Sit up straighter. Don’t look at them, look at me. What rule did you break? You broke it again. Straighter. You need to learn. You’re here to learn. Your parents want you to learn. That’s why they sent you here. So you’d learn. You’re not that fucking dumb. Act right! You’re such a fucking failure. You’re never going back at this rate. They’ll keep you here. Better for you here than out there where you’re always hurting people. Why do you hurt them? You hate them, don’t you? Don’t you?

The screams echo in my head.

If you hear that kind of thing often enough, it starts to sound true. My arms would burn from lifting them up and up and up while we did jumping jacks until your body couldn’t take any more. My feet hurt. Once I had a swollen ankle from when one of the teachers tackled me—damn thing was probably sprained—but I still had to do jumping jacks. Ankle’s never been the same since. The pain never really went away.

Maybe it did, but I still feel it.

Haley. I should think about Haley. I’ll never forget the rest of that shit, but I can choose to concentrate on Haley.

My memory of her is like my phone. Hundreds of images locked away even though I know they’re there.

Sometimes she pauses, and something about the way she goes still makes me think she can feel me watching.

I like the thought of her feeling my eyes on her. It’s like she saw me.

No one else really did. They looked right through me.

When her bedroom light is on, it’s like a one-way mirror. She can’t see me watching her, but I can see her. The curve of her neck. The way the fabric slides off her body when she takes her shirt off, smooth and deliberate. How she stretches her arms over her head, so beautiful, so perfect.

And then, when the light goes off, I know she’s crawling into bed and the soft sheets are touching even softer skin and she’s warming up the blankets with her body.

Maybe she still thinks about me watching when we weren’t supposed to. She was the one rule I broke. One more reason I was convinced I’d die in that place. Maybe she touches herself, thinking about me watching. Maybe it turns her on to know I’m out there in the dark on the other side of the glass, all these years later.

My dad sighs and I’m snapped out of my thoughts. He picks up his can of beer from the side table, drinks, and sets it back down.