Chapter 3

My door was locked from the outside.

There had been something in that milk. I never touched it. It went into the plant.

She'd smashed my phone that afternoon. She called it taking away my electronics.

At ten the next morning, a car was coming for me. Once I was inside, I'd turn into what Zoe was. A very sick girl getting treatment in Switzerland. After that I'd just be gone.

I couldn't wait for morning.

I felt around under the false bottom of my desk drawer and found a bobby pin.

All those years locked in the basement taught me exactly one useful thing, and that was how to pick a lock. My mother had swapped my doorknob out for the kind that locks from the hallway. The cylinder was old.

I straightened the pin and worked it into the keyhole.

Click.

I pressed the handle down slowly. The door opened.

The hallway was pitch dark. I could hear my dad snoring in the master bedroom.

I didn't bother with the basement. That box was already gone. I knew it was.

I went down barefoot and into her study.

The safe was under the desk. I didn't have the combination and I didn't have time to guess at it. But there was a manila folder lying out on the desktop with ZOE written down the side.

I grabbed the folder and took the spare car keys off the hook by the door on my way past.

The hall light came on.

"Nora?"

My dad was at the top of the stairs, rubbing his eyes. Then he saw the keys and the folder in my hands.

His face changed. "What are you doing? If your mother finds out—"

"She's taking me to Cedar Ridge at ten." I kept my eyes on him. "Same as she did with Zoe. How much longer are you going to pretend you don't know?"

He took a step back and looked away. "It's for your own good. You girls are sick. You need to be corrected—"

"What is Zoe sick with?"

"Your mother says she—"

"She says." I let that sit for a second. "Is there one thing in this house that isn't just what she says?"

He opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

"Move."

I shoved past him, ran for the front door, and yanked the chain off.

"Vivian! Vivian!"

He was shouting it behind me. Something broke in the master bedroom, and then my mother screamed.

I pulled the door open and ran out into the rain. I was soaked in about two seconds.

I hit the key fob and the black SUV in the driveway lit up.

By the time I got the door open and the engine going, she was out of the house. Nightgown, hair everywhere, one hand slapping the driver's side window. Under the porch light her face didn't look like her face.

"Nora! You drive out of this yard and you are never coming back!"

I hit the gas.

The tires screamed on the wet driveway and the car shot out into the dark. In the mirror she got smaller and smaller, until the rain swallowed her up.

I pulled into a closed gas station outside of town. It was still coming down.

I did think about driving to the police station. But I had no phone and no ID, and Ms. Parker's card was in my mother's purse. The one adult who'd actually picked up a phone for me had handed me straight back to her.

I turned on the dome light and opened the folder.

First page was the enrollment form. Student name, Zoe. Date of admission, March 14, two years ago. The guardian signature was my mother's handwriting. Neat. Not one shaky letter in it.

Behind that came a consent form with a column of little checkboxes.

Permission to use physical restraint.

Permission to restrict outside contact.

Permission to sedate the student when necessary.

Every box ticked.

Next was a photo. Zoe in a dark green polo shirt, standing in front of a white fence, holding up a small board with a number on it. Her hair was cropped short. Her face had gotten so thin that her jaw stuck out.

The date in the corner said November of last year.

In November of last year, my mother told me at the dinner table that Zoe had been switched to a new imported medication. Eight thousand a month.

Under all of it was a stack of letters.

Addressed to me. At our house. Every one of them already opened.

I took the top one and unfolded it. The first line said:

Nora, this is the ninth one. If you get it, you can write back one word. That would be enough.

I pulled another from the very bottom of the stack. That paper had gone brittle.

Nora, they told me if I behaved I could earn a phone call home. It took me four months to save it up. Mom picked up. She said you were doing homework and it wasn't a good time.

Nine letters. I never got a single one.

I cracked the window. The rain hit the back of my hand, and that was when I noticed I'd been shaking the whole time.

The last page in the folder was a printed form.

BUILDING C, FLOOR 2, BED 4. ZOE. STATUS: NONCOMPLIANT.

Noncompliant.

Two years. Two years in a place like that, and she hadn't cracked and she hadn't given in.

I rolled the window up and started the car.

Wipers on high. A road sign came out of the dark and flashed past in the headlights.

CEDAR RIDGE ACADEMY. 5 MILES.

"Hang on, Zoe," I said.