“He'd just chant it,” she said, touching my cuff. “Like some priest . . . throwing out these images. Not giving you a chance to speak. He made you feel you were the only bad person in a beautiful world—a shit smear on silk. And you believed him. You believed everyone was changing for the better, learning to control themselves. Everyone was on his side, you were the only piece of shit.”

“Cutting you off,” I said, “so you wouldn't confide in the other kids.”

“It worked; I never confided in anyone. Later, when I was out of there—years later—I realized it was stupid, I couldn't have been the only one. I'd seen other kids go into the rooms—it seems so ridiculously logical now. But back then, I couldn't—he kept focusing me in on myself. On the bad parts of me. The vermin animal parts.”

“You were isolated right from the beginning. New environment, new routine.”

“Exactly!” she said, squeezing my arm. “I was scared shitless. My parents never told me where we were going, just shoved me in the car and tossed in a suitcase. The whole ride up there, they wouldn't speak to me. When we got there, they drove through the gates, dumped me in the office, left me there and drove away. Later I found out that's what he instructed them to do. Have a happy summer, Meredith . . .”

Her eyes got wet. “I'd just repeated seventh grade. Finally faked enough to barely pass and was looking forward to a vacation. I thought summer would be the beach and Lake Arrowhead—we had a cabin, always went there as a family. They dumped me and went without me . . . no apologies, no explanation. I thought I'd died and gone to hell—sitting in that office, all those brown uniforms, no one talking to me. Then he came out, smiling like a clown, saying, what a pretty girl you are, telling me to come with him, he'd be taking care of me. I thought: what a jerk, no problem putting it over on him. The first time I stepped out of line, he let it pass. The second time, he pulled me into a room and bad-loved me. I walked out of there in a semi-coma . . . blitzed, wasted—it's hard to explain, but it was almost like dying. Like bad dope—I felt I was on a rocky island in the middle of a storm. This crazy, black, roaring sea, with sharks all around . . . no escape, him working on my bad parts—chewing me up!”

“What a nightmare,” I said.

“The first week I hardly slept or ate. Lost ten pounds. The worst part was that you believed him. He had a way of taking over your head—like he was sitting in your skull, scraping away at your brain. You really felt you were shit and belonged in hell.”

“None of the kids ever talked to each other?”