Love's Cruel Redemption

by C. L. Stone

  The room was empty. The others hadn’t arrived yet as far as I knew, or they were hanging around the courtyard while we were here early.

  Once we were out of eyesight from the rest of the school with the door closed, I relaxed, breathing out slowly through my lips.

  Mr. Blackbourne put a gentle hand to my lower back in a warming touch. “You did beautifully, as always.”

  “I didn’t know it’d be a parade,” I said. I knew the uniform had a purpose, that it would draw attention. I wasn’t expecting to walk all over the place to get here. It was actually good. It got this out of the way the moment we arrived.

  “It was just good timing,” he said. “I caught Mr. Hendricks driving in as we entered. A little serendipitous.” He crossed to the wooden upright piano on the other side. He took off the messenger bag and placed it on top before turning around.

  “What about taking the long way to get here?” I asked.

  “That was me making my presence known to other teachers. And who I really worked for.”

  “A school that doesn’t really exist?”

  He nodded shortly. “I represent something of a higher standard. I’ve no qualms or loyalty to anyone here, including Hendricks. This is important to establish. It also helps to know students can be chosen to enroll at any time.”

  This idea had changed from when they first started going to the school. At first, they’d blended in, or tried. Mr. Hendricks continued to keep us identified as ‘other people’ regardless of the effort they made. So the strategy had changed. No more hiding.

  I remained by the door, gazing into the room. The room seemed different to me. It was familiar, yet it didn’t intimidate me like it had in the past. “So what do we do now?”

  He unbuttoned the front of his gray jacket, shaking it off his shoulders to place on top of his bag. “We’ll wait for the others. They’ll need to question several students and teachers before they get here. Also, I believe Mr. Lee was going to determine if someone was following you yesterday by checking the cars in the parking lot.”

  “That could have been anyone,” I said.

  “It could have been, including someone from Mr. Hendricks. Or this Volto character. At this point, we need to prove coincidence, not assume it.”

  That was true.

  Mr. Blackbourne took to putting a few of the chairs down from their stacks. I helped to push them a little closer to the chalkboard.

  But before long, Kota arrived, followed by Nathan. They both wore similar uniforms, with Nathan carrying his jacket under his arm and without a tie. Kota wore the whole ensemble together, with a tie tucked into his closed jacket.

  I brightened seeing them, especially walking in together. Nathan looked tired, with dark shadows under his eyes, but he perked up when he saw me. He shortly waved to me while waiting on Kota to get through the door, and hurried to me to give me a quick, deep hug.

  “Did he tell you about your sister?” Nathan said in my ear. I sensed him dropping the jacket on the floor behind me to complete the hug.

  “Yes,” I said. I held his hug for a long moment before I stepped back a half step. “I’m still kind of processing.”

  He held at me a moment longer, looking at the outfit and grinning. “Hey, we match. About time you wore that.” He broke off the hug to pull back and then looked up at Mr. Blackbourne. “They didn’t do anything else last night, but they didn’t want to come into school today, even though I said they should. Marie’s scared shitless of this place now.”

  “Probably more fear of embarrassment than actual fear,” Mr. Blackbourne said. “Her getting called in repeatedly gets her teased in class. But also, I imagine she’s tired of Mr. Hendricks’s threats, and I don’t blame her. However, she’s got to know by now it’s meritless. We’ve told her as much. He never gives her any punishments. And he asks the same questions.” He sighed and then looked at me. “What do you think? Should we give your sister and her friend what they want?”

  “I’m not sure about Danielle,” I said. “Only with Marie...her being miserable for the rest of the school year and possibly next if she comes back would be tough. I know she’s only a junior, but I wasn’t sure she’d return after summer anyway.”

  “Mr. Hendricks won’t be here then,” Mr. Blackbourne said. “But I’m not sure the environment will be much better after he’s gone.”

  “It’ll take a while for the attitude with students and teachers to change,” Kota said. “Everyone’s tense. Faculty is suspicious of each other.”

