Lisa dreamt of coffee. She could smell it, almost taste it. In her dream, she was wrapped in a blanket, lying on a lumpy sofa in a cafe. A woman with a wicked grin and hair sharp as needles turned toward her. It was Sue Green, and she held a cup of coffee topped with a small foam mountain. Storm clouds swirled above it in turmoil and flashed tiny bolts of lightning. “Lisa! Watch out!” called Patrick from where he stood at the bar pouring martinis. Lisa turned back to Sue. The woman floated toward her and Lisa struggled to free herself, but the blanket held her down, its warmth and weight trapping her. She couldn’t move, could barely breathe. Sue tossed the coffee at Lisa’s face, the black liquid slowly drifting in space.
“Lisa, wake up.”
Lisa woke with a gasp and untangled herself from her thin blanket.
Jamie sat perched on the edge of her bed. “Good morning, sunshine. How are you feeling?”
An image of a shirtless George popped into her head. Lisa groaned and covered her face with a pillow.
“I brought you coffee. Drink up.”
“Will you smother me?” asked Lisa, her voice muffled by
the pillow.
“No.” Jamie pulled the pillow off Lisa’s face and tossed it aside.
“Jamie, what is wrong with me?” she asked.
“The usual things. Impulse control issues. Possible substance abuse problems. Generalized anxiety. And most recently—sexual deviance. Just your average twenty-something with an over-controlling mother.”
“Can I blame her for everything?”
“Absolutely,” said Jamie. “And, speaking of your mother, she texted that she’s on her way here. She was not kidding
about breakfast.”
“No . . .” groaned Lisa as she pulled the pillow back over
her face.
“So you best get up and get ready. Also, I’m really hungry, so I’ll be joining your special mother-daughter brunch because I assume your mother will pay the bill.”
“Just five more minutes.”
“Right on. Take your time. I’m sure your mother won’t mind waiting downstairs. She seems like such a patient and reasonable woman,” said Jamie, leaving the room.
Lisa pushed the pillow aside, sat up, and took a sip of coffee. She felt achy and grimy and she needed a shower.
She lay back down and closed her eyes, feeling a vague sense of déjà vu. Another place, another time, another fateful meeting with her mother.
***
The day had started well enough with an invitation from Patrick to sit by the lake after fourth period. A light breeze churned the water, causing the dock to sway gently beneath her. She felt the rough, weathered boards through the threadbare bath towel she lay on. Sleepily, she wondered how many students the cloth had dried during its life at the Academy, and she imagined particles of those lives seeping into her body.
She opened her eyes and leaned back on her elbows. The sky was a startling blue, for once devoid of clouds. Dragonflies danced along the lake’s surface, darting into reeds that bordered the shoreline, hunting tiny prey. The mountain rose before her, dominating the view, its mirror image visible on the lake’s surface. She pressed her index finger to her leg, testing. Its pink surface tingled with pinpricks of pain that would lead to the inevitable sunburn and peeling skin. She should have put on sunscreen, but it would have taken so much effort.
Turning over onto her stomach, she lowered her head onto her crossed arms and glanced over at Patrick, who lay on his back beside her.
He held up a tattered paperback of On the Road with both hands like a shield against the sun’s rays. “Let’s steal Bob the Nob’s car. We’ll hit the road and drive to San Francisco like Kerouac.”
“Bob drives a Nissan Sentra,” said Lisa.
“I know. Sweet ride.”
“There is nothing sweet about that sad, rusty excuse for a car. We wouldn’t make it past Eugene.”
“Listen to this,” said Patrick, squinting at the well-thumbed page. He read aloud: “‘I was surprised, as always, how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt. The world was suddenly rich with possibility.’” He turned onto his side and smiled at her.
The breeze drifted Patrick’s dark hair over his eyes, and she brushed it gently away. On most days, the Academy felt like a prison, but in this moment Lisa felt almost like an ordinary girl enjoying a sunny afternoon with her crush. She’d resisted Patrick at first. He was such a dork, she kept telling herself, always going on about sci-fi movies she’d never heard of and pulling crazy stunts like the one in the gym to get her attention. And she had a boyfriend back home, Garrett, a tattooed twenty-two-year-old with a dented Harley motorcycle that he called vintage but was really just junk. As the weeks turned to months and her letters to Garrett went unanswered, she started hanging with Patrick. They hadn’t even kissed yet. It wasn’t as if the school discouraged it. The counselors turned a blind eye to sex between students.
