I woke up screaming, in a rush of terror, gasping for breath. All that existed of my memory was a white and blue flash that opened a pit of fear in my stomach in the first milliseconds before I unpeeled my eyes. I didn't know my name. I didn't know where I was. I didn't even know what I looked like.

There was a face there, looking down on me, but it didn't scare me; in a strange way, it comforted me--I wasn't alone in whatever void I'd wakened into. It was doughy and brown and pursing its lips into a demand for me to keep quiet, to Shhh! Its dark eyes sparkled with concern.

"Shhh!" the face of the boy ordered again. His finger came up to his lips. He was frantic, but how could I have known why? I wasn't making noise anymore, anyway, and would've questioned his hysteria, but the sickness in my stomach kept me from giving him a response. "You don't want them to come in here, do you?"

I tried to ask him who, but he stopped me.

"They'll come anyway." He pushed his glasses up onto his pug nose and looked past me, his seriousness worse than his panic. "Who are you?"

I couldn't answer him. I said only, "I don't know." My hands cupped over my mouth at the shock of my voice, and then I pulled them away immediately to look at them. I was browner than the boy was. I hadn't remembered. I hadn't even known the color of my own skin. A sob rose in me.

"You're fine," insisted the boy, putting a hand on my shoulder. He might've meant it; he looked sincere in his attempt at a smile.

But I was far from fine. I didn't even know my own name! I pulled my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around them and squeezed tighter than anything, like everything would make more sense if I could just wrench it all into a compact ball. "I don't know my name. I don't know my name!" The words pressed through gritted teeth.

"Just hang in there. We'll be here when you get back."

Why? Where was I going? And who were we? A quick glance around the room showed me that there were three other beds besides the one I was in. They were all neatly made, like beds in hotels would be--unlike mine, a mess from my movement. That's all that was in the room: four beds and a square, barred window—a barred window. The window was barred. Where in the world was I? Sobs rose in me again.

"It will only make them come sooner!" said the boy. He kept looking up toward the ceiling and back, like something was there, and I began to feel that maybe he was more confused than I was—and then some terrifying deepness opened in me at the thought that this was an insane asylum. I was insane. Something had happened to me . . . had I ever been lucid? Was this even real? "But I guess they've already seen you wake up," the boy added in resignation. Clattering noises came from somewhere behind my head. I turned around and realized that beyond my bed, there was a door. Sounds of footsteps, the squeak of rubber tennis shoes, were coming from outside it, in a linoleum-floored hallway, I guessed. "See? They're here," were the boy's final words as a deep grating sounded and the lock in the door slid aside.

I jumped as a woman came into the room. She wore khaki pants and a long black jacket with words in white print across the front that read Oliphant Juvenile. The words meant nothing.

"Get up," she said as she came to me. She reached out her hands. I didn't want to go anywhere with her, but I did what she asked. Twisting my legs out of bed and getting to my feet, which ached with the weight of me though I was a scrap of a person, I saw that I was dressed only in a white hospital gown and in helplessness turned to the boy, who had backed away. He wasn't even looking at me anymore, the plump little traitor. I was speechless, and by the time the woman pulled me out of the room, my dread had morphed into nausea. I clutched my stomach as she dragged me through the halls, unable to focus on my surroundings. That boy had forgotten me. How could he have let her take me? How could I have let her take me? I wanted to go back. I wanted to give in to my weakness and vomit. And maybe even I wanted to follow this woman, who might have something to say. What should I feel? Nothing was making sense.

Sickness came over me completely when she got me into a room and sat me down in a chair. I couldn't remember anything about the building I'd just been through, and right when I took a seat, my stomach heaved. I leaned forward. The woman saw it coming and gave me a bucket, which I promptly threw up into. It was all liquid. I didn't know what had made me sick. The woman didn't say a word to me. She just stood at the door of the room like a guard. She didn't even turn in my direction, just let me sit there with my bucket, shivering, cold in my hospital gown, wanting so much to scream at her but having no physical ability to do so. I wanted her to talk. I didn't care who she was or why she'd pulled me into this little room. I could have forgiven her for a million things right then if she'd just spoken to me, but instead the moments stretched, and she ignored me.

Finally, I stopped gagging. A horrible taste permeated my mouth; it was almost enough to get me retching again, but I managed to keep my empty stomach still. It took a supreme effort, but it gave me something to concentrate on. If I weren't so occupied with just getting my breathing back on track, I would've let my fear overwhelm me again. I stared at my fingers as they gripped the bucket. No way was I going to look down inside it. Breathe, I told myself. Just breathe.

"It's about time you woke up."

I slowly lifted my head toward the voice. My unkempt black hair hung sadly in front of my eyes. Whatever I looked like, it couldn't have been pretty, but that was the last thing I could let myself worry about. A man had come into the office. He was thick and looming, gave the impression that a mountain had just shifted into my view, and it didn't help that I was unable to stand. His face wasn't worth describing—what mountain has a face?—but his hair was buzzed into a high plateau, turning his neckless head into a giant rectangle of flesh. The small, clean office around us didn't seem to fit him, I thought immediately. He looked like he belonged in a circus wrestling tigers or something.

