The Pinecrest Reformatory School sat on the edge of the coast, surrounded on three sides by the Atlantic Ocean. The water had always been deep and cold enough to keep its students from getting ideas, so it was strange to finally see it from this angle: Outside-in instead of inside-out. It looked sadder than usual. Desolate. Sure, it had always been, but this was different. There was no activity left to contribute to its typical performance of liveliness.
It took two months for Alice Rhode to convince Millicent and Fran to come with her. They sat now on Alice’s small fishing skiff, a handful of feet apart from one another, unsure of what to say. They had never been close, but when Alice got the news, she knew of no one else to tell. It was impulsive. A herald attempting to send out an essential message as quickly and efficiently as possible to as many people as she could. Turns out she knew very few people who weren’t dead or wholly disinterested.
“You get the time right?” Millicent poked.
Alice rolled her eyes. She always hated the way the woman questioned her. Made her think she was stupid. She had been top of her class and could have gone to college if she wanted to. She did—want to, that was—before she’d gotten so behind. Before Pinecrest had gotten its greedy hands on her.
One bad night was all it had taken to undo a decade of work. Make one mistake and find yourself at just the wrong place—
It had been like winning the lottery, only backwards.
“Yes,” Alice remarked. “Marshall called me.”
“Marshall? You kept up with him?” Fran asked.
“Not really. But he found my number. Thought I’d want to know what was going on.”
Alice observed the boards covering the windows of the older girls’ residence building, absently counting three stories up and two to the left, where she used to smoke clove cigars after lights out. Before Fran would threaten her to share or risk getting snitched out on to a house mother.
“I’m sure he did” Millicent said, an insinuation there that Alice was too tired to dissect.
The construction equipment was an odd sight, trampling the once-pristine grounds. Mucking up the perfect green grass, clover, and wildflowers that used to coat the lawns and flowerbeds. Alice wondered if any of the crew knew or cared about the bones of the structures they were about to wreck. She guessed not. They were simply facilitating the progression of time. Things came to be. They existed. Then one day they didn’t. And the world would continue on as if they never did.
She wasn’t quite sure what she was expecting, but it was jarring to watch the excavator work against the intricately designed building. Even as a similarly-sized wash of relief came over her, it was left to fight for its place alongside that small inkling of sorrow. The machine carelessly ripped apart layer after layer, not bothering to be delicate. But delicacy couldn’t dismantle the building that once held so much power over them. Not like pure and explicit recklessness could. It came down with no resistance. Like it had been waiting for any opportunity to.
Pale yellow wallpaper. Arched crown molding. Hardwood floors. All mixed into the same soulless heap. Millicent let out a low whistle.
“Would you look at that?” Alice muttered.
The stairwell where they hid from morning chores. The attic where contraband was collected and judiciously redistributed. The common room where they raged over games of chess because there was nothing else worth putting energy into. All gone.
Was she supposed to grieve? Alice wagered in some odd way she did. But no woman ventured out this afternoon with the expectation of true tears.
Fran gave a small chuckle in response and cracked open a beer with a pocket knife, offering it to Alice. She took it by the neck, letting the cold beads of condensation drip onto her fingers. However, she refrained from drinking it. It felt wrong, even though there was no one there to police them. They were on their own now. They could do as they pleased.
But there would always be a part of her that felt as if someone would be waiting to catch her. There would always be a reason to look over her shoulder when she felt free.
The three women wouldn’t be able to close the distance between them in one evening, but the quiet grew comfortable instead of oppressive as they watched the destruction from the skiff. There was no need for malice. No need for competition or lies or succumbing to the intangible divides that those at Pinecrest had attempted to foster between them.
It would be a long while before the entire campus came down.
But it had been a long while before they’d managed to get out.
And every bitter second in between had been worth it.
Georgia Hope writes queer fantasy with a southern gothic twist and essays that break down the turbulent relationship between adolescence and academia. Currently a high school senior in the state of Texas, her idea of a good time is exploring haunted small towns with a notebook, camera, and a large cup of iced coffee. When she’s not making her readers cry you can find her gathering more bizarre lore for her next story or having an existential crisis on her instagram page @georgiainabook.
Featured image by Guillaume Techer on Unsplash.
