Alyssa Sheinmel - The Castle School (for Troubled Girls)

The first thing they tell me is that the school is called the Castle and the campus is called the Kingdom.

Doesnt that sound nice? my mother says, her voice maddeningly upbeat.

I roll my eyes. No matter what they call it, my parents arent sending me to a fairy-tale charm school for aspiring princesses. Not when there are two enormous men waiting by our apartments front door to take me there. I glance at my dad, but he wont meet my gaze. Mom must have told him that this is for the best. He always lets her take the lead.

A glossy brochure is spread out on the coffee table in front of me, a name printed in block letters across the top: THE CASTLE SCHOOL. The pictures show a building that looks like one of those medieval castles in the Black Forest in Germany, the kind you see on postcards and in tourism magazines and books.

They never tell you that the king who had those castles built was mad, that he tortured and enslaved people to make his pretty buildings.

Finally, I say, Youre sending me to reform school?

King Ludwig II. That was his name, the German king who built the castles. Mad King Ludwig.

Its not a reform school. Moms voice shakes. Teenagers get sent to reform school as an alternative to prison . She recites the words as though she practiced them. This place is nothing like that . This isnt a jail, its a castle!

Technically, there are plenty of castles that served as prisons. Take the Tower of London. But I dont think Mom is in the mood for that kind of historical trivia. Nathan always loved my little factoids. If he were here, hed say Mad King Ludwigs name out loud, exaggerating the v sound. Lud-vvvvvig.

This is a school for girls going through a rough patch. Girls whose parents Mom pauses, then closes her mouth. Her dark brown eyes are bright with tears even though shes the one choosing to send me away.

In my head, I fill in the rest of Moms sentence: girls whose parents cant handle them anymore. Girls whose parents cant stand them anymore. Girls whose parents are at their wits end because their daughters might not graduate this spring. Girls whose parents are so disappointed with the way their daughters have turned out that they dont know what to do. Girls whose parents think theres something wrong with them, so they send them away, hoping for a fix.

Thats not a rough patch. Thats just rough.

I press my hands against the sofa, feeling the spot where the material is slightly scratchy from the time I spilled grape juice as a little kid, a stain Mom was never able to get rid of completely. An accident for which she still hasnt forgiven me.

Im willing to bet that shes been thinking about sending me away for a while, but only made up her mind to go through with it last week, wheninstead of doing the extra credit work my teachers so generously assigned me over winter break so I could maybe graduate with the rest of my class this springI came home after curfew with a tattoo on my arm.

Well, not that night exactly . I was able to hide the tattoo for the first few days.

Id originally wanted to get a line from my left index finger to my heart, because my grandmother once told me that traditionally, Jewish women wear their wedding rings on their index fingers. She said she chose to wear hers on her left index finger because she believed that finger was the beginning of a direct line to her heart. The tattoo Id imagined going up my arm and across my chest would have been a symbol of the space my best friend took up inside my heart.

But I knew a long line would have been impossible to hide, so I decided to get something smaller at the halfway point between my finger and my heart, on the inside of my upper arm. A little red arrow pointing in the right direction. Red for love; red for the blood beneath my skin. Id kept it bandaged and dry for days, hidden beneath long sleeves.

And then my mother walked in on me in the bathroom. Id taken my shirt off to check on the tattoo in the mirror, holding my arm up like a bodybuilder. She didnt even look at me, only at my reflection. She screamed like shed seen a ghost.

Its not like Id gotten a tattoo of Nathans name . There was no need for that, since the word already felt written on my skin, into my heartbeat, coded into my DNA. But to Mom, a tattoo was a tattoo, no matter how small. As far as she was concerned, Id branded myself.

Later, Mom assigned me chores to punish me for what Id done. I said I didnt see why I should be disciplined for doing something to my own body, but she insisted, and my father kept quiet. So I checked the mail, took out the trash, washed the dishes. At the time, I thought Mom must have read some parenting magazine from the 1950s on how to discipline your rebellious teenage daughter.

Now, she tells me the school told her that assigning chores would help keep me from backsliding further. If I went too far into darkness, I wouldnt be eligible for the program anymore. Its not a hospital, Mom explains. Girls who are too sick cant go there.

I like the sound of that: too far into darkness . I wonder if its in the brochure.

They say hes the best. Mom brushes an invisible strand of hair away from her face. Mom always says we have the same hairdark brown, straight, thickbut Ive never believed it. My hair is always a mess. Mom never has a strand out of place.