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it’s funny you should say that—”
    “We’re warning you, Valerie.” He turned his back.
    “No one has warned me about anything yet, actually.”
    He left me with Avril and Burrito Eater. They stood on either side of me while I listened to the video about New Horizons play in the other room. It talked about being the only program in the province with both freedom and security. How it wasn’t a correctional facility, but an opportunity to better ourselves. We were to think of the experience as a privilege—a chance to re-energize away from our everyday lives.
    But in my head, it was still that summer camp where acne first popped up on my chin, and my brace face learned to kiss. It was a so-called facility for troubled youth, in a summer camp that Patty Slaunwhite had funded, and Uncle Mike had sold out of sadness.
    Now, without warning, we were all Stones.
    The video turned off after a while and the groups came out of the room. I glanced up and down at the residents as they moved along the hallway. We all looked the same. The buzz cut guy looked right at me as he walked with the army of other troubled youth.
    He rolled his eyes.
    “Like I care,” I told him. But I did. There were a lot of annoying things a person could do, and the small, simple ones, like an eye roll in my direction, had the capacity to make my blood slosh around inside of me.
    He had two bruises around his eyes. They were purple, green and black that circled around the sockets, and emphasized the whites around his pupils. His face was full of colours, and his irises were grey. A lonely, pathetic grey.
    I imagined what it would be like to jump out of my seat and strangle him. But I had no idea who he was, and I wanted to be good for at least ten minutes. Right then I was the bad kid who had been sent out of the room. Nobody wanted anything to do with me, and it was kind of nice. But when everyone was gone, a woman came out of another room, ruining my alone time.
    “Hello,” she said. She looked at the two huge men beside me. “I will take her from here.”
    Burrito Eater and Avril left her alone with me. Maybe that wasn’t too smart.
    I looked at the old woman. Everything about her—from her clothes to her face—was crumbling. I wondered what held her together from the inside. I bet her bones were about to crack. With her frail condition, she seemed like the kind of person who could pass away from a broken ankle. She was an old, family horse that was there just because somebody couldn’t stomach getting rid of her.
    “I’m Sharon and I’m your group counsellor.” She held out her hand.
    I shook it but didn’t bother telling her my name. I was so confused by her.
    Sharon had grey hair that was rolled into a bun and wire glasses that she wore low on her nose. Maybe she didn’t know that glasses could come in plastic. When she moved, she walked with a hunch, as if she had just pulled her lower back. Her wrists were limp, and it looked like she was waiting for her nails to dry after painting them.
    My favourite part about Sharon were her wrinkles. They weren’t deep, but they were definitely there and pointlessly scattered across her face. They were what made me wonder if she was barely alive, or nowhere near dead. She had to be a hundred. Or sixty. She reminded me of Patty Slaunwhite before she got ovarian cancer and croaked. And Granny, before she died of a little bit of everything.
    “There are several new residents for this summer, as you’ve seen in the classroom. There are thirty-two residents currently in the program, and you twelve are the last for the summer. These will be your cabin mates—boys with boys, and girls with girls, of course. You all start out at the same Stone level, but that doesn’t mean you will all be progressing together. At the end of each day, you’re all there to help each other out. We’re each other’s support team. We encourage each other to be the best version of ourselves that we can be.”
    I was