12


It was true that at Hope House they had been allowed either very little or no medication. It was a part of Bobby Boler's radical wellness program that every student had been forced to participate in.


Helen was starting to feel violent again, and she was one of the first people to be seen by Dr. Mendez. Mendez gave her Risperdal and a stimulant, Adderall, to counteract the negative effects of the Risperdal.


Some of the children, realizing that they would not be shocked here, had started to self-harm again. There was blood on the grass. There was blood on the floor in places. There was blood on some of the bedsheets in the dorms. One girl was found cutting herself in the shower, with hardly any blood left, and was rushed to the infirmary for a transfusion of blood pre-donated by O-negative 3--I members, then rushed to Dr. Mendez, who gave her loxapine to make her stop believing she had to cut herself and Cogentin to prevent the sometimes suicide-inducing side effects of the loxapine.


As Sharona walked around the mess hall that night at dinner time looking for a place to sit, she heard snippets from conversations of the ex-students.


"I was on sixteen at once," Marck was saying to Saul. "Then Dope House took me off all of them at the same time and I nearly died. I swear, I had a heart attack. You know how Tegretol does that when you stop it suddenly? Well, I was on 400 milligrams of that *** and I almost **** died. Because I was on other stuff too like Ativan, which I was addicted to by then."


Jeremy was telling Isis that he had been shocked for masturbating in his room. "They caught me on camera. but there was no one in the **** room. So I said I'd do it in the bathroom instead and they said I'd better not because they'd shock me twice the next time I did it anywhere."


Helen sat down and told Lester and Dannisse about how she'd convinced five kids to go talk to Sharona and film themselves on the webcam telling their stories and send them to the media.



Sharona couldn't help but grin. Their stories were getting out. She saw plenty of smiles in the mess hall too. And she knew then that she and her friends had done the right thing.


Sharona went to the front of the mess hall and shouted into the microphone at the podium, "May I have your attention!" She then told everyone about the new website they were starting, using their own server and satellite dish, that nobody would be able to shut down.

Then suddenly: "Breaking news."


Everyone in the mess hall looked up at the large TV on the top of the wall at one end of the room.


"Professor Robert Boler has been found dead in the Hope House ruins, and investigators have seized footage of his death, in which a male student, Myron Jeffries, decapitates him with a knife. Myron Jeffries has been said to be dead by the radical activist organization 3--I, or the International Incident Initiators. Footage of the funeral, which appears to take place in a field near a forest, was released yesterday on CNN. Investigators believe, however, that this may be a trick to put them off of Jeffries's trail. Nola Todd has the story."


"This is Nola Todd, and, as you can see, I'm in front of the ruins of the Hope House School, which burned to the ground over the last five days while police, firefighters, and EMTs watched and tried to prevent the students and 3--I activists from doing more damage. One hundred and four students are in custody as of this evening, and two hundred and one are missing. Some of the dead have been confirmed to be students but their bodies were so badly burned that DNA tests will have to be performed to identify them. The rest appear to have taken off with the International Incident Initiators to an unknown location. However, six hundred 3--I members are in custody and none of them are talking."


The screen showed 3--I members, shackled to a long chain, boarding a bus at gunpoint. But wait... Helen recognized one of them as Nikita Norberg, a fellow student.


She must be pretending to be a 3--I member.


Helen turned excitedly towards her friends and started babbling.


"Poor thing," Marck said. "She'll be identified. At least there's no more Dope House. What other place would do that to her? I mean, shock her like they did at Dope House."