1
“Douglas.”
I ignore Sister Annabeth because there’s blood under my nails. It’s all I can focus on. Not the polished wood of her office. Or the photos of her summiting six out of seven of the highest peaks. Nothing but the blood.
The good news: It’s not my blood. And there ends the good news.
The bad news: The voices are louder this time. Not the voices of the students at Regent Academy, or those of the sisters and brothers speaking in a rapid-fire fever pitch around me, pretending I can’t hear them as they whisper how it was a mistake that I was accepted to this prestigious school. Despite how much I dislike these people who stick their noses up at everyone who comes from a different background than them, I’d welcome that. At least those voices would make sense.
But these are the hushed whispers of Atolas Forest, which butts right up against our school and is bigger on the inside than any map or traveler will admit to. A forest that every student knows not to go near. And it’s talking to me. It always talks to me. And I do my best not to listen.
Usually, if I’m lucky, the dissonant voices hum in the background like white noise. But this time, they’re screaming. So loud I can barely hear myself think. A cacophony of twenty-plus voices, all saying everything and nothing at the same time, which blends together into one genderless, consistent, loud, never-ending noise.
I want to dig my bloody nails into my scalp and rip open my head. I want to pull apart my skull flaps, cut the pads of my fingers on jagged pieces of bone, and dig around in my brain until I can grab the voices, strangle them, and toss them onto the floor in a bloody heap. I know how ridiculous that sounds, but perhaps then I’ll have peace. Just one freaking minute of peace. Or at least I’ll be able to destroy whatever part of my mind makes me believe that a forest is talking to me.
If I listen to the voices, really put my mind to it, and pick out a singular one to hear, I can make out the words, like scratches against stone that whisper a warning.
You’re going to die here.
We’re going to kill you.
They’re going to kill you.
He’s going to kill you.
Shut up, shut up, shut up, I mouth to myself, keeping my face down, eyes staring at the red stains that tint my dark brown skin. Funny how anything can be an anchor to reality, even someone else’s blood.
The blood in question is Kent Hale’s. It stains my knuckles too, and some blotchy specks of it are on my cream-and-maroon Regent Academy blazer. It has already started to dry, which is going to make it a bitch to get out. On top of everything else I have to deal with, tending to my bloody blazer—the only blazer I have, since only one is provided to students and any more cost three hundred dollars apiece—is not how I want to spend my time.
But maybe the repetitive motion, the focus on the suds and the warm water and the way the clear-colored sink turns from light pink to dark red, will do me some good. Repetition and consistency are the cure for so many things. Maybe it’ll fix whatever is wired wrong in my brain.
“Douglas.”
I don’t think I’m insane. Insane is a clinical definition, and I would need a doctor, or a nurse like my mama, to confirm before I add that little fun factoid to my Regent bio. I think crazy would be a closer word, but that’s ableist and just thinking it sends shivers down my spine. I don’t know what I am. I don’t know how to describe it.
No, I do. Broken.
That’s the word. I just don’t want to say that out loud. Because when you say things out loud, you put energy into the world that you can’t take back. Once I say it, once I admit it, there’s no hope for me.
But the voices. Oh my god, the voices. They’re screaming so loudly today that Sister Annabeth has to slam her hand down on the table to pull my gaze away from the forest where the sounds are coming from.
“Douglas,” she says for the third time. At least, that’s what I think she says. When
someone looks at me with that sternness and flicker of a nerve in their cheek that resembles annoyance, it usually means they’re calling my name or I’ve done something to make them wish I was . . . well . . . not in front of them at that moment.
I focus on her lips, watching the way they part to form a two-syllable word that feels familiar. Ever since the voices started eight months ago, I’ve gotten good at figuring out ways to pretend I’m actively listening. Reading lips took some time, but it’s been the best method so far. Focus enough on the words and they act like an anchor, grounding me through the storm until the voices melt away and the world returns to normal. As normal as being a Black kid in an elite private boarding school can be.
“Sorry, I was—”
“Distracted?”
I read somewhere, probably history class, that in the past they would take those they thought were mentally unstable, lock them away in cold, damp asylums, and do horrific things to them. Ice-water baths. Boiling-water baths. Electroshock therapy. Beatings. Isolation. Lobotomies. Anything to scrape the sick out like black mold that lines attic walls. And though I don’t think there’s any universe where the sisters and brothers at Regent Academy would do something like that—the parents who pay upward of eighty thousand dollars a year in tuition would have words—it’s safe to say that trusting random people with my . . . affliction is a way to make me seem even more of an outsider in a place I already fit in about as well as a square peg in a round hole.
