Margaret Ellison - The Conservatory

Vera had been sitting in the leather chair for forty-seven minutes. She knew because the grandfather clock in the corner announced each quarter hour with a sound like breaking bones, and she had counted three chimes since Mrs. Caldwell told her to wait.

The portraits watched her. Seventeen former headmistresses, their painted eyes following her slight movements. Vera traced the brushstrokes in their mouths with her gaze. Thin lips, all of them. Mouths that knew how to keep secrets.

Mrs. Caldwell’s pen scratched against paper behind the mahogany desk. The sound reminded Vera of fingernails on coffin wood, though she couldn’t remember where she’d heard that comparison before. The memory felt borrowed, like most of her memories did these days.

“Your parents have made a generous donation,” Mrs. Caldwell said without looking up. Her silver hair caught the afternoon light streaming through the tall windows. “The scholarship fund appreciates their understanding.”

Vera’s hands remained folded in her lap. She had learned not to flinch at the lies anymore. Her parents had been dead for three years. Car accident on the interstate, black ice, gone in an instant. She remembered the funeral, the flowers, the way her aunt Sarah had cried into a tissue that turned gray with mascara.

“I’m grateful,” Vera said, because that was what was expected.

“Of course you are.” Mrs. Caldwell finally raised her eyes. They were pale blue, like winter sky. “Dr. Thorne would like to see you this afternoon. Four o’clock in the conservatory.”

The conservatory. Vera’s stomach tightened. Through the office windows, she could see the glass structure attached to the main building like a tumor. Beautiful and wrong. Inside, the orchids were always dying, their petals dropping to the heated floor like tears.

“May I ask why?”

“Your wellness evaluation, dear. We want to ensure you’re adjusting properly to your final semester.” Mrs. Caldwell’s smile was perfectly calibrated. Warm enough to seem caring, cold enough to discourage questions. “You’ve been through so much.”

Vera nodded. The script was familiar now. She stood, smoothed her uniform skirt, and walked toward the door. The portraits seemed to shift as she passed, seventeen dead women turning their heads to watch her leave.

In the hallway, other girls moved between classes like sleepwalkers. Their footsteps echoed against the marble floors, a rhythm that had once seemed elegant but now felt like a countdown. Vera recognized most of them. Camila with her perfect posture and pharmaceutical smile. Joss disappearing inside her blazer like it might swallow her whole. Priya walking with purpose toward somewhere the rest of them couldn’t see.

They were all here for reasons that made sense on paper. Academic excellence. Financial need. Promising futures. But Vera had begun to notice things. The way certain girls were selected for special attention. The way their files were thicker than others. The way Dr. Thorne took notes during lunch, watching them eat or not eat, watching them laugh or stay silent.

The dormitory was quiet when Vera returned to her room. Her roommate Elena sat at her desk, writing another letter she would never send. The wastebasket overflowed with crumpled pages, words in three languages that meant the same thing: help me.

“How was your meeting?” Elena asked without turning around.

“The usual.” Vera sat on her narrow bed and stared at the window. Beyond the glass, the conservatory waited. Four o’clock was still three hours away, but she could already feel the weight of Dr. Thorne’s questions, the careful way she would probe for weakness like a dentist searching for decay.

Elena’s pen stopped moving. “Vera?”

“Yes?”

“Do you ever wonder why we’re really here?”

The question hung in the air between them. Outside, a bird hit the window with a soft thud and fell to the ground, its neck bent at an impossible angle. Vera watched it lying still on the manicured grass.

“Every day,” she said.

Camila kept her inventory in a hollowed-out copy of Jane Eyre. The irony wasn’t lost on her. Twenty Adderall, fifteen Ritalin, three bottles of anxiety medication with labels carefully steamed off. The exam answers were stored digitally, encrypted files on a thumb drive shaped like a silver heart.

Her father would be proud of her organizational skills, if not her product line.

“I need something for tonight,” whispered Sarah Chen, sliding into the library carrel beside her. “Dr. Thorne wants to see me tomorrow and I can’t stop shaking.”

Camila didn’t look up from her chemistry textbook. “What kind of something?”

“Something to make it stop. The shaking. The way my heart pounds when she asks about my mother.”

“Lorazepam. Five dollars.” Camila turned a page, her finger tracing molecular diagrams. “But Sarah?”

“Yeah?”

“You might want to consider why she keeps asking about your mother.”

Sarah’s face went pale. She slid a crumpled five across the table and disappeared between the stacks like smoke.

Camila made a notation in her real ledger, the one hidden inside her pillowcase. Not the transaction—she kept those in her head—but the observation. Sarah Chen, anxiety spike before Thorne appointment. Mother issues. Possible family trauma history.

She had files on all of them now. Mental notes that grew more detailed each week. Joss hadn’t eaten a full meal in seventeen days. Priya had ordered a dozen razor blades online, though her legs showed no cuts. Mei-Lin had been photographing documents in the administration building after hours. Elena wrote letters in Spanish, French, and English, but never mailed any of them.

The patterns were becoming visible, like a photograph developing in chemical baths.

“Camila Rodriguez to the headmistress office. Camila Rodriguez.”

The intercom crackled through the library’s hushed atmosphere. Several girls looked up from their books, expressions carefully neutral. Being called to Mrs. Caldwell’s office was never good news.

Camila closed Jane Eyre and slipped it into her bag. The weight of the pills rattled softly against the binding.

The walk to the administration building gave her time to think. She had been careful. The transactions happened in places without cameras—bathroom stalls, supply closets, the narrow space behind the kitchen where the groundskeepers stored fertilizer. Her clients paid in cash and kept their mouths shut because they needed her more than she needed them.

But careful wasn’t the same as invisible.

Mrs. Caldwell’s office smelled like expensive perfume and old money. The headmistress sat behind her desk like a queen holding court, her silver hair perfectly styled despite the humid October air.

“Sit down, dear.”

Camila chose the same chair Vera had occupied that morning. The leather was still warm.

“Your grades are exemplary,” Mrs. Caldwell said, opening a thick file. “Chemistry, biology, economics. Your teachers speak very highly of your analytical mind.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Your father must be proud. CEO of Rodriguez Pharmaceuticals, isn’t he? Quite successful in the anxiety medication market.”

Camila’s hands remained steady in her lap, but her pulse quickened. “Yes, ma’am.”

“I imagine you’ve learned a great deal about the pharmaceutical industry from him. The importance of proper distribution channels. Quality control. Understanding your market demographics.”

The words hung in the air like a noose.

“Dr. Thorne has noticed some interesting patterns among our students,” Mrs. Caldwell continued. “Improved focus during exam periods. Decreased anxiety levels during her sessions. She’s curious about the catalyst for these improvements.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“Of course not.” Mrs. Caldwell smiled. “But perhaps you might keep your eyes open. These girls trust you, don’t they? They confide in you.”

Camila understood. The meeting wasn’t about punishment. It was about recruitment.

“What exactly are you asking me to do?”

“Simply continue being helpful to your fellow students. But perhaps you might share your observations with Dr. Thorne. She’s conducting important research on adolescent stress responses. Your insights could be valuable.”

“And if I prefer to keep my observations to myself?”

Mrs. Caldwell’s smile never wavered. “I’m sure your father would be interested to learn about your entrepreneurial spirit. Though I suspect the DEA might be less appreciative of unlicensed pharmaceutical distribution.”

Checkmate.

Camila nodded slowly. “When does Dr. Thorne want to meet?”

“Tomorrow afternoon. Four o’clock. In the conservatory.”

