s a r a h n . h a r v e y & r o b i n s t e v e n s o n
20
Circle time
. The previous summer I had worked at a karate
camp for six- to ten-year-olds—Little Dragons, it was called—
and this felt a lot like that. I hoped Claire wasn’t going to
make us play Duck, Duck, Goose.
With much nails-on-chalkboard screeching, we
dragged our heavy wooden chairs into a circle and sat
there, checking each other out while pretending not to
give a shit. Druggies, dealers, delinquents. I tried to think
of a collective noun for my new peer group. A rabble of
felons. A scourge of liars. A plague of losers.
I still couldn’t believe my mother had done this to me.
Every time I thought about it, an awful rage surged up inside
me, and I wanted to throw things or hit someone. My mother
and I had always been super close—it had been just the two of
us since I was a baby. But right now—really, ever since she’d
told me she was sending me to
intro
—I almost hated her.
“I know you’re probably all tired,” Claire said. Her
voice was sugar-filled, over-the-top perky, a little too high-
pitched. Phony, I thought. It was a weird thing I’d noticed
before—a lot of adults who worked with teens were phony.
My school was full of them. Sometimes I wondered if they
were only phony when they were around teens and turned
into real people after work.
“Most of you have had long journeys,” she went on, “trav-
eling to our little island from Vancouver, and Imogen, I heard
you were a bit seasick on the boat…”
Imogen ignored her. She pulled an enormous purse
from under her chair and began rummaging through it.