If only her mother knew what really happened here.
With a sudden rush of air, a clump of mud sailed overhead and splashed down between them.
“What the hell,” protested Patrick. He jumped to his feet and narrowly dodged a second projectile.
Lisa sat up and wiped the mud from her legs. Looking back toward the shore, she saw a pack of kids preparing another onslaught.
“This is our dock,” yelled a short, stocky kid named Willy. His pudgy fists rested on his hips in righteous indignation. Five cohorts stood behind their ringleader, their faces cocksure
and confident.
“The hell it is, you little shits,” yelled Patrick.
“You have to leave. We have seniority, you pathetic worm,” said Willy.
Encouraged by Willy’s bold words, his counterparts hurled more mud, this time hitting Patrick’s book. Patrick threw it down angrily and charged at them, but the boys held their ground.
“Patrick, stop,” begged Lisa, knowing they had no choice but to leave the dock to the kids. Some of these boys had been at the school since they were ten years old. Now thirteen or fourteen, the school’s twisted system of hierarchy meant they had seniority over older students like Lisa and Patrick. The longer you were stuck at the Academy, the more levels you passed, the more “in agreement” you were with the staff. Each level attained equaled more privileges and more power over your peers.
They’re a bunch of chubby sociopaths, thought Lisa. She wondered when the school’s sadistic practices would finally drive her to their level of madness. She picked up the paperback from where Patrick had flung it on the dock and tried to wipe off the mud with her towel. It was pointless. The book was ruined.
She looked up and saw with dread two of the school’s security staff rushing toward them from the main campus. Lisa had a hard time remembering the staff’s names as turnover at the school was so high, but she thought the pair were called Dwayne and Stanley. The little pack of monsters had probably given them a heads up.
“Patrick, stop it. We have to get out of here.” She pointed at the men stumbling down a stone pathway toward the lake. Patrick was too angry to hear. He was twisting Willy’s arm as the boy yelped in pain.
Dwayne reached them first, breathing heavily from exertion. He doubled over, trying to catch his breath, his chest heaving up and down painfully. He was dressed in a bright blue polo shirt with Lost Lake Academy stitched on the left breast and a pair of khaki cargo shorts sporting massive pockets stuffed with gear. “Let Willy go,” he said to Patrick between desperate gulps of air.
“They threw mud at me and my girlfriend,” said Patrick angrily, still holding Willy roughly.
“Let him go, and we’ll talk about this.”
“He’s hurting me!” screamed Willy. “We didn’t do anything wrong.”
“The little shit is lying,” said Patrick, tightening his grip.
“We don’t tolerate that kind of language,” said Dwayne.
Stanley, dressed in a green polo and faded jeans, finally caught up, his thin, flushed face covered in a sheen of sweat. “What’s going on?” he asked Dwayne angrily.
“Dude, take it easy, I just got here too,” he said.
“Get this situation under control now,” said Stanley, obviously thinking he was in charge.
Dwayne looked at Patrick uncertainly. Patrick was several inches taller and in much better shape. Slowly, the man reached into a pocket and pulled out a Taser. He pressed the trigger, and it made a menacing crackling sound. The kids circled around them, taunting Patrick and cheering on Dwayne.
“Patrick, please, let Willy go,” pleaded Lisa. “It was just a little mud.”
Patrick looked at her, then back toward the men. “Fine, I surrender.” He released Willy and held both hands up. The pair tackled him to the ground.
“Just you wait, you little motherless fuckwits,” yelled Patrick at the boys. “You’ll regret this.”
Lisa clutched the muddy book tightly to her chest, and watched the men drag Patrick away. She guessed they’d drop him in the hole for “self-study.” It would be his third time. He didn’t speak to anyone for a week after the first. She noticed suddenly that the little cretins had crept up and surrounded her.
Willy spoke. “What’s wrong, hottie?”
Another kid named Martin said, “You don’t have to leave. Stay with us.”