"Isn't it? About time you woke up?" growled the man, moving ungracefully into the rolling chair behind the desk.

It took me a minute to realize that he wanted me to agree with him—that it was, in fact, about time I woke up. I didn't have anything to say, though; I hadn't any idea how long I'd been asleep and couldn't judge his opinion. I might have just been born, for all I knew.

He leaned forward on his elbows, which resembled two giant potatoes, and narrowed his eyes at me. "You don't know where you are, do you?"

I shook my head at him slowly, suddenly wondering if anyone was going to take the puke-bucket from me. It shouldn't have concerned me, considering the circumstances, but I was compelled to begin lowering it to the ground, to my side.

"Don't you dare," he immediately threatened, and as much as I wanted to be rid of that thing, something in me decided to listen, and I grudgingly pulled it back onto my lap. "That's right. Good girl. You've been out of it since you got here," he continued. "This is Oliphant Juvenile Center, OJC, where the bad kids come. You've been bad, young lady, and so they've sent you to me to deal with. Now!" He fell back against his chair hard. "You'll be here indefinitely. The rules of Oliphant are strict and simple. Don't do anything you haven't been given permission to do. You don't eat, sleep, or brush your teeth unless you're told you can do so. You can talk only in your room or in the mess hall, and even then, it had better be quiet. You'll start classes tomorrow. Character building, counseling, a little bit of academia . . . you get the idea. Ms. Benjamin will give you your schedule. If we have one peep—one peep—of misbehavior from you, I guarantee you'll regret it. Disrespect from minors is one hundred and five percent unacceptable, you understand?"

I one hundred and five percent did not understand. He'd said so much so coldly that I felt no more enlightened than when I'd come into the room. Was this man even human? "Please," I forced myself to say, though it was difficult to be polite. "Can you tell me why I'm here?"

He glowered at me, and it was clear in that moment that I was not the one in danger of being disrespectful. His mouth looked like a red hole in his face as he said softly, menacingly, "That's right. You don't remember."

"No, nothing." My words sounded strange, like those in some far-away dream.

"Don't you worry. I'm sure it'll all come back, and when it does, you'll wish it hadn't." He grinned, then practically leapt up from his chair. "You've been a bad girl, and that's all I can say about it. Now, get up and get out. Ms. Benjamin will give you a quick tour of the quarters. I hope I never have to see your face again."

"Wait!" I cried desperately when the lady by the door came toward me. "No! If I did something I have a right to know what it was! You can't just lock me up in here! Don't I—don't I get a—a lawyer or something? "

"Nope." He clicked his tongue and looked up at me. "Get your dirty hands off my desk. Don't ever touch my property unless I give you permission to do so." He backed away and nodded at the woman. "Go on Benjamin. Get her out of here."

"No! Just--just my name, then? Can't you tell me my name?"

"Oh!" the man held up a hand to Ms. Benjamin (who had taken firm hold of my upper arm) and said in a sort of daze, "We forgot our introductions now, didn't we?" All-politeness, he asked me to take my seat again, and Ms. Benjamin went back to the door. Then he came around and hovered in front of his desk. He crossed his thick arms; I was surprised he could do so. "I want you to call me nothing, because criminals don't get the privilege of speaking to me. And your name is . . . let me see. I looked it up right before they got you here. Hold on a second." He shifted to a file cabinet against the wall and rifled through folders stuffed with papers.

Sickness whirled in my stomach again, although it wasn't nausea; it was anticipation. I was so anxious—anxious to hear my name. It would have to bring my memory back. It would have to. What was my name?

"Here we are," he finally said, pulling out a paper, scanning it briefly, then putting it back into the drawer and slamming it shut. "That's right." He looked at me again. "Out there, people who actually care about you give you names." He jerked his thumb toward his window, which bright sunlight was pouring through. My heart leaped as if wanting to be out in that sun, but I kept myself seated. I wanted to know my name. "In here," he said, "I give you names. F-13."

I stared at him, not sure what I'd just heard. "F-13?" I repeated into the air.

"F-13. Remember it. You are worthless. You are nothing. You are no one. Benjamin!"

The woman scurried over to me and, latching onto my arm again, pulled me out of my chair. My shock was so much that I let the bucket fall from my lap, and I didn't even care when the man shouted and swore and got on his phone. He literally pushed us out the door. I yelled. About what, I barely knew. That I didn't understand, that some enormous mistake had been made and I didn't even know what it was. That my rights were being violated, though I wasn't sure whether that was true or not. That I hoped the puke smell never left his office. But nothing came of it, because I was too weak to do much more, and after about a minute, I was unable to make any noise at all for fear I'd collapse. I let that woman drag me through the halls again, although this time she tried to explain what things were. I didn't listen to anything she was saying. There were clocks hanging from the ceiling at every turn, and cameras were all over the hallways. Ms. Benjamin pulled me along. She pointed to doors and stairwells and said things. She had me glance through double-paned windows in the locked doors and I saw other young people, all dressed in the same sort of gray clothing, sitting at desks and listening to people talk. It was a big place. That was about the only conclusion I came to. The rest of my thoughts were too jumbled to make sense.

