The Never List

a pile of spiral notebooks. As she opened it, we peered in over her shoulder.
    “Photographs,” Adele said, looking excited at first, until she saw what they were. They were not what any of us were hoping to find. Not even Adele.
    Tracy flipped through them slowly, and the rest of us stood watching over her shoulder. As the photos flashed past, I saw image after image of young women’s bodies, of all shapes and sizes, in both natural and unnatural poses, naked and clothed. In color, in black and white, in sepia tones. But it was their faces that disturbed us the most, blurred as many of them were. Some were smiling, some looked afraid, some were clearly suffering. And some were the faces of corpses, in various stages of decay.
    Adele covered her mouth with her hands, her eyes wide. I thought she might throw up.
    Tracy methodically stacked the photos, put them back in the box, and replaced the lid.
    “I don’t think we need to look at those right now,” she said with almost unnatural calm.
    She turned to Christine. “This should give you some comfort. Some of those appear to go back twenty years or more. You certainly weren’t the start of it all.” But Christine looked like the rest of us felt, completely horrified.
    What did this mean? Again, I reached for Jennifer’s photo in my pocket. Was there a picture of her in that box as well?
    “Let’s see the notebooks,” I said, keeping my voice under control, even though I felt like screaming.
    Tracy lifted them out and handed one to each of us. I turned the pages of mine slowly, careful to let only the tips of my fingers touch them, as though a poison might be embedded in the words he had scratched out onto the blank pages.
    “What is this?” I finally said. They were filled with notes in Jack Derber’s even scrawl. I read out loud, “‘Subject H-29 withstands pain at 6 count.’”
    We turned to Adele as one. Only she could tell us what this meant. She was clearly in shock. She took the notebook from my hands, but unlike me, she caressed the pages like a long-lost love.
    “These are his … notes,” she whispered in awe. “The ones I’ve been looking for. For ten years.”
    “Would you care to elaborate?” Tracy said, an edge creeping into her voice.
    Adele suddenly seemed confused, her bravado evaporating as it dawned on her what this meant to us. What this would mean to any other human being. She tried to explain.
    “It’s not what you think. Jack … Jack said he had gotten access to highly classified government documents. CIA research on soldiersand civilians from the fifties on—on certain coercive techniques. You know, ‘brainwashing,’ ‘mind control.’”
    “But why is it all in his handwriting?” Tracy didn’t sound convinced.
    “His contact wouldn’t allow him to photocopy anything, so he wrote out everything by hand. He wanted to publish a study, the definitive truth about mind control. This is what I was working on with him, but he wouldn’t let me see any of his actual notes.”
    “Adele, I hate to break it to you, but I don’t think this work was based on secret CIA records,” Tracy said. She patted the box of photographs beside her. “Looks like this was original research. And I certainly don’t think he planned to publish it, considering it’s evidence of his crimes.”
    Adele shook her head. She looked confused, panicked. “I don’t know what you’re—”
    Christine interrupted. “Brainwashing? Adele, don’t forget I was a psych major too. I know about those CIA experiments using Chinese and Korean persuasion techniques. They’ve been discredited. The CIA gave up. Brainwashing does not work.”
    “Jack disagreed,” Adele replied. “He thought the CIA only discontinued their studies because they got caught. Their methods were unethical, so they got shut down. But Jack said the documents he obtained proved the CIA was successful. And that his discovery would change the field.”
    Tracy interrupted her, “I see. And you figured if you were his coauthor, you’d surely be invited to join the Harvard faculty.”
    Adele turned pale but said nothing.
    I remembered the books Adele had been reading in the library, and it started to make sense. But then I had another, even more horrible thought.
    “Adele, how does this research connect back to your little secretsociety? I know it existed. You and Jack were in it together, weren’t you? Does that have anything to do with torturing these girls? Tell us the