They were all at least a foot shorter than she was, but there were too many of them. Unloved creatures, abandoned by family, allowed to roam this hideous place with impunity, as long as they followed the ridiculous rules set out by the school administrators. One, John, was even from her peer group, and she tried to catch his eye, but he wouldn’t meet her gaze. She’d make him pay later. He’d confessed to her during their “truth counseling” session that he regularly stole jars of mayo from the cafeteria and ate it like ice cream. She’d report him to the staff, and he’d get his. Her eyes darted around, looking for a way out.
“We’ll cheer you up,” said Willy, his hand roughly grabbing her arm. She slapped him away and started up the hill back toward the main school grounds.
Someone still out of sight was calling her name.
“I’m telling Dr. Bob that you’re out of agreement,” said a boy behind her.
“Go to hell,” she said, not looking back. She kept along the path, leaving the lost boys behind her. She looked for whoever had called her name and saw with relief it was Jamie. Having Jamie in her peer group was the only thing, besides Patrick, that made the Academy remotely tolerable.
“Why aren’t you ready?” Jamie asked as she reached Lisa.
“Ready for what?” asked Lisa, feeling confused. She looked behind her to make sure the boys hadn’t followed.
“It’s visiting day,” said Jamie urgently.
“So?” Lisa just wanted to head back to the girls’ dorm, lie down on her twin bed, drift off, and forget everything for a few precious hours.
“Well, your mom is here. Why are you covered in mud? Anyway, I was talking with my parents and my brother Roderick, and I saw this woman. She was so pissed, yelling at the staff, asking why her daughter wasn’t waiting for her. She was seriously giving them hell, and then she said your name, and I took a closer look at her and could totally see the resemblance.” Jamie rattled on, not noticing that Lisa had slumped down and was sitting on the ground. “What are you doing down there?” she asked.
Lisa looked up at Jamie, not quite able to breathe. She whispered, “Who?”
“Your mother.”
Lisa felt nauseous. “My mom can’t see me like this. She’ll never let me come home if I look like this.” Lisa brushed at her mud-spattered tank top and shorts, vainly trying to wipe away the stains. She pulled a clump of dirt from her short, messy hair. It was hopeless. She felt naked, raw, and powerless. Tears spilled down her face as she cried for her lost life, for her father who was too scared to stand up for her, for all the stupid shit she’d pulled to make her mom believe this horrible school was the only way to deal with her sad excuse for a daughter.
Jamie knelt next to her. “You don’t have to see her, you know.” She gently patted Lisa’s back as a few more helpless sobs escaped. “You have a choice.”
Lisa lifted her eyes to Jamie’s. “I wish I did, Jamie. I really wish I did.”
***
And now, her mother was back. For a moment Lisa felt as helpless as ever. Angrily, she wiped away her tears and got out of bed. Hell if her mother was going to have that kind of power over her again. This time would be different.
Pulling on her old flannel robe, she headed to the bathroom. She turned on the water in the shower to let it heat up and examined her face in the bathroom mirror. The bump on her forehead had turned a sickly shade of purple. Lovely. At least she hadn’t needed stitches. She’d only have emotional scars.
Boohoo, she thought as she stepped into the shower, it’s all my own damn fault.
Minutes later she was clean and dressed in a T-shirt, shorts, and flip flops. She pulled her wet hair into a pony tail and gently dotted some cover-up on her forehead and around her eye.
“Nice shiner,” said Jamie, squeezing into the bathroom next to her.
“Thanks, friend.”
“My phone is about to explode from the twenty texts your mother sent in the last minute.” Jamie’s phone buzzed again. “She is seriously going to lose her mind if we don’t get downstairs now.”
They headed down the creaky wooden steps to the lobby where a fake ficus tree sat dusty and forlorn in a corner. A row of mailboxes full of flyers and junk mail was fitted in one wall, and a faded mural of Mount Hood adorned the wall opposite. Over the years, tenants of varying artistic skill had embellished the wall with flourishes of their own, some philosophical, some political, some making commentary on the landlord’s lack of prowess as a lover. Oddly, said landlord had never made an effort to alter or fix the painting. As Lisa and Jamie passed the mural, they smacked the mountain with their palms for luck.
“Are you ready?” asked Jamie.
“As I’ll ever be,” said Lisa.