Of course. The conservatory. Where the orchids died slowly under perfect conditions, and Dr. Thorne collected broken girls like specimens.

Walking back to her dormitory, Camila calculated her options. She could run—her father had taught her to always have an exit strategy. She could confess everything to the other girls and hope they would forgive her eventual betrayal. Or she could play along and gather intelligence from the inside.

The latter was the most dangerous choice. It was also the only one that might save them all.

In her room, she opened Jane Eyre and counted her inventory. Tomorrow she would start keeping different kinds of records. Not just who needed what medication, but why they needed it. What questions Dr. Thorne asked. Which girls left the conservatory looking more broken than when they entered.

Her father had taught her that information was more valuable than any product.

Time to find out what Dr. Thorne was really selling.

Joss weighed eighty-seven pounds at morning check-in. The nurse, Mrs. Patterson, made a note on her clipboard but said nothing. They had stopped commenting on the numbers weeks ago.

“Any dizziness today?” Mrs. Patterson asked, wrapping the blood pressure cuff around Joss’s thin arm.

“No ma’am.”

“Chest pains? Irregular heartbeat?”

“No ma’am.”

The lies came easily now. Joss had been dizzy since Tuesday, and her heart stuttered like a broken engine when she climbed stairs. But honesty led to conversations she didn’t want to have, with people who would try to make her eat.

“Dr. Thorne wants to see you this afternoon,” Mrs. Patterson said, removing the cuff. “Four-thirty in the conservatory.”

Joss nodded. She had expected this. Her weight had dropped below ninety pounds for the first time since arriving at Millbrook, and the staff were trained to notice thresholds. Numbers that triggered interventions.

But they didn’t understand. This wasn’t about being thin. This was about becoming small enough to slip through the cracks in their perfect system. Small enough to disappear entirely if necessary.

In the dining hall, Joss sat with her usual companions. Vera picked at a salad, moving lettuce leaves around her plate like chess pieces. Elena ate methodically, cutting her sandwich into precise squares. Camila consumed her lunch with businesslike efficiency, as if nutrition were just another transaction to complete.

“You’re not eating,” Vera observed.

Joss looked down at her untouched apple. “I had a big breakfast.” Another lie. Breakfast had been black coffee and half a piece of toast, carefully disposed of in the bathroom trash.

“Dr. Thorne wants to meet with me today,” she added.

Elena’s knife paused mid-cut. “What time?”

“Four-thirty.”

“That’s interesting,” Camila said quietly. “Vera’s seeing her at four. I’m at four-fifteen.”

They looked at each other across the table. The dining hall chatter continued around them, but their small circle had gone silent.

“How many of us do you think she sees in a day?” Elena asked.

Joss counted mentally. “Yesterday I saw Priya coming out of the conservatory at three. Sarah was crying in the bathroom afterward, so probably her too. Mei-Lin missed chemistry lab Tuesday afternoon.”

“Systematic,” Vera murmured.

“What?”

“The timing. The frequency. It’s systematic, not therapeutic.”

Joss had never thought about it that way, but Vera was right. Real therapy happened when patients needed it, not according to administrative schedules. This felt more like data collection.

After lunch, Joss retreated to her room. Her roommate Nora was at field hockey practice, so she had privacy to complete her afternoon ritual. She stripped to her underwear and stood in front of the full-length mirror, cataloging the changes.

Hip bones protruding like knife handles. Ribs visible beneath pale skin. Collarbones sharp enough to hang jewelry from. Her body was becoming architecture, all angles and empty spaces.

She dressed carefully for her appointment. The uniform blazer hung loose on her shoulders, and she had to use a safety pin to keep her skirt from sliding down her hips. Mrs. Patterson would notice, but there was nothing to be done about it.

The conservatory was always too warm, heated to accommodate the dying orchids that lined the glass walls. Dr. Thorne sat in her usual chair, a leather notebook balanced on her knees. She was younger than most of the faculty, maybe forty, with prematurely gray hair and intelligent eyes that missed nothing.

“Hello, Joss. Please, sit down.”

The chair was positioned to catch the afternoon light streaming through the glass ceiling. Joss felt exposed, like a specimen under a microscope.

“How are you feeling today?”

“Fine, thank you.”

“Your weight is concerning the medical staff.” Dr. Thorne’s voice was gentle, but her pen was already moving across the page. “Eighty-seven pounds is quite low for someone your height.”

“I feel fine.”

“I’m sure you do. That’s actually part of what I’d like to discuss with you.” Dr. Thorne leaned forward slightly. “Can you tell me about your relationship with control?”

The question caught Joss off guard. She had expected inquiries about food, family, feelings of inadequacy. Not this direct probe into the mechanism itself.

“I don’t understand.”

“In your daily life, what things can you control completely?”

Joss considered this. She couldn’t control her roommate’s snoring, her chemistry grades, whether Mrs. Caldwell called her to the office. She couldn’t control her father’s drinking or her mother’s desperate phone calls asking if she was eating enough.

But she could control this. The numbers on the scale. The space between her thighs. The way clothes hung on her shrinking frame.

“Some things,” she said carefully.

“And how does it feel when you exercise that control?”

“Peaceful, I suppose.”

Dr. Thorne made another note. “Do you ever feel like you’re disappearing?”

The question hit like a physical blow. Joss felt her carefully constructed composure crack.

“What do you mean?”

“Some people find that reducing their physical presence helps them feel safer. Smaller targets are harder to hit.” Dr. Thorne’s eyes were kind, but her pen never stopped moving. “Is that something you’ve experienced?”

Joss wanted to lie, but the truth was sitting in her throat like a stone. “Sometimes.”

“Tell me about sometimes.”

“When people expect things from me. When they watch me eat or ask how I’m doing or want me to be happy when I’m not happy.” The words came faster now, as if a dam had broken. “When they want me to take up space I don’t want to occupy.”

“And being smaller helps with that?”

“Being smaller makes me harder to see.”

Dr. Thorne nodded as if this made perfect sense. As if the logic of self-erasure was something she encountered regularly.

“What would happen if you disappeared completely?”

Joss had never said it out loud before. “Then no one could hurt me anymore.”

“But you would also cease to exist.”

“Yes.”

“And that doesn’t frighten you?”

“No,” Joss said, and realized she meant it. “That sounds like relief.”

Dr. Thorne wrote for a long time after that, her pen scratching against paper like fingernails on glass. Outside the conservatory, another orchid dropped its petals to the heated floor.

When the session ended, Joss felt hollow. Not the familiar emptiness of hunger, but something deeper. As if Dr. Thorne had reached inside her and carefully removed something essential.

Walking back to her dormitory, she passed Camila heading toward the conservatory for her appointment. They nodded at each other, two ships passing in carefully charted waters.

Joss weighed herself again that evening. Eighty-six pounds. Progress, though toward what destination, she was no longer certain.

Priya kept seventeen razors in a small wooden box her grandmother had given her for jewelry. They lay in neat rows on purple velvet, surgical steel gleaming under her desk lamp. Every evening she selected one, cleaned it with alcohol, and examined the edge under her magnifying glass.

Not for cutting. Never for cutting. For something else entirely.

Her roommate Maya thought she was obsessive-compulsive. “You sterilize them every night,” Maya had said once, watching from her bed. “But you never use them.”

“Preparation isn’t the same as action,” Priya had replied, wrapping the chosen razor in tissue paper before returning it to the box.

Maya didn’t understand that some things required perfect readiness. That precision mattered more than execution.

The knock on their door came at eight-fifteen, fifteen minutes after lights-out. Priya opened it to find Camila standing in the hallway, her dark hair loose around her shoulders.

