my mouth to correct her, because what she’s said is just factually inaccurate. I don’t listen to gangster rap, and as a sheltered middle-class white girl, I know I have no claim to being "hard." I typically listen to grunge or alternative music, which would be obvious if they hadn't stripped me of my band t-shirts, holey jeans, and Converse high-tops. I think most people would safely describe my aesthetic as “depressed,” which was much more fitting to my station in life.
"Actually…" I say, and the room erupts.
"NO REBUTTALS!" the girls scream in unison, and Chaffin chortles.
I’m ashamed that I don’t know what "rebuttals" means, but I gather that now isn’t the time to try and expand my vocabulary.
"I could totally see that you were going out for Joey's acceptance," continues Lisa, bright blue eyes inches from my face. My mouth opens of its own accord. Joey is cute, sure, but I hadn't been trying to get his attention.
"Oh, you thought no one noticed that?" Another girl says. "You've been crying since the moment you got here, but then there's a boy around, and you're suddenly like, a superathlete. Anything to get male attention, right? I wonder what kind of stuff you were doing at home to make the boys like you. You were totally one of those girls, weren't you?"
My mouth starts quivering. I'm a virgin, I want to say, but I have kissed boys. There have been clumsy fumblings in darkened rooms. So maybe she's right.
Another girl steps into the circle.
"Oh, PPM!" says the girl, raising her fists and twisting them near her eyes to mimic crying. "Oh PPM, my parents sent me to a program because I'm a SPOILED BRAT!" By now, she's screaming, inches from my face. I can taste her breath.
When she's finished, I whisper, "Sorry, what's PPM?"
"NO REBUTTALS!" screams the room.
"...Oh, so you want to know what PPM is?" says the girl, lowering her voice again. "It means POOR. PITIFUL. ME. That's all I see when I look at you—a poor pitiful crybaby."
Several of the girls raise their hands to mimic crying. I do my best to mold my vibrating face into a skeptical look, willing my eyes to stay dry.
Another girl steps forward.
"You are SO. GROSS. You are DISGUSTING! I hate even looking at you. Ever since you got here, you’ve sucked the air out of every room we walk into. I hope your parents pull you so I won’t have to look at you anymore."
If I’d wondered what these girls thought of me, or if we would ever be friends, I knew the answer now.
The girl is still yelling, and her hair is sticking up at all angles, matted with dirt from the gravel pit. Her hair flips around as she jerks her head with every shrieked word. Several times, her spit spackles my face. If I let my eyes go fuzzy, she kind of looks like a manic muppet. If I could turn the volume down on her words, it would almost be cute.
When it becomes clear that the manic muppet isn’t sure what else to say, another girl steps in, then another, then another. It’s wild, I think from somewhere outside myself, how I've only been here three days, and I've barely said a word, but these girls—virtual strangers—could all immediately see how stupid, useless, repulsive and incompetent I am. It’s dawning on me, slowly, slowly, that every bad thing I've ever thought about myself is 100% true, and that there are a bunch of other bad things about me that I haven’t yet discovered, which these girls are now taking pleasure in pointing out. These insights will occupy my mind for many a teeth-grinding night for years to come.
We've come full circle and are back to Lisa, who informs me that I have a smirk on my face. This is a surprise to me—anything I’m doing with my face is simply a desperate ploy not to cry.
"You want to act all hard? Okay, be hard. You've been crying since you got here, but you're not actually sad, are you? No, you're ANGRY. So why don't you show your anger? I want you to go around this circle and push every girl here, one by one, as hard as you can."
"Like, physically push them?" I ask, genuinely confused.
"Like, physically push them?" says Lisa, doing a fair imitation of my stupid voice. "Yeah, that's what I said, isn’t it? It's time for you to get some of your anger out."
So I start by giving Lisa a good shove.
"Is that all you've got?" she asks. So I push her again, and it DOES feel good.