“Yes, let’s go with distracted,” I say. Better than saying I think the forest is talking to me.
Sister Annabeth sighs. If there were a way to visually personify I’m not upset, just disappointed, then you’d have the look she’s giving me right now. We’ve been sitting here in her fourth-floor office overlooking the western side of the campus, silently, for the past fifteen minutes. Ever since Coach Watson pulled me off Kent’s chest and dragged me down the hallway, kicking and shrieking for everyone to see. I can still hear my voice bouncing off the marble walls, screaming at him, Who’s the bitch now, huh?
In hindsight, I could have been a bit smarter and classier with my rebuttal.
“You remind me of my brother, Douglas,” Sister says. “Have I ever told you that?”
More than once, I think while playing with the faint raised lines inside my wrists.
It’s a nervous habit I’ve developed since getting out of jail; those scars from the cuffs never fully healed.
But I don’t say those thoughts out loud. Sister Annabeth is one of the nice ones, and being crass and snappy with her doesn’t feel right. Sister Baxter, who teaches English, would use the term self-defeatist. There’s no benefit in losing the only defender I have just to get a quippy reply in. Winning the war is more important than winning the battle. And to me, winning the war means making it out of this school with my diploma.
I shake my head. Sister Annabeth arches her brow. The voices begin to grow quiet. They do that sometimes, just . . . disappear, as if they get bored with me.
Funny thing, though—they are never gone for long.
“No.” I adjust the pitch of my voice now that I can hear myself, so I don’t sound like I’m yelling. “You haven’t.”
She turns the photo on her desk toward me, showing a woman who looks exactly like her except fifteen years younger, a man with similar facial structure, and two people who are clearly their parents, standing in front of the Grand Canyon. They look happy, whole. They look normal.
“He was a student here too, about fifteen years ago, and then I followed two years later.”
“Where you fell in love with psychology, thanks to your professor who did a class on Freud. You did your master’s in New York, met Headmaster Benjamin Monroe at a conference, and decided to come back and teach at the school that made your brother into the happy man he is and you into the studious, fair, kind guidance counselor for troubled boys like me that you are today.”
Sister Annabeth smiles slyly. It makes her face look younger, hiding her laugh lines. “Someone was paying attention during career week last month. The point is, I know how hard it can be to be . . . the other here. My brother and I were like you.”
The words other and like you make me ball my fist against my slacks. Great, now those have bloodstains too. I have to remind myself again that Sister Annabeth is one of the good ones. She could have easily just sent me to the headmaster’s office, or had one of the other sisters handle me. But she’s never given up and that means something.
And besides, being called other technically isn’t wrong, especially here. How many Black students and staff are there at Regent, besides my mama and me? How many openly gay students are there at a school that breeds the top 1 percent? How many scholarship students does Regent actually take?
The answer to all three questions is the same: not many. That’s not what makes my skin crawl, though. It’s her thinking we’re similar. We’re the furthest from the same as any two people can be, and her trying to relate to me through some cheap ploy makes me want to clench my jaw until my teeth crack.
When she looks at the forest, what does she see? Bowing trees? All-encompassing
darkness? Jagged rocks and ice-hardened stone?
When I squint just right, I see an almost picturesque view from the top of the Regent Academy steps to the main hall, which, together, look like the shape of a skull. And sometimes, the skull looks like its mouth is opened wider than it was before.
Sister Annabeth eventually sighs, shifting her weight in the wooden chair to get more comfortable. She flips open a manila file, scanning the first paper. There’s a picture of me—the one from my student ID—information about my family, my grades, and a psychological evaluation. I flick my eyes to the other files on her desk. They’re each half as thick as mine.
“Alright, let’s start from the beginning. Walk me through what happened,” she says, grabbing a pen.
“I’m sure every student at the gym told you.”
“I’d like to hear your side of the story,” she quietly urges.
Her way of saying, Defend yourself.
A wave of anger that morphs into nausea pulses through me again. I do everything to swallow it down. Like my mama says, I’m too old to look at everyone as my enemy. What she doesn’t know is that the world makes it so easy.
“He called me a faggot,” I mutter, turning to look out the window—the opposite window that faces east, toward Winslow, the nearest town. It’s a beautiful, cold October day in Vermont. The leaves have already started to change into shades of fire, and the brisk air requires us all to wear sweaters. It’s my favorite time of year. Soon, the weather will turn mercilessly cold. The grounds will be beautiful—the Academy’s Gothic arches and eighteenth-century style lean well into pristine whiteness. In more ways than one.