  “Marie’s not exactly an honor roll student anyway,” Nathan said. He looked at me. “And she wasn’t before. Right?”

  “No,” I said. “Never, really. She did enough to get by.”

  “She may not know her talents yet,” Mr. Blackbourne said. “But she won’t find it here. Legally, she could drop out. She’s seventeen, and in South Carolina, that’s the age it could be done. But let’s not tell her this. Maybe she doesn’t know. Let’s pretend dropping out isn’t an option yet. I’d rather her think she needs another alternative. I don’t think taking her out of school to wither away at home to be a good thing.”

  “She probably needs to talk to someone,” I said. “Maybe Lily...I didn’t have much hope for the future before I met you guys. I was just trying to survive. She doesn’t really have a plan for herself. Not that I know of.”

  The others nodded simultaneously.

  Kota seemed to finally see the uniform I was wearing and then blinked a few times. “I didn’t think you’d be wearing that yet.”

  “We pushed up the deadline,” Mr. Blackbourne said. “You’ll hear why in a bit, when the others get here.”

  Kota tilted his head and then reached out, brushing fingertips across the hidden heart on the patch. “Is it too warm?” he asked. “Mine gets pretty hot during the day.”

  “It’s okay right now,” I said, enjoying his sweet-natured concern for my comfort.

  “If you get uncomfortable, there are spare clothes in our cars. Borrow whatever you need.”

  Before I could answer, the music room door opened.

  The other guys appeared, starting with Victor, who wore the uniform sans tie, but with just his Armani shirt instead of the traditional one. His wavy hair had a bit of curl as it had gotten longer around the ears.

  He approached, admiring the uniform I wore and beamed. “Morning,” he said brightly.

  “Good morning.”

  He reached out to the front collar of my jacket, feeling the material. “How is yours nicer? I want one like yours.”

  North and Silas entered the room. North wore a black sweater over his tie and shirt. He still hadn’t shaved and appeared older than the others by a couple of years now.

  Silas moved beside him, but his big brown eyes were shadowed. His lips stretched into a yawn as he walked. His wide shoulders and broad chest were stuffed into the jacket, and he wore his tie loose around his neck.

  Silas put a hand on my back, saying good morning. He looked down at the uniform then made a half grin. “I don’t want to make a school girls are hot comment. Usually I find it creepy. What am I supposed to say if I actually like the girl?”

  North grunted at Silas. “Just think if Rocky says it.”

  Silas frowned. “I don’t want to think about that. Sang, don’t change your clothes just because Rocky might say something. Punch him if he does.”

  North snorted, stopped, turned, sniffed the air. He leaned over me, smelling. “What did you put in that bath last night?”

  I shrugged. “Multiple bath bombs.”

  He nodded. “That scent lasts a while. Better than soap.”

  “You like it?”

  “You smell like I should tell Luke to stay away. He’d bite off a finger.”

  Silas leaned in, sniffing hard near my shoulder. “Sugar? Strawberry?” He backed up. “How did you know from so far away? Your nose is as good as your hearing now?”

  “She’s not the only one who can smell things,” Nor
th said, walking further into the room to talk to Mr. Blackbourne.

  Gabriel came in behind them. He wore the shirt with his tie and didn’t carry a jacket at all. Luke was behind him, just the shirt, unbuttoned at the top two buttons and untucked.

  Gabriel went right over to me, inspecting the outfit. He cocked a brow. “Hm. I don’t think I like the jacket on you.”

  Luke leaned into Gabriel, his hand to his chin like he was judging me. “Hmmm...I’d wear it.”

  “You don’t wear your own,” Gabriel said.

  “It’s stiff. Hers looks softer.”

  Gabriel groaned. He waved a finger in my direction. “This is only for school, okay? Bad enough we’ve got to wear something like this.”

  “She looks okay,” Luke said.

  “She looks fabulous. The outfit isn’t worth the bother.”

