This Will Be Funny Later by Jenny Pentland

Author:Jenny Pentland [Pentland, Jenny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2021-10-24T16:00:00+00:00

12.

Death by Survival

The summer I lay down to die in the dusty, hot cactus fields of southern Utah, I was fifteen years old—it was the summer of 1991. My peers were home watching The Simpsons and brushing their Furbys’ hair while I was out here on “Survival,” eating squirrels and wiping my ass with a pinecone.

“Survival” is slang for any number of private programs that lead you on a wilderness expedition with the sole purpose of self-improvement. Some, like National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), were reserved for consenting adults, while some, like Aspen Achievement Academy (AAA), were for nonconsenting teens. Teens like me.

The majority of these teen “students” (these places always called us “students” or “attendees” or any other word other than “captives”) were spoiled rich kids who were here to be stripped of all luxuries and broken down until they were groveling urchins who would be grateful for a single bowl of gruel. In theory, we’d return home full of gratitude and would beg to do chores and be the middleman for our unhappily married parents in exchange for their subpar room and board. That was the dream the parents were being sold for the low price of sixty thousand dollars.

Jessica had been sent here a month before me and was still out on course when I arrived. We wouldn’t see each other, as she was in a different peer group, and much further into the program. I was once again following in her footsteps.

One downfall of being Jessica’s successor was being held accountable for her behavior and/or confused with her. The incident with the Youth Transport Service (they called themselves this; we called them bounty hunters; my dad called them ghostbusters; they should be called kidnappers) was just the first of many times this happened.

The crew my parents had paid to escort me to AAA were the same bounty-hunting, ghostbusting, youth-transporting kidnappers for hire who had come to get Jessica two years prior to take her to her first placement, CEDU.

The bounty hunters had noted the altercation they had had with Jessica and the kitchen knife she’d pulled on them in their file captioned “Pentland female,” so when they came to get me two years later, I was handcuffed in order to prevent my ever doing this again.

“Wait! That wasn’t me! That was my sister! We’re Irish twins!” I pleaded, to get them to take the handcuffs off as I boarded a flight to Utah.

“Every criminal has a twin that ‘did it,’” said a man who looked like the lead in a community theater production of Thor, as he moved the cuffs from my back to my front so I could sit on the plane. I rode that flight fluctuating between a hysterical laugh and a surrendering cry and was relieved when we landed. Now there was just a long car ride to base camp, where the cuffs could be removed.

Base camp was a warehouse in the desert of Loa, a town with a population of around five

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