More days passed. I remained as uncommunicative as ever. Roxie didn't try to tell me anything else at night, and I was glad of it. I couldn't figure out what she'd been trying to tell me the first time, anyway. It mustn't have been too important, though, because she didn't seem to act any differently.

I started to get used to my routine. The only class I absolutely loathed was Basic Character Building. The reason I couldn't stand it was because the teacher was constantly asking me his unanswerable questions. I never knew the answers, and even if I did, I wouldn't have wanted to give them. I hated talking. Not just because it put me in the spotlight in front of everybody else, but also because the sound of my own voice bothered me. Sometimes when I talked I thought, Is that really how I sound? Am I just stuck in somebody else's body? Because that was how I felt most of the time. Everyone probably thought I was weird. They didn't know that I couldn't even remember the name of the person I was sitting inside, the one whose voice I answered questions with.

Dr. Scarpoli was the teacher in Basic Character Building. I couldn't stand him. He was a middle-aged man about five-foot-four with a nose like a witch's. There was a ring of pepperish hair circling the large bald spot on the top of his head, so he sort of looked like one of those old religious men from the Middle Ages, and liver spots were appearing on his exposed skin like cancerous freckles. He dressed in suits. A different shade of brown every day. He wore steely little glasses that always reflected the glaring fluorescent lights overhead. We could never see his actual eyes unless he turned a certain way; maybe he did that on purpose so he could sort of spy on us when we didn't think he was watching. Of course, I could tell he was always watching. Something about him made me kind of anxious when I sat in his classroom. I never felt comfortable there. Always had to keep guard over my mind so it wouldn't wander and give him the chance to get the better of me. And he was a doctor, apparently, although I had some doubts. He was teaching a basic class to a bunch of juvenile delinquents; how could he not want to be doing more with his life if he were a doctor?

Yes, it was his class that I hated most. Even my therapy sessions were better. Easier. Less nerve-wracking. Of course, it was also in Dr. Scarpoli's torture chamber that I first heard about Henry. From the people whispering behind me, I mean—not from him. I didn't know their names, and I didn't care about them either. They were just a couple more numbers I couldn't retain in a sea of empty faces. One was a girl, one was a boy. Both looked fairly young, I thought. Neither ever spoke to me at all.

We weren't allowed to talk during Dr. Scarpoli's lectures, of course, and he lectured ninety-nine percent of the time (the other one percent was reserved for his torturous questions). Being caught whispering to a classmate could mean isolation for a day, or missing a meal, or who knew what else, but none of those repercussions seemed to bother the two sitting behind me. They were very quiet. I had to strain, to lean back as inconspicuously as possible, to hear what they said. It was a full class, so all students sat a little bit closer than we normally did in other rooms. There were twenty-one of us in all, and that was considered a packed room. Almost ridiculously packed. But that was the only reason I heard what the two were saying: we were closer than normal.

"Did you hear about Mara?" asked the boy.

I had no idea who Mara was. When people talked about each other, they used real names. Not letters and numbers. Those titles were for the teachers and other adults. So "Mara" meant nothing to me. I might've known who it was if the boy had said P-49 or K-33, but he hadn't. I was clueless.

"No," whispered the girl.

"Henry got to her," said the boy.

The girl gasped. "Did she make it?"

The boy sighed so softly I was surprised I heard him. "Do they ever?"

"What's the count?"

"Mara makes five."

"That's crazy."

"If he contacted me, I'd do it."

"You would?"

The boy sighed again. "Better than sitting around here for another year."

By that time, I was engrossed. I was listening so hard that I didn't hear Dr. Scarpoli's question the first time he asked it. I was even leaning back farther than I'd realized, so when he barked my number, I kind of jolted back into my usual position.

"F-13!" the man shouted right into my ear, showering spittle. He was bending down to my height and I felt my head swell with the sudden pain in my eardrum. "What is your answer?"

I felt my mouth and throat start to dry up, as if I'd sucked in sand. I didn't think I could've answered even if I'd known what the question was—which was the real problem; I had no clue what Dr. Scarpoli had asked.

