What I didn't put together was that Roxie had been planning to escape. She'd been figuring it out for some weeks when she finally attempted to do it. After everything happened, I saw the things I hadn't at first. When she'd been talking to me in the middle of the night, she'd been trying to tell me about her plans. She'd just decided to give it a go. And all of her exercising in the room—that had been her physical preparation for the actual event. It was hard for me to see earlier because I'd been so absorbed in my own thoughts, like my memory loss and Henry, what I'd heard in the office and my therapy session, and Jason's note. Everything was just clouding my own mind so much that I couldn't see what was happening with her. When I did catch what was going on, I wished I hadn't, because it made things even more tense.

It was about a week after my therapy session. I hadn't even looked at Jason since he'd given me that note—not like I'd ever looked at him anyway. I didn't go to any more therapy, but Roxie had to go to hers. So I was just sitting in my side of the room by myself again when something urged me to go to the window.

I'd noticed the barred window the first time I'd awoken. It was divided in half when the wall went down, so both the boys and us had one, and it was made of some sort of glass run through with a wire meshing in addition to the bars. I'd known it was there, but I'd never felt too inclined to look out of it, seeing as the only thing visible was a square of grass below surrounded by walls, which created a sort of courtyard nobody used. Perhaps had the days been sunny, I might have spent some time staring up into a blue sky, but it seemed gray was the only color ever surrounding Oliphant. In any case, I decided to look out of the window at that moment. It was kind of high up, so I had to pull my bed toward the wall in order to stand on top of it. Gripping the bars, I helped myself up to the pane. What I saw wasn't anything more than the other walls of Oliphant, though walls without windows. Could that be high security? It was the first time I'd wondered it.

While I was just standing there, staring at the other building walls and the dark green grass three stories below me, I saw something that shocked me so much I figured I had to be dreaming. It was late afternoon, so the sun wasn't shining high. Shadows were between the two wings of Oliphant. But that didn't keep me from making out the clear figure of a girl slinking along the wall opposite my window. Of course, she was on the ground, but how had she gotten out there? And she was very obviously not a worker--not in that gray sweatsuit. Then I noticed something that made me feel even more anxious: The person down there had a long brunette ponytail. It was Roxie.

I had no idea what she was doing at first. I wondered if maybe she was lost or had been sent outside to do some sort of chore. But as I watched her, I knew that she wasn't outside for either of those reasons. Nobody went outside. Not even the physical education classes. When I realized that, everything started sinking in.

She was trying to escape.

My stomach lurched. On one hand, I didn't care about Roxie at all. She was no sort of friend to me in her up and down moods. Still, she was not on Oliphant's side. She was on our side—the side of every one of us who was stuck in that awful place—and even if she wasn't a friend, I didn't exactly want anything bad to happen to her. There wasn't anything I could do, though. I just watched until she'd skimmed out of my sight, gone to who-knew-where, and then I started to wonder if I'd really seen her at all. Maybe she'd been an apparition, a daydream, a hallucination. For her sake, I hoped she was, because if they caught her, I had a feeling things wouldn't be pretty.

I figured that if Roxie really had been down there, I'd know soon enough; if she didn't return from her therapy, I'd know it. So I sat the next hour or so practically shaking with nerves. I didn't know what to do with myself. If Roxie didn't come back, my whole world as I knew it was shaken up again. I didn't want to be alone with the boys. I definitely didn't want to be around Jason without Roxie, whose volatile nature had kept him off my back more than once.

The clock on the wall ticked the minutes by. The sky outside darkened. I sat on my bed, which felt awfully uncomfortable all of a sudden, and waited for the wall to go up. Four o'clock came; I knew Roxie should've been back half an hour ago. Tobias and Jason would notice her absence right away. Our half of the room would appear pretty much empty, because I was usually invisible to them; they tended to look through or around me. And what would they think of spending time just with me? Me and not her? It wasn't like Roxie's absence was my fault, but I was much more anxious than she probably deserved. I was also wondering whether she'd make it. Every minute that went past, I expected sirens to go off or lights flashing, but nothing happened. I mean, I didn't know what they did when people tried to escape. For all I knew, she'd already been caught. I just couldn't tell.

