"Hey. Hey. Wake up." I shake Zindagee gently from over her covers. 

"What? What is it?" Her voice is laden with sleepiness.

"Come into mine and Maggie's room, we have to tell you something. Be quiet. Don't let anyone hear." My hushed voice is barely audible. 

"Why? What is it?" 

"It's a mystery." 

"Okay, fine."

She makes her way out the door while I climb up to wake up Aisha.

"Aisha. Dude. Wake up. Wake up."

"Why?" 

"I have something important to tell you."

One by one Maggie and I wake up everyone. And we send them all to our room. Thankfully, they're all quiet. Everyone is quiet. They go through the glowing halls without alerting any of the people who are supposed to be keeping an eye on us. 

Eventually there are twenty girls crowded onto the bottom bunk of our bunk bed. I can barely make anyone out amidst the shadows. But I squeeze against Lumina towards the edge of the bed. 

Maggie recalls her story first, voice breaking as she cries her way through all the experiences and emotions that broke her and formed her and made her who she is. The other girls don't understand it at first. Just like I didn't understand it at first. But slowly, surely, they come around. They feel Maggie's pain and her love and her restlessness and her yearning. 

"A thing like that, it could really teach you a lot of things," Ishani comments. 

"I'm sorry you had to go through that, Maggie, you deserve better," Valentina comforts. 

"I know. But it taught me so much. I don't think I ever could've gotten truly close to my brother if he hadn't died." There is anguish in Maggie's voice, but there is also a strange sense of gratitude. 

"I ... I think I understand." Bik's words are subdued and thoughtful, almost like a lullaby in the nighttime. 

"But Maggie," Cara speaks solemnly, "How can we help you get over this?" 

"I don't need to get over this," Maggie replies, "I need to keep the memory with me always. It set me free. It set me free and I have to honour my brother and all he did for me and all he gave me. I have to honour him by setting all of you free as well." 

"But they won't let us be," Chin points out. "They brought us here, and they'll keep us here, and we won't be free." 

"No," Nora opposes, "we have to take freedom. We have to take freedom however we can, with whatever means necessary." 

"But is it really so bad here?" Lavinia's voice is unsure. She isn't fully brought over to our side yet. 

And so I tell them my story. I tell it from the beginning, from finding that notebook in my school hallways. I talk about all the alienation, the disillusionment, the entrapment that I felt. I talk about how superficial and hollow I saw everything as. I talk about how I was ever so determined to get free. 

I talk about the nights and days I spent roaming the hidden alleyways of the city. I talk about all the thoughts I thought, all the emotions I felt. Everything I experienced. I talk about the strangeness and the familiarity that overtook everything then. About how purposeful and wandering I was. I talk about the wind on my arms and the dryness in my throat. And I talk about how I just kept going, how everything inside of me was calling out to me to keep going, how everything around me was singing the same song. 

I talk about how at the forge of death, at last, for the first time in my life I felt like I was a part of something. For the first time in my life I felt wanted. For the first time in my life I felt like I belonged. I talk about how I lost myself entirely and how I was more myself than I ever had been. And I talk about how I was one with the wind and the cold and the sky. 

I end with the story of how I was taken in chains to the hospital, and had my mind drilled into against my will. 

"So what are your guys' stories?" I ask the girls gathered all around me, straining to listen. 

One by one they all take turns remembering what they can from their past, from their time before the rehabilitation centre. Their memories come in bits and pieces, but all of their memories come back, eventually. 

Nora was a runaway, living on the streets and begging for food and water. She had been there for two or three years. It was a hard life, it was a hungry life, it was a life full of need and want and glaring violence. She often did not know how she would keep on going, keep on making it through. But she says that it was a better life than the one she had lived before, a life in the lap of luxury. Eventually the police found her, and they took her to the hospital, screaming all the way. 

Nora was a lot braver than I ever could be. She is brave. She is bold. But most importantly she's good, so good. Much better than I ever could be.

Delores got into a fight with her mother and father about what she wanted in her life. They were insisting that she go to preparatory school, which would be a tightly regimented and closely surveilled thing just as the rehabilitation centre is. She insisted that she did not want to go, and the resulting fight was horrible. It was ugly. It lead neighbours to call the police and the rest is history. 

I know what it's like fighting with your parents. It's hard. It hurts. It never leaves you. It makes you who you are. It breaks through the veil of illusion and it makes you stronger. 

Labonita also ran away one day, just like me. Unlike me she was not trying to kill herself, though she didn't particularly care about living either. What she was trying to do was go beyond the city, and find out what was out there. She kept walking and walking and walking. And just when she thought she almost made it, just when she thought that the edge of the city was close, the police caught up to her. And they dragged her to this accursed place. 

I never thought there could be anything beyond the city. It seems to stretch every which way in every direction. I've never heard anyone talk of anything beyond the city. Labonita's really creative, thinking that something is out there. Really creative or really hopeful. I hope she's right. 

Brigely tried to kill herself in a more concrete way than the rest of us did. Her story is a really rather ghastly one. She put a noose around her throat, made of strong, coarse rope she bought in secret and kept under her floorboards. She got as far as tying it to a tree, and jumping off of the branches with the horrible, beautiful promise of a rope around her throat. She remembers pain, incredible pain. She remembers feeling like she was drowning on dry land. And she remembers waking up in the hospital. 

Brigely is brave too. Though I wish so very much that she didn't have to ge brave. I wish we all didn't have to be brave. I wish we could all live in a kinder world, where life and tenderness and joy were not things that were forever denied to us, denied to everyone. 

[scene continued in next part]