Some students love it. Check the social media platform of any Regent Academy student, and around wintertime, their feeds are flooded with beautiful, homey photos and boring captions reminding the rest of the world how perfect life is as a student here. Yet whenever I look out the window and see nothing but endless white for miles, except for the hazy gray forest in the distance, all I’m reminded of is how truly stuck I am.
“I see.” A beat. “You’ve been called a—that word—before and not lashed out.”
“You can say it.”
“I’d rather not. And I’d rather you don’t either.”
I shrug. “He also called me a bitch. And stupid.”
“So, that’s why you’re upset? That’s reasonable. I don’t think your reaction was—”
“No. F—”
An arched brow.
“The f-word I can deal with. A bitch, sure. But no one’s called me stupid before.”
Sister Annabeth does her best not to smile, looking down at her folder and clearing her throat.
I don’t let the stillness between us last for long. Stillness allows the static to creep in. “I know what you’re going to say. That it was my pride talking. But you’ll use the word hubris. You like those five-dollar words.”
“I’d hardly consider hubris a five-dollar word, Douglas,” she muses, closing the file and staring through me. “But you’re absolutely right. I believe you lashed out in an effort to defend your pride. I’d also say two other things.”
“That I’m off the hook and you’re going to recommend that Kent is the one who gets punished, not me?”
“Close. Number one, you and I both know Kent will never get punished, so this
idea of justice you have? That one day you’ll be seen as the hero and Kent the villain? It’s fraught. And number two, you were one hundred percent justified in your actions, but that doesn’t make them right. In fact, it was a stupid choice to punch Kent—or anyone, for that matter—considering . . . ”
“My history?”
“Yes, your history.”
And by history, she means the fire I was accused of setting eighteen months ago, which killed over two dozen people. A crime I did not commit. I told the police that. That I couldn’t have done it. That I saw someone else there.
But I don’t think there’s any point in rehashing that. No one wants to believe me anyway, and I’m tired of trying to defend my honor and name.
People say I owe Regent everything. I wouldn’t be where I am without them. I say bullshit.
I mean, technically, they’re right. Jessica Hale—Kent’s mother, funnily enough—came to my rescue eighteen months ago, offering me a free ride to Regent Academy and the use of her law firm to take over my case, since the lawyer my mother bought—the only one she could afford—was going to botch my case. Mrs. Hale was my savior and followed through with every promise she made. A week after our meeting, the charges were dropped. Two weeks later, I was on a plane to Regent Academy with my mother, who was also given a job as head nurse. I was handed a second chance at life that few people get—especially Black kids threatened by the predatory legal system in this country.
But something has always felt . . . off. I’d never heard of Regent Academy before that meeting. I remember scanning the brochure Mrs. Hale had brought me. Analyzing the beautiful photos of the rolling landscape, the perks of this king-and-queen-making school of elite students . . . How had I never heard of it? And more importantly, why did they want me? I’m smart, but not that smart.
But I had no choice. Mrs. Hale made that clear, and even if she hadn’t, I could see the signs of how my case was going to end. I didn’t start that fire that burned the complex to the ground.
But no one believed me. Justice is supposed to be blind, but when a Black kid is an easy scapegoat, that blindness often comes at the expense of the truth. So why not tip the balance in my favor? Why not use the same perks the rich and successful use all the time to get what they want? I know I’m innocent. At least, I think I am.
If Dad was here, if the cancer hadn’t come out of left field and mercilessly wrecked his body, he would believe me.
If Dad was here, he wouldn’t have let it get this far.
“I’m not going to say thank you again, if that’s what you want,” I remind Sister Annabeth, pulling myself out of my memories.
“No one is asking you to. We’re only asking you to not throw away this opportunity
You know how hard it was for the headmaster to make this happen. You know how much he stuck his neck out for you.”
I don’t really, but people always like to remind me. Sure, I absolutely would have ended up in prison if it wasn’t for Mrs. Hale. But no one, not even my mother, stopped to question how she knew about the case. Or how she went about winning. Or why one of the most expensive and exclusive schools in the country gave me a full ride.
“This is a great opportunity to put all this behind us,” Mama had said in our apartment’s kitchen when we were packing and I had the audacity to question the gift. “We can’t stay here, Douglas. You know that. Either we’ll leave or people will make us. It might be good to be somewhere different.”