“We need to talk,” Camila whispered.

They walked to the third-floor bathroom, the one with the broken lock that no one used after evening room checks. Camila sat on the edge of the old clawfoot tub while Priya perched on the window ledge.

“They know about the medications,” Camila said without preamble.

“I assumed they did.”

“No, I mean they know and they don’t care. Mrs. Caldwell basically recruited me this afternoon. Wants me to spy on everyone, report back to Dr. Thorne.”

Priya absorbed this information. “What did you tell her?”

“That I’d do it. But I’m not going to, obviously. I’m going to find out what they’re really doing to us.”

“And what makes you think I can help with that?”

Camila leaned forward. “Because you’re planning something. I can tell. The razors, the way you’ve been studying the building layouts, the fact that you ordered those chemistry manuals from the library in Portland.”

Priya had underestimated Camila’s observational skills. “You’ve been watching me.”

“I watch everyone. It’s how I stay alive in this place.” Camila’s voice was matter-of-fact. “But you’re different. You’re not just surviving. You’re preparing for war.”

There was truth in that. While the other girls focused on getting through each day, Priya had been thinking strategically. Mapping the building’s weak points. Learning which staff members worked which shifts. Understanding the patterns that governed their carefully regulated lives.

“What do you want from me?”

“Alliance. Information sharing. Whatever you’re planning, I can help.”

Priya considered this. Camila was smart, well-connected, and had access to resources. But she was also compromised now, under direct pressure from the administration.

“Dr. Thorne wants to see me tomorrow,” Priya said. “Four forty-five.”

“We’re all being scheduled. Vera, me, Joss, you. Probably others.”

“Systematic evaluation.”

“That’s what Vera called it.” Camila stood up, began pacing the small bathroom. “But evaluation for what? What are they measuring?”

Priya had theories about that. She had been reading about psychological research methodologies, clinical trial protocols, data collection frameworks. The pattern at Millbrook resembled a longitudinal study more than a educational institution.

“Have you noticed the cameras?” she asked.

Camila stopped pacing. “What cameras?”

“In the conservatory. They’re hidden, but if you know what to look for…” Priya pulled out her phone and showed Camila a photograph she had taken earlier that week. “Tiny lenses in the light fixtures. Audio pickups disguised as air fresheners.”

“They’re recording the therapy sessions.”

“All of them. Every word, every breakdown, every moment of vulnerability.” Priya slipped the phone back into her pocket. “The question is why.”

Camila sat back down on the tub’s edge. “My father runs pharmaceutical trials. This feels similar. Like we’re test subjects, not students.”

“Test subjects for what?”

“I don’t know yet. But I’m going to find out.”

They sat in silence for a moment, listening to the old building settle around them. Somewhere in the walls, pipes gurgled like dying things.

“There’s something else,” Priya said finally. “About Joss.”

“She’s getting worse.”

“She’s getting closer to the threshold. Whatever they’re measuring, she’s approaching the limit.”

Camila’s face went pale. “What kind of threshold?”

Priya had been thinking about this for weeks. The way certain girls disappeared from Millbrook mid-semester. Always the ones who had been seeing Dr. Thorne most frequently. Always the ones whose problems had become most acute.

“I think there’s an endpoint to their study. A conclusion that doesn’t involve graduation.”

“You think they’re killing them?”

“I think they’re documenting the process of self-destruction. And once the documentation is complete…”

She didn’t need to finish the sentence. Camila understood.

“We have to do something.”

“Yes,” Priya said. “We do.”

Back in her room, Priya opened the wooden box and selected tomorrow’s razor. She cleaned it carefully, methodically, the way her grandmother had taught her to prepare for important tasks. The blade gleamed under the desk lamp, sharp enough to cut through more than skin.

Maya was already asleep, her breathing deep and regular. She would sleep through anything. That might be useful later.

Priya wrapped the razor in tissue paper and placed it in her blazer pocket. Tomorrow she would sit in Dr. Thorne’s leather chair and answer questions about her family, her fears, her plans for the future. She would be measured and catalogued and filed away like a specimen.

But she would also be gathering intelligence. Learning about the cameras, the recording equipment, the security protocols that kept their prison running smoothly.

The other girls saw Dr. Thorne as their torturer. Priya was beginning to understand that she was something much more dangerous.

She was their researcher. And research, by definition, required expendable subjects.

The razor felt cold against her leg through the blazer fabric. Not for cutting. For something else entirely.

Something that would require perfect precision when the time came.

Mei-Lin had always been good with locks. Her uncle taught her when she was seven, claiming every woman should know how to get into places she wasn’t supposed to be. He meant it as a joke, but Mei-Lin had taken the lesson seriously.

The administration building stayed locked after nine PM, but the third-floor window latch had been broken since September. Maintenance kept promising to fix it, but maintenance also smoked behind the greenhouse every evening at nine-fifteen, leaving a convenient window of opportunity.

She slipped through the gap like water, landing silently on the carpeted hallway. Dr. Thorne’s office was the third door on the left, marked with a brass nameplate that caught the moonlight streaming through the tall windows.

The lock was older than the ones in the dormitory. Mei-Lin had it open in thirty seconds.

Inside, filing cabinets lined the walls like sentinels. Each drawer was labeled with careful precision: Academic Records. Medical Histories. Psychological Evaluations. Session Notes. The organization was beautiful and terrible, decades of student lives reduced to categorical data.

Mei-Lin started with Session Notes, pulling out files for the girls she knew were seeing Dr. Thorne regularly. Her hands shook as she opened the first folder.

SUBJECT: Josephine Torres (Joss) SESSION DATE: October 15 WEIGHT: 87 lbs (down 3 lbs from previous session) COGNITIVE STATE: Increasingly dissociative. Strong ideation regarding self-erasure. TRAUMA RESPONSE: Subject exhibits classic pattern of control displacement following family instability. Father’s alcoholism provides necessary stressor for maintaining deterioration trajectory. PROGNOSIS: Approaching optimal documentation threshold. Recommend increased session frequency to capture final stages. NOTE: Subject expresses desire for complete disappearance. This represents successful conditioning toward study endpoint.

Mei-Lin’s stomach dropped. She photographed each page with her phone before moving to the next file.

SUBJECT: Camila Rodriguez SESSION DATE: October 16 PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE: High intelligence, natural leadership tendencies. Recruited as informant per Protocol 7. FAMILY LEVERAGE: Father’s pharmaceutical company provides useful cover for medication distribution study. Subject’s compliance ensured through legal threats. RESEARCH VALUE: Dual function as subject and data collector. Monitor for signs of rebellion or alliance formation with other subjects. NOTE: Subject’s entrepreneurial activities demonstrate desired stress response patterns while providing controlled access to anxiolytic medications for broader study population.

The clinical language made her sick. Mei-Lin flipped through more files, finding her friends reduced to variables in an equation she couldn’t understand.

SUBJECT: Vera Chen TRAUMA HISTORY: Orphaned at 15. Parents deceased in vehicular accident. Aunt committed suicide six months post-guardianship assignment. CURRENT STATUS: Subject believes parents alive and funding her education. Fabricated donation records maintain this delusion per Protocol 12. RESEARCH FOCUS: Impact of sustained deception on trust formation and reality processing. Subject shows increasing signs of dissociation from factual memory. PROGNOSIS: Excellent candidate for final-stage documentation.

Mei-Lin’s hands were shaking so hard she could barely hold the camera steady. Vera’s parents were dead. Had been dead for years. Everything she believed about her situation was a lie constructed by the people who were supposed to be helping her.

