Sometimes, they had school; not so often, anymore. The teachers were terrified, and the lessons terrible, anyway. Even the kids who remembered liking school could tell they were better off without it. None of the teachers spoke English too well, and most of the kids refused to use anything else. Nobody knew if math was part of the curriculum. And the propaganda lessons stopped when Mia yelled at the teacher and made the teacher’s head bleed. The teacher hadn’t come back, and the story had evolved to include a terrible suicide in Mr. Sun’s office on a hill overlooking the cabins.

Sinister rumors abounded.

Entertainment was meager. You could find something to do in the woods, or swim in the lake if it wasn’t freezing. There were a couple of awful 8-track tapes in a cubby in the dining hall. And, for a while, they had movies on Fridays, but they were all awful things about farmers and factory workers, and finally Stephen made the projector break and nobody had to watch the stupid things, anymore.