Then, suddenly, I was back in the room with the four beds and the boy. As the door swung shut and bolted behind me, I felt so awfully empty that I thought I was going to pass out. The boy came over to me, though I hardly saw him through the angry tears swimming in my eyes.

"You're fine," he said. "Sit down."

I did what he told me to. I was F-13. I was nothing. I was no one. I probably could've been molded into an airplane if somebody had tried to make me into one.

The boy was dressed in gray pants and a gray sweatshirt. There were words in black across the front: Oliphant Juvenile Student. How had I gotten into my white hospital gown? How had I gotten into that bed (which, I noticed while I sat on it, was now as neatly made as the others)? How long had I been asleep?

"Here," the boy said, handing me a gray sweatsuit like his own. He'd seemed to know my thoughts. "You've been here since yesterday afternoon. You were out of it all day and night. My name is Tobias. They call me S-20 when I'm out there, but you can call me Tobias."

My eyes stared unblinking at the wall beyond him. I could feel the itch in them, urging them to blink, but they were as stubborn as my brain seemed to be at remembering. "I don't know my name."

Tobias sat down next to me. I felt the questions in him. "You don't remember anything, huh?" he asked. "You're a no-name."

No name. That hurt. I put my face in my hands. "F-13," I said. "That's what he named me. F-13." I was adamant. I would have a name. I wasn't going to be called a no-name. Just because I couldn't remember didn't mean I was a nobody, that I wasn't worthy of a name, even if the only name I knew made me sound like a part on an assembly line.

"I know. But that's not what we'll call you. We'll call you something else . . ." He thought. "I don't know. What do you want your name to be? I'll ask Roxie. She's better with that kind of stuff. Now listen. This must all seem really strange. They don't explain things too good, so I'll try to do better. This is where they send bad kids. It's like jail for minors, you know? So you had to have committed a crime or something, since you're here."

"But I don't remember doing anything."

"Doesn't matter. Why would you be here if you didn't do something wrong? It's why we're all here. This is like school, though. Do you remember what school is?"

"Yes," I snapped. "I'm not an idiot." Then my heart sank. "I know what it is. I don't remember, though."

Tobias sighed. I didn't know if it was because he felt sorry for me or because he was annoyed that he'd have to explain so much. "Right. Well, we have classes here, just like in normal school, except . . . different. They're stupid. People talk to you about how to make yourself better and everything. Really lame. Then you've got gym, where they work you pretty hard. I don't know about the girls, actually, but they're pretty hard on us guys. Jason almost killed himself yesterday. Jason's the other guy in this room. And there's Roxie, too. There used to be another girl, but you replaced her. She left. Roxie's ok. You'll get along with her as long as you stay on her good side. And Jason's cool, but he's real weird. Just don't go near him when he gets this crazy thing going on with his eyes—that's when he's a little dangerous. Me—I'm never bad. I'm everybody's friend. Don't you worry about me." He fell silent momentarily, then perked back to conversation, all seriousness. "Oh. And this is really important."

He pointed at the two cameras in opposite corners of the ceiling which moved slowly left to right, scanning the entire room.

"They watch everything," he whispered so softly I barely heard him, " except for in the bathrooms--we think." He pointed behind him. The room was shaped so that the door was down a short piece of hallway. This was because there were two bathrooms that stuck out from the walls, one on either side of where the door was, creating a little alcove.

"They have cameras everywhere, and they listen to what we say, too, but the recordings must not be the best. Because some people have made plans before and nobody's picked up on them until they almost went through with them."

"Plans?"

"Sure. Sometimes . . ." he leaned in toward me as if, in spite of his words, he feared that somebody really were listening in on us. "Sometimes people try to escape. None have ever made it."

That word—escape—made me feel hollow again. I still had so many unanswered questions. Most of all, what had happened to my brain? Why couldn't I remember anything? And if Tobias and that man were to be believed, I had committed a crime of some sort. Who was I?

"Tobias," I snapped, eyeing him warily, "Why are you here?"

He looked away from me and sort of frowned. Then he took a deep breath, almost grudgingly. "Held up some convenience stores—nothing too serious. They thought it was, though." He nodded his head toward nothing in particular. "It was all fun until somebody got shot. I didn't do it, if that's what you're thinking. I'm not that bad. The really bad ones go in the high security section."

I was relieved to hear him say that. Not only did it mean that I was not going to be sharing a room with murderers but it also meant that whatever I'd apparently done, it wasn't as bad as it could have been. Self-loathing crept into me; my brain might as well have been dead for what it was worth, and I had done something illegal for which I'd been placed in a bizarre prison. Then there was my name. I didn't even have a name. What sort of person doesn't recall her own name?

Nausea threatened once again, its fingers pressing into the depths of my empty stomach. I needed to lie down. I went back to my bed and, not caring if I disturbed the covers, curled back onto the squeaking mattress and stiff pillow. Tobias just watched me. Maybe this is all a nightmare, I thought. Soon, I'll wake up. I realized, to my misery, that if this were a dream, I had no idea what I expected to wake up to.