She said different, but she meant safe. Regent Academy is like its own universe. The campus is over forty acres. Winslow is the nearest town, and the vast majority of the students at Regent live in dorms and go home to their rich families for summer and winter break. There’s no better place than here to start over; Regent will give me the tools I need to succeed.
But at what cost?
It’s absolutely true that Regent Academy makes successes out of its graduates. But graduates of Regent aren’t the type of successful people you would know of. They move in the shadows, manipulating the world like puppet masters. And that type of person, who can afford the Academy and get into the Academy, is a specific breed. And a middle-class Black boy who was charged with twelve counts of manslaughter and couldn’t even afford one week at the school, let alone two years of tuition, does not click with that profile. I’m not stupid enough or desperate enough to know they aren’t getting something in exchange.
And then there’s the forest. The always-present forest.
If you ask any student or teacher, it’s just . . . there, blending into the colorful background. I get that; I’m from DC. The Washington Monument, the Supreme Court, and the White House are just . . . things to me. They aren’t special. It’s like that for the French and the Eiffel Tower. Mount Rainier and Seattle residents. And apparently, those in Winslow or Regent Academy students.
But here’s the thing: The forest doesn’t stay the same. It follows you. If you look at it carefully—I mean really look at it—the trees shift to always face you. It’s subtle at first. If you blink, you’ll miss it. They move enough so that no one can really tell, like a cat stalking its prey.
Or maybe my mind really is fracturing inside my head. Just a bunch of broken glass rattling around. Maybe I need to keep quiet and focus on school.
Because that’s what my mama would want me to do. Put my head down, make good grades, and put the past behind me so her sacrifices aren’t for nothing. And how have I repaid her?
Punching Kent Hale in the face. Three times.
“So, what happens now?” I ask. But the real question I’m asking is, Are you going
to tell my mama?
Sister Annabeth sighs. “You don’t make things easy for me, you know that?”
“Maybe that’s your curse,” I suggest.
Sister Annabeth narrows her eyes. I raise my hands in defeat. “Sorry, sorry. Forgot we don’t condone talks of curses in this room.”
She nods curtly and once again looks at my folder, licking the tip of her finger to turn the page, before quickly writing down some notes.
“I’m going to let you in on a little secret, Douglas. You’re smarter than almost every other student here.”
“Tell that to Kent.”
“But your mouth, your temper, and your hubris are going to ruin a good thing for you. If you stay here and graduate, your protection continues. You can get an excellent job, or your pick of colleges and medical schools, or you can win a grant to start your own company. The opportunities are only limited by your imagination. You have the chance to make a real difference for others, and yourself.
“If you keep up like this, though? Going down this reckless path? I can’t protect you anymore. We can’t protect you anymore. And everything your mother sacrificed will go up in flames like that apartment complex.”
Sister Annabeth’s words are like an arrow with perfect aim, finding the chink in my armor. I squeeze the arms of the seat, doing my best to show as little emotion as possible.
“This is the last time I will help you, Douglas. The sisters will overrule me if this happens again. Headmaster Monroe accepted you and your mother out of the graciousness of his heart.”
“You all don’t stop reminding me.”
“It’s worth reminding.” She hands me a slip of paper with an ominous and familiar red stamp on it: detention. “The last time, Douglas.”
On most days, I’d continue the argument, but a firm knock on her office door gives me pause. A guy with short, blond hair pokes his head in. Ezekiel, a fellow junior who works in the administration office.
“Sister Annabeth, do you have a moment?” he asks. “You’re needed.”
“I’m with a student, Ezekiel.”
“Headmaster Monroe called and wants you in his office. Says it’s urgent and
regarding . . .” Ezekiel falls silent, looking at me once more before turning back to Sister Annabeth. “He just said you should come now. It’s important.”
His voice is tight and thin, which isn’t unusual for him. Ezekiel is a stick in the mud—in and out of the bedroom. But his voice is colder than usual. There’s an urgency behind it he’s trying to keep hidden.
Something’s wrong.
My eyes flicker to Sister Annabeth, but she doesn’t give anything away. She curtly nods to me. “Go to your mother. She’s expecting you.”
As I leave and Sister Annabeth’s eyes turn down to the stack of papers on her desk, my gaze shifts to the forest behind her. The voices aren’t screaming anymore. In fact, they’re quieter than a moment ago. Now they’re snickering at me. Like they know something I don’t. Which wouldn’t surprise me.