One by one, I push the girls. Just a few short hours ago, I’d hoped they would become my friends, but now...
When I get to Shareen, I forget about her MS, and shove her with just as much force as I did the other girls. She stumbles.
"Oh my gosh," I say, reaching out to help her, "I'm so sorry!"
"It's okay," Shareen says. She's holding my shoulders to steady herself.
I'm distantly aware that somewhere behind me a girl is mimicking my apology and screaming that I didn't really mean it, that I try to seem so nice and sweet so people will go easy on me, but actually I’m just manipulative...
My eyes are still locked on Shareen's face, because Shareen is talking too, though without words.
She's saying something like, None of this is real, you know that, don't you? It's just a stupid game.
It's a message sent only with her eyes, but clear as day nonetheless.
But it feels so real, I want to tell her, and she looks back at me with such genuine amusement and empathy that something pops behind my eyes and I finally start crying in earnest.
There's a palpable change in the room. The angry energy dissipates. Chaffin leads me over to the wall near the door. He directs me to kneel and put my nose "in the place where the wall and the floor meet."
I kneel. I lower my head. It is actually quite hard to put your nose "in the place where the wall and the floor meet."
I can feel the eyes of Chaffin, Joey, and the girls on me as I kneel down, then lean forward. “Nose!” says Chaffin.
I lean forward as far as I can, butt up in the air, aware that everyone in the room is probably watching me. I turn my neck to the left, scoot forward on my knees, and thrust my upper body forward so I can jam my face into the corner where my nose touches both the floor and the wall. It requires me to strain my whole body. I'm not sure how long I can keep it up. If I knelt parallel to the wall, it would be easier and more comfortable, but my ease and comfort obviously aren't the purpose of this exercise, so I'm not sure if Chaffin will allow me to change my position.
I sneeze and hit my nose on the floor and wonder if it will start bleeding again. After that, I breathe through my mouth. Behind me, Chaffin is addressing the girls, but I'm not listening to what he's saying. I’m in my right place. My role here has been fulfilled.
At some point, the day staff arrive. Chaffin pulls them aside and they have a whispered conversation. Eventually, the girls are dismissed from the front room and I can hear them running around the cabin, accompanied by an endless chorus of "Can I cross, can I cross?" ringing through the rooms. They're getting ready for the day, and I'm still kneeling with my face in that place where the wall and the floor meet.
I don’t remember how I ultimately got out of that position. I want to say that after Chaffin left, one of the day staff said, “Uhh, I guess you can get up now?”, but the moment seemed to never end.
Regardless, I do know that we were still “on silence” the rest of that day, and the next day, and the next day, and the next, and that each day bled into the next. We trudged down the road to the classroom, where we sat silently, then we walked to the cafeteria, where we ate silently, then to the basketball courts, where we walked in silent circles around the pavement. The only punctuation points to the silence are warnings, which are sling-shotted into a girl’s day like a rocket that she’s not allowed to react to.
The only time we'll talk in the following days will be during "group," which means more of that circling up, more screaming in each other's faces. The victim is different each day, but other than that, each day will be like the next day and the day after that and the day after that, until eventually Chaffin will summon us for another “process,” or "challenge," or one of the other staff will dream up a challenge of their own, or we'll have a seminar, or a facility meeting, and all of them will include the screaming in each other's faces, and the only way to stop the screaming is to cry, but you can't start crying too fast—they'll call you out for being manipulative—and you can't cry too much, or you'll get a reputation as a PPM. Your progress depends on your ability to wield your tears strategically.
You learn to dole them out when they're needed. A helping for the staff so they can feel powerful, a dash for that kid when they're in need of a lift, buckets in seminars where they're expected. Your tears are your currency in a place where your only other currency is silence and compliance.
The next day, Chaffin comes back to our cabin for "group." He comes bearing gifts, for me alone. He holds out a paper heart. It's colored with crayon. It's burnt around the edges to give it an old look. There's a yellow string looped through a hole punched at the top of the heart. The yarn is long enough to be worn around one's neck. Written in a childish scrawl across the heart, it says, "True beauty is found within."