The sudden crank and groan of the rising wall made my head spin. I hurt my neck I turned so fast. I didn't want to see Jason and Tobias. I didn't want them looking around my half of the room, asking questions about Roxie. It wasn't like I had a choice, though. Soon, Tobias's face appeared. He was crawling between the walls before they were even separated all the way. That wasn't a smart thing to do—the wall was heavy. If it decided to come back down, it could probably cut him in half.

"Where is she?" he asked immediately.

I just shrugged.

He knew. I could tell he knew. Maybe because he'd been looking out of the window on his side at the same time I'd been staring out of mine. Maybe he'd seen Roxie, too. When the wall was fully up, I saw Jason sitting on his bed, flipping through a notebook. He didn't act as if anything were different, as if a quarter of us was missing. Either he didn't care about what was going on, or he was stupid. Just when I was thinking that neither of those things fit Jason's personality, a third possibility struck my mind: Had he known what she was going to do? That sounded more like him.

Tobias saw me staring in confusion at Jason, and he said all flushed, "Just ignore him. He's being a jerk, acting like nothing's even happening."

"Do you think he knew?" I whispered. I didn't want Jason to hear me talk about him.

"Oh, he knew all right. He must've figured it out a long time ago and never told me. Like he doesn't even care! I saw her out of the window, trying to leave."

I nodded. "Me too. And if we saw her, that means someone else must've, too. There's no way we were the only ones."

Rubbing his forehead and re-adjusting his glasses, Tobias blew a breath out of his doughy cheeks and said, "I never would've guessed it. She always talked against the ones who try to run. But if anyone's smart enough to make it . . . it's her."

With a barely-audible scoff, I said mostly to myself, "Not too smart if the two of us both saw her."

Even though Tobias and I spoke quietly, Jason heard us, and not moving his eyes from his notebook, he said, "Roxie is about as smart as a maze-rat. Short cuts. It's all about the short cuts. Too impatient."

"Impatient!?" exclaimed Tobias. "Are you joking? Do you want to stay here? I think I'd do about anything to get back outside. My time isn't up for another three months. I'm about to go crazy in here! And Roxie . . . she had longer. Six more months. I don't blame her at all. It's not a short cut—she's doing it the harder way, if you ask me."

Jason startled us by actually throwing his notebook onto the floor as if something offensive had been said. He jumped off his bed. "You think she's smart for doing that? You think she has a chance? You're dreaming if you think that. You're as dumb as you are fat. There's no way she's getting anywhere. She's going to be caught like all the rest. Nobody Henry ever contacted has made it. I don't know why anyone would listen to that jackass over there." He motioned out the window toward the high security wing. "Bunch of morons—anybody who takes him up on his offers. Everybody needs to just stop complaining and do their time. So just shut up about her being smart. That's the last thing she is." He turned away and leaned over to pick up his notebook.

"What about your time, huh?" Tobias said in a low voice, a dangerous voice. He was offended, and he was worried about Roxie probably more than she deserved, but it was the wrong thing to do--talk about Jason to his face. "You got a whole year to go, even though you've already been here three months. Talk about stupid, man—you're it. You got yourself in longer than anybody here I know . . . and for reasons I think you're too ashamed to admit. Seems to me maybe you're the moron, Jason."

I was standing about a foot behind Tobias, and even though I hadn't been the one to say anything, I was probably more afraid than he was. Jason was tall and athletic; Tobias was short and dumpy. It was pretty obvious which one of them would have the upper hand if they got in a fight. And Jason looked pretty angry. His eyes widened. Then I remembered what Tobias had told me a long time ago—about Jason's eyes—and I had a feeling that the way they were now was the way I didn't want to see them. They looked like black holes, as if the dark brown irises had expanded, and I could see the rage begin to surge behind them. There was no need to look at his reddening face or trembling shoulders to know that trouble was about to erupt.

