Page 16 of Riot House
“Don’t worry that pretty little head of yours, Lovett. Everything’s under control. I know when to say when. I’ll have my fun and then I’ll call it a day. Got college on the horizon, anyway. We’re all better off saving our energy for when the real adventures begin next year.”
“Wren. Be realistic,” Dash chides. “You’re already in it up to your neck with this girl. The way you’re brooding around her is classic Jacobi obsession material. And she didn’t open the desk, which I know is just driving youinsane.”
I wish he wasn’t right about that. I shouldn’t be so bent out of shape over the fact that Elodie didn’t discover the mangled frog’s legs I planted in her desk. It was a schoolboy tactic, childish as fuck, but I took one look at her the other night and I knew she’d be squeamish. If she hadn’t figured it out beforehand and she’d just lifted the lid on that desk, she’d have lost her freaking mind. She robbed me of that experience, and yeah, I’m salty as fuck about it. “Don’t worry. I have a plan,” I say.
“Fucking hell. Sounds ominous,” Dash groans. His accent always makes cursing sound way more fun. “You’re not planning on breaking into her room, are you? Because the last time you did that—”
I light the weed in the pipe, sucking the thick, sweet smoke into my mouth, then blow it at Dash, who sits up, alert. He holds his hand out, gesturing for a hit of his own. The guy doesn’t know how to be embarrassed. If he did, he’d do something to hide the tent his erect cock is making out the front of his pants. And I’m not talking two-man adventure racing tent. I’m talking a palatial eight-man tent with a separate fucking living area. His dick must be fucking killing him. “You can’t change the subject with Mary Jane,” he admonishes, taking a deep, heavy hit from the pipe. “My short-term memory’s bomb proof. I remember the shit you got yourself into the last time you broke into a girl’s room. Andthatroom? God, you’ve gotta be fucking insane. If you wanna fuck the little French girl, then do it and get it out of your system, post haste. Anything else, and, well…” His eyes roll back into his head, his eyelids fluttering closed. “Anything else would be bad news for you, my friend. You know it’s true.”
7
ELODIE
Nun Elizabeth Mary Whitlockwas hanged for suspected witchcraft in the rectory of Wolf Hall’s tiny gothic church in 1794. I learn this on Wednesday, while exploring the old tumbledown building with Carina after our last class of the day. We sift through piles of broken glass from the shattered windows, the shards worn smooth and opaque like colorful old sea glass, and Carina finds an ancient rosary. It’s beautiful, the beads alternating between what looks like labradorite and solid silver, and on the end a large, delicate crucifix dangles, cast in gold. We’re both too scared that it might have belonged to Elizabeth Mary Whitlock to keep it, so we bury it in the crowded graveyard at the rear of the church next to a headstone so old that the lettering carved into the stone has worn away to nothing.
On Thursday, Carina guides me to a dark, cramped crawlspace at the back of a cleaning closet at the end of our hallway and urges me inside.
At first, I’m petrified. I am not good with tight spaces. Over the past three years, I’ve done everything I can to master my fear, from locking myself in closets, to even tighter spaces where I can hardly move at all, learning how to breathe and to overcome my roaring terror. Against all odds, I can now endure the pressing claustrophobia, but the prospect of crawling into the dark, narrow space is still a daunting one.
Aside from my panic, I’m also suspicious. Carina, with her easy smile and her friendly, gregarious laughter, treats me like we’ve been friends our entire lives. I’ve never met a girl like her. An ugly part of me—the part that’s been the subject of plenty of ridicule and abuse at the hands of other female students in the past—thinks she might be setting me up for some epic prank.
I decide to trust my gut, though, and I climb inside, ignoring the frantic thrumming of my heart, holding my breath to keep from inhaling in the dust, and I scramble forward on my belly until I’m spat out inside a huge, cavernous attic with a bank of small, dirty windows overlooking the lawn and the turning circle in front of the academy.
Carina whoops, delighted, as I explore the abandoned, cluttered attic, watching me with open glee as I scavenge through travel chests and rotten cardboard boxes, amazed by the treasures I find inside.
On Friday, the girls from the fourth floor—Pres, the redhead, Rashida, Chloe, Loren, and even Damiana all gather in Carina’s room, which is at least twice the size of mine, and we all sprawl out on beanbags, pillows, and cushions, and watchLove Actually, which everyone’s amused to learn I haven’t seen before. We share popcorn. We talk about our respective countries, our childhoods, and our differing yet oh-so-similar upbringings, and everything feels both new and very much the same.
