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never.
    Then a hand clamped down hard on my arm. When I spun right, Rebecca’s blue eyes were sending ice cold darts through me. Her fury was surprising. I hadn’t thought she’d had it in her.
    No, she mouthed to me. I tried to shake her off, but she grasped me harder. I could feel her nails digging into my skin. Her skin had whitened in reflection of the morning sun.
    “Let go,” I said in a low voice.
    “They got her!” someone cried.
    All the girls, Rebecca and myself included, inched curiously toward the break between the buildings. I’d managed to rid myself of my roommate’s grip, but it hardly mattered now. The moment had passed. The guards were watching us now that Rosa had been captured. If any of us felt inspired to follow in her footsteps, they were ready. Rebecca had ruined my chances.
    I pushed between two girls and saw Rosa, twenty feet in front of me, cornered inside the dead end of the alleyway, trapped. Our two line guards were trying to box her in. They held their arms out wide and low, like they were herding a chicken. Rosa shrieked as she burst through them up the middle, back toward the wide-eyed group of seventeens. The ugly soldier beat her there. He rammed into her from the side and sent her sprawling to the ground.
    “No!” I shouted, struggling to reach her. A new guard blocked my way. The skin was tightly stretched across his face, and his insidious glare gave me chills.
    Try it, he seemed to say, and you’ll be next.
    Everyone watched as the jeering, pock-faced Randolph contained the flailing Rosa with a knee, harshly planted between her shoulder blades. After catching his breath, he hauled her body to a stand and locked her hands behind her back with a zip tie.
    And then he hit her.
    My belly filled with horror as blood spewed from Rosa’s nose and painted her dark skin. I would have screamed if I’d had the breath. I’d never in my life seen a man hit a woman. I knew Roy had hit my mom. I’d seen the aftereffects. But never the actual act. It was more violent than anything I could have imagined.
    And then it hit me, like a punch to my face. If this was what could happen to us, to the girls in rehab, what were they doing to the people who actually committed the so-called crimes? What had Chase done to us? The urgency to flee grew even stronger. I was more afraid for my mother than ever before.
    “She’s crazy,” I heard one of the seventeens say.
    “ She’s crazy?” I said in disbelief. “Did you not see that he just—”
    The girls beside me parted silently as Ms. Brock pushed her way through. She stared at Rosa, then at me. My blood turned to ice.
    “That he just what, dear?” she asked me, brows raised in either cold curiosity or challenge, I couldn’t tell.
    “He … he hit her,” I said, immediately wishing I hadn’t spoken at all.
    “And placated the beastly child, thank God,” she spouted with feigned relief. I felt my mouth go very dry.
    She assessed Rosa down her pointy little nose for several seconds, clicking her tongue inside her mouth. “Banks, take Ms. Montoya to lower campus please.”
    “Yes ma’am.” The sandy-haired guard shoved Rosa past me, leaving her attacker behind smirking with satisfaction. I tried to meet Rosa’s eyes, but she still appeared dazed. The ripe twinge of blood elicited a wave of bile up my throat.
    And then Ms. Brock turned, humming, and walked away.
    *   *   *
     
    WE spent the next hours in silent meditation. Class, they called it. Where we sat on stiff-backed wooden chairs and read until our eyes crossed, while cow-eyed attendants occasionally interjected comments like “Heads down,” and “Don’t slouch.”
    I was afraid for Rosa. They hadn’t brought her back. Whatever was happening to her was taking a long time.
    The guard Banks had returned, and he and Scary Randolph patrolled the rows, deterring any notion of escape or misconduct. None of the other girls whispered now. They seemed shaken by the