Sisters in Sanity Read Free Page A

Guess they didn’t want us to go all Jerry Springer and start hurling it around.
    Like the rest of the inmates, I was wearing therequired uniform: khaki shorts and a Red Rock polo shirt—an outfit that I’m convinced was designed as a form of fashion punishment. We were all standing in a circle, looking like a suburban high-school phys-ed class. At the center of the circle a girl named Sharon was giving us a deer-in-the-headlights look as she turned to catch insult after insult. A counselor named Deirdre and a Level Sixer named Lisa egged us on. “Tell her what you think. Ask her why she sleeps around. Ask her why she doesn’t respect herself.”
    Welcome to “confrontational therapy.” It’s supposed to make you face your issues, but it mostly makes you cry—which seems to be the point because it was only after you’d cried that you were allowed to leave the circle and “process” what just happened. CT, as it’s called, was a big crowd-pleaser at Red Rock, very gladiator-like, and those who’d been inside the circle were even more vicious once they found themselves safely outside it. For example, the girl chanting “whore” was Shana, who only a week ago had been berated for her eating disorder—until she broke down sobbing and was promptly rewarded with a group hug.
    I’d pretty quickly figured out that CT was typicalof the Red Rock philosophy: Treat ODD teenagers like crap until they break. Now that I was in Level Two, my days were spent in CT, in strange lecturey one-on-ones with Sheriff or another one of the counselors, and—once a week—with Dr. Clayton, who’d already suggested putting me on antidepressants. I was depressed now, but only because I was at Red Rock. The rest of my days were spent back in my cell, doing “self-directed” study, which was the academic equivalent of Mad Libs, even though back at school I would’ve been in AP English. I still wasn’t able to write to my dad or get any letters from him. That wouldn’t happen until Level Three, when I’d be sprung from my room and allowed to attend school.
     
    “Brit, right?”
    Beside me in the confrontation circle stood the Sixer who’d taught me the key to escaping Level One. She was scarily tall, towering over me, and giving me that same you’re-an-idiot face she had before. I was really starting to hate the Level Sixers, who generally seemed like a bunch of do-goodery, kiss-ass snobs.
    “I believe we’ve established that’s my name,” I told her.
    She arched her eyebrows again. “Well, Brit. Mouth it.”
    “Huh?”
    “Mouth it. Pretend you’re saying something.”
    “What?”
    “Do you not understand English or are you just slow? You’re not ‘participating in the process.’” She was whispering, but she made it sound like a barked order.
    “I don’t know anything about this girl. I can’t yell at her.”
    “Are you moronic or deaf? Mouth it. Fake it. Or you’ll get in trouble. Have I made myself clear?”
    Before I had a chance to think of a clever reply, she had moved to the other side of the circle, where she was chanting insults so ferociously that you had to watch closely to see that she wasn’t actually making a sound.
    I didn’t know what to make of her. She was a total bitch to me, insulting me as much as the counselors did, telling me how delusional I was. She might have been trying to railroad me: You could move up levelsat Red Rock by narcing out your roommates (so Fascist). But her advice was kind of subversive, which had me thinking she was maybe trying to help. I did what she told me to, and it turned out to be her second piece of good advice. After I started fake name-calling in group, one of the counselors patted me on the back and said I’d begun to “work my program.” When I met with Dr. Clayton later that week, she gave me a creepy smile and said she thought I was finally ready to “deal with my demons” and “break down my walls.” Which meant promotion to Level Three, and