  It felt like it had been a while since I was with so many of them in the same room without someone like Erica or Jessica nearby. I realized then how being around anyone else besides them made communication feel stifled. We couldn’t talk about anything, the relationship, Academy work, personal family issues... Even their goofy banter seemed cut off when others were around.

  Maybe we needed our own place more than I realized. We needed somewhere secure they could all be free to communicate openly.

  “We’re only missing Dr. Green?” Mr. Blackbourne asked as he inspected the others. He motioned to Luke to tuck his shirt in. Luke did, but he left the buttons undone.

  “On his way,” Kota said. “A little slow this morning after a late night at the hospital, and his mother this morning...”

  Mr. Blackbourne delicately touched the corner of his glasses. “We’ll have to work without him and he’ll need to catch up. He’ll probably have to hurry to teach his classes anyway. I think he’s a volunteer sub for a couple of classes today.”

  “I didn’t know he did that,” I said.

  “It gets him involved with more staff and teachers.”

  Victor immediately set up a laptop on the piano and opened it. Mr. Blackbourne opened his messenger bag and took out a device, some sort of thing that looked like an external hard drive. He hooked it up to Victor’s laptop. Victor took over after, typing and clicking around. I wasn’t quite sure what it was, but after a few moments, Victor signaled to the rest of us. “Should be safe.”

  We all took a seat in the chairs Mr. Blackbourne had set out. I sat next to Nathan with Silas on my other side. The others made a semi-circle around us.

  “We’ve several projects ahead of us,” Mr. Blackbourne said. “But before that, are we all feeling rested after our time off?”

  I nodded, and the others murmured mostly agreement. There had been stressful times between Christmas break, the Academy camp at New Year’s, and then following the fiasco with Carol and my father and my escape from that.

  In a way, I was glad it all happened, glad it was over, and now we could move on.

  “Kind of got jolted near the end,” Nathan said. He gazed at his feet at the floor, scooting his shoe around the linoleum.

  “We’re already making changes regarding everything moving forward,” Mr. Blackbourne said. He looked dead at me. “Why don’t you tell them your plans, Miss Sorenson?”

  I blinked repeatedly for a moment. I wasn’t sure what he was talking about until I looked over at Luke, who sat up and spoke, “That’s our project.”

  “Uh,” I said. “Yes, we were thinking about...a house.”

  Gabriel took over. “We need to start thinking about it and looking at options. Between Victor and Sang and I, we’d need a place soon. We can’t all crash at Nathan’s forever. It’d be too obvious to everyone on that block, not to mention Erica or the Sorensons noticing.”

  “It’s the project we can take on,” Luke said. “But we need to hear from everyone else what they’d need. Like a list of...”

  “Wait,” Silas said, an eyebrow raising. “We’re talking about one place? For everyone?”

  “Sometimes students share a house once they move on from living at home,” Mr. Blackbourne said. “Usually near a university.”

  I realized suddenly this was a family meeting, and the device Mr. Blackbourne and Victor had set up probably helped keep our conversation private. However, the way they tiptoed around certain topics made me think they still weren’t willing to say too much out loud. Perhaps talking about it here wasn’t the best, but it was getting harder to get most of them together like this in the same spot.

  “Yeah,” Silas said. “But we can’t all just move. And what kind of place are we talking about?”

  “Pam’s love life is getting in the way of my sleep,” Gabriel said. “And going back and forth every day... I just want a closer spot, okay? We lose at least a couple of hours a day trying to drive back and forth to where we need to be. And Sang needs her own turf. We’re already in trouble with Erica as it is. We’re just asking for more problems if we keep this up.”

  “So we’re voting to not tell anyone about us?” North asked. “We’re going to hide in a house no one can visit, because we can’t explain why there are ten of us in a single house. I mean, that’s what you’re looking at.”

  “Don’t we need to sort this out for ourselves, first?” Nathan asked. He glanced over at me and then down to the floor. “I mean, we all want to do the right thing. But...there’s a lot we haven’t talked about.”

