Circles

In all of her seventeen years, Georgia had never heard of an entrance exam for reform school. Alternative high schools weren’t typically a dumping ground, per se, but what kind of institution for “troubled” youths was not only looking to recruit, but vet their student body?

The Cerchio School. That’s what. Cerchio took the roughest kids across the region—not just the district or even the county—when they were on their last chance, last expulsion, last juvenile detention stint, and placed them exactly where they needed to be. And where they were placed was determined by an exam. The exam Georgia was going to take today.

In her letter from the school, which either her mom or her dad had slid underneath her locked bedroom door at home, she was instructed to arrive promptly at 8 a.m. dressed in business casual attire. Okay. So this was also a job interview. She scoffed at the letter, thinking, somewhat ironically, that this could have been an email.

The night before the mysterious exam, before she would spend the rest of her waking hours holed up in the safe space that had become her locked bedroom, she tip-toed through her quiet house, first to the kitchen to get a small cup of water, then to the bathroom for her final pee of the night. Her parents weren’t around, as usual, keeping as far away from her as humanly possible. She sighed, hearing the faint sounds of the television coming from her father’s den downstairs. Her mother was probably in their bedroom behind her own locked door. This was the atmosphere of her house now; Mom and Dad no longer wanted to talk, so she felt like she couldn’t, either.

*Click* went her bedroom door behind her.

On the way to take the exam the following morning, on the bus—which, to her surprise, looked like any other yellow school bus—she realized she had to consider herself lucky. She was always too smart for regular public school, in the words of her parents, her teachers, guidance counselors. She was always too clever, and she’d become bored with the routine of her high school. Maybe this was the kind of “alternative” that could stimulate her too-quick mind and give her a challenge.

“I should keep an open mind,” she told herself under her trembling breath as she sat in her seat at the middle of the bus. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, who I’m going to meet or how the adults will talk to me. I don’t know anything yet. I can spin this to my advantage.”

She kept talking down her anxiety, smoothing down her khaki skirt and fixing the collar of her blood red blouse repeatedly like a compulsion, patting her thick hair at the crown to check for frizz, for shrinkage at her roots. It was a gray morning, already humid with a promised high temp of seventy-seven.

Other than the bus driver, there was only one other kid, a boy, on the bus with her. He sat all the way in the back in dark blue chinos and a crisp white polo, gazing out the window with a small, serene smile on his face. 'Weirdo.'

The bus driver watched the two of them the whole time in a large, rear-facing mirror. It was a wonder he stayed on the road.

The building where Cerchio set up the exam was not actually at the school itself, but it was on the campus. Nondescript and even a little ugly, the tawny-colored building was a two-story box inside which nothing but the business occurred, Georgia could tell.

The school bus doors hissed and she disembarked the same way she’d gotten on that morning: by sliding past both the driver’s intensely watchful eye and his locked arm as he gripped the lever holding the doors open.

As soon as the feet of the boy behind her were on the ground, the driver pulled the doors shut and sped off. By the time she finished crossing the gravel driveway and pulled open the door to enter the building, Georgia was shaking. The air outside had been still, apart from the rush of wind the speeding bus had pushed against her back.

Everything around this building had been quiet, ominously so, and the inside was no different. She and the boy stopped at the end of the small foyer, and she bent forward at the waist to peer down the perpendicular hallway, first left, then right. Her letter had informed her there would be windows where she would receive her exam room assignment. She was to report to window seven.

She decided to go to the right down the hallway. The boy went left, having never said a word to her. She headed in what she hoped was the right direction, wringing her hands with every step she took; her strapped ballet flats squeaked on the yellow linoleum that reflected the bright fluorescent light above her head in a way that made everything look dim, aged. The hallway, the building, was so quiet that every eek of her shoes made her jump.

'This quiet isn’t normal,' she thought. 'What kind of school is this?'

The hallway was so long, she only saw the rows of windows in the distance ahead after she’d been walking for five minutes. Georgia could tell the area behind the windows was all one room with partitions separating the stations themselves. It was dark behind the Plexiglas, which, as she approached, Georgia realized was bulletproof. She rolled her eyes. Sure, this was a reform school, but if the only kids they were hand-selecting were kids like her and the quiet, weird boy she’d been on the bus with, this type of measure was pretty dramatic. She wasn’t planning on hurting anyone here.

