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kind of insubordination has her fingerprints all over it.”
    For some reason, this made me furious, and now I was the one turning purple. “I’m my own person, Dr. Clayton, as much as you people here want to change that. I can be insubordinate all on my own.”
    “I see that you can, Brit. And trust me, we’ll be working on that.”
    I expected to be demoted to Level Three right there and then, but Clayton had other plans for me. They sent really bad girls to Red Rock’s version of anaughty chair. It was a small hut, next to the quarry, with a dirt floor and nothing much else. For three days, instead of working the quarry, I had to sit on my ass and not move, not talk, not eat, and not pee for four hours straight. I know it was meant to be a kind of torture, but aside from my cold feet and my numb butt I kind of enjoyed the solitude. I even felt triumphant. They couldn’t break me so easily.
    But Clayton wasn’t through with me yet. A few mornings later, I got my runny oatmeal from the cafeteria and went to sit down next to V. She shook her head at me. At first I thought it was the reemergence of her Jekyll and Hyde personality, but later, at the quarry, the counselors immediately separated us, and I got the sense that something bigger was going on. Bebe filled me in that night. V had been called into Clayton’s office and berated for exerting her bad influence not just on me, but on Martha and Bebe as well. She was stripped of much of her Level Six authority (no more leading CT sessions, to V’s relief) and was warned to keep her paws off of us—or say hello to Level Five.
    “It appears the party is over, darlings,” Bebe whispered from her bunk.
    “What party?” Tiffany asked. “You guys aren’t throwing a party or anything? If you get me in trouble, I swear, I’ll tell.”
    “There’s no party, and if there were, rest assured, you wouldn’t be invited,” Bebe replied, making me grateful, not for the first time, that I was on her good side. Sometimes she could be such a bitch.
    So, that was the end of the Sisters in Sanity—at least the public face. From then on, we had to lay low, keep our friendship more secret. Which was the most lame-ass thing I’d ever heard of. What kind of messed-up place didn’t want you to have friends, to have any kind of good time? What kind of place wanted you to be lonely, sad, and miserable—all in the name of therapy?

Chapter 11
    As Christmas approached, none of us was feeling too merry. First we had the Sisters crackdown. And then it was like, instead of the holidays infusing the staff with some good cheer, it made them more surly. Maybe they thought a little Christmas joy would undo all the tough love they’d been smothering us with. They paid lip service to the holidays by making us decorate the halls, but that was about it. We didn’t get any break in our schedule. No party, no tree.
    The anti-Christmas got me thinking about last year. Clod had played a sold-out day-after show at the X-Ray. When we’d finished our set, we walked down to the riverfront to exchange our presents: I’d foundErik a Ramones-emblazoned cigarette lighter, Denise a beaded handbag, and Jed a pulp edition of the Jim Thompson book Pop 1280 . My gift made Jed so happy that he gave me a kiss, somewhere between the mouth and the cheek. That had me buzzing for hours. And later on, when I started shivering from the cold, he pulled me close to warm me up. It was probably more a friendly thing than anything romantic, but I still felt all oozy inside and wanted to stay there forever.
    There’d be none of that this year. Only Level Five and Six girls were allowed to receive presents from home. The rest of us could only get cards. Exchanging presents among ourselves? Not allowed either. Not that we had anything to give: The staff had refused our request for a Christmas-shopping field trip.
    It was V’s idea to exchange presents anyhow. “We obviously can’t give traditional presents,” she