She found her own file in the E section, filed under her American name, Ellen Chang, though she had never used it at Millbrook.

SUBJECT: Mei-Lin Chang SELECTION CRITERIA: High academic achievement masking severe perfectionist anxiety. History of self-harm through academic overwork. CURRENT RESEARCH FOCUS: Breaking point analysis. How much academic pressure can subject sustain before psychological collapse? SESSION NOTES: Subject demonstrates increasing paranoia and hypervigilance. Sleeping 3-4 hours nightly due to study schedule. Shows promising deterioration in social functioning. INTERVENTIONS: Increased coursework assigned. Extra credit opportunities provided to encourage overcommitment. Subject responds predictably to achievement-based manipulation. NOTE: Consider introducing controlled academic failure to accelerate breakdown timeline.

The words blurred as tears filled her eyes. They had been engineering her destruction systematically, using her own ambitions as weapons against her. Every extra assignment, every opportunity to excel, had been calculated to push her closer to collapse.

She photographed everything, her phone’s memory filling with evidence of their systematic torture. As she reached for another file, footsteps echoed in the hallway outside.

Mei-Lin froze. The maintenance crew wasn’t supposed to return for another hour, but the footsteps were measured, purposeful. Someone was coming directly toward this office.

She shoved the files back into their drawer and looked around desperately for an exit. The window was too high, and the footsteps were getting closer. The only option was the supply closet in the corner, barely large enough for cleaning supplies and a crouching teenager.

The door opened just as Mei-Lin pulled the closet door shut behind her. Through the crack, she could see Dr. Thorne entering the office, carrying a steaming mug of tea and a thick folder.

“I know you’re here,” Dr. Thorne said conversationally, settling into her desk chair. “The motion sensors alerted security twenty minutes ago.”

Mei-Lin’s heart hammered against her ribs.

“The question is whether you found what you were looking for.” Dr. Thorne opened the folder and began making notes. “I suspect you did. You’re very thorough, Mei-Lin. It’s one of your most useful qualities.”

The use of her name made everything worse. Dr. Thorne knew exactly who was hiding in her closet.

“You can come out now. We need to have a conversation.”

Mei-Lin remained perfectly still. Maybe if she waited long enough, Dr. Thorne would leave. Maybe this was psychological manipulation, another test to document her stress responses.

“Or you can stay in there while I call Mrs. Caldwell and report a break-in. Your choice, but I should mention that expulsion would be particularly unfortunate given your immigration status.”

The threat was delivered in the same gentle tone Dr. Thorne used during therapy sessions. Mei-Lin pushed open the closet door and stepped into the office, her phone heavy in her pocket with dozens of incriminating photographs.

“Sit down, please.”

Mei-Lin sat in the leather chair where she had answered so many questions about her fears, her family, her desperate need to succeed. The chair where she had unknowingly provided data for her own destruction.

“What did you learn tonight?” Dr. Thorne asked.

“That you’re not trying to help us.”

“That’s not entirely accurate. Our research will help thousands of young women in the future. You’re contributing to something much larger than yourselves.”

“By documenting our breakdowns?”

“By understanding the mechanisms of resilience and collapse in high-achieving adolescents. The data you’re providing is invaluable.”

Dr. Thorne leaned back in her chair, studying Mei-Lin with the same clinical interest she had shown during their sessions.

“The question now is what we do with your newfound knowledge. You have two choices. You can report what you’ve discovered and face the consequences, or you can help us complete our research.”

“Help you destroy my friends?”

“Help us understand them. Some of your classmates are beyond saving, Mei-Lin. Joss, for instance, has been on a trajectory toward self-destruction since long before she arrived here. We’re simply documenting the process.”

The casual dismissal of Joss’s life made Mei-Lin’s hands clench into fists.

“But you,” Dr. Thorne continued, “you still have choices. Work with us, and we can ensure your future remains bright. Your immigration status, your college applications, your family’s safety—all of it can be protected.”

“And if I refuse?”

Dr. Thorne smiled. “Then you become just another subject in our study. And subjects, I’m afraid, rarely graduate.”

Elena had written forty-three letters to her father and burned every one. The ashes accumulated in a coffee tin under her bed, gray dust that smelled like regret and unfinished conversations.

Tonight she was writing in Spanish, her pen moving across the paper in loops and slashes that looked like wounds.

Papá, they want me to forget what you did, but I remember everything. The sound your hand made against my face. The way you explained that discipline and love were the same thing. How you cried afterward and bought me books in three languages because guilt speaks universally.

She paused, listening for Maya’s breathing from the other bed. Her roommate had been restless lately, talking in her sleep about cameras and corridors. Everyone was sleeping badly now, as if the building itself had grown teeth.

Dr. Thorne asks about you every session. She wants to know why I stopped speaking to you after the incident. She uses that word—incident—like it’s clinical. Not violence. Not the moment I realized that people who claim to love you can hurt you the most efficiently.

Elena’s appointment tomorrow was at five o’clock. The last slot of the day, when the conservatory caught the dying light and threw long shadows across the floor. She had been seeing Dr. Thorne twice weekly since October began, each session peeling away another layer of her carefully constructed silence.

I told her today that silence is my only honest language. That every word I’ve spoken since you hit me has been a lie designed to keep me safe. She wrote this down like it was important data, not a fourteen-year-old girl’s survival strategy.

The letters had become confession and weapon simultaneously. Elena wrote the truths she could never speak aloud, then destroyed them before anyone could read her bleeding onto paper. But tonight felt different. Tonight the words seemed to write themselves, urgent and necessary.

She knows about the languages. Knows I dream in French when I’m frightened, think in English when I’m angry, and cry in Spanish when I miss who I used to be before you taught me that love and pain were synonyms.

A soft knock interrupted her writing. Elena quickly folded the letter and opened her door to find Mei-Lin standing in the hallway, tears streaming down her face.

“Can I come in?”

Elena nodded, stepping aside. Mei-Lin entered quietly and sat on the floor beside Elena’s bed, hugging her knees to her chest.

“I know what they’re doing to us,” Mei-Lin whispered.

Elena waited. She had learned that silence often extracted more truth than questions.

“They’re studying us. Documenting our breakdowns. We’re not students, Elena. We’re lab rats.”

The words hung in the air like smoke. Elena felt something shift inside her chest, a careful structure collapsing.

“What did you find?”

Mei-Lin pulled out her phone and showed Elena photographs of files, clinical notes, psychological profiles reduced to data points. Elena read her own file with growing horror.

SUBJECT: Elena Santos RESEARCH FOCUS: Selective mutism following paternal abuse. Language compartmentalization as trauma response. INTERVENTION STRATEGY: Systematic pressure to verbalize traumatic memories. Breaking down linguistic barriers to access core psychological damage. NOTE: Subject’s multilingual capabilities provide unique opportunity to study trauma encoding across language systems. CURRENT STATUS: Approaching breakthrough threshold. Recommend increased session intensity to precipitate complete psychological exposure.

“They know about your father,” Mei-Lin said softly.

“They know about all of us.” Elena’s voice came out rougher than she intended. “The question is what we do about it.”

“Camila thinks we should expose them. Get evidence to journalists or authorities.”

“And you?”

“I think some of us might not survive long enough for that to matter.”

Elena understood. Joss was disappearing by degrees. Vera was losing her grip on reality. The research had timelines, endpoints, conclusions that didn’t necessarily include the subjects’ continued existence.

“There’s something else,” Mei-Lin said. “Dr. Thorne caught me in her office tonight. She wants me to work with them. Spy on everyone, report back.”

