I detail findings from an ethnographic study of a high school remedial reading class, with a particular focus on students' perceptions of what it means to be literate and how their mandatory enrollment in the course impacted their identities. Compounding students' experiences was the existence of a high-stakes reading examination that all students in the district must pass to graduate high school. Findings describe the contrast between school literacies that students learn in class and their own literate practices, which neither youth nor their teacher recognized as literacies, as well as the functioning of the remedial reading class as a sort of "purgatory" that holds and segregates students, the majority of whom are students of color and/or from marginalized socioeconomic backgrounds, for semesters on end. Still, students employed tactical literacies to subvert the teacher's directives and reclaim their time. These findings suggest that common approaches to remediation may be a cause of youth disinterest in reading and that youth literacies may be leveraged in service of broader literacy goals, although the school must first acknowledge them.