by Bree Cariad
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she whispered, a little embarrassed to meet seven strong men at once. In their former town, there had been a couple dominant men, but never eight in one room. It was quite daunting.
“Charming,” David said, nodding at her. “How old are you, Kathy?”
“Eighteen.” She wondered if he had a daughter who was around her age. That was usually why parents asked that kind of question.
“Are you graduating this year?” Tanner asked in some surprise. “Moving right before graduation. Must be rough.”
“No,” her mother explained. “Kathy’s a junior. She started school a year later than her peers.” For a moment, Kathy was afraid her parents would explain why, but thankfully they stayed mum on the subject. She supposed she shouldn’t be embarrassed by the fact that she started school late because of an illness that had put her in the hospital for six months, but it wasn’t something she liked to talk about.
“And when did you turn eighteen?” Alexander asked in a deep voice.
“May first.” Her voice was microscopic, to the point of disappearing. Something about this man shook her a bit. She would bet money that he was the head of the council.
“Well, that’s perfect timing,” Gary said with a huge smile. “Gerald, come to the council meeting next week. We have a very special event that takes place around a girl’s eighteenth birthday you should be made aware of. Usually the planning begins earlier than this, but I’m sure we can make an exception.”
“Well, if you gentlemen don’t mind,” Carilyn said, rising to her feet. “Kathy and I need to go search for a few items. We’ve just found out we have to make her school uniforms tomorrow. Still need to find our sewing machine.” The men in the room stood as the two left the room.
Kathy was glad to get out of there and went upstairs to get as far away from them as possible. Carilyn joined her a few minutes later. “What do you think?” she asked, digging into a large box.
“Umm, they were rather imposing.”
Snorting, her mother nodded. “Yeah, I kind of wondered if that many dominant men could be in one room and not have the universe implode either.” Spluttering a laugh, Kathy grinned and tore into another box.
They finally found the sewing machine in a box marked ‘dog food’ that was sitting in the laundry room. When Gerald called family prayer and sent her up to bed at nine, she was momentarily startled. “Nine?” In the past, it had always been ten on a school night, midnight on Friday and Saturday.
“I spoke to several townsfolk today. They all said their daughters who were in high school went to bed at nine. Every night,” he added as she turned to head upstairs.
Going into her bedroom, she shut the door and plopped on her bed, glad her mother had insisted this morning that making the beds was the first thing they needed to do. Nine p.m. Every night? Hopefully this new rule would bend quickly. Some rules her father was very clear on: home by curfew, no going out with people they did not know, and always acting like the lady they raised. But there were others that he didn’t seem to mind about, like wearing a dress every Sunday. Thankfully that had become “wear a dress when we go visit your grandmother” which had been a rare event. It wasn’t that Kathy disliked dresses, it was more that she hated Sunday dresses, frilly things that made her feel like a little girl at Easter. She preferred cute things from the mall. Though, many of those her father had made her return for being too sexy.
Wondering just what school would be like, she changed into her pajamas, cleaned her face, brushed her teeth, and quickly climbed into bed. Tomorrow was sure to be interesting.
A morning person she was not, but when her alarm buzzed at just before six, she managed to drag herself out of bed and into the bathroom. That was a major plus about this new house. She had a bathroom that was connected to her bedroom. Her friends back home would have been jealous thinking that meant they didn’t need to clean it as often. In this household, that was not the case. Kathy had daily chores that she mostly took seriously and one of them was to always keep her own bedroom and bathroom clean.
By seven, she was dressed in nearly new jeans and a lace blouse over a dark blue camisole, turning this way and that in front of her mirror to make sure she looked okay. Plain brown eyes and shoulder-length curly hair that was a non-descript color. It wasn’t brown, it wasn’t red. It was some combination of the two and depending on how much sun she’d had lately, her response was one or the other. Red always sounded more exciting than brown though. Today, it just looked blah. There hadn’t been enough sun to bring out her red highlights. “Plain old boring brown,” she sighed, pulling her hair behind her ears and heading back into her bedroom to pull on her knee-length boots. She loved them. Just a month before she found them at a garage sale, not even used. They weren’t scuffed at all.
Her boots clopped on the stairwell as she made her way down for breakfast. “Good morning,” Carilyn said brightly, handing her a plate as she walked in the door of the kitchen.
“Pancakes?” Kathy usually settled for cereal or a to-go bar.
“Put up with your mother’s quirks,” Gerald said from the kitchen table. “She knows this is the second to last time she gets to send you off to school.”
Shaking her head at the silliness, she sat down and poured a mound of syrup over the fluffy goodness in front of her. The first day of a school year – or of going to a new school – had become a bit of a tradition in their family. Her mother had a thing about making pancakes for her first day of school. While they ate, she mostly just listened as her parents talked about people and events that were foreign to her while she thought about her day. True, she wouldn’t be attending class, but she would at least get a look at the school. “How big is it?” she asked, accidentally interrupting her father in mid-speech. This occurred to her as silence settled on the room. Instantly she turned red and shook her head. “Sorry. I was thinking and not paying attention.”