"You don't know what you're talking about!" hissed Jason between clenched teeth. "You have no idea."

Tobias had begun to regret speaking but wouldn't back down. "W-well, all I know is that y-you can't talk about other people like that, because you don't know what you're talking about, then."

Stepping closer, Jason eliminated the six inches of space between him and Tobias. He was practically on top of him, towering over the shorter boy. I backed up, but Tobias didn't budge. Either he was asking for it, or he knew Jason better than I did--I hoped for that, and yet my eyes turned to the cameras, wondering if anyone were watching this and knew to come running.

"You think I'm here cause I belong here, don't you?" said Jason in a low, controlled voice, more terrifying than anything I'd heard out of Roxie. "You think I'm dangerous, right? Maybe I am--but I'm not a killer, at least. I'm not someone who'd take the God-given life from another person. I'm not someone who's got no right to be standing here in this room. What do you know, Tobias? What do you know at all about her?" He pointed, and it was a moment before my brain registered that he was directing his finger toward me.

I instinctively moved so the backs of my legs were up against my bed. Jason was staring right at me with his freaky eyes. I hated him. I'd thought before that the two of us just didn't get along, but now I knew I hated him. How could he possibly know anything about me?

Tobias bumped his chest against Jason to regain his attention. "Oh yeah?" he cried. "Well if she's done something that bad, she'd be in high security!"

I couldn't believe he was standing up for me. Maybe Tobias didn't care about me at all, though; he could've just been trying to reassure himself that he wasn't in a room with a killer. And that's what I was doing, too, in my mind--over and over, I was telling myself that whatever Jason thought of me, he was wrong. I couldn't have done anything more terrible than either of them, otherwise I'd be over in the wing that held the real criminals. The one where Henry was.

"When are you going to figure out that they don't treat those no names the same? There're different rules for them. There's a reason they've forgotten everything. Maybe I don't know what it is, but there is one. Those of us that can remember . . . we're just kicked around like dirt. But those freaks," he pointed at me again, "those total blanks . . . everybody steps around them! Look at Henry! How many times has he been let off? Don't you think they'd have medicated him or sent him somewhere else by now? After what he's done? The murderer. How stupid are you, Tobias? Doesn't anything stick in that massive head of yours?"

Tobias's breathing got heavier. I couldn't see his face, but something told me he was trying to keep his rage in. He couldn't do it, though. He shoved Jason hard in the chest.

It was like Jason had known it was coming, though. He fell back a foot, but it wasn't a stumble. He kept himself on his feet. I thought for sure he was going to swing at Tobias. Horrible things played out in my head. Jason had supposedly beaten up someone—right? that was why he was there! I didn't want to see it happen right in front of me. Instead of punching Tobias, though, Jason said in a shaky but calm voice, "You don't want to start something."

"Yeah, I do!" shouted Tobias.

"No . . ." replied Jason, sincerely. "Trust me; you don't."

For a very short moment, I was actually impressed with Jason. The way Tobias was fired up, I was certain Jason would be on top of him. It would've been hard to keep control. I didn't have much time to think anything else, though, because right when Tobias opened his mouth to say something again, the door on my side of the room slid open and three people (including Ms. Benjamin) hurried in. One was holding things, but I couldn't really tell what they were. I figured maybe restraining devices or something, because the first idea that came to me was that they'd seen Jason and Tobias getting ready to fight on the cameras, and they'd come to break them up. Either that, or they'd come to look for Roxie. That was the second thing that occured to me. So I was utterly shocked when one of the people came over to me and pulled both my arms behind my back.

"You'll have to sedate her," said Ms. Benjamin.

Some sort of words rose up in me but were choked by shock. What was going on? Did they think I'd had something to do with the boys' argument? Why would I need sedation? Before I could ask, the other person was pulling out a needle and sticking it in my arm. Within seconds, the room around me blackened. The last thing I saw was Jason's face, and it looked, unsurprisingly, happy.