Learning Seventeen Read online

  Copyright © 2018 Brooke Carter

  All rights reserved. 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 is dedicated to preserving the environment and has printed this book on Forest Stewardship Council® certified paper.

  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

  www.orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  21 20 19 18 • 4 3 2 1

  For Tia, who stayed with me in the rain.

  Orca Book Publishers is proud of the hard work our authors do and of the important stories they create. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it or did not check it out from a library provider, then the author has not received royalties for this book. The ebook you are reading is licensed for single use only and may not be copied, printed, resold or given away. If you are interested in using this book in a classroom setting, we have digital subscriptions that feature multi user, simultaneous access to our books that are easy for your students to read. For more information, please contact [email protected].

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Acknowledgments

  An Excerpt from Another Miserable Love Song

  Chapter One

  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 a
sked 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 NOs and DO NOTs. 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.

  Back to that hypothetical meeting with your new girlfriend’s parents. What if this cute girl’s liberal-yet-suspicious dad asks you an innocent, run-of-the-mill question like, “Have you always lived in the area?” Instead of saying yes and admitting your local status (because maybe he’ll run into your parents), you find yourself saying something crazy about how actually you were born in Budapest, and as soon as the word is out of your mouth you regret it. You really have no idea why you said it, except that, oh yeah, you are a totally compulsive liar.

  So now you are committed, and there’s no greater commitment than a liar to her lie. And you rack your brain at their raised eyebrows and you search your memory for plausible details the way any good liar would do, and all you can think of is Hungary. Budapest is in Hungary.

  Then a lightbulb pops off in your brain and you see the fourth-grade class photo illuminated in your internal gallery of pictures. And third from the left—spotlight on, zoom the camera in—is your fourth-grade bestie, Anna Pusky. Oh, good old Hungarian Anna, with her dark hair and dark eyes and European skin tone. So you try to embody Anna and conjure her within yourself. You imagine the smell of pig-snout stew and imagine your stepmother as Mrs. Pusky, with her weird fur hats, her accent, and her penchant for oversized amber-colored glasses. You imagine, as any skilled liar would, that feeling these details will somehow transmit them through you as a kind of truth, like method acting, and you can see by the lowering eyebrows of your dining companions that it is working. It’s working.

  You hope now that no one asks too many probing questions because, frankly, you don’t know a damn thing about Hungary. And there it is. Now that you’ve lied, you can never love this girl and she can never love you. You probably won’t be able to see her again after this because if you got more serious then she might ask a question and you’d have to admit to the lie.

  With each passing day, week, month, the chances of being found out escalate. It has already gone too far, let’s face it—it has already gone way too far to admit the truth now. Because it’s too weird to be a joke, right? Saying you were born in Budapest when you weren’t is just too weird to be a joke, and no one would ever understand why you’d lie about such a thing.

  Now whenever you hear the word Budapest or think the word Budapest, you will be reminded of the lie. You will be reminded of saying goodbye to that girl, that potential great love. Budapest will now equal goodbye. Then years later when you’re old and alone you will go to the doctor and they will only have bad news. That lie you told grew inside until it invaded your cells, and now it is stuck deep inside, way back in the hardest-to-reach area, way back past your heart, and it’s pushing for your death. It wants it. It can’t be cut out. You can’t be saved. The lie can’t be taken back. Budapest, Budapest, Budapest, it throbs in your blood. Budapest, you dumb girl. Budapest, you liar.

  Is that what I am supposed to say? Did I get it right? Can I go home now?

  Chapter Three

  You’re probably wondering what I did to get sent here, right? Well, it wasn’t just one thing, and it also was just one thing. I know—nothing is ever simple with me. I’ve been messing up for a long time in lots of spectacular ways, but I guess the one major way I’ve been messing up is by having a thing for other girls. I mean, it’s not just a passing phase. It’s not just a preference. I’ve tried being with guys, and that’s sort of okay, but when I dream about love, I dream about loving a girl.

  Dad and Sheila have put up with a lot of my shenanigans, but if there’s one thing my stepmonster can’t live with, it’s having a lesbo stepdaughter. I think she tried to ignore it for a while, but when I got caught making out with Jenny Flaherty, shirts off and all, in the equipment locker at my old high school, well, she just couldn’t take the embarrassment. So they sent me here to No Hope. Yay me.

  After a few weeks I find I’m getting used to this place, and I hate that. I am getting used to the smell of lemon-scented floor wax, the sounds of rubber soles on linoleum and sobs into pillows, the taste of warm, recycled air rebreathed by all the other messed-up kids. The kids who stare out windows that don’t ever open. I’m used to it the way I am used to not getting high. I have no choice, and so I live with it. But I’m the kind of person who doesn’t get used to things easily.

  Keeping my journal and doing the lame writing exercises they ask me to do is supposed to be therapeutic, but really, it’s just making me mad. I mean, I don’t think my counselors want an honest answer. All they want is for me to tell them how wrong I am. I think asking someone to list their faults and all the dumb things they’ve done in their life is just cruel. After all, have you never done anything wrong? Have you never made a mistake? You know what? If you haven’t, then I don’t want to know you. But I do know that if I want to get out of here, I have to play along.

  So I pretend to reflect back and figure out what went wrong. I bet they’re looking for some trite confession, some equation of wrongdoings and low self-esteem that will add up to a picture they can understand. But they’ll never understand. How can they? And anyway, maybe I’m just a bad girl. Maybe I am evil. That’s what they want me to say. I’m evil because I like girls.

  Today I meet again with counselor Terry, and I shudder as I walk into his office. It smells like feet and beans. Terry is a tall skinny guy with a pointy, pinched face and a long nose. I think he looks like a really gangly bird, and his tuft of almost-white blond hair adds to the effect. Baptist Big Bird. He smiles when I walk in, but it’s one of thos
e smiles that doesn’t touch the eyes, so I know he’s faking it. I mean, how could he possibly be happy to see me? I’ve only been here a few weeks and already I’m a huge spear in his side. Ha.

  He sighs when I sit down, and I sigh back, mocking him.

  “How are you, Jane?” he asks, shuffling the papers around on his desk. “Any journal entries for me?”

  I hand over my journal, and he leafs through, taking a few minutes to read. After a while he stops. “You know,” he says, “this won’t work if you don’t take it seriously.”

  I shrug. “How can I? I don’t believe any of this Jesus stuff.”

  He bristles at that. “Maybe a little faith would do you some good.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning if you put your trust in the Lord, you might find freedom from your sins. Jane, it isn’t your fault that you’re…you’re different.”

  “You mean gay?”

  Terry coughs. “You’re not gay, just confused.”

  I roll my eyes. “No, Terry, I’m not confused.”

  “That’s Satan at work in your life,” he says. “You need to ask God for forgiveness.”

  “So I just ask to be forgiven and that’s that?” I ask.

  “Well…yes,” says Terry. “And then you must try to never sin with other girls again.”

  I laugh. “Oh, Terry,” I say. “Keep dreaming, man.”

  We go back and forth like this every time we see each other. I really wonder why he doesn’t give up. He goes on and on about “good” selves and “bad” selves. I really think he believes I have a demon in me or something. I mention this to him, and he says he thinks I exaggerate to amuse myself. I tell him there’s nothing funny about any of this but that if I don’t laugh, I’ll probably die in this place.

  Every time I see him, he asks me if I want to be saved. I always tell him the same thing. But I don’t think he believes me. I tell him it’s all I’ve ever wanted.