Also tied to the string is Chaffin's wedding ring. He holds these offerings out to me, like a bashful kindergartner with a Valentine—an all-powerful kindergartner with a Valentine I'm not allowed to refuse. He tells me I can wear his wedding ring all week; that he's trusting me with it, and to please be careful. He tells me something about how maybe he was wrong, that maybe I was actually just a sweet person, like his wife…or something. Whatever he’s saying now feels less real than what he said the other night, when he leaned in close and told me my very name was offensive to him.
Now, in the bright light of day, with this man holding out a paper heart and wedding ring, clarity eludes me. I cast my eyes about the room, searching the faces of the girls and the staff for comprehension.
"Guys, this is weird, right?" I want to say. "Guys?"
But around me, feminine cooing has reached a crescendo.
"Awwwwww," they say, a sound better suited to a bridal or baby shower.
I take the paper heart from Chaffin’s outstretched hands, smiling, mouthing “Thank you,” hoping the tears rolling from the corners of my eyes look like happy tears. Like I’m crying because I’m so moved by his thoughtfulness and trust in me. But really I’m crying because I realize I’ve been duped. This therapeutic boarding school where I hoped to become a better person is neither therapeutic, nor is it a school. The things that happen here are not going to help me, in fact, what happens here over the next year and a half will fuck with my well-being for decades to come, and possibly for the rest of my life.
* * *
Now, 25 years later, at age 40, I’ve become obsessed with this idea that people can occupy the same physical space, but live in parallel realities. They can witness the same things, and ask themselves the same questions, and come up with totally different answers.
How does Chaffin conceptualize the things he did to us program kids? What’s the story he tells himself? Did he really think he was helping us, or on some level, did he realize that maybe he just really enjoyed having and exercising power over teenage girls?
I really meant to depict Chaffin with nuance, recognizing his humanity. That’s a quality I appreciate in mature, thoughtful writing. I genuinely subscribe to the idea that there are no good guys, there are no bad guys, just deeply flawed people doing their best. But every time I try to write about Chaffin, he comes out as a monster. I don’t know how to fix it.
I do this meditation sometimes. I think of specific people and go through a series of wishes for them. I do this for loved ones, I do this for near strangers, I do it for the difficult people in my life. It’s soothing. It helps me take a wider view.
I picture my best friend, and think:
I wish you freedom from suffering, I wish you success in your worthy endeavors, I wish you peace and joy.
I picture a difficult family member:
I wish you freedom from suffering, I wish you success in your worthy endeavors, I wish you peace and joy.
I picture the trucker who cut me off in traffic the other day:
I wish you freedom from suffering, I wish you success in your worthy endeavors, I wish you peace and joy.
I picture that kid who bullied me in the 6th grade:
I wish you freedom from suffering, I wish you success in your worthy endeavors, I wish you peace and joy.
I picture Chaffin:
I wish you freedom from…
I wish you…
Ah fuck that guy, maybe it’s right for him to suffer a little bit.
He is the only person from my life that I can’t seem to do that meditation for. That’s saying something, isn’t it? I can do it for all the other staff in the program. They weren’t bad people, they were just swept up in a bad machine. But when it comes to Chaffin, I’m not totally sure.
That’s why I would love to hear Chaffin’s version of the story of the night of the gravel pit. I’d love to hear what he thought I would gain from putting my nose in that place where the wall meets the floor. Chaffin, if you’re reading this, write it out, let me know. I’m so curious. It would be cool to be able to develop some degree of empathy for him. It would also be cool to be a fly on the wall when Chaffin explains his take on the movement to regulate the Troubled Teen Industry. Are we all just whiners who couldn’t handle the natural consequences of our actions?
