Rhett McLaughlin - The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek

“Whose room is this?” she whispered once J had come inside and carefully closed the door behind her.

“Hers,” J answered, pointing at a picture hanging on the wall near the desk. “I think she might have been one of the students who died.”

Alicia quivered, then took a cautious step toward the picture. She was walking with her hands close to her side as if she were exploring a museum exhibit. In the faded picture sat a young girl, maybe seven or eight years old, holding what appeared to be the same blue frog from the bed. She had blond pigtails, a forced smile, and sad eyes lined with dark circles.

“She looks sick,” Alicia observed.

“Yeah, maybe that’s why they gave her this nice room,” J reasoned.

Over the desk hung a bulletin board with crayon drawings of flowers, dogs, a dragon, and a family of three. The pictures were signed, in the sloppy fashion of a small child, Ruby.

“We don’t have much time. Take a seat.” J motioned toward the perfectly made bed. Alicia sat down softly, keeping most of her weight in her feet as if she didn’t trust it to support her.

“The J is for Josefina,” J said.

“The A is for Alicia,” Alicia replied.

“I knew it! You don’t look like an Allison. Or an Amy. And definitely not an Amber.”

“Thanks, I guess?”

Josefina was strange. In a good way.

“I’m Guatemalan,” she said.

“Oh, okay.”

“I kinda have a habit of telling people that because they always ask. Anyway. Nice to meet you, Alicia.” She extended her arm.

“Nice to meet you, Josefina.” Then, still not completely sure what was happening, Alicia grabbed her hand. The simple touch of another human—after days of feeling so isolated—seemed to raise her body temperature. She felt her face flush.

“So, how did you find this place?” Alicia asked in an effort to hide her embarrassment.

“Sneaking around is kinda my thing,” Josefina explained. “I know where your dorm room is too.”

Alicia stared, not sure what to make of that.

“It’s not creepy,” Josefina said. “Just practical. Anyway, thank you.”

“Thank you?”

“Yeah. Before you came, I was starting to lose hope. Lose myself. You snapped me out of it.”

“Oh,” Alicia said. “Uh, yeah. You’re welcome.”

“After what you did to Headmaster, you’ve got a bright red bull’s-eye on your back. And you act like it’s no big thing. I admire that. Reminded me what it means to fight.”

Josefina’s words made Alicia feel like her resilience had been worth it. She smiled.

“We should get back,” Josefina said, rising from her chair. “I’ll go first, then you follow after a minute.”

“That’s it?” Alicia said. She knew Josefina was right, but she desperately wished they had more time. Even just another minute.

“For now,” Josefina said. “We’ll meet again soon. Try to keep each other sane. Next time we’re in the Leisure Room together, follow my lead. If that doesn’t happen, get here right after dinner, during those fifteen minutes of study time before lights out.”

“Are we safe to be in here, though?” Alicia asked, getting to her feet.

“Doubt it,” Josefina said. “But it’s all we have. We’ll be careful.” She gave Alicia a final nod before opening the door a crack and sliding out into the hallway.

Alicia silently counted to sixty before following.

—

OVER THE NEXT twenty-four hours, Alicia replayed her conversation with Josefina again and again. Especially the parts where she’d been told how inspiring she was. She parsed every line, every gesture, every inflection, wondering if Josefina had some larger plan in mind. Whatever it was, Alicia was on board.

Unfortunately, she didn’t make it to the Leisure Room that day, or even to dinner, as she ended up back in the Roll. She hadn’t even been trying to disobey.

Alicia had just finished participating in a class activity, a sort of deprogramming during which students would share a hobby or interest and their classmates would list all the ways that particular passion could corrupt them. After she’d mentioned that Cheers was one of her favorite TV shows, the class had somehow managed to make a case that continuing to watch it would set her on a surefire course toward alcoholism.

This had been immediately followed by a deeply unsettling slideshow of people who’d fallen victim to various worldly vices: mangled bodies in drunk driving accidents, blue-faced overdosers, and half-naked murder victims. Alicia had involuntarily looked away from the stomach-turning images.

Candidati were not allowed to look away.

Her experience in the Roll was again horrendous, but a hair less this time, both because she’d been through it before and because it provided her with so many undisturbed hours to think about her new friend. In Josefina, there was hope.

When Alicia was released from the Roll a day or so later, a new kink in her neck and her beige onesie freshly soiled with urine, she was far from broken. After she was given clean clothes, she was delighted to realize it was already dinnertime, which meant, yes, she could put food in her brutally deprived stomach, but also that she might be able to make it to the bedroom behind the beige curtain to see Josefina.

That night, once dinner ended, she again walked to the bathroom, hid in a stall for a few minutes, peeked into the hall to make sure no helper was patrolling, and made a beeline for the secret bedroom. She knew what she was doing was reckless, that to be taken back to the Roll now would be devastating, but she had no choice. She needed to see Josefina again.

And sure enough, Josefina was already there when Alicia walked in. She was sitting in that same desk chair, holding close the blue stuffed frog from the bed.

“Hey,” Alicia said, feeling buoyant even as she gripped her sore neck.

“Oh no,” Josefina said, standing up and dropping the frog, maybe a little embarrassed. “They sent you to the Roll again, didn’t they?”

“Yeah. But it’s okay.”

“The Roll is the worst,” Josefina said. “I’ve only been there once and that was enough for me.”

“You’re missing out. It’s so much better the second time,” Alicia said.

Josefina released a small heh sound, which Alicia echoed. She’d forgotten how good it felt to laugh.

“So what else have you learned sneaking around here?” asked Alicia.

“This is gonna blow your mind,” Josefina answered, “but this whole place used to be a resort.”

“A resort?”

“Yep. I found some old brochures in a storage closet. People would come to that mineral spring outside so it could, like, heal them. And then some of the water would get pumped to those private bath houses.”

“The Thinking Sheds.”

“Exactly.”

“Hard to believe anyone could have a good time in there,” Alicia said.

“For real,” said Josefina.

“So, how long have you been here?”

“At Whitewood? I don’t even know.” Josefina sat back down in the chair. “It has to be at least six months, but hard to say.”

Alicia nodded and sat down gently on the bed, suddenly wanting to learn as much as she could as quickly as possible. “Why did your parents send you?”

“I killed my sister,” Josefina said, staring at Alicia without blinking.

It wasn’t what Alicia was expecting. She tried to get this new information to add up, to process that her only ally in the building was a murderer. “Wow,” she said. “That’s—”

“I’m joking,” Josefina said, breaking into a smile. “I don’t even have a sister. Sorry. I’ve always been bad at jokes.”

Alicia exhaled. “Oh. Well. It would have been okay if you had. Done that.”