'Speaking of….' She turned her head to look behind her briefly, down the empty hallway that now seemed to stretch for miles to the other end, where that boy had headed. She was apparently at the right place, so where had he ended up?

*Ding!* Georgia flinched, gasped, nearly swore, as she heard what sounded like the noise on the intercom before a flight attendant starts to speak. She looked to her right and saw one of those caged bulb lights sticking out and flashing above a window. Window seven.

She inched toward the window, cautious of any other sudden noises. It was still dark back there, no one manning the window for her information distribution, nothing at all going on behind the glass. Georgia looked above her head, searching for surveillance cameras to explain that someone was watching her, saw her arrive and knew her window number and pressed the button to direct her to the right one. She saw none.

Thoroughly freaked out now, Georgia started wringing her hands again. When she’d rubbed them together so much that she felt the friction create heat, her shaking got more visible, like she was a chihuahua. Her restlessness grew. Her muscles tensed. She was about to speak up when her window spat out a narrow slip of paper, almost like a receipt. Still trembling, she reached for the paper and studied it. It directed her to room “V” for her exam.

Once again, she didn’t know where that was. She studied the darkness behind the window one more time before wandering to her left, past the other windows numbered six to one, and around the corner of the hallway.

“Breathe,” Georgia told herself through labored breaths as she searched for room “V.” She didn’t find a letter on every door, but the ones she did see weren’t in any kind of reasonable, alphabetical order. It took several more minutes for her to find her room, which, she realized as she came upon it, was open and ready for…her, she supposed. Well. An open door was a helpful directive.

Georgia peeked into the room, which was dimly lit like an eye doctor’s examination room during the eye chart portion. *Which is better: option one, or option two?*

She could leave now, couldn’t she? More than likely, the answer was yes…right? As she looked around the room, her body still in the hallway, something told her she was crossing a very permanent threshold.

She stepped in. There was no one inside, and no clever little door or portal for an instructor or administrator to show up through. During this entire process, she had been isolated. A lot like at home. When she closed this door behind her, as instructed on her slip of paper, would someone lock her in like she was locked in her room at home?

Georgia closed the door with the smallest click, as gently and quietly as she could manage. “No reason to be afraid,” she said.

She noted the small floor lamp in the corner of the room, casting the only light from a weak bulb. She noted the chair and desk set up just for her. The small desktop computer casting the bright blue light of an instruction page for her to read before she began her exam.

She sat, nerves winding their way through her arms and legs and out through her extremities. The introduction page simply directed her to respond to all fifty prompts honestly and thoroughly. All of this to determine what, she still didn’t know. She moved the mouse to select “Begin,” and her eyes scanned the first question.

I get along well with others.

Always true

Sometimes true

Neither true nor false

Sometimes false

Always false

The formatting of these prompts was annoying, to say the least, but the question was simple enough. She selected “Always false” and moved on.

I’m unhappy with the state of the world.

Always true

Sometimes true

Neither true nor false

Sometimes false

Always false

Georgia selected “Always true.”

I feel dysregulated in group settings.

Georgia selected “Always true.”

I often disassociate when around people I don’t like.

“Always true.”

The more she went on, the more Georgia realized she was selecting absolutes every time. The room became a vacuum as she clicked, the humming of lights and machines and technology dropping into a hole in the center of the floor behind her. She heard nothing but the sounds of her own breathing, the blood pulsing behind her ears—she could always hear blood—and the click, click, clicking of her mouse.

Around the middle of the exam, and making excellent time, Georgia’s trance-like state was penetrated by the prompts’ subject matter, which was getting more…specific.

I respond to disrespect with appropriate force.

Always true

Sometimes true

Neither true nor false

Sometimes false

Always false

Confidently, she selected “Always true.”

I feel good when I hurt people.

Always true

Sometimes true

Neither true nor false

Sometimes false

Always false

Georgia frowned. She, of course, had the option to answer “false,” but the prompt itself still felt like an assumption. She wondered what this exam knew about her, where it planned to categorize her if she began attending The Cerchio School.

