Read Online The Unseemly Education of Anne Merchant by Joanna Wiebe - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Joanna Wiebe
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fingertip. “Once you learn who’s in control, I’ll learn that you’re worth fighting for on graduation day.”
With the needle, he pricks my finger and squeezes a drop of my blood onto the lower corner of each form. I press my thumb into the crimson drop; as I pull away, I stare for a moment at the fingerprint I’ve left behind, at the lines that swirl around the center like the walls of some fiery tornado around its funnel, at the mark they use to identify criminals, not students. I look at the tiniest flecks that the lines of my fingerprint leave, and I think of how those ridges are designed to fire signals to the brain when a surface feels dangerously sharp, dangerously hot.
Not long after, Teddy heads to campus for an evening meeting of the Guardians, and, relieved to be alone, I bolt downstairs to the kitchen, where an old-school telephone—the rotary kind, black—clings to the wall. I need to talk to my dad. I need to know how much this place is costing him and if he has any idea he’s sent me to a place where creepy Guardian-people crawl into your soul and suggest you get by in life on your back.
I pick up the receiver for the phone. But there’s no dial tone. A quick glance shows me there’s no cord connecting the two pieces.
“Ten bucks says Teddy took the damn thing with him.”
Restless and still shaken by the PT exercise, I slide on my boots and Gigi’s big, stinky jacket and head out the front door into the night air.
There are two ways I could go: up-island to campus or down-island to the verboten village. Creeping over the grass under the twilight sky and onto the road, I look north at the endless stretch and then south through the haze to where a distant village I’m not supposed to enter sits in wait. Behind me, I can feel the presence of the Zin mansion, where the golden glow of warmly lit rooms fills just enough ornate windows to make me long for a life as pleasant for myself.
I turn left. And, emboldened by my “look closer” PT, walk toward the village.
Taking their cue from the cool weather, the leaves have started changing color. Spots of orange and violet spread through the woods on both sides of the road, their colors diluted by the gray air, which is crisp enough to turn my nose and fingertips red. Outside the village, I spy a craggy wooden sign that shows the population: 212.
My PT may have given me the push I needed to head in this direction, but it hasn’t empowered me to such an extent that I actually intend to go into the village. Given everything I’ve been told today, especially if I want to be valedictorian next year, that would be a career-limiting move worthy of detention, demerits, suspension, or whatever they do at Cania to punish disobedient students. Veering away from the village just as its old pale fishing shacks come into view, I head toward the flash of a lighthouse that passes through the woods on the west side of the island. On my way, I wander by a hillside spotted with enormous Cape Cod–style homes that are anything but what I expected the villagers to live in. These people are the inhabitants of an old whaling village, after all. They should live in shanties with dimly lit porches. They should have tattered clothes that reek of fish guts. And yet, judging by their homes, you’d think they were all millionaires.
“That’s not fair!” a man hollers suddenly. I can’t see him. He’s somewhere far ahead, on the other side of the woods.
For a moment, I worry he’s shouting at me, and I scramble away. But when it’s obvious he doesn’t know I’m here, I inch toward his voice, to the edge of the woods and to the top of a low cliff overlooking not only the vast, smooth ocean and the distant twinkling lights of the Kennebunkport coast but also the marina, which houses more mini-yachts than it seems to be built for. Standing on the dock below me, deep in a fiery conversation, are three men. Two I recognize instantly: Headmaster Villicus and the
With the needle, he pricks my finger and squeezes a drop of my blood onto the lower corner of each form. I press my thumb into the crimson drop; as I pull away, I stare for a moment at the fingerprint I’ve left behind, at the lines that swirl around the center like the walls of some fiery tornado around its funnel, at the mark they use to identify criminals, not students. I look at the tiniest flecks that the lines of my fingerprint leave, and I think of how those ridges are designed to fire signals to the brain when a surface feels dangerously sharp, dangerously hot.
Not long after, Teddy heads to campus for an evening meeting of the Guardians, and, relieved to be alone, I bolt downstairs to the kitchen, where an old-school telephone—the rotary kind, black—clings to the wall. I need to talk to my dad. I need to know how much this place is costing him and if he has any idea he’s sent me to a place where creepy Guardian-people crawl into your soul and suggest you get by in life on your back.
I pick up the receiver for the phone. But there’s no dial tone. A quick glance shows me there’s no cord connecting the two pieces.
“Ten bucks says Teddy took the damn thing with him.”
Restless and still shaken by the PT exercise, I slide on my boots and Gigi’s big, stinky jacket and head out the front door into the night air.
There are two ways I could go: up-island to campus or down-island to the verboten village. Creeping over the grass under the twilight sky and onto the road, I look north at the endless stretch and then south through the haze to where a distant village I’m not supposed to enter sits in wait. Behind me, I can feel the presence of the Zin mansion, where the golden glow of warmly lit rooms fills just enough ornate windows to make me long for a life as pleasant for myself.
I turn left. And, emboldened by my “look closer” PT, walk toward the village.
Taking their cue from the cool weather, the leaves have started changing color. Spots of orange and violet spread through the woods on both sides of the road, their colors diluted by the gray air, which is crisp enough to turn my nose and fingertips red. Outside the village, I spy a craggy wooden sign that shows the population: 212.
My PT may have given me the push I needed to head in this direction, but it hasn’t empowered me to such an extent that I actually intend to go into the village. Given everything I’ve been told today, especially if I want to be valedictorian next year, that would be a career-limiting move worthy of detention, demerits, suspension, or whatever they do at Cania to punish disobedient students. Veering away from the village just as its old pale fishing shacks come into view, I head toward the flash of a lighthouse that passes through the woods on the west side of the island. On my way, I wander by a hillside spotted with enormous Cape Cod–style homes that are anything but what I expected the villagers to live in. These people are the inhabitants of an old whaling village, after all. They should live in shanties with dimly lit porches. They should have tattered clothes that reek of fish guts. And yet, judging by their homes, you’d think they were all millionaires.
“That’s not fair!” a man hollers suddenly. I can’t see him. He’s somewhere far ahead, on the other side of the woods.
For a moment, I worry he’s shouting at me, and I scramble away. But when it’s obvious he doesn’t know I’m here, I inch toward his voice, to the edge of the woods and to the top of a low cliff overlooking not only the vast, smooth ocean and the distant twinkling lights of the Kennebunkport coast but also the marina, which houses more mini-yachts than it seems to be built for. Standing on the dock below me, deep in a fiery conversation, are three men. Two I recognize instantly: Headmaster Villicus and the
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