"You weren't daydreaming, were you?" hissed the hateful man. "I don't approve of daydreamers. Dreams lead to trouble, and you—every one of you—should know that. If you can't answer the question, you can go straight to your unit supervisor. I don't think she'd be happy to hear you weren't paying attention in class."

Dr. Scarpoli stared at me with his beady eyes. I couldn't bring myself to look at him, to give him direct eye contact. If he'd known anything about me, he'd have known that I couldn't possibly have been daydreaming about my future: how could I fantasize about what I'd become when I didn't even know who I'd been? But I couldn't admit to what I'd really been doing, or it would've implicated the two behind me, and I was fairly certain they wouldn't have appreciated that. So I just kept my mouth shut and my eyes down, and before I knew it, a black coat whisked through the door and led me out of the room.

Ms. Benjamin was not happy. I didn't know what happened to students who were pulled out of class. In one of my previous classes a boy had been pulled for talking out loud. I'd heard rumors of punishments, but I had no idea if they were true or not. I hadn't done anything offensive! I'd only missed a question. So what?

I didn't talk to Ms. Benjamin, but as my surroundings became familiar in a vague sort of way, I figured where she was taking me: I was going to see rectangle head. The mountain. I hadn't seen him since my first day, when I'd woken up, and I definitely didn't want to see him again. Not like I had a choice, though. My stomach sank and my legs got shaky just thinking about him. I was ashamed of my fear, but I couldn't help feeling nauseated all over again. As we went through the clean halls, I could hear none of the teachers' voices as they taught. There were classrooms all along the walk, and I knew that teachers were lecturing, but the doors were sealed shut and the walls were thick so no sound could escape the rooms--it was as trapped as all the teenagers inside. There were also video cameras at every angle throughout the hallways in addition to those in each room. I had kind of gotten used to them, but as I was led toward that man's office, I felt more keenly that he might be watching my every move.

When we reached the first floor and got to the front of the building, Ms Benjamin slipped a security card into a slot in the office door, and the great metal slab slid aside. In we went. There was a small waiting area before his actual office. I didn't remember it being there before, but then I'd been so sick and frantic that first time that I didn't remember much of anything. I could hear muffled voices coming from his closed office, but I couldn't make out what they were saying. He must've been in a meeting. Ms. Benjamin motioned for me to sit down and took up her position standing watch over me, but no sooner had she settled in then a small black pin on her jacket beeped and lit up. Glancing at it, she turned to me, then looked to rectangle head's door.

She made up her mind. "I've got a situation. He knows you're coming, and we're watching. Don't try anything stupid." With a wave at the cameras, she let herself out of the waiting room. Was an escort supposed to leave the person she was escorting? Weren't we volatile and dangerous? She obviously didn't consider me such. Either that or her "situation" was really bad. Whatever it was, I found myself suddenly alone in a nerve-wracking silence that was broken only with the blurred conversation going on in rectangle head's office. At first, my own breath sufficed as a focus, but then I realized that if I listened hard enough, I could make out bits of what was being said inside the office.

There were two voices—one that was the rectangle's and another I didn't recognize. Both were loud and overlapping each other, which told me that they were probably arguing. My interest held for only a few seconds, because I couldn't make out too much, heated words here and there that rose and then fell, as if someone was trying to reconcile or steer the conversation in a more productive way. But then I heard a name practically yelled out: Henry. One of them had said Henry. Wasn't he the boy that the two people behind me in Dr. Scarpoli's class had been discussing? They'd said something about Henry.

That caught me.

Rolling my eyes up toward the cameras, I chewed my lower lip. They'd know if I moved. Would it matter? Would they care that I was trying to listen? An idea came. Casually, I turned to the floor, then leapt up as if I'd seen a spider. Attempting to look frightened, I scooted out of my seat and took the chair closer to the office door, staring at my imaginary arachnid as I went. I couldn't take the risk of leaning too close to the door, but I tilted my head as much as I dared to catch every scrap of conversation I could get. Something inside me seemed to spark at the mention of that name--Henry. I wanted to hear whatever I could, to learn what I could.

"--him out of my school!" That was rectangle head. I could picture the veins standing out on his thick neck.