“Will you?”

“I told her I’d consider it. But Elena…” Mei-Lin’s voice broke. “I’m scared of what happens if I say no. And I’m scared of what happens if I say yes.”

Elena returned to her desk and picked up the half-finished letter. Her father’s face materialized in her memory, the mixture of rage and remorse that had defined her childhood.

The thing about trauma, Papá, is that it teaches you to recognize predators. Dr. Thorne has your eyes. The same clinical interest in pain, the same careful calibration of pressure and release. She hurts us methodically, just like you did.

She handed the letter to Mei-Lin. “Read this.”

Mei-Lin scanned the Spanish text, her expression growing more somber with each line.

“You’re going to send it?”

“No. I’m going to read it to Dr. Thorne tomorrow. In Spanish.”

“Why?”

Elena sat back down beside Mei-Lin on the floor. The coffee tin of ashes was under the bed, forty-three letters’ worth of unspoken truths reduced to dust.

“Because they want to study how trauma lives in different languages. They want to break down my linguistic barriers and access my core psychological damage.” She quoted directly from the file. “So I’m going to give them exactly what they want.”

“That’s dangerous.”

“Yes. But danger assumes you have something left to lose.”

Elena had been thinking about this for weeks, since she realized that Dr. Thorne’s gentle questions were actually surgical instruments, designed to cut through her defenses and expose the raw places where her father’s violence still lived.

“If I cooperate with their research, if I let them document my complete breakdown, they’ll have what they need from me. But they’ll also have evidence of their own methods.”

“You want to give them enough rope to hang themselves.”

“Something like that.”

Mei-Lin was quiet for a long time, studying the letter in her hands. “What do you need from me?”

“Record my session tomorrow. They have cameras in the conservatory, but I want our own documentation. Independent evidence of what they’re doing.”

“And then?”

“Then we decide whether we’re going to be victims or witnesses.”

After Mei-Lin left, Elena returned to her letter. But instead of writing to her father, she began composing something else. A different kind of confession, in three languages, designed to be read aloud in a room full of hidden cameras.

They think silence is weakness, she wrote in English. Ils ne comprennent pas que le silence peut être une arme, she continued in French. Pero mañana van a aprender que algunas verdades son demasiado peligrosas para documentar, she finished in Spanish.

Tomorrow she would sit in Dr. Thorne’s leather chair and speak for the first time in months. She would give them every detail they wanted about her father’s hands, her mother’s willful blindness, the night she decided that words were too dangerous to trust.

She would cooperate completely with their research.

And in doing so, she would destroy them all.

Zara found the file by accident, looking for her mother’s medical records in Dr. Thorne’s cabinet while the older woman stepped out to take a phone call. The folder was misfiled under Z instead of M, thick with documentation spanning fifteen years.

SUBJECT: Monica Winters (née Hassan) STUDY DESIGNATION: Millbrook Longitudinal Research Project - Phase One AGE AT INTAKE: 17 TERMINATION DATE: March 15, 2009 CAUSE OF TERMINATION: Pharmaceutical intervention - successful completion of deterioration cycle NOTES: Subject responded optimally to controlled trauma exposure. Final documentation achieved on daughter’s 14th birthday per planned timeline.

Zara’s hands went numb. The pages scattered across Dr. Thorne’s desk like fallen leaves, each one documenting her mother’s systematic destruction with clinical precision.

SESSION 247: Subject reports increasing dissociation from daily activities. Sleeps 14-16 hours daily. Expresses desire to “stop existing” - exact phraseology noted for comparative analysis with current cohort.

SESSION 251: Introduced pharmaceutical component per Protocol 15. Subject accepted prescription readily, trusting therapeutic relationship established over previous months.

SESSION 255: Subject hoarding medications as anticipated. Expressing specific plans for March 15 (daughter’s birthday). This represents optimal documentation opportunity for final phase.

The door opened behind her. Dr. Thorne entered carrying two cups of tea, her expression unchanged at finding Zara surrounded by evidence of her mother’s murder.

“I wondered when you would find that,” Dr. Thorne said, setting one cup on the desk beside the scattered papers. “Sit down, Zara.”

“You killed her.”

“Your mother killed herself. I simply documented the process.” Dr. Thorne settled into her chair as if they were beginning a routine session. “The pharmaceutical intervention was her choice. I merely provided access.”

Zara remained standing, her body trembling with rage. “You gave her the pills knowing what she would do with them.”

“I gave her what she asked for. Relief from pain that had become unbearable.” Dr. Thorne opened her notebook and began writing. “Your mother was part of our preliminary research into adolescent trauma recovery patterns. She helped us understand how childhood psychological damage manifests in later life.”

“She was seventeen when you started studying her.”

“The same age you are now. The parallels have been remarkably instructive.”

The casual acknowledgment hit Zara like a physical blow. “I’m not part of your study.”

“Of course you are. Second-generation trauma research. We needed to understand how documented parental psychological deterioration affects offspring development.” Dr. Thorne looked up from her notes. “You’ve been a subject since birth, dear. Your mother’s participation was always intended to be multi-generational.”

Zara backed toward the door, but Dr. Thorne’s voice stopped her.

“Where are you going to go? Your father committed suicide six months after your mother’s death. Your grandmother refuses contact because she blames you for Monica’s breakdown. Millbrook is the only family you have left.”

The truth of this was devastating. Zara had no relatives who acknowledged her existence, no resources beyond what the school provided, no future that didn’t depend on completing her education here.

“Why?” The word came out broken.

“Because trauma is hereditary, and we need to understand the mechanisms of transmission. How does a mother’s psychological damage transfer to her children? What environmental factors accelerate or inhibit the process?” Dr. Thorne set down her pen. “Your mother’s research provided baseline data. Your participation allows us to study the next generation.”

“What happened to her could happen to me.”

“It will happen to you, eventually. The question is whether we can document the complete process this time. Your mother’s termination was somewhat premature - we would have preferred additional data points.”

Zara felt the room spinning around her. Her mother’s death hadn’t been suicide driven by illness. It had been the planned conclusion of a research study, timed to maximize psychological impact on her daughter.

“The birthday timing…”

“Was designed to create maximum associative trauma for you. Birthdays would forever be connected to loss, celebration corrupted by grief. We needed to understand how anniversary trauma affects adolescent development patterns.”

Dr. Thorne picked up her pen again, making notes about Zara’s facial expressions, her body language, the way her breathing had become shallow and rapid.

“You’re documenting this conversation.”

“Everything is documentation, Zara. Every interaction, every emotional response, every moment of discovery. This conversation represents a crucial data point - the moment you learned the truth about your family history.”

“And what happens now?”

“Now you have the same choice your mother had. You can cooperate with our research, help us understand the mechanisms of intergenerational trauma transmission. Or you can resist, in which case the documentation becomes more… intensive.”

Zara thought about her mother’s file, the progression from willing participant to broken subject to pharmaceutical intervention. The planned timeline that had ended with pills hoarded in a bedroom drawer and a fourteen-year-old girl finding her mother’s body on her birthday morning.

“How many others know?”

“About your specific case? Mrs. Caldwell and myself. About the broader research program? Several faculty members, though they understand their roles differently.”

“The other girls?”

“Are beginning to piece together fragments of the truth. Mei-Lin has been particularly resourceful, though her discoveries can be managed. Elena is preparing for what she believes will be a dramatic revelation tomorrow, unaware that her planned confession serves our documentation purposes perfectly.”

Dr. Thorne closed the notebook and leaned back in her chair.

