Page 39 of Controlled Chaos

“A month. Long enough to get the alcohol out of my system and figure out something weird is going on here.”

“Alcohol,” I asked. “I thought the program mainly dealt with drugs.”

“They do, but my uncle Edward pulled some strings to get me out of my DUI, with the condition that I go through the program.”

“You mean the same Edward who went through my suitcase?” I asked.

“He does that to everyone when they arrive, including mine.”

“So, how did you sneak out?” I asked. “I thought they put the barracks on lockdown at night.”

She grinned. “They do, but I found a way out within the first three days. It’s just a matter of waiting for everyone to fall asleep before I sneak out.”

“You do realize they’ll kick you out of the program if they figure out that you’re the one who stole my clothes.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not sure I want to be on the island anymore. Not with whatever they got going on. As it is, I sleep with one eye open.”

“So, what did you see when you touched the symbol in the envelope, I gave you?” I asked.

She glanced at me. “Hope.”

Her answer was to the point. She should have seen what she desired most. I couldn’t blame her for sleeping with one eye open. I was beginning to feel that I needed to do the same thing. Visions flashed into my mind, fast and hard. My steps slowed, and I rested my hand on Frankie’s arm. “Give me a second.”

“You aren’t going to have a heart attack or something, are you?”

I wasn’t ready to share my secret, at least not yet, but I couldn’t look away from what I was seeing. I didn’t want to break the connection.

I was standing somewhere with a group of girls. Their faces and clothes were dirty. I’d only recognized one. The rest were in the shadow. The girl that had been wearing handcuffs with bags beneath her eyes was standing in front of me.

The vision changed to that of me in that damn dirt field. Porter standing over me, holding a gun pointed at my head. There was no emotion on his face. Nothing to even suggest that he had reason to pull the trigger. Thaddeus was standing beside him. “Kill her.”

“Porter, you don’t want to do this,” I begged.

His eyes were flat and unfocused.

“When I blow the whistle, you will pull that trigger, and then you will feed her body to the sharks.”

Porter cocked the trigger.

“You can daydream on your own time.” Frankie touched my arm, and the vision vanished just as quickly as it had hit. Panic raced down my spine as I opened my eyes. A fateful knowing settled in my gut. If I didn’t stay, that girl would most definitely die, and if I did, I was the one who’d get the bullet with her name on it.

“Sorry,” I said as my mind raced with the implications of what I’d seen. I followed behind Frankie, lost in my own thoughts until we reached the fence.

She climbed over it first, and I followed behind her into the darker recesses on the other side, the forbidden zone.

“Do they do any type of hypnotism on the island that you know of?”

“Well, yeah,” she answered, pulling a sling bag over her head. She handed one to me. “That’s one of the ways they get you to quit the drugs, along with the therapy, but they hypnotize us every other day to drill home the point that we can live without the drugs and that we don’t even crave them.”

I swallowed hard around the lump in my throat. Had that been the reason Porter was holding the gun and going to kill me? If that was the case, then I was in worse trouble than I thought.

How long had Thaddeus, his daddy, and Edward been in Porter’s mind? How long had his hypnotic suggestions been like shadows in the brain waiting to see the light? Were these suggestions toying with his mind? Was that why he’d gotten sick after we’d scaled the fence? I didn’t know anything about how to remove any post hypnotic suggestions. Was it even possible?

---