Sisters in Sanity by Gayle Forman Read Free Book Online

days?”
    Martha just stared down at her plate of food, until she squeaked, “I don’t get it.”
    “What?” I asked.
    “I’m supposed to lose weight, but the only thing they have to eat is this stuff,” she said pointing to her plate of breaded fish sticks, Tater Tots, and carrots so overboiled, they were dissolving into a blob under melted margarine. “If I eat this, I’ll just get fatter, but if I don’t eat it, I’ll get written up,” she whined, gesturing toward the clipboard-wielding counselors. And then she started sobbing.
    Poor Martha. The food at Red Rock was positively vile. Everything was frozen and came in theseindustrial-sized metal tins: burgers of dubious meat origin, burritos, pizza, fish sticks, chicken nuggets, ice cream that didn’t have cream in it, packaged cookies. The only fresh vegetable was iceberg lettuce salad with some scary old tomatoes. It was so disgusting that I ended up eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches most days. But the girls on food watch didn’t have the luxury of PB and Js. They were monitored all the time. If they ate too much, they got a black mark. If they didn’t eat enough, they were suspected of starving themselves and got a black mark. Martha was supposed to lose weight, but in the catch-22 that was lame-ass Red Rock, she also had to clean her plate.
    “Martha,” V said in that sharp way of hers. “Don’t cry. Don’t let them see you weak. There are ways around everything in this place.”
    Martha looked up at her. “What ways?”
    “Yeah,” I asked. “What are these ways of yours?”
    “Not here. Not now. But soon enough we’ll have a little education for some of you newbies.”
    “Where?” I asked.
    “Shh. Bebe will take care of you,” V said. “Now let’s scatter before we call more attention to ourselves.” V stood up. “I’m glad you’re starting to examine your food crutches, Martha,” she said in an overly loud voice. Then she nodded her head, shot Martha a wink, and walked away.

Chapter 8
    “Don’t make a sound.” Bebe was standing over me in her pajamas, with her hand over my mouth. I opened my eyes and she put her finger over her lips and mouthed, “Get up.” She went over to Martha and did the same thing, except Martha jumped when she woke, and for a second it looked like Tiffany was up too. We all held our breath until Tiffany rolled back over and resumed snoring into her pile of stuffed animals.
    Bebe led us out of our room and through the hallways to the T-junction where the residential units met the administrative offices. She pointed to the guard chair, which was empty, and an open utility closetwhere one of the goons was asleep on the floor. “He likes to nap between one and three, like clockwork, so we, my dears, have a small window of opportunity.” It was a quarter past one.
    “How’d you wake yourself up without an alarm clock?”
    “I never went to sleep. I was just replaying my mom’s old soap episodes in my mind. Always good for a laugh.”
    “What about the cameras?” I asked.
    “They don’t have them in the halls, and besides, they can’t see crap when the lights are out.”
    She took us to a small office, empty save for V and Cassie, who were waiting for us there. We sat down in a circle on the floor and faced one another.
    “Wow, how’d you know about this office? How’d ya get in?” Martha asked.
    V held up a small silver key. “Secret number one,” she said. “The pass key. It opens every door in the place.”
    “How did you manage to get that?” I asked.
    “Our sneaky V stole it off the Sheriff’s giant key ring,” Cassie said.
    “Let’s just say I liberated it. Sheriff thinks he lost it.And of course, they didn’t want to pay to change all the locks,” V said. “Now, let’s get down to business.”
    “But what if we get caught?” Martha asked. “I don’t want to get sent back to Level One.”
    “We won’t get caught,” V said, impatiently.
    “How do you know