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“Move it up and out, ladies! Time for some sunshine. Sneakers, sweatpants, hoodie. Let’s go, go, go!”
“I’m sorry, for what, now?” Brandy asks.
“Daily run. Move the body, free the mind. Five minutes until we leave. The name’s Chuck. Pleased to meet you.”
He shuts our door. In a minute, I hear that same metal water bottle being banged on Billy’s door.
“I do not run,” Brandy says. “I treadmill, slowly. But I do not run.”
I look at myself. I’m already dressed in sweatpants and a sweatshirt, since I never took off my clothes from yesterdaybefore going to bed. I haven’t showered since I left the hospital. What does it matter, though? I pull my sneakers from under my bunk and drag them on.
“We used to do a twelve-minute mile in middle school in PE,” I tell Brandy. “Sixth grade. PE was right after lunch, and it sucked. If you stopped, you had to start over. I am not looking forward to this.”
“Well, I’m not doing it. The sun isn’t even up yet. It’s inhumane.” Brandy shoves herself back under her blanket and turns to the wall. I go into the bathroom and pee and brush my teeth, moving the toothbrush carefully around the bad part.
Clonk, clonk, clonk.“Let’s gooooooooo!”
I yank open the bathroom door and walk to the bedroom door and open it. Billy is standing in the hallway with Chuck, his eyes half closed.
“Where’s your friend?” Chuck asks. He’s bouncing up and down.
I shrug.
Chuck leans his head into our room. “You don’t want to come, that’s all right with me. But it’s a demerit.”
“A what?” Billy asks.
“I don’t care!” Brandy shouts, her voice scratchy.
Chuck turns to Billy. “It counts against you. You don’t follow the program, you get a demerit. You get too many, you lose things.”
“Like what?” Billy asks, alarmed. “How many demerits? What things? I’ll get my phone back, right? Right?”
Chuck starts jogging down the hall. “Fuck around and find out!” he calls over his shoulder.
—
Outside, he leads us in stretches. When I reach for my toes, a wave of dizziness spreads over me and needles of pain spread up the backs of my legs. Billy can barely reach past his knees.
There’s no track or anything, just desert. About fifty feet away, there are more adobe buildings and what looks like…a mini-farm? That must be the goats and the chickens. There is already a bunch of kids out there dressed in parkas and hoodies and jeans, raking the coop and throwing hay and grass from a bucket for the goats to eat.
“Don’t worry,” Chuck says. “You’ll be one of them soon.”
Billy shivers. “It’s freaking cold out here.”
Then Chuck takes off. Like,fast.
Billy and I stare at each other.
“You first,” I say.
“You,” he says, and scowls. “I’m not much of an athlete.”
Far into the desert, Chuck yells, “Demerits!”
“Shit,” Billy says. He starts running.
I watch him run awkwardly, his feet slipping on stones in the desert sand. His arms fly everywhere.