Her father nodded slowly. “Need a reminder?”
“No.” Oh, please no. Not a spanking right before school. Those were the worst kind, trying to act like everything was normal when her behind was going up in flames.
“All right. I’ll give you a freebie this morning.” Turning back to her mother, he picked up from where he left off as Kathy forced herself to eat. Getting out of a spanking for interrupting was a miracle. Gerald despised rudeness in any form. And she agreed with him. If she had been paying attention, she wouldn’t have done it. “Kathy?” Blinking, she looked up realizing he was speaking to her.
“Yes?” What did she miss? Had he said her name more than once?
His lips quirked. “Your mind is all over the place this morning. I was just asking what question did you want answered.”
“Oh, I just wondered how big the school was.”
“Chet says the school is pretty small. But you’re used to that. The students are bussed in from twenty miles away, so it doesn’t start until nine and ends at four.” He continued, but Kathy’s mind clicked onto the four p.m. School was out at four and she had to be in bed by nine? She’d never get anything done. “—so there aren’t the kinds of events you’re used to. There’s a football team and a basketball team. And your uncle says the girls’ senior year is very important. Besides the state assigned English, math, and science, you’ll have classes to help you with your life once you graduate.”
“Like what?” In her last high school there had been a class to introduce students to college. That would be kind of fun. At some point she hoped to marry and take care of the home like her mother did, but she also wanted to do something more. Going to college sounded like the perfect way to figure out what that something might be.
“Home Ec is one, not sure of the others. Since you’ll be eighteen, I believe you’re also given the choice of early release, but he said that depended on a few other things.”
Early release? Score! If given the option, she would take it.
Without much further to tell her, G
erald finished eating and soon left for work, leaving them to clean up and attack more boxes before taking Kathy to school to sign up. They almost had the living room box-free when her mother said, “Come on. We can finish this later. It’s time to go.”
School was about fifteen minutes away, in the exact opposite direction of her father’s work. The schoolhouse was actually quite large. A four-story, tan-brick building, she counted fourteen windows along one side and ten across another. “Do you want me to come in?” her mother asked. Shaking her head as she would prefer not to be escorted by her own mother, Kathy opened the passenger door of her mom’s SUV and headed toward the school. The grounds consisted of low-cut grass surrounding the school on all sides. It was actually kind of bleak.
She opened the front door and walked in, looking around for any kind of sign that would tell her where to go. Her mother had thankfully timed their arrival perfectly for right after the first class started so no other students were in the halls. Looking to her right, she spotted a sign at the very end of the hallway and headed toward it. She passed several doors that had small window cut-outs right above the handles and could tell they were classrooms. Since she wasn’t close, there was no way to catch a sight of the full uniform, but it looked like jackets were included. Ugh.
When she reached the administration office, she pushed the door open into a small room with a counter running across two sides that were slightly above waist high on her. As nobody was around, she walked up and tapped a bell sitting on the counter. A few seconds later, a door opened off to the side and a woman about her mother’s age walked into the room. She offered a closed-lip smile and cocked her head. “Yes?”
“Hi. My name’s Kathy Bretherton. I just moved here.”
“Ah,” she said, her puzzled expression clearing as she walked closer and bent over, digging under the counter for something. “We received your school records, Kathy, but with only three weeks left,” she said standing back up, “there isn’t much to do. All the classes are either test-taking or doing presentations. To be honest, we think your attending classes would be an issue. As such,” she added, placing a large packet of paperwork in front of Kathy, “we’ve decided that you’ll only come to campus two days this week and three next. During those times, you’ll be tested to see where you fit for next year.” She paused and an actual warm smile crossed her face. “My son Clive just returned home from college last year. He has a very promising future.”
The last two sentences were confusing, but Kathy offered her a smile in return. “So, do you want me to bring this stuff back filled out?”
“Yes. You can return on Wednesday; we should have the exams ready by then. At the bottom of the stack is the order form for uniforms but you can use it for next year. After all,” she said with a delicate laugh, “the choice of uniforms depends on what happens this summer.”
Now Kathy was sure she was missing something. What did the summer have to do with uniforms? Did eighteen-year-olds wear different ones from seventeen-year-olds? “Umm, so what should I wear on Wednesday? Mom and I can make some, I’m sure.”
The lady shook her head, though very kindly. “They are very intricate and the material isn’t available locally. All of your testing will be in here, so just come wearing something similar to what you have on after the first bell. You won’t be allowed in the hallways and you can leave school by two. Oh, do you need the bus to pick you up?”
“No, Mom’s gonna pick me up and drop me off.”
“All right. Welcome to Hyacinth, Kathy. You’re going to love it here.”
Smiling, Kathy nodded and left, sure the conversation had meaning if she knew where to look for it. Maybe that was how people talked around here, in riddles. It would make the time go by quicker, she supposed, if you spent all your time trying to figure things out. Jogging over to her mother’s car, she hopped into the passenger seat. “Don’t have to make uniforms,” she said with a grin. “In fact, I won’t even be taking classes. Just testing a couple days a week.”
