Like any other town in the world, Rettop County had an elementary school, a high school and a community college, but it was also home to Lady Clare’s Academy, an exclusive boarding school for the very gifted and very rich — I was neither.
The polished marble building sat at the very top of a winding hill, overlooking the industrial community below the way the Grinch did Whoville — with arrogant distaste and an upturned, snooty demeanor. Everything about the four stories of the pristine establishment oozed smug egotism. I could tell right away that I was going to fit in like a hole in the head.
The high, wrought-iron gates sat open in what I guessed was supposed to be a welcoming gesture. The white gravel crunched like money being tossed around all the way up to the looming set of doors at the top of a wide and graceful set of marble stairs.
Children, anywhere from five to eighteen, separated by gender, marched in two precise, military lines across the courtyard. All the girls were dressed immaculately in gray skirts, white blouses, gray vests and a gray blazer with knee high socks and black shoes. The boys were in gray slacks, white dress shirts, gray vests, gray blazers and black shoes. They all had a black satchel held firmly at their left side and an emotionless expression on their faces. I felt horribly out of place in my grunge black jeans, black Guns ‘N Roses t-shirt, braided bracelets and high tops.
“What is this place?” Even if I had tried subtlety, the absolute horror rang loud and clearly in my question.
“Your new school,” Mom answered, the cheerfulness greatly forced. “I’ve already spoken with the front desk and they’re awaiting your arrival.”
Anything I really wanted to say would only ensure an argument, so I wisely bite my lip and pushed the door open, but made no effort to leave.
“It’s not so bad!”
“Really?” So much for biting my tongue. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”
“Just make it work!”
I snorted, rolling my eyes. “Yeah, sure, why not. I’ve always wanted to be brainwashed into a zombie.”
Her fake smile vanished and her expression became deprecating. “I hate that you got my sense of humor.”
My grin was genuine as I climbed out of the car, saying, “Yes, well, sucks to be you!”
Mom scowled. “Get going!”
I grabbed my duffle bag from the backseat and turned to the gates. They loomed before me like gaping jaws of death. I could have sworn they were leering with malicious glee at the prospect of fresh meat. Stepping through could very well be the last thing I ever did.
I gulped.
Raindrops clung to my hair and trailed down my face in icy ribbons the longer I stood there chewing on my thumbnail, deciding between running and taking the first step. Being a mindless zombie didn’t hurt, did it?
“It’ll be okay,” Mom murmured through the open window of my door. “You got your snacks?”
I managed to pull myself together long enough to offer her a comforting smile — because she needed it, needed to know I was okay. For her, I had to be strong, even if it felt like I was walking to my own execution.
I patted my duffle bag, weighed down drastically by the insane amount of chocolate and oatmeal granola bars stuffed inside. They would have to suffice for in-between snacks, or when I couldn’t get my hands on anything and needed a quick fix. I knew from past experiences that the amount I had on me was just enough for three months — that’s assuming I only indulged in one a day. That was roughly the number of times the cravings hit, when I was weakened by the inhumanity that nailed my control to the wall. The problem was that I needed something in my stomach every few hours; otherwise, I was crippled by migraines and cramps. Stocking up on non-perishable items was the only way to keep the prowling demon at bay.
“Yeah, I’m all set.” I slammed the door closed and tossed my duffle bag strap over my shoulder. “I’ll call you the second I can.”
She seemed to hesitate, which made me hesitate, and the knot tightened. “Fallon, listen…” she faltered, sucked in a breath, closed her eyes, then shook her head, giving a weak chuckle. “You know what… Never mind. Call me the second you get settled.”
I took the hotel key she held out through the window. The scuffed and faded keychain with the hotel name and number stamped on the back felt hefty in my grasp and warm from being inside her pocket. I dropped it into the side pocket of my duffle.
With a last glance at my mother, I made my way through the gates and started up the front steps. The two single files of students continued their brisk pace on either side of me, and their footsteps sounding more and more like a steady heartbeat against the wet stone. I felt oddly trapped between them, like I was being herded. I actually stopped and waited to see if they would grab me and drag me forcibly inside.
