“The orientation is the real stuff,” Becky said. She again hooked her arm around mine and tried to get me to follow her, but I resisted. I probably had fifty pounds on her, in muscle and height, and I didn’t budge.

“I want to see the principal first.”

Becky’s face burst into a delighted smile, which was as fake as it was big. “You are so decisive. I think that’s terrific.”

“What?” I couldn’t believe how weird she was acting. Nothing in the orientation could be as important as she was making it appear. It was like she was trying to keep me away from the principal.

“I’m just saying that we can really use someone like you at this school.”

I laughed, though I didn’t know why. Maybe because this had to be a joke. “How old are you, Becky?”

“Sixteen, almost seventeen,” she said happily. “My birthday’s at the end of October.”

Her smile was plastered on like a tour guide’s. That’s what she was: a tour guide, all smiles and scripts.

“No offense,” I said, “but can you show me where the real Becky is?”

“What do you mean?” She let her hand slip off the door, and it swung slowly shut.

“I mean that I don’t believe a word you’ve said. This is all some stupid game.”

“I’m the real Becky,” she said, concern growing in her eyes.

“You’re not, and you’re not even a good liar. You said that your birthday is coming up at the end of October. It’s already November second.”

She opened her mouth but didn’t say anything. She took a step back and looked out at the forest. The two runners had just reemerged from the trees, their sweaters glowing a vibrant cherry red in the afternoon sun.

“So,” I continued, “enough of the crap.” I grabbed the door handle, but it was locked again.

“I am Becky,” she said, her arms folded across her chest.

“Why’s the door locked?”

“I am Becky,” she repeated.

“I don’t care,” I said. “How do we unlock the door? I want to see the principal.”

She turned to look at me, her eyes fierce. “I am Becky Allred. And I’m telling the truth.”

“I don’t care who you are. I want to see the principal.”

Her smile was gone now, replaced by a grim stare. “We don’t have one.”

What?

“We don’t have a principal,” she said. “We don’t have teachers, and we don’t have counselors. That’s why I do the orientations.”

“There’s no—I mean, you don’t have . . .”

She tried to put her smile back on, but it was weak and forced. “This school is different from other schools.”

“So who teaches the classes?”

“We do,” she said. “The students. We get lesson plans.”

“I don’t believe it,” I said. “That doesn’t explain your birthday. Why did you lie about that?”

Her grin seemed to be back in full strength. “It’s not a lie. I know it seems weird, and it’ll be easier to understand when we go through the full orientation. But . . .” She paused, mulling over her words. “We don’t have any calendars.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope.”

“Can’t you just look on your computers? Every computer has the date.”

“Not ours. But you do get your very own laptop. Did you know that?”

I couldn’t believe it—in spite of everything she’d just said, she was still trying to sell me on how great the school was.

“But can’t you just email someone? Get on the internet?”

Her nose wrinkled again. “Our computers don’t get on the internet.”

This was ridiculous. “Well, didn’t your family call you on your birthday?”

“No phones, either.”

“Let me get this straight. There are no adults in the school. And we can’t talk to anyone on the outside.”

She bobbed her head in embarrassed agreement.

I pointed at the two runners, who were standing on the lawn now, holding hands and looking back at the forest. I could see little puffs of breath rising from them as they talked.

“He said we can’t get out of here,” I said. “Is that true, too?”

“Yes.”

This could all still be a joke. It had to be a joke.

“I shouldn’t have taken the scholarship.”

“That depends on how you look at it,” she said. Her voice was warm and happy, but detached and distant, like she wasn’t really directing her words at me. Another script. “There are some great people in this school. We learn a lot of interesting things, and it can really be a lot of fun.”

I bet. I wanted a good school and I got this. Ms. Vaughn had been right about one thing—she’d said this place would be different from what I was used to. I thought she’d meant that we’d actually learn something, and that kids wouldn’t get beat up in the parking lot. Instead, she meant that it was a prison.

“What’s the point of this place, then? Is it for screwed-up kids?”

Becky laughed. “No, it’s just a school. We go to class and we have dances and play sports.” She gave me a mischievous grin. “You’re not screwed up, are you?”

I pulled away from her, my confusion suddenly erupting into anger. “Why are you calm about this? How long has it been since anyone here has talked to anyone”—I gestured vaguely at the world beyond the forest—“out there?”

Becky glanced quickly at the horizon. The school sat in a low spot in the forest and we couldn’t see much more than the rolling, wooded hills and, in the far distance, a faded gray mountain range.

“I’ve been here for about a year and a half,” she said simply. “I don’t miss it. Like I said, things are good here.”

“Do people graduate?”

“Not yet,” Becky said. “But I don’t think anyone is old enough.” She took my arm again and turned me back toward the door. “How old are you?”

“Almost eighteen,” I lied, and then remembered that she had my records. “Well, I’ll be eighteen in about nine months. Happy birthday, by the way. You’re seventeen, too.”

Becky laughed and then stepped to the door. It unlocked again with a buzz, and she pulled it open. “I like you, Benson. You’ll do well here.”

Chapter Three

The foyer of the school looked like the natural history museum I’d visited back in elementary school. The floor was marble, and dark wood covered the lower half of the stone walls. It was the kind of place that my optimistic twenty-minutes-ago self would have loved and referred to as a beautiful, awe-inspiring palace of education. My current self thought it was an ugly, poorly lit haunted house. And now it was home.

Not for long. Maybe some of the other kids didn’t mind being locked in, but I did.

A massive staircase led up to the right, but Becky directed me forward, under a stone archway and down a long corridor. The front doors closed behind us with a soft thud, and despite the tall ceilings, I felt claustrophobic.