The trees are older than all of us. They’ve seen things we can’t even imagine, and deep within the rings of their bark lie secrets that could break the world. And whatever is happening now is one of those secrets. I can feel it. 2
I have a Black mom, which means she puts up with very little of my shit.
I’m not one to care much about rumors, or what people say about me. I got that from her. Being one of three women-of-color staff members at Regent Academy doesn’t help, I’m sure, but you’d never know by the way she carries herself. My mama only cares about three things: me, her job as a nurse, and keeping us safe.
Which is why I know she won’t understand why I let Kent get the best of me; an action that threatens all those things.
She’s sitting in the lavish office of the nurses, bigger than most schools’ classrooms, with cream-colored curtains around a dozen beds and soft ocean music playing through the Google Home on her desk. It’s so different from Jefferson High, my school back home. She was the nurse there too, but the windows had a layer of yellow slime on them, the doors never fully locked, and the walls had a lingering scent you just couldn’t place. Here, the scent of lavender meant to calm even the most nervous of students hangs in the air. In the eight months I’ve been here, I’ve only ever seen maybe five of the beds filled at once—and that was due to some sophomores going off campus and eating bad seafood. Even now, the room is empty save for Mama and a girl I’ve never seen before.
The student finishes putting on her blazer as Mama hands her a small white bag.
“Take one of these with each meal and you’ll be fine,” Mama says, smiling.
The girl flashes Mama a hesitant smile back, her eyes flickering to me.
“I didn’t hear anything,” I promise, crossing my fingers over my heart. The girl rolls her eyes, checking the Regent ribbon all girls must wear in their high ponytails and tightening it a bit before leaving.
The air falls still when it’s just Mama and me. She doesn’t look up, focusing on the folder in front of her. Strands of her carefully-cared-for locs fall over one shoulder as she’s focused on getting all the information down about whoever that was. She takes her job—taking care of me and my fellow students—seriously.
“I can come back later if—”
“Sit.”
My body functions without me even thinking, and I lower myself onto the nearest bed. For about a minute, Mama sits in silence, back to me, finishing whatever she’s writing. She slides the folder into her metal file cabinet, then locks it. Whoever it was, their last name starts with the letter Q.
The metal chair barely makes a sound when she turns to look at me.
“I know you can’t tell me why she was here,” I say, “but you can tell me if it has to do with her curse.”
Students at Regent Academy are like no others. They believe they are predestined for greatness; that they got here not because of luck and privilege, but because they did something to actually deserve the wealth and power they’re afforded.
They also believe in curses.
Everyone in school does, like some old wives’ tale passed down. The reason someone gets sick once a month? A curse. The reason a student can get As on every assignment but always fail their finals? A curse. It’s almost like how people use their astrological signs as an excuse for bad behavior by saying, Oh my god, I’m such a Gemini.
I think it’s silly. But like Mama said, as a nurse, it’s not her job to judge people. It’s her job to meet them where they are and operate in their reality, because if that’s what helps them get better, then so be it.
Personally? I just think allowing people to believe things like that, things that are obviously wrong and completely out of the realm of reality or possibility, promotes bad behavior. But that’s why she’s the nurse and not me.
Am I really all that different, though? I think the forest talks to me, that the trees follow your gaze. Say it enough times and you begin to believe it. Say it a few more times and you realize how unsettling and
unstable that sounds.
Say it one more time and the forest seems to whisper back yes.
Mama pushes off with her feet, the chair sliding over to bridge the space between us. Gingerly, her soft fingers brush against my cheek, the same earthly hue as her own skin—except for the warm redness right under my eye.
“You know I can’t tell you that, Douglas. Doctor-patient—”
“Doctor-patient confidentiality, I know. But you’re a nurse.”
“Still applies,” she mutters, taking a beat to turn my face to the left, then to the right. “I’m guessing the other guy looks worse?”
I try not to smirk, but I can’t help it. Seeing Kent on his back, clutching his face, blood staining the palms of his hands and the front of his blazer like thick red paint? Worth it.
“Naturally.”
She gently taps my cheek with the open side of her hand. It’s a weak slap, but it does its job and knocks the cockiness out of me.
She glides over to the counter and grabs some gauze, gloves, Band-Aids, and a few wet wipes before moving back to me and getting to work.
Being a nurse has always been my mama’s calling. Taking care of me, though? That’s second nature. And I don’t just mean physically, or in the way a parent is supposed to, like financially and morally. ...
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