No one touched me, with their hands, but eyes followed my movement like camera lenses. Most of the attention came from the boys, the ones between thirteen-to-eighteen. They gave me the once over, interest dark in their eyes. I nervously stowed away a coil of escaped hair behind my ear, anxiously staring down at my high tops. Maybe if I didn’t take notice, they’d stop, even if past experiences warned me that wouldn’t happen. I knew from history that boys liked new things. I was new, thus a novelty. I knew that if I remained in one place long enough and people got to know me, I would be no more interesting than the chain link fence caging us all in. But I was new and I was different — the equivalent of a circus freak.
More desperate than before to flee, I glanced back over the wave of bodies blocking my view to my mother’s car, surprised to find her already gone. She could have waited until I was inside before just deserting me, I thought, expelling a sigh as I started forward again.
The flash of light spiking off gleaming metal caught the corner of my eye. My attention was swiveling even before my feet shuffled to clumsy a halt. My heart rate raised in volume between my ears, a loud drum of noise that drowned out the clap of feet on stone. A lock slammed down on my breath, trapping the air in my lungs as I stared, dizzy, at the figure bathed beneath the shadows of an oak tree, clad entirely in black.
The motorcyclist from the other night raised a gloved hand and saluted.
Chapter 3
I didn’t recall running, but my sneakers slipped as I scrambled down the stairs, duffle bag abandoned in my haste. The robot-children eyed me as I shouldered my way through their perfect assembly. But he was gone when I broke free at last.
The spot he’d occupied beneath the giant tree lay vacant. There was no sign of him or his bike. It was as though he’d vanished into thin air. But people didn’t vanish. People didn’t just appear and then disappear mysteriously. I must have been seeing things. A trick of the light? Guilt? It was either that or his ghost had decided to haunt me.
Inwardly, I snorted. Stand in line! I wanted to tell him. Amalie already had dibs.
“Fallon Braeden?” The woman that appeared at the top of the stairs was rail thin with a long face, almond-shaped eyes and a severe expression. She wore a gray dress suit with black, sensible shoes and thin-rimmed glasses that made her features seem even thinner. “Come with me.”
She spun on her two inch pumps and stomped back into the looming darkness on the other side of the open doorway. She didn’t even glance back to see if I was following. She walked with the determination of a person on a mission. This was clearly not a woman who liked her time wasted, so I didn’t.
I grabbed my duffle bag off the courtyard floor and ran after her, not caring if I killed myself trying to maneuver slippery stairs at a run.
The foyer was pure marble, sleek, glossy and white, matching the vaulted ceilings with its crown molding. At the end of the oval room, there was a set of wide, arched stairs draped in a blood-red carpet. At the bottom was an arched doorway that matched the three at the top. The place was bright, disturbingly clean and smelt nauseatingly of floral air freshener and rain.
“My name is Ms. Wonnacott and you shall address me as such,” her voice echoed through the narr
ow corridor, reverberating along with the clicking of her heels. “I am Headmaster Pardun’s Deputy Headmistress and the one you will be dealing with should there be any nonsense conducted within the school grounds. We generally don’t allow such late admission, but your mother was… insistent so we will expect a great deal more from you than the others. Lady Clare’s Academy will not accept slacking. You will be prompt for each class and your assignments will be up to par and on time each day. You will keep your uniform clean, pressed and presentable. No outside clothing is allowed here and you will do well to remember that.”
“I don’t have a uniform,” I told her.
“I am aware,” Ms. Wonnacott replied sharply, as if I had just broken one of the cardinal rules by speaking. “Due to the… circumstances, you will be measured this afternoon and your uniform will be ready by the end of the week. In the meantime, you will wear appropriate attire, preferably in gray colors.”
I wasn’t sure I was allowed to speak again, so I said nothing, but I could tell I was going to just love it here. Nothing said relaxed atmosphere like everyone dressed in gray.