"It's not happening," countered the other voice. "At least—not yet." Then he mumbled something quieter, something I didn't catch.

"Don't patronize me!"

Lucky for me, that large, fleshy man had a booming voice, and he was worked up enough that his half of the conversation was quite clear when it flared in beat with his temper.

"It's been over six months, now, and you're no closer to getting him out of here than you were when you first threw him in! . . . I know . . . using me! . . . He's in high security and he still manages . . . fifth girl since he got here! . . . My paycheck comes from the government! So you can take that back to them and shove it--"

He was cut off so abruptly that I momentarily wondered if he'd had a heart attack or been stabbed (neither of which would have made me cry), but as I stretched myself as close as I dared and strained to hear what was going on, I could tell that someone was actually talking, though very, very quietly, threateningly. Then there was complete silence, so quiet that I again focused on my breath, but the moment I found comfort in that I was literally shocked out of my seat when the office door swung inward a few inches. Thankfully, whoever had pulled it had hesitated for some reason, long enough for me to scramble back to my original seat, not really thinking about how awkward it would look on the cameras.

A quiet, sinister voice drifted crystal-clear through the open door, now. "Henry's been completely wiped. He knows nothing. That's how they want it, so that's how it'll be. You don't like it, call them yourself--see how amenable they are to your incompetence."

Rectangle head answered him quickly, before the mystery speaker could leave, but this time, his voice was small, cowardly. "Wh-what about the other one?"

"Other one?" The door nearly closed again but by some small miracle remained open a crack.

"Don't you know? Another no name. Some girl a couple weeks ago. No clue who she is. Maybe if you'd tell me--"

"Might've been from the Eden Circuit. She's not under my care. None of my concern."

The man I remembered as towering and terrifying when I'd awoken to this miserable life suddenly roused himself again, snarled, "If she tries anything like Henry does--I swear--he pulls one more stunt of his and I'll kill the damned—"

Rectangle head's words suddenly choked on themselves and the stranger drawled, "If you touch the boy, you'll lose more than this dead-end job."

My body went cold.

"We're always watching."

Something told me to move, but there was nowhere to go! I couldn't just leave the waiting room . . . couldn't move any farther than I already had! But before I could figure out what I could do, the office door whipped inward and a figure stepped out into the waiting room. I tried not to look at him, but I knew he was staring at me and couldn't help turning my eyes upward. He was tall and lean and wearing standard business attire. His jet hair was slicked back and shining, and his eyes were black and calculating, strange in comparison with his clean-shaven, square jaw. As he stared down at me, some recognition seemed to flicker across his mind, because he smiled at me--or sneered, more like, like he was not only startled by but disgusted with my presence. He knew things . . . he knew something about me . . . as normal as he looked on the outside, there was something intensely abnormal about him, and he knew something--I was sure of it!

There was no time for me to figure out what, though. He whisked importantly across the waiting area and through the door long before I could garner any courage to say or do anything.

I was once again left alone. When I looked back to the office door, it had been closed. There was no way I was going to knock on it. Rectangle head would no doubt be in a dangerous mood. In fact, I wondered if he were even still alive or in one piece. The way that argument had sounded, he'd lost it, and he was a big guy. The man who'd just left his office wasn't half the size of him.

I had to have sat in that waiting room for two hours. I felt like I was going to die of boredom by the time Ms. Benjamin remembered I was there and came to get me. I never did see rectangle head that day, so I didn't get in trouble for what had happened in Dr. Scarpoli's class (although waiting in that office had been punishment enough). The only thing that kept me going during my wait was contemplating what I'd heard about this Henry person, and he was still on my mind when I got back to my dormitory room.

The wall wasn't down between us yet. We had about forty minutes to kill until dinner. Roxie was flitting around the room like she usually was at that time—before she'd gotten rid of all her energy and things she felt she had to say. She was going off on some teacher again, getting all flushed just thinking about the person. I wasn't paying her any attention. I just went over to my bed and sat down on it, trying to avoid the obvious stare Tobias and Jason gave me. They knew I'd gotten in trouble for something because I'd come in so much later than them. Roxie didn't seem to notice me. Not until she got annoyed that no one was joining in her venting and turned on me, the weakest arguer in the room.