Shaking her head in amusement, Carilyn pulled out of her parking space. “Looks like you get your desire for no school for the rest of the year. However did you pull that off?”
“I’ve been good,” Kathy teased, “very, very good.”
Chapter 2
The next two weeks flew by. Testing at school was incredibly ordinary. The days she went, they stuck her in front of a computer and she just followed the directions on the screen. Her only wish was that she could find a way to meet some other students her age. Summer would be awful long without some friends. On her last day of testing, Mrs. Greenthorpe – the woman she met the first day – had her choose her classes for the next year.
“You will need to choose four regular classes, two classes you would like to take, and three alternates just in case those classes are full. Your senior class currently has two hundred and forty-seven people in it, and as they did their sign ups two months ago, it is likely that at least one of the classes you want will be full. You’ve tested out of what Washington State expects of its students for math, so you can choose an advanced math class if you want, but you don’t have to.”
Over two hundred people. That was twice as many as were at her old school. The number seemed rather daunting, but Kathy plowed ahead, looking at the class list. It was a pleasant thought that she didn’t have to take math next year. It wasn’t one of her favorite subjects. After choosing a literature class that sounded interesting and a chemistry course as she had to take one science, she was left with wondering what other classes to take. The regular courses included band, choir, gym – for which there were four options – and to her horror, an entire year of Sex Ed? No, thank you. She chose choir and yoga and went on to add-ons. There were tons of those, though they seemed to all center around home education. After choosing an advanced sewing class and a baking course, it was the alternates she wasn’t sure of.
“Mrs. Greenthorpe?” she called as she looked at the screen.
“Yes, dear?”
“I’m at my three alternates. But how do I know what to choose? Should they cover the regular classes? Or the add-ons?”
“I’d pick two regular classes. Those are the ones that fill up.”
Kathy marked three alternates and clicked finished, pleased she was finally done. Getting up, she walked out of the small testing room she had been in and up to the counter. “Okay, all done.”
“Wonderful. Let me get your schedule.”
Already? Well, that was good.
“Mom was wondering about ordering uniforms. The paperwork you sent said to wait until late June.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Greenthorpe said, walking back into the office with a paper in her hands. “You should know by then if you need to order them with the extras or without.” She handed over the paper. “Only one of your requested classes was full. You were lucky. Now, we won’t need to see you next week. It’s the final week of school and is going to be hectic. But we look forward to seeing you next year, Kathy.”
“Thanks.” Turning, Kathy left the administration building, momentarily startled as she spotted someone else in the hallway. He was digging in a locker and looked up, raising an eyebrow at her. Realizing she was staring, she forced her feet to move forward.
“You’re new,” he said, his eyes brazenly looking her up and down. Used to that, she just ignored it.
“Yep. I’m Kathy Bretherton. My family just moved here.”
“Ah,” he said nodding as he slammed his locker shut. “The new doc. Yeah, Dad told me there was one. I’m Kyle Betts and I’m glad to say I’m graduating in eight days.”
Snickering, she nodded as he turned and walked with her down the hall. “Yeah, I’ll be saying that a year from now.”
A snort left his lips. “Yeah, you’ll be saying ‘it’s eight days till my wedding day.’ “
Frowning and not liking the sneering tone in his voice, she stood up straight and glared at him. “I’m going to college. Marriage won’t happen f
or years.”
Barking out a laugh, he turned down another hall as she paused at the doorway. “Boy are you in for a shock,” he called over his shoulder before opening a classroom door and walking in.
Annoyed, she left the building, glad to see her mom waiting in the parking lot. Hopping into the passenger seat, she didn’t realize how angry she actually was until Carilyn put her hand on Kathy’s knee. “What happened?” she asked softly.
Letting out a long sigh, Kathy shook her head. “Boys.”
“Ah. Yes, that says it all, doesn’t it?”
Deciding to forget Kyle’s words, Kathy looked down at the paper she still held. “I got my class list for next year, though.”
“Oh good, what’re you taking?”
“Literature, chemistry, yoga, art, advanced sewing, and baking.”
“Art?” Carilyn said in amusement. “That isn’t quite your style.”
“I guess choir was full. Art was an alternate. Hopefully they won’t expect me to actually be artistic.” That would be a nasty surprise for the teacher. Crafts Kathy could do. Drawing? Nope. Every time she tried, they turned out looking nothing like what she was trying to actually put on the page. “What’s left on the house?”
For two weeks, when not doing testing, she had helped her mother start the fun of peeling wallpaper. The house looked like a destruction zone with the walls ripped up and all the furniture covered in plastic.
“Sanding next week. Then we can finally start painting.”
“Good. Can we paint my room peach?”
Once they got home, Kathy put her paperwork in her room and they started dinner. Cooking was restful to her, especially as she got to do it with her mother. Some of the recipes were quite complex and what she couldn’t understand, Carilyn usually could.