  “We’re getting off track,” Mr. Blackbourne said. “But no matter what we decide or who we choose to trust, some basic necessities need to be addressed.” His eyes shifted from one of the guys to the next, including me in his pass. “We’re getting to the point where it could be critical that you all need to move away from home. Whether you choose to live with each other or separate, it is your choice. Opting to live separate doesn’t mean voting yourself out of the group. Or out of anything.”

  “I vote to live with Sang,” Luke said, raising his hand.

  “Me, too,” Gabriel said, copying Luke with both of his hands in the air.

  North groaned. “We know.” He pointed at Luke. “But you aren’t going anywhere until Uncle’s house is finished.”

  “Sang needs a house before then,” Luke said.

  “That’s fine,” he said. “But we’ve got other obligations before you can start running off.”

  “Which brings us to Hendricks,” Mr. Blackbourne said. “And the rest of the people we’ve crossed paths with while here. We’ll need to complete it all before—” His lips twisted, and he instantly dropped his hand into his pocket to fish his phone out. An eyebrow raised, crossing behind his dark glasses. He slid his finger across the surface and put it to his ear.

  The rest of us fell silent. For a moment, I couldn’t imagine who it could be. We were all accounted for.

  His lips tightened, the sharpness in his gray eyes turning the color into steel. After a minute, he lowered the phone and pushed a button then motioned us to keep quiet.

  The voice was difficult to hear, but after a moment, I recognized Dr. Green.

  “Look, I really want to help you,” he said. “But I can’t until you tell me what’s going on.”

  “It’s...Mr. Hendricks,” a woman’s voice said. It sounded familiar to me, but I couldn’t place it right away. “I haven’t had a day off this year. I’ve had to work all this time to keep my old pay rate. I can’t survive on less.”

  “But you have to take days off...I mean state regulation...”

  “It’s off the books. It’s complicated. But it’s this or he threatens to get me fired. I don’t know what to do. The things he gets us to do aren’t official anyway. He’s in with the superintendent, I’m sure. He keeps saying he’s got friends higher up the chain that can make things happen if I don’t cooperate. Including not being able to work anywhere else in this state...”

  I glanced over at Nathan, who sensed me and locked eyes. I made a worried expression, sharing my concern with him. In all of our talk about us, I forgot we had bigger pr
oblems here. Mr. Blackbourne was right. Luke had been right. Hendricks was a problem.

  “What are you doing when you aren’t teaching?” Dr. Green asked. There was a slight muffling like clothing shifting around the phone. I got the feeling he’d called Mr. Blackbourne to have him listen in but his phone was probably still in his pocket. She probably didn’t know.

  “Sometimes I’m here to supervise after school. I run the ticket booth and some security at sport games. And then after school...he has me look in on some students. Sometimes faculty. He sends word sometimes at odd hours of the night to go check on someone. Not really check on. Mostly I sit in my car and leave a report with him about what I saw.”

  “Why?” Dr. Green asked. “He shouldn’t be doing that. And why look in on people after hours?”

  I thought it almost amusing how well he could pretend we didn’t know Hendricks was doing this.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But I know I’m not the only one. And now someone’s been parking outside of my house at night.”

  “He’s having you monitored?”

  “Yes,” she said. “And then I can’t sleep. I don’t know why it’s happening. But I was wondering...I know it is forward of me, but I wondered if your school might have any openings. The one you and Mr. Blackbourne work for. I’ve heard a few things...”

  The conversation continued with Dr. Green consoling the woman, promising to help her. Meanwhile, Victor got up, went to the laptop, and started typing. Kota went over with him, looking over his shoulder.

  The others pulled away, to the far side of the room, circling Mr. Blackbourne to continue to listen quietly.

  I went to Victor and Kota. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do, but when no one said to do otherwise, I figured it was okay to join them.

  Victor was pulling up video monitoring to get a look at where Dr. Green was. They were in the office Dr. Green and Mr. Blackbourne shared. Dr. Green was leaning against the desk. The teacher had her back to the camera, but I recognized Ms. Johnson, my old English teacher.