Page 18 of However You Want Me

Sure enough, when I pull out my phone, the instructions are there waiting for me.

Reminder: Ridgemore. 3 am.

I start the car and let my mind go blank. I don’t want to think. I don’t want to remember anything—not even who I am.

The man I find in Ridgemore is the man that watched me piss. The one who used to constantly watch. He had a baton on his waist. I’m not sure whether his hands on that baton hit me the most. He’s not ready for me. He doesn’t hear me coming. Nobody does.

Nobody hears him when he starts to squeal, either. I hit him over the head with an old baseball bat I found in the dumpster a few months back so many times that it stops looking like a human head at all—just a mess.

By then, he’s not making any sound.

By then, he’s very still.

But I keep going. It only seems fair. It barely even feels real. The blood being hot as it splashes, the lights behind the trees from the cars on the street… none of it truly registers. In my head, I’m him, beating the shit out of me when I was only a fucking kid.

Lots of people have ideas about right and wrong. Most would say that killing is wrong. But how could they think that when they did all that shit to us? And they were allowed to. No one ever got in trouble when the truth finally came out. They just got to go home. So right and wrong, when it comes to what other people think… well it doesn’t really register for me.

I learned from that school that what people say isn’t what they mean.

I learned that nothing matters except making sure everyone gets their punishment.

DEAN

10 years ago

The “treatments” are never treatments in this hell hole.

It’s like everything else about the school. It’s not really a school, it’s a prison for people like me. Delinquents. Nuisances. Some of us did actually commit a crime and got caught. I know I’ve shoplifted before but I got away with it. It was just candy bars. It was wrong and I know that. It was stupid. That was last year when I was 14. My buddy Nick did it first and I know I shouldn’t have. It was dumb and I was missing my mom.

Just thinking about her makes me want to cry. She wouldn’t want this for me. She would have told Dad there was another way. Bad grades and acting dumb… I know I shouldn’t have, but this?

I don’t deserve this. No one fucking deserves this.

It’s not a school, and the treatments aren’t really treatments—they’re just torture.

That’s obvious after about an hour in this place, and it only gets more obvious as the days go by. If you stand in silence, perfectly still, just listening to the cries and screams, the things they tell us… it’s not right. Nothing here is what it’s supposed to be. I really do wonder how they sold this place to our parents. What the hell would they put on a brochure to make this seem like it would help?

It feels like my soul is chipping away piece by piece.

I wonder if they needed my dad’s consent for the treatments, because I’ve been intreatmentsfor months, and there’s nothing to treat. Nobody in their right mind would call this medicine. Nothing about it will heal me. It’ll only make things worse.

That’s the goal. These people want to break me. They want to turn me into someone who follows orders at every cost.

I’ve been doing that already. They don’t know how much it costs to feel like this, but then they don’t care.

Mr. Jay cares least of all. I’ve been alone with him in this room for an hour. Maybe two. Maybe three. There’s no clock, so there’s no way for me to be sure what time it is. After dinner, I think. I try not to guess what time it is. Time doesn’t matter anyway. You’re up when they tell you to get up. If that’s 3am or noon, it doesn’t matter. If you got to bed at 9 and they say rise and shine at 10, you get your ass up or you get the shit beat out of you.

Besides, time doesn’t pass normally here. I think it’s been hours, so it’s probably only been minutes. I think it’s been years, so I’ve probably only been here for months.

It’s better if I don’t think about it.

Most of what’s on my mind is that my stomach hurts.

It hurts because it’s full of water. Mr. Jay said to drink a bottle when we first came in. Then another. Then another.

It’s been hours and he keeps bringing in bottles to drink. I don’t know how many so far. All I can remember is that it was warm and tasted like plastic, like it had been sitting in a case too long. I can’t move from where I am. I can’t let my back rest against the chair. I have to sit on the edge of it. The stack of books in my lap. My legs stiff.

I have to piss and I know he wants me to piss myself. To hurt and ache. To be weak and pathetic. I hold it in though. Silently sitting perfectly still. Staring ahead and trying not to cry when the baton comes down on the books.

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