Learning Seventeen , livre ebook

Learning Seventeen
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Learning Seventeen
Brooke Carter
Copyright © 2018 Brooke Carter
All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training and similar technologies. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Carter, Brooke, 1977-, author
Learning seventeen / Brooke Carter. (Orca soundings)
Issued in print and electronic formats.
isbn 978-1-4598-1553-7 (softcover).— isbn 978-1-4598-1554-4 (pdf) .— isbn 978-1-4598-1555-1 (epub)
I. Title. II. Series: Orca soundings
ps8605.a77777l43 2018 jc813'.6 c2017-904481-8 c2017-904482-6
First published in the United States, 2018
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017949720
Summary: In this high-interest novel for teen readers, Jane finds her soulmate at a Baptist reform school.
Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.
Edited by Tanya Trafford
Cover image by iStock.com and Shutterstock.com
Orca Book Publishers
orcabook.com
For Tia, who stayed with me in the rain.
Prologue
Hannah always said, Everyone has a story to tell. You’re the star of your own life’s journey . I thought that was both adorable and cheesy as hell. It turns out she was right and wrong—I do have a story to tell, but the truth is, my life didn’t really even start until she showed up. The day she walked into the gray walls of New Hope Academy with her wild red hair and her loud voice and curvy body was the day I started living. This might be my story, but she was the star.
I’m getting ahead of myself. If I’m going to tell this story, I’ll have to go back to the time before Hannah. It’s hard to think of those days. I was so lost and just waiting for someone to find me. Looking back, I hardly recognize myself. But there’s something good to be found in all this, I know it. If I can change, and if Hannah could have loved the messed-up person I was, then who knows? I might have a future after all. You might too. Whoever you are, I hope this story finds you the way Hannah found me. I hope it lifts you up. I hope you’ll see the truth in it. I hope you’ll see that things can get better. Even for people like you and me.
Chapter One
Intake at New Hope Academy—or, as I like to call it, No Hope—is a lot more boring than it sounds. The word intake seems like it might be about getting something, but really it’s about taking things away. They take you away from your home, from your friends, from your old school, from your neighborhood, from sex (especially the “unholy” kind), from junk food, from television, from the sweet smell of marijuana, from staying out all night, from doing whatever you want whenever you want, from your favorite low-cut top, from your angry music, from your weird dyed hair, and from everything that makes you, well, you. After all, Baptist reform schools put a pretty heavy emphasis on the “reform” side of things.
When you walk into these unremarkable yet somehow threatening walls, they take your temperature, your medical history, your allergies, your past, your present, your future, your bad attitude, your lack of faith, and they write it all down. Oh, they love to write things down. I think they do that so they can hold your sins against you.
They want to tear you down so they can build you up fresh. I know their game. I see how it works on the others, all the sad little boys and girls who get sent here because their mommies and daddies just can’t deal anymore. I see how it works on the meek little girl they pair me up with as a roommate-slash-cellmate. Marcie, her name is. Might as well be Mouse for the squeak of her voice. So timid she can’t even look me in the eye.
The people here think I’m just like Mouse on the inside, a good girl waiting to get out, but their Find-Jesus program won’t work on me. No, I’m a different species altogether. If Mouse is a rodent, then I’m the cat. I wonder how long it will take them to figure it out.
My stepmonster, Sheila, convinced Dad that No Hope is their last hope at straightening me out, so to speak, so they’re dumping me in here along with all the other unwanted weirdo kids. Dad didn’t even take time off from work to attend my “intake” and left it up to Sheila to get me settled. I guess her idea of “settled” means pushing me inside the front doors and then speeding off in her Acura.
I’ve been through the “orientation” process, which is really just a rundown of the rules (spoiler alert—there’s a lot of them). I have a couple pairs of scratchy skirted uniforms and a blank journal, and I am now sitting here in my cell.
The room has linoleum floors and two single beds, one for me and one for Mouse, and the walls are decorated with paintings of Jesus that look like they were done by some teenager who was locked up here in the ’70s or something because ol’ Jesus is throwing down some sweet rock-and-roll hair. For some reason, none of the paintings show a whole-body shot. Each image is of a different part of his body. Dismembered Jesus really gives me the creeps.
Over my bed is a painting of his hands, palms up, the skin color a little too yellow and the nail-wound blood a little too pink and applied too thick on the canvas, as if the artist thought piling on the paint would make their total lack of talent less obvious.
There is a painting of his eyes, all sad-like, over Mouse’s bed.
The top of sad Jesus’ head with his overgrown mullet hovers over the doorway. That one has a crown of thorns and a halo. I think either one would have been enough, but what do I know?
And then there’s the one of his feet. Oh, the feet.
They look just like I always imagined God’s feet would look like. Huge, wide, stubby-toed white feet in strappy brown-leather sandals with flat soles. When I first saw the painting I had to sit down on the squeaky little bed because just looking at it made me feel dizzy.
It’s true, I thought. God really is a foot.
You see, when I was a little kid I asked my mom (my Real mom, not the stepmonster) about God and she told me that he was everywhere and that he could see everything. I said he must be really big to be everywhere at once, and Mom agreed.
I remember we were standing in our backyard and the wind was blowing the sheets on the clothesline. I said that I bet God’s big toe was about all that could fit in our yard with us. Mom didn’t say anything, and I looked out over the lawn and the trees and the fence and where the blue of the sky met the horizon and I felt like you do when you’re about to cry or fall asleep. I swear I could see God’s giant foot, transparent but there, really there, just hovering over my house and my street and my neighborhood.
Momma , I asked, why doesn’t he step on us?
She just laughed and laughed.
Chapter Two
The No Hope Journal of Jane Learning Entry #1: Lies, Lies, Lies
I am supposed to write in this stupid journal if I ever want to get out of No Hope. That’s Rule Number One of about a zillion different No s and Do Not s. Today my counselor, a really squirmy-looking guy named Terry, asked me to think about the nature of lies. He wants to know what I’ve learned about my behavior since I got here. I don’t really think I’ve learned anything, except how to bend the rules (and that if you’re a real pain in the ass, your family will just ship you off to live with Jesus freaks).
But I guess I do know something about lies. If you lie to someone, then they can’t love you and you can’t love them because you’re not being your real self. You may think you love each other, but it’s all an illusion. It took me a while to understand this. What surprises me more is that the adults at No Hope haven’t figured out the truth-love connection yet. They’re all walking around like they’ve got the truth in their pockets. But if you ask me, they’re just spreading more lies.
Here’s an example. Let’s say you are hanging out with someone you really like a lot and they invite you to meet their family and you suddenly realize that you are girlfriend material. Like, you are being considered for an honest-to-goodness role in this person’s future and so you start imagining that future. You can see it all—how this girl you like will become someone you really love, and then your ultrareligious stepmonster will know that you are definitely, absolutely not straight. Then she’ll force you to break up with the only girl who ever loved you and your life will be over, and you’ll learn the hard way that people who live in truth tend to die alone. Lies are so much more attractive. Yes, lies are safer.
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