“The beauty of longitudinal research, Zara, is that subjects eventually become complicit in their own study. Your mother reached that point shortly before her termination. She understood what we were doing and chose to complete the process anyway.”

“Because you gave her no other choice.”

“There are always choices. Your mother could have left Millbrook, abandoned her education, started over somewhere else with nothing. Instead, she chose to trust the system that was destroying her.” Dr. Thorne smiled. “You’ll make the same choice, eventually. It’s hereditary.”

Zara looked at the scattered pages documenting her mother’s systematic destruction. Fifteen years of careful torture, designed to produce a specific outcome on a predetermined timeline.

“What if I warn the others?”

“Then you accelerate your own timeline. We have contingencies for non-compliant subjects.”

“Contingencies?”

“Your mother wasn’t our only successful termination, dear. Millbrook has graduated many girls over the years, though not all of them walked across the stage to receive their diplomas.”

The threat was delivered in the same gentle tone Dr. Thorne used to ask about feelings and family relationships. Zara understood that her mother’s death had been neither suicide nor murder, but something more systematic. An agricultural process, with human beings as the crop.

“I need time to think.”

“Of course. But Zara?” Dr. Thorne opened her notebook again. “Don’t take too long. We have schedules to maintain, and your mother’s timeline serves as our template. March is only five months away.”

Walking back to her dormitory, Zara calculated possibilities. Five months until her mother’s death anniversary. Five months to figure out how to escape a study that had been documenting her entire life. Five months to decide whether she would follow her mother’s path to its planned conclusion, or find a way to burn down the system that had destroyed them both.

The October air was cold against her face, but she could already feel the approach of March, and the weight of hereditary trauma settling around her shoulders like a shroud.

Sage learned about sound from her father’s studio, where silence was just another instrument waiting to be played. She understood frequencies and resonance, the way voices carried through materials that seemed solid, how words could be captured and preserved like insects in amber.

The recording equipment fit inside her violin case, small digital devices that looked like music accessories to anyone who might search her belongings. She had been documenting everything for three weeks now, collecting voices and confessions and conversations that were never meant to be preserved.

The conservatory’s acoustics were perfect. Glass walls and high ceilings created natural amplification, every whisper bouncing between surfaces until the building itself became a resonating chamber. Dr. Thorne had chosen her location well, but she hadn’t considered that good acoustics worked both ways.

Sage sat in the practice room adjacent to the conservatory, her violin positioned to mask the real purpose of her presence. Through the shared wall, she could hear Elena’s session beginning.

“Thank you for agreeing to speak today,” Dr. Thorne’s voice carried clearly through the glass partition. “I know verbal communication has been difficult for you.”

“Difficult isn’t the right word.” Elena’s response was measured, deliberate. “Strategic is more accurate.”

Sage adjusted her recording levels and began playing scales, providing cover while capturing every word of the conversation happening fifteen feet away.

“Tell me about strategy.”

“My father taught me that words are weapons. That people who claim to love you will use your honesty against you more efficiently than enemies ever could.” Elena’s voice was stronger than Sage had heard it in months. “So I stopped giving anyone ammunition.”

“But you’re speaking now.”

“Because I’ve realized that silence can also be a weapon. And some truths are too dangerous to leave undocumented.”

Sage’s bow paused against the strings. Elena knew about the documentation. This wasn’t therapy anymore; it was performance, carefully orchestrated for an audience Elena couldn’t see but knew was listening.

“Go on.”

“My father hit me regularly from age seven to fourteen. Not in anger—never in anger. He was methodical about it, educational. Each blow came with an explanation about discipline and character building and the necessity of pain in proper child development.”

Dr. Thorne’s pen scratched against paper, audible through the thin walls.

“He spoke three languages fluently, and he beat me in all of them. Spanish when he was teaching me about respect. French when the lessons were about obedience. English when he wanted me to understand that this was normal, that American families simply hid their educational methods better than others.”

Sage felt sick listening, but she kept the recorder running. Elena’s confession was devastating and deliberate, designed to give Dr. Thorne exactly what she wanted while simultaneously destroying her.

“How did this affect your relationship with language?”

“I learned that honesty in any language leads to punishment. That vulnerability is just another word for target. That people who ask about your feelings are usually preparing to hurt you with the information.”

“Is that what you think I’m doing?”

Elena’s laugh was sharp as broken glass. “I know what you’re doing, Dr. Thorne. I’ve seen my file. I know about the cameras, the research protocols, the systematic documentation of our psychological destruction.”

Silence stretched between them. Sage held her breath, waiting for Dr. Thorne’s response.

“And yet you’re here, speaking freely, giving me exactly the kind of material I need for my research.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I want you to have it all. Every detail about my father’s hands and my mother’s willful blindness and the night I decided that silence was safer than truth. I want you to document every moment of my breakdown, capture every tear and tremor and terrified confession.”

“That’s remarkably cooperative.”

“It’s strategic. See, Dr. Thorne, you’ve been studying damaged girls for years, but you’ve never been studied yourself. You’ve never had your methods documented by someone who understands exactly what you’re doing.”

Sage realized what Elena was accomplishing. She was creating evidence of Dr. Thorne’s manipulation, forcing the researcher to reveal her methods while appearing to comply with the study.

“I don’t understand.”

“My friend is recording this conversation. Every word you’ve spoken, every clinical observation you’ve made about my trauma, every indication that you know about my father’s abuse and are using it as research material rather than providing actual help.”

Dr. Thorne’s chair creaked as she stood up. “That’s not possible. We control all recording devices in this building.”

“You control the official devices. But girls like us, we learn to work around systems designed to contain us. We learn to document our own destruction before anyone else can profit from it.”

Sage heard footsteps approaching the practice room door. She quickly switched off the recorder and began playing a Brahms sonata, her fingers moving across the strings with practiced ease.

Dr. Thorne opened the door. “Sage, how long have you been practicing here?”

“About an hour, Dr. Thorne. Is everything alright? I can move to another room if I’m being too loud.”

“No, that’s fine. Carry on.”

The door closed. Sage waited until the footsteps retreated before switching the recorder back on. Elena’s voice resumed, stronger than before.

“The beautiful thing about documentation, Dr. Thorne, is that it works both ways. You’ve been recording us for months, building files full of our pain and vulnerability. But we’ve been recording you too.”

“Even if that were true, who would believe you? You’re psychologically unstable adolescents with histories of trauma and mental illness. I’m a respected researcher with an impeccable academic record.”

“You’re right. Our word alone wouldn’t be enough. But your voice, recorded while you admit to knowingly exploiting traumatized minors for research purposes? While you demonstrate detailed knowledge of abuse you’ve never reported to authorities? While you explicitly discuss using our pain as data points?”

Elena’s voice dropped to a whisper that the conservatory’s acoustics carried perfectly.

“That might be more persuasive.”

Sage heard papers rustling, chairs moving, the sound of someone packing up quickly.

“This session is over.”

“Yes, it is. And Dr. Thorne? When you write up your notes tonight, remember that documentation is forever. Every word you put in our files, every clinical observation about our trauma responses, every indication that you’ve been systematically harvesting our psychological damage—it’s all evidence now.”

“Evidence of what?”

“That some research subjects bite back.”

The conservatory door slammed. Sage waited five minutes before packing up her equipment, Elena’s words echoing in her memory like a perfectly played note held just long enough to shatter glass.

Her father had taught her that the most important sounds were often the ones people didn’t realize they were making. Tonight, Dr. Thorne had made the kind of sounds that would destroy her, recorded in perfect clarity for anyone who cared to listen.