As she went on, for the first time thoughts of just what she might be studying at the school crossed her mind. As a rising senior, she’d learned nearly everything she was meant to learn under the K-12 curriculum. Maybe her classes here would be more like college courses, more focused subjects. Things she was interested in. As she neared the exam’s completion, it sort of started looking that way.

I’ve killed seven animals.

True

False

Her head reared back. Okay. Right to the point with that one. Blood rushed to her ears again, heat flooding her face. Suddenly, the entire room was pulsing. Her clicking became more frantic as the prompts…accusations?...continued.

I collected them in sevens.

True

False

My parents found my sevens.

True

False

They lock me in my room for their protection.

True

False

I have seven eyes.

True

True

I have seven fingers.

True

True

TRUE

I have seven jars of blood.

ALWAYS TRUE

ALWAYS TRUE

ALWAYS TRUE

Georgia let out a disgusted groan, answered the last question just to get it over with, and stood. Panting, she looked around the room, waiting for an administrator to finally come in and tell her what this was all about, what they thought they were doing, what kind of sick “test” this was. Blood still pulsed in her ears, frantically pumping to and through her heart, which she thought would beat out of her chest. Nothing happened for several long minutes. Then—

Her screen flashed. An arrow rotated in the middle before the next page loaded.

Status: COMPLETED

Result: PASSED

She stared, confused, terrified, elated. She passed the test. Georgia did love passing a test.

Immediately she knew this must mean admittance to The Cerchio School, but she no longer knew if she was into the challenge. Had this exam been her first conviction? Torture for torture? What had her mom and dad told this school about her?

Apparently everything.

Georgia sat, exhausted, over this morning and everything about it. She would have to handle her parents, somehow, before beginning classes here. They talked too much.

Georgia was sighing, frustrated by this slight inconvenience, when her screen flashed again. Startled, she whirled in her seat and read what it said.

DESTINATION: SEVENTH CIRCLE.

“What in Hell—?” The words hadn’t even fully passed her lips before the floor opened up beneath her, cracking away like a sinkhole was consuming it. The old linoleum chipped and disintegrated, revealing gray concrete and brown dirt.

Georgia leapt from her chair, but she had nowhere to go; the floor swallowed everything, sucked down the chair, the desk, the lamp, the computer with its bright screen—DESTINATION: SEVENTH CIRCLE.

Georgia screamed as she fell, down past soil, bone, and bedrock. She tumbled for what seemed like centuries, screaming until her lungs gave out.

Then she passed through the layer of white, with its people dressed in white; they wandered aimlessly, eyes unfocused and mouths permanently agape.

She passed through the layer of purple, where a giant, plum-colored mattress held a hundred bodies that pulsed around and under and through each other.

She passed through the layer of pink, where monsters gorged themselves on giant, swollen humans that were naked, their bulging bodies covered in a thin sheen of sweat.

She passed through the layer of green, where people crawled on the ground, their knees and heels of their hands bloodied. “Enough! Enough!” they screamed in agony.

She passed through the layer of fiery orange and saw…the boy from the bus. He smiled a smile too wide for his face, showing her his dozens of teeth. Behind him, there were others, their jaws unhinging to form smiles, though their laughter sounded like furious roars.

She passed the layer of blue, where people hung upside down from their feet and recited gibberish, the tops of their heads dark purple with the blood rushing to them.

Blood. Georgia passed into the layer of red, the seventh layer, before she crashed to the ground.

She lay there, studying her surroundings while recovering the wind that had been knocked out of her. The rust-colored walls dripped with something shiny. She knew what that something was. She clenched her fists at her sides and felt the thick, sticky liquid under her hands and arms, then noticed the feeling on the back of her neck and in her hair. It soaked through her clothes.

Georgia sat up, stretched all her limbs to make sure everything was intact, and stood. This layer was quiet, but the constant drip-drip sound was oddly comforting. As she finished looking around the space she was in, she saw the others, the ones who also passed, who also got admitted to Cerchio. Her classmates. Forever.

At least she was finally in the company of students who could keep up with her.