Lakewood

Lena Johnson, a young Black college student, carries out her grandmother Miss Toni's detailed final wishes: a funeral, a luncheon, and a late-night trip to Miss Toni's favorite casino, where Deziree, Lena's mother, accepts condolences from staff while Lena retreats to a bathroom stall, overwhelmed. Lena constantly monitors Deziree for signs of her long-undiagnosed chronic condition, which causes seizures, migraines, limb weakness, and episodes of confusion. When they return home, Deziree presents an envelope stuffed with unpaid bills: funeral costs, medical debt, and maxed-out credit cards. Lena adds the bills to a to-do list crowded with college exams, work-study, and coordinating Deziree's home health care.

While searching for work, Lena receives a letter inviting her to participate in research studies about "mind, memory, personality, and perception" called the Lakewood Project. It promises health insurance, housing, and a stipend, but its vague language unsettles her. Her roommate and best friend, Tanya, encourages her to call. At a party, Lena meets Kelly, an MFA student and her friend Stacy's brother, who tells her the letter is likely legitimate. She interviews at a fast-food chain called Burrito Town, where the manager offers her a demeaning mascot position. She accepts, knowing she needs any income.

Lena visits an intake office disguised as part of a company called Great Lakes Shipping. Invasive forms demand social media passwords and detailed health history, and reveal the program is government-affiliated. The final page is a nondisclosure agreement carrying $50,000 in penalties. That same morning, Lena learns Deziree's electricity has been shut off. Reflecting on her grandmother's sacrifices, she signs.

At a five-day pre-screening facility 40 miles from campus, Lena surrenders her phone and is patted down. Dr. Maggie, a physician, administers undisclosed booster shots. Dr. Lisa, a psychologist, probes Lena's views on race, violence, and morality through interviews and hypothetical scenarios. Dr. Maggie gives Lena pills and phrases to memorize, then injects a clear fluid that causes excruciating pain. During this week, someone from the program impersonates Lena via text, communicating with Deziree and friends undetected. Lena discovers a journal she wrote but cannot remember writing, describing additional injections, forced midnight runs, and the word "blood" in large capitals. She resolves the ordeal is worth enduring if it means caring for her mother.

On the final day, Tim, the orientation leader, formally invites Lena to join the Lakewood Project in a small town two and a half hours north. The contract offers a generous salary, full health coverage for her family, and a new NDA with escalating penalties, including $100,000 if she dies. Lena fixates on the healthcare: Deziree could resume Botox injections for migraines, afford physical therapy, and always have medication. She signs immediately and tells Deziree she has a job at a shipping company. That night, she researches declassified government experiments, including the Tuskegee syphilis study and Project Artichoke, a Cold War-era CIA interrogation program.

In Lakewood, Floor 1 of the building functions as a trucking dispatch office for cover, Floor 2 holds study areas, and Floor 3 and the basement are off-limits. Lena receives daily "Day sheets" scripting a fake work narrative. She notes that almost all observers are white, while nearly all study participants are Black, Indian, or Latinx. Charlie Graham, the branch supervisor and the only other Black person Lena has seen in town, introduces himself.

The experiments escalate. An observer locks Lena in a remote cabin for days and plays a video of her being slapped and choked by an unidentified man. She has no memory of the event. When released, she panics, sprains her wrist fleeing through the forest, and wakes in a hospital bed. When she talks about quitting, Dr. Lisa leans close and whispers: "Before you talk like that to any of us again, think about your mother" (102). One morning, receptionist Bethany arrives and begins pulling out her own teeth while observers take notes. Eye drops turn Lena's brown eyes blue; she is sent to a bar to gauge reactions. Bethany is replaced by a series of receptionists named Judy, each identical and each denying knowledge of her predecessor. Lena fills out a power of attorney naming Tanya and hides it in her nightstand.

Dr. Lisa lists a new medication's side effects: damaged short-term memory, confusion between dreams and reality, migraines, depression, and paranoia. Lena recognizes many symptoms as identical to her mother's condition. Forced to take the pills, she experiences rapid cognitive deterioration. While incapacitated, an observer named Helena walks her through an underground facility. Lena fakes confusion and observes enormous animals, rooms with living grass and gray corn, and people with mushrooms sprouting from their arms. In a replica of the office, neon notecards outline scripted storylines for each participant. Helena brings Lena to a room where staff watch a surveillance feed of a young girl named Madison opening a safe, taking a gun, and shooting both her sleeping parents. Dr. Lisa responds, "We needed to see a full range of results from that study" (182). Lena suppresses all reaction.

After recovering, an older white man who holds authority over the program asks Lena about her grandmother, studying her face as if he recognizes her. Smith, one of the observers, drives Lena home for a break. Deziree is healthier than ever. Among Miss Toni's papers, Lena finds a photograph of her grandmother as a teenager in front of a tree she recognizes from a meadow near Long Lake, suggesting Miss Toni had a prior connection to the area.

Back in Lakewood, the narrative shifts to unsent letters Lena writes to Tanya. She encounters protesters with signs reading "STOP HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN THE USA" who offer to help anyone in a study. Charlie returns after an unexplained absence, his body completely hairless. He confides that he has blank spots in his memory and warns Lena not to speak to anyone. Fellow participant Mariah has a seizure after taking new pills and dies in Lena's arms. The older man gives Lena a golden pill, and she hallucinates vividly, including a vision of her grandmother injecting her. She wakes on September 5th having lost weeks, bearing a scar near her heart. At the local emergency room, patients describe hallucinations, and a news report announces the water supply is contaminated.

Lena drives home and tells Deziree everything. Her mother produces a faded invitation addressed to Deziree for "The Mineral Hills Project," a study identical in language to Lena's letter. Deziree reveals three years of her life are missing, including the year she became pregnant with Lena. She and Miss Toni were estranged during that period because Miss Toni believed Deziree was using drugs. Lena realizes the studies may explain her mother's lifelong illness and the older man's interest in three generations of her family. A newspaper reports a Michigan hospital's apology for research on African Americans in the 1960s and 1970s; an anonymous letter describes a teenager in Lakewood given injections she was told would prevent cancer, the disease that killed Miss Toni.

When Lena and Deziree return to Lakewood, everything has vanished. The apartment is stripped, Great Lakes Shipping is an empty warehouse, and no trace of Charlie Graham exists online. News coverage shifts from the experimentation revelations to the water crisis, which proves more photogenic: dying geese, portraits of affected white residents. The human experimentation story fades. Deziree meets with journalists but faces skepticism. Lena struggles with severe anxiety, unable to leave the house on some days. Deziree scratches her scalp as Miss Toni once did and secures a full-time job with health insurance. Lena volunteers as a docent at the art museum her grandmother once took her to, one of the few places she feels safe. In her final letter to Tanya, she resolves to visit the museum daily and remind herself that "despite everything I know now, people are capable of making something wonderful" (271).