I was taken to a lavishly furnished office and told to sit in one of the two seats facing an enormous mahogany desk. Ms. Wonnacott took the seat behind the desk with absolute grace and folded her hands over the folders resting there neatly.
“I have gone over your records,” she tapped a red-tipped finger against the folder. “I have to say I am more than a little apprehensive about accepting your application. Usually when a person transfers as many schools as you have it means something, either you will be a problem, or something else.”
I really hated the way she said something else as if I were a criminal guilty of something heinous. How could she judge me so easily without even getting to know me? She jumped to the assumption that I was bad news when in fact I’d never been in trouble my entire life.
“Why have you changed so many schools, Miss. Braeden?”
What could I say? I never had an answer to that question because I had no idea myself. Besides, at that point, it didn’t really even matter. I’d been to enough interviews like that one to know they didn’t really care. Anything I said at that point would result in one of two things: they would deem my mother unfit and possibly a danger to me, or that I was a problem student.
“Are you lazy?” She tipped her head to the side slightly, her eyes narrowed behind her glasses. “Or just easily distracted? Will you even be with us for very long?”
No. But that wasn’t something she would take kindly to hearing.
“Other schools have failed to capture my rapid learning abilities,” I replied, reciting the same speech I’d given every other school. “I believe Lady Clare’s Academy has what I need to better myself.”
What a lie. I knew already that this place had nothing the other schools didn’t. They were all the same, mindless drones marching to the beat of someone else’s drum. A building full of rich, snobby brats who could barely wipe their own noses yet somehow still managed to grow up to rule the world one day. My whole existence fit inside a duffle bag and they couldn’t leave their mommies and daddies without a nanny tagging along.
“And what exactly are you hoping to accomplish?” Ms. Wonnacott asked, leaning back in her chair.
I replied instantly, “A brighter future.”
It was hard to tell if she bought it, but I guessed I was in the clear when she removed a stack of papers from inside the folder beneath her hand and dropped them down in front of me.
“I will be watching you very closely, Miss. Braeden.”
Fantastic.
Lady Clare’s Academy turned out to be exactly what I pegged it would be. The clique factor was so tight that I would have had better luck breaking into Fort Knox than make friends with anyone there. Everyone moved in packs and no one ever talked to anyone else that wasn’t in their circle. It was as if the entire school was broken up into small groups. If I were a follower of politics, I would label each group as a country for the amount of animosity that ran thick amongst them. Being new, I could have had leprosy for the distance everyone put between them and me. One boy even refused to touch my history paper during grading period, which the teacher found completely acceptable.
The teachers were no better. The favoritism was appalling. They didn’t even try to hide it. Some of them were bending over backwards to keep their pets happy. These kids were usually one of the very elite, the sons and daughters of the very important. I didn’t recognize any of them as celebrates, but I guess it took all kinds as long as they had money.
For me, mom may have paid a small fortune to get me in, but that didn’t mean I was accepted. My parents didn’t do anything important, thus, I wasn’t important, which was fine by me. I was just bidding my time until I could leave anyway.
At the end of the first grueling week, I was called into Ms. Wonnacott’s office. She threw a garment bag onto my lap.
“Your uniform has arrived,” she stated briskly. “You will be in charge of keeping them clean and in order, is that understood?”
“Yes, Ms. Wonnacott.”
There was no beating around the bush; my uniform did nothing for my complexion or figure. It didn’t mold and fit me like it did the other girls — some who looked like they had simply painted their uniforms on — nor did it bring out my eyes or the highlights in my hair. If anything, I looked even more washed out than before, and the whole thing hung off me like a designer potato sack.
“You’ll have to get that altered,” my dorm mate, Lidia, decided, never glancing away from the glossy pages of her fashion magazine.
She was a pretty girl with short, tight ringlets framing a small, round face. As roommates went, I guessed she was okay. It wasn’t as if we talked or anything, but she hadn’t drowned me with a stack of rules when I took the bed next to hers so she got an automatic A in my books.