"And what are you so quiet about, Nadia? Idiota. You hate him too. I heard he kicked you out of class today for not answering a question. That's where you've been all afternoon, isn't it? In the office?"

For as quiet as we were all supposed to be, gossip traveled fast at Oliphant. "Are you talking about Dr. Scarpoli?"

"Claro que soy yo!" Roxie practically yelled at me. She was really worked up. "Pendejo! He thinks he can keep me in from lunch just for turning to look at the empty seat behind me? Mara was supposed to be sitting there. How was I supposed to know she wasn't? Lo odio tanto! Quiero matarlo!"

She went on in a string of Spanish that I was sure included a bunch of words we weren't supposed to say. On and on she went. When she mentioned the name Mara, I guessed she was talking about the same girl that the two behind me in class had been talking about. The one Henry had gotten to, as they'd said. And that Henry had to be the one I'd heard about in the office--he was some sort of problem. Someone rectangle head definitely didn't want around. And there was something else. Something that the other man had said that made me anxious. He'd referred to someone as a no name, and I was pretty certain he'd meant me. That was what Tobias had called me. I was a no name. If Henry were one too . . . maybe he could help me. Or maybe not. If he couldn't remember anything about himself either, then how could he be of help to me? Could it be possible that we were somehow linked in our loss of memory? We had something in common, and that was why we'd both been placed in Oliphant without any memories? Why were both of us no names? Who was this boy that everyone seemed to be so wary of?

"Do you know who Henry is?" I found myself asking, the thought making its way out through my mouth.

Instantly, Roxie ceased ranting. I was surprised that she'd even caught my question; it was so quiet compared to her outburst. But my three roommates had heard me clearly and suddenly, all of their eyes were on me. They looked confused, amazed, even. Roxie came right up to me and shoved me so hard that I fell over onto my bed. She was a lot stronger than she looked--crazier, too--and I felt confident that she'd done some pretty stupid things to earn a place at Oliphant. She knelt on top of me and pinned me down, her pretty face contorted with anger, and I was actually scared of her. "Don't you ever say his name around here!" she hissed.

"Hey!" called Tobias. He jumped off his bed and came over to Roxie, pulling her off of me. "Leave her alone, all right?" He waved an arm at the cameras. "You want to bring all hell in here?" His words brought a sense of gravity back into the room, which seemed to swirl when

I sat up. Anger rushed through me. How could I have let that girl attack me? In my imagination, I saw myself fighting back, but nothing about my small horrible world gave me enough confidence to actually do it.

"What's wrong with her wanting to know?" asked Tobias, after we'd settled. He spoke quietly but seriously. Did it matter if the cameras heard us? "Everybody wonders about him. She's just now heard him mentioned somewhere and is curious, that's all. Right, Nadia?"

I nodded silently. That was the truth.

Jason sat cross-legged on his mattress, leaned against the wall like he was beyond all of us. "And what's it matter to you, Roxie? I've never seen you so moved by talk of Henry."

"You shut up!" cried Roxie, her tight ponytail swishing as she fixed her narrowed eyes on Jason.

I was glad her attention had been diverted. She and Jason had a sort of stare-down, but nothing came of it except Roxie huffing off into the bathroom, slamming the door.

Tobias looked at me sternly, like a big brother would look at a little sister. He came and sat on my bed, spoke so low I barely heard him myself: "We don't talk much about him, because they might realize we are." He cocked his head toward the cameras. "For some reason, they really care about everything to do with him. He contacts people--girls--to try to escape with him. We don't know why he's in here, but he must've done something really bad. He's been locked in the highest security they've got. No one's ever seen him, but if Henry contacts you, it's your chance to try to get out."

"But if he's in such high security, how can he contact anybody at all? Don't they watch him closely?"

Tobias shrugged. "That's something all of us would like to know, too. It's risky, going through him. To date, we don't know of anyone who's actually gotten out. But some have come real close, and it's only a matter of time before one gets away. Then . . . who knows?"