Sage smiled as she closed her violin case. The recording was already uploading to her father’s secure server, safely beyond Millbrook’s reach.

Some performances deserved preservation.

Nora had been waiting eighteen months to make the phone call. Her sister Rebecca answered on the second ring, her voice cautious in the way it always was when Millbrook’s number appeared on her caller ID.

“Nora? Is everything alright?”

“I need you to listen carefully,” Nora said, walking to the window of her empty dormitory room. “And I need you to record this conversation.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Everything. The whole place. Rebecca, they killed our classmates.”

Silence stretched across the phone line. In the background, Nora could hear her sister moving around, probably reaching for her laptop to start recording software.

“Okay, I’m recording. Tell me everything.”

Nora had been preparing for this conversation since her first week at Millbrook, when she realized that the sister she had known for seventeen years—confident, unbreakable Rebecca—had returned from this place hollow and terrified. Rebecca had never spoken about her time here, but she had never been the same afterward.

“They call it a research program. Longitudinal psychological study of trauma responses in adolescent females. We’re not students, Rebecca. We’re lab rats.”

“Are you safe right now?”

“For the moment. Most of the staff went home for the evening, and my roommate is at her violin lesson. But I don’t know how much time I have.”

Nora pulled out the USB drive Sage had given her that afternoon, loaded with recordings of Dr. Thorne’s sessions. The sound files were labeled with dates and subject names, a digital archive of systematic psychological torture.

“I’m going to email you files while we talk. Audio recordings of therapy sessions, photographs of research documents, evidence of what they’ve been doing to us.”

“Jesus, Nora. How did you get all this?”

“We’ve been documenting everything. Elena figured out they were studying us, Mei-Lin broke into Dr. Thorne’s office, Sage has been recording the sessions. We’ve been building a case.”

Her laptop chimed as files began uploading to Rebecca’s secure email account. Hours of audio, hundreds of photographs, documentation spanning months of carefully orchestrated psychological destruction.

“Rebecca, I need to ask you something, and I need you to tell me the truth.”

“Okay.”

“What happened to you here? What did they do that you’ve never been able to talk about?”

Another long silence. When Rebecca spoke again, her voice was different, younger, broken in places that had never healed.

“There were eight of us in my graduating class. Only five of us walked across the stage.”

“What happened to the others?”

“Suicide, officially. Sarah Kim jumped from the bell tower in February. Melissa Torres took pills in March. Hannah Chen—” Rebecca’s voice cracked. “Hannah cut her wrists in the conservatory bathroom during spring break.”

Nora felt cold spreading through her chest. “And you never reported it?”

“Who would have believed us? Three girls with documented histories of depression and anxiety, all receiving intensive psychological treatment for their mental health issues. The school had files full of evidence that we were unstable, self-destructive, prone to dramatic episodes.”

“But you knew it wasn’t really suicide.”

“I knew they had been pushed to breaking points that Dr. Thorne had carefully mapped out in advance. I knew their therapy sessions had become more frequent and more invasive right before they died. I knew we were being systematically destroyed, but I couldn’t prove it.”

Nora understood now why Rebecca had spent the last three years in therapy, why she startled at unexpected sounds, why she had tried so hard to convince their parents not to send Nora to Millbrook.

“The files I’m sending you include documentation of the research protocols. They’ve been doing this for decades, Rebecca. Studying how far they can push adolescent girls before we break completely.”

“And some of you don’t break fast enough, so they help the process along.”

“Joss weighs eighty-four pounds now. She’s disappearing by degrees, and Dr. Thorne is documenting every stage of her self-destruction. Zara found out her mother was a previous subject who was driven to suicide on Zara’s birthday as part of the research design.”

Rebecca was crying now, soft sounds that carried across the phone line like whispered apologies.

“I should have done something. After I graduated, I should have found a way to expose them.”

“You survived. That was enough.” Nora checked her email again. More files uploading successfully. “But now we have evidence, and we have a plan.”

“What kind of plan?”

“Parent Weekend is next Saturday. All the families will be here, along with board members and alumni. Mrs. Caldwell gives her annual speech about molding tomorrow’s leaders while parents tour the facilities and write donation checks.”

“And?”

“And Sage has access to the sound system. We’re going to play Dr. Thorne’s recordings during the presentation. Let everyone hear exactly what kind of research their tuition dollars have been funding.”

“That’s dangerous, Nora. If they realize what you’re planning—”

“Some of us are going to die anyway. Joss probably won’t survive until Christmas at her current trajectory. They’re planning something for Zara in March. Elena’s reached the point where they’re pushing for complete psychological breakdown.”

Nora looked out her window at the conservatory, where dying orchids caught the moonlight like pale flames. Tomorrow was Friday. Parent Weekend was forty-eight hours away.

“Rebecca, I need you to contact journalists. Send them the files, tell them what happened to your class, what’s happening to mine. We need media attention focused on this place before Saturday.”

“I’ll make the calls tonight.”

“And Rebecca? If something happens to me—”

“Nothing’s going to happen to you.”

“If something happens, make sure people know that we fought back. That we documented our own destruction before they could finish the process. That some lab rats learn to bite.”

After hanging up, Nora sat in the darkness of her room and thought about her sister’s graduating class. Eight girls who had arrived here with bright futures and academic ambitions. Three who had been driven to suicide during their final semester. Five survivors who had spent the last three years trying to pretend that what happened here was normal.

Her phone buzzed with a text from Elena: Everything ready for tomorrow?

Nora typed back: Rebecca’s contacting media. Files uploaded. Audio equipment tested.

Good. Joss wants to speak at the presentation.

Is she strong enough?

She says dying girls have nothing left to lose.

Nora looked out at the conservatory again, where Dr. Thorne would spend tomorrow documenting more sessions, collecting more data, pushing more girls toward carefully calibrated breaking points.

Tomorrow they would find out whether documentation could be turned into a weapon sharp enough to cut through years of institutional protection.

Tomorrow they would discover if the subjects could destroy their researchers before the research destroyed them.

The auditorium filled with parents and donors while Mrs. Caldwell adjusted her microphone. Vera sat in the third row between her aunt Sarah and a woman claiming to be her mother’s college roommate, both of them smiling with practiced warmth that didn’t reach their eyes.

“Such a beautiful campus,” the fake roommate said. “Your parents would be so proud.”

Vera nodded because it was easier than explaining that her parents had been dead for three years, that the donation checks had been forged, that everything these people believed about her situation was carefully constructed fiction.

Around the auditorium, other girls sat with their families. Real families, mostly, though Vera had learned to spot the inconsistencies. Zara’s supposed grandmother looked nothing like the woman in the photographs Dr. Thorne had shown her during sessions. Camila’s parents seemed genuinely surprised by their daughter’s academic achievements, as if they were meeting her for the first time.

Mrs. Caldwell began her presentation with slides showing academic statistics and college acceptance rates. Parents nodded approvingly at the data, these successful adults who had built careers on trusting institutional authority.

“Millbrook Academy has always been committed to nurturing tomorrow’s female leaders,” Mrs. Caldwell said. “Our innovative wellness program ensures that each girl receives the individual attention she needs to flourish.”

Vera spotted Sage near the sound booth, her violin case positioned casually beside the mixing board. Elena sat with her mother, whose confused expressions suggested she hadn’t expected her daughter to speak during the family weekend after months of selective mutism.

“Our research program, led by Dr. Thorne, has been groundbreaking in its approach to adolescent psychological development.”

Dr. Thorne stood briefly to acknowledge the applause, her smile warm and professional. In the audience, parents clapped politely, unaware they were applauding their daughters’ systematic tormentor.