I was thrilled when I learned that I was coming back to the States. I would have been thrilled to get sent anywhere, so long as it was away fromhim. Now that I’m here and I’m actually making friends, though, it feels like I could actually be happy enough here. I’m enjoying my classes, and even Damiana seems to have defrosted a little. The only potential thorns in my side are the Riot House boys, and not a one of them has even so much as looked in my direction since Tuesday.
My room is as cold and drafty as a morgue, and the lights flicker every time I turn them on. My bed is lumpy and uncomfortable as fuck, but with Colonel Stillwater on the other side of the world, I haven’t slept this well in…well, ever.
Wren aside, I’d say, as first weeks at new schools go, this one’s been fairly successful.
Saturday morning arrives, and my bedroom door crashes open with an earsplittingBANG!I hurl myself out of bed, heart slamming in my chest, adopting an automatic fighting stance that has Carina, dressed in a bright orange jumpsuit, arching her right eyebrow at me like I’m certifiably insane. “Whoa, now, Jackie Chan. What the hell is this all about? Are you about to karate chop my neck or something?”
I take a calming breath, straightening out of my defense stance as quickly as possible, laughing nervously under my breath. “Ahh, y’know. Military father. He used to drill me harder than he drilled his men.” This is not a lie. It’s the truth. Just not the whole truth. She’s been amazing and welcoming, but I don’t know Carina well enough to be spilling that shit just yet. Maybe I’ll never know her well enough.
Carina cringes, patting me on the shoulder sympathetically. “I literally thank god every day that my parents are just lazy shits and not army personnel. I’m not cut out to be duck rolling from beds and preparing to fight a split second after I wake up. You amaze me.”
Uneasy, I tug at the oversized Real Madrid soccer jersey I slept in last night, wrangling it into position so that it covers the tops of my legs. Seems like Carina bought my half-truth, or at least she didn’t suspect that itwasonly a half truth. Catching sight of the old digital clock on the nightstand, I groan at the time. “Oh my god, Carina. What are you trying to do to me? It’s six forty-five!”
“That’s what time we always get up.”
“During the week! It’s Saturday. Am I not entitled to a lie-in? A little R and R? It’s cruel to wake a girl up before eight on the weekend.”
Carrie laughs. “If you’re not up and out before seven thirty on Saturdays, Harcourt makes you help serve community breakfast in the dining hall. You get stuck cleaning pots and pans until midday. And if you’re not out of the building by eight on a Sunday, Mr. Clarence makes you attend his non-denominational gratitude service, and that, my friend, is a fate worse than death itself.”
Ah. Damn. I guess there’s still a lot to learn where the day-to-day operations at Wolf Hall are concerned. Community breakfast sounds like torture. And non-denominational gratitude service? Yeah, fuck that. “How long do I have to get ready?” I ask, already bee-lining for the closet to grab an outfit.
“Twenty-five minutes,” Carina advises, checking the time on her cell phone. “Shower, makeup and hair. Let’s go. One second over and we’re gonna be stuck ladling porridge onto food trays like convicts on mess hall duty, and I did not wear this jumpsuit to be ironic.Go, go, go, go, go!”
* * *
For the past five days, my world has been Wolf Hall. The classes, the people, the building itself…it’s all been so overwhelming, so much information thrown at me all at once, that my mind hasn’t considered the world beyond the edge of the academy’s immaculately kept lawns. Now that I’m in Carina’s beaten up yet classic Firebird, speeding down the long, winding roads with the wind blowing in my hair, I suddenly feel free. Like absolutely anything might be possible.
New Hampshire is a breathtakingfeuille mortekaleidoscope: all burnt oranges, umber, russet, crimson and carmine. The winter trees, still stubbornly grasping onto their colorful autumn foliage, whip past in a blur as Carina burns through the chicanes and hairpin corners that lead down the mountain like she was a rally driver in a past life. Soon, we arrive in the town of Mountain Lakes itself—a dozen or so quaint little shops; a high school; a football field, and not much else—and I’m pleasantly surprised to discover that the townisactually bordered by two beautiful, vast and shining lakes.
Carina pulls up outside a diner called Screamin’ Beans and slams the parking brake on the car before the vehicle’s even stopped moving. I haven’t driven much since I passed my driver’s test in Israel, so I can hardly judge, but Carina’s a little hair-raising behind the wheel. “Come on,” she commands. “These guys have the best breakfast, but they stop serving super early so the Wolf Hall kids don’t bother them.”