Also, she was the only one who smiled at me when we passed in the halls, which didn’t make us friends, but it was nice all the same. And, she wasn’t messy. Her side of the room was cozy, full of pictures, dolls, stuffed animals and other little glass knickknacks that were placed neatly on shelves. She’d been at Lady Clara’s her entire life and her section of the room showed it.
The differences between our sides was a little jarring at first glance, her with her bright colors and me with absolutely nothing, not even a picture frame on the nightstand. I had nothing on my walls or shelves, except my schoolbooks. I hadn’t even unpacked my duffle. It was stuffed beneath my bed whereas she had all her clothes neatly folded in the dressers and hanging in the closet.
If she found my behavior odd, she never said — another A for her.
“Altered?” I asked, turning away from the mirror behind the closet door to face her.
She lay reclined across her bed, her left foot propped up on her right knee. She was still in her uniform, even though classes were over. I’d never seen her in regular clothes, except when she went to bed in her gray shorts and white t-shirt with the school logo on the right breast.
Bright, green eyes rose over the magazine and met mine. “Yeah, you know? Altered.” She grinned a little. “Did you honestly think they would actually fit you?”
I would have taken offence if I didn’t understand what she meant. I guessed it made sense how everyone else’s uniform fit them so well and mine… well, it was embarrassing.
“Where do I get them altered?” I asked, not that I had the money for such luxury.
Lidia tossed her magazine down and sat up. “Well, technically, we’re not supposed to do it, you know? Unity and all that good stuff, but no way would anyone be caught dead walking around looking like that—” I didn’t blame them. “—but if you want to do it, you can have your family send them off overnight. It’ll cost extra, but whatever, right? Or you can do it yourself, if you’re handy with a needle and thread. But I wouldn’t let on that you didn’t send it off.”
I was pretty handy with a needle and thread; being
on the road a lot meant a lot of free time, not to mention… who else would do it? We didn’t have professional tailors following us around. When something ripped, we sewed it together ourselves.
“Thanks,” I said to Lidia, taking my uniform off and placing it on the bed.
“No problem.” She swung her long legs over the side of her bed and got to her feet, tightly wound curls bouncing around her face. “Hey, listen, I’m heading down to the theater room to hang out with some friends. You want to come along?”
It was a life altering opportunity she was giving me, allowing me to join her group, but I couldn’t afford to make friends. I would be leaving soon and it would be that much harder when the time came.
“Thanks, but I have things to do here.” I motioned towards my uniform.
She shrugged her tiny shoulders, making her russet curls bounce again. “Okay, but you know here to find us if you change your mind.”
I thanked her again, watching as she slipped into her shoes and left the room. I sat down on the bed, still clad in my underthings, and sighed.
Being a gypsy was never easy.
“He won’t stop!”
The hand clutching the pen trembled. Tears splashed across the yellow pages.
Outside, the storm screamed, throwing itself against the glass. The windows rattled, threatening to shatter beneath the blows. The candles flickered around the room, trembling as though fearing what was about to come.
“He’s coming!” Amalie said suddenly, pen dropping from her fingers. “He’s coming! Get up!”
“Fallon!” Someone was shaking me, hard. The muscles along my arm and neck screamed in protest under the assault. Something sharp hooked into the bare flesh of my bicep and tugged. “Fallon, get up!”
My eyes snapped open, and for a full heartbeat, disorientation stole my breath. Everything around me was rattling. Objects rocked on their shelves and tumbled off, smashing to dust across the floor. Like a pendulum, the hanging light overhead swung wildly from its chain, creating spider webs in the plaster. Across the room, the window shattered. Someone screamed. I bolted upright just as something heavy toppled on top of me, pinning me down on the mattress. Flaring arms and legs beat against me as my companion fought for freedom. The fragrance of something exotic and expensive identified the mysterious bulk flailing and screaming in my ear.
Touching Smoke Page 3