One of the most common refrains we would hear as kids in the program was, “You chose to be here based upon your actions at home,” or “Based on results, you have exactly what you intended.” Their goal was to drive home the idea that we absolutely deserved everything they dished out. It was the ultimate in using someone’s hand to hit them in the face, and saying, “Stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself!”
Here’s the thing about Chaffin, though. He and his twin brother, Cameron, have been embroiled in several lawsuits over the years. The first, that I’m aware of, involved the suicide of Karlye Newman, a 16-year-old girl who killed herself at Spring Creek in 2004. They were charged with “wrongful death, negligence, breach of contract, deceit, and constructive fraud.” They were never, as far as I can tell, charged with “harassing depressed teenage girls until they genuinely wanted to die.”
I wonder how suicidal Karlye was when she arrived at Spring Creek? We do know that she never managed to kill herself at home, with all of the freedom, sharp objects, and other suicide assists that homes provide. And yet she managed to follow through on the act in the program, where it would have taken a great deal of planning and forethought, not to mention constant scanning for the exact moment when she could get the job done, given we were supervised 24/7 in the program. I don’t know if she had a history of suicide attempts or suicidal ideation, but even if she did, it seems she became more motivated while at the program. I wonder if she ever spent time with her nose in the place where the wall and the floor meet, because I can tell you first-hand: when it comes to wanting to kill yourself, that’ll do the trick.
Anyway, after that lawsuit, there were lawsuits involving sexual abuse and grooming, and most recently, another suicide. Ithink they’re still fighting that one, hiring lawyers with the money our parents gave them in good faith, believing theywould help us.
But let’s assess their battle in court against what happens to your average program kid. First off, Chaffin gets a trial. He’ll only be locked up if the evidence leads to conviction.
Program kids get no trial. We had kids in the program for “talking back,” and we had kids in the program for “a bad attitude.” We had kids in the program who’d been sexually abused. The school billed itself as therapeutic, remember. Still, a majority were in for the kinds of things I was in for: I smoked weed, I ditched school, and I kissed boys. But we also had Shareen. When Shareen began to show MS symptoms—shaking, blurred vision, bumping into things—her parents thought she was on drugs. No drug test, no evidence, she got locked up on their suspicion alone. When the truth came out that she wasn’t on drugs, that she was simply sick with a chronic illness that would eventually kill her, the program held onto her for months. They only let her go when caring for her became too much trouble, as a result of the fact that she ended up needing a wheelchair. As a kid, I cried for myself and what I was going through in the program. As an adult, I cry for Shareen.
Anyway, back to Chaffin and the allegations against him.
Chaffin gets a judge and jury to adjudicate and compare his case against similar cases to get some sense of his innocence or guilt. Program kids get no judge or jury. The only thing it takes to lock them up is parent inclination and family or insurance money. Chaffin gets a lawyer—again, paid for by our parents’ money, to defend him. Program kids get no lawyer. And finally, if Chaffin is found guilty, which he won’t be, Chaffin gets to go to prison. Hold up there, you say, prison is bad.
I know, I’ve seen Orange is the New Black too. Looks rough. But here’s the thing: every person I know who’s been to both prison and the program says that the program was hands down worse.
Let me repeat that again, for the people in the back: People who’ve experienced both say that prison is preferable to the program.
And yet Chaffin is fighting like hell to stay out of prison. So, I’ll give him the same message he was so fond of conveying to us program kids: You can choose your actions, Chaffin, but you can’t choose your consequences. You should just accept the natural consequences to your actions. Based on results, you have exactly what you intended.
There’s still so much more to say about the subject, but I think this is enough for today. You’ve stuck with me for nearly twenty pages.
Thank you.
I wish you freedom from suffering. I wish you success in your worthy endeavors. I wish you peace and joy.
But Chaffin? Chaffin can rot in hell.
If you're a survivor of the Troubled Teen Industry and would like to contact Cami, please email her at wewereprogrammed@gmail.com.
Cover Photo by EMDR.