“Before we tour the facilities,” Mrs. Caldwell continued, “I’d like to share some testimonials from students who have benefited from our comprehensive approach to education.”

This wasn’t part of the planned program. Vera felt tension ripple through the girls scattered across the auditorium.

“Joss Torres would like to say a few words about her experience.”

Joss walked to the podium with careful steps, her blazer hanging loose on her eighty-three-pound frame. Her parents sat in the front row, her mother’s face tight with worry that had been building for months.

“Thank you, Mrs. Caldwell,” Joss said, her voice barely audible through the microphone. “I’d like to tell you about the research program that’s been helping me disappear.”

A confused murmur ran through the audience. Mrs. Caldwell moved toward the podium, but Joss continued speaking.

“Eighteen months ago, I weighed one hundred and thirty-seven pounds. Today I weigh eighty-three. Dr. Thorne has been documenting my self-destruction as part of a longitudinal study on adolescent trauma responses.”

“Joss, dear, perhaps you should—” Mrs. Caldwell reached for the microphone.

“Don’t touch me.” Joss’s voice was stronger now. “You’ve been touching us for months, documenting us, using our pain as research data while our families paid tuition to watch us die.”

Parents began shifting in their seats. Vera saw several people reaching for their phones, though whether to record or call for help wasn’t clear.

Sage stood up near the sound booth. “I think everyone should hear what those research sessions actually sound like.”

The first recording began playing through the auditorium’s speakers. Dr. Thorne’s voice, clinical and measured: “Tell me about the night you decided to stop eating.”

Joss’s voice, younger and more desperate: “When I realized that taking up less space made me harder to hurt.”

“And how does starvation feel?”

“Like control. Like disappearing before anyone can destroy me completely.”

Parents sat in stunned silence as their daughters’ most vulnerable moments played overhead. Vera watched her aunt Sarah’s face go pale as Dr. Thorne’s voice continued, probing and documenting and treating human suffering like scientific data.

Mrs. Caldwell rushed toward the sound booth, but Elena intercepted her.

“You’re going to listen to all of it,” Elena said, her voice carrying clearly across the silent auditorium. “Every session, every manipulation, every moment when you used our trust to destroy us more efficiently.”

The recordings continued. Elena’s session from the previous day, where she had carefully led Dr. Thorne into admitting her knowledge of unreported abuse. Vera’s sessions, where her grief over her parents’ death had been systematically exploited. Camila’s recruitment as an informant, documented in detail.

“Turn it off,” Dr. Thorne shouted, pushing through the crowd toward the sound equipment.

“No.” Mei-Lin stood up, holding a thick folder of documents. “Everyone needs to understand what you’ve been doing to us.”

She began reading from the files she had photographed. Clinical notes reducing girls to research variables. Protocols for inducing psychological breakdowns. Timelines for documenting self-destruction. Plans for managing “research terminations” among subjects who completed the deterioration cycle.

“Zara’s mother was a previous subject,” Mei-Lin announced. “She was driven to suicide on Zara’s birthday as part of the research design. They’ve been studying intergenerational trauma transmission using Zara as a second-generation test subject.”

Zara stood up in the back of the auditorium. “My mother killed herself with pills Dr. Thorne provided, knowing exactly what she would do with them. It was documented as the successful completion of a research protocol.”

Parents were standing now, some moving toward their daughters, others toward the exits. Vera saw several people on phones, and she hoped at least some of them were calling journalists rather than lawyers.

“This is clearly a coordinated delusion,” Mrs. Caldwell said, her voice shaking. “These girls are exhibiting classic symptoms of mass hysteria, a well-documented phenomenon in institutional settings.”

“Then explain the recordings,” Sage called out. “Explain the files. Explain why your research protocols include plans for managing student suicides.”

The audio continued playing, Dr. Thorne’s voice growing more incriminating with each session. Discussions of pharmaceutical interventions. Plans for accelerating psychological deterioration. References to previous students who had “completed the research cycle” through self-destruction.

Elena walked to the microphone. “Some of you are wondering if this is real. If your daughters could really have been treated as laboratory animals while you paid tuition and attended parent conferences.”

She pulled out photographs of the conservatory cameras, the hidden recording equipment, the files documenting years of systematic abuse disguised as therapy.

“We have documentation going back fifteen years. Hundreds of girls who were studied, broken, and discarded. Some of them graduated. Some of them didn’t survive the research process.”

Dr. Thorne had reached the sound booth, but Sage had locked herself inside. The recordings continued, months of evidence playing to an audience of parents, donors, and board members who were finally hearing what their money had purchased.

“The beautiful thing about documentation,” Elena continued, “is that it works both ways. You documented our destruction. We documented yours.”

Security guards entered the auditorium, but several parents blocked their path to the sound booth. Vera saw her aunt Sarah standing with other families, forming a protective barrier around the girls who were still speaking.

“My daughter tried to tell me,” one mother called out. “She said the therapy wasn’t helping, that Dr. Thorne made everything worse. I thought she was just resisting treatment.”

“Mine stopped eating three months after arriving here,” another parent said. “The school said it was normal adjustment stress.”

The recordings reached Elena’s session, where she had carefully maneuvered Dr. Thorne into confessing the scope of the research program. Parents listened to their daughters’ therapist admitting to exploitation, to systematic documentation of trauma, to using psychological damage as raw material for academic research.

Mrs. Caldwell grabbed a microphone from one of the security guards. “These recordings could easily be fabricated. Digital manipulation is simple with current technology.”

“Then explain this,” Camila said, standing up with her own folder. “Financial records showing payments from pharmaceutical companies for research data. Government contracts for studying trauma responses in controlled populations. Insurance claims for students who died during the research process, filed as routine mental health casualties.”

The evidence continued mounting. Years of careful documentation, turned into weapons against the system that had created it. Parents demanded answers, journalists began arriving, and sirens wailed in the distance as someone had finally called actual authorities instead of institutional ones.

Joss collapsed at the podium, her eighty-three-pound frame finally unable to sustain the effort of standing and speaking. Her parents reached her first, her father lifting her carefully while her mother called for an ambulance.

“She needs medical attention,” Vera called out. “Real medical attention, not more research documentation.”

Dr. Thorne tried to leave through a side exit, but found her path blocked by Rebecca, who had driven down from Boston with three journalists and a camera crew.

“Dr. Thorne,” Rebecca called out. “I’m Rebecca Walsh, Millbrook class of 2018. I’d like to ask you about the three classmates who died during our final semester.”

The confrontation was being filmed now, Dr. Thorne’s face caught in harsh media lighting as she faced questions about decades of systematic abuse. Mrs. Caldwell found herself surrounded by parents demanding explanations, board members calling emergency meetings, and donors threatening to withdraw funding.

Vera looked around the auditorium at her classmates, girls who had spent months being systematically destroyed and had found the strength to destroy their destroyers in return. Some of them would need years of real therapy to recover from what had been done to them. Some might never fully heal.

But they had survived. They had documented their own abuse before anyone else could profit from it. They had turned their pain into evidence and their trauma into testimony.

The research was finally over, but the subjects had written their own conclusion.

In the chaos of parents embracing daughters, journalists interviewing survivors, and authorities beginning investigations, Vera felt something she hadn’t experienced in months: the possibility of a future that wasn’t carefully planned by someone else.

The conservatory stood empty now, its glass walls reflecting flashing lights from ambulances and police cars. The orchids would continue dying without an audience to document their deterioration.

Some experiments, Vera thought, deserved to fail.