Wayward Children 07 - Where the Drowned Girls Go, page 6
She stopped, throat moving soundlessly. Stephanie stepped up next to her, sighed, and said, “They said it didn’t matter what we thought the truth was; when the truth isn’t something you can see, it’s malleable, and because we’re still legally children, our parents get to decide what’s true for us. They get to say they want their ‘real’ kids back, the ones they wanted, and not the ones they ended up with.”
“Minnie and Cora aren’t the only ones who chose to come here—and you, I guess, Sumiko—but there aren’t many of them,” said Emily, getting herself back under control.
“Minnie?” Sumi cocked her head.
“That’s not really her name,” said Stephanie. “We don’t know much about the world she went to, but we know it had to do with rats, and something about being there stole her real name, so she can say it, but no one hears it. If you knew it, and you said it with her in the room, no one would hear you, either.”
That was a terrifying, fascinating thought. “There’s not a lot of magic that can make it through the doors and keep hurting you once you’re here,” said Sumi, glancing to Cora. “Not having a name sounds like it would be really difficult. How could anyone tell you when your pizza was ready?”
“That’s why we call her ‘Minnie,’ but only when she’s not in the room,” said Stephanie. “Anything people call her to her face starts getting the silence stuck to it. Someone really wanted her to be forgotten.”
“We need to get to breakfast,” said Emily. “It’s your first day, and they won’t be happy if we’re late. I just wanted to ask about your door and thank Cora.”
“Thank me? For what?”
“People don’t stand up for each other around here. It’s not safe.”
“If we wanted safe, we wouldn’t have gone through the door in the first place,” said Sumi. She loosened the tie on her uniform and flashed the other girls a winsome smile. “Let’s go. Maybe we’ll get ice cream sundaes for our breakfast.”
They did not get ice cream for breakfast.
Cora got her expected eggs and turkey bacon. Emily got real bacon and sliced strawberries, which she looked at with clear and obvious revulsion. Sumi, who had received a bowl of oatmeal, began stealing them one by one, hiding them in her own beige breakfast. Stephanie received an actual omelet, oozing with cheese, which she pushed away untouched.
“Look,” she whispered, nodding to a table on the other side of the room. “They let her out.”
Cora glanced in the direction Stephanie indicated. Her glance became a stare as she realized what she was looking at.
Regan was back at the table where she’d eaten breakfast every day since Cora’s enrollment in the school. Her head was bowed and her shoulders were slumped, but she was there, not locked away in solitary or hidden in some cavern of punishment. There wasn’t a single piece of vegetable matter on her plate. It was all bacon, ham, and cheese, worked into a complicated scramble that would probably taste more like butter and grease than anything else.
No one was talking to her. No one was even looking at her.
“Man,” said Stephanie admiringly. “She almost pulled it off, too.”
“Pulled what off?” asked Sumi blankly.
“Regan almost graduated this morning,” said Cora.
“If she’d been able to keep her cool a little longer, she’d be out of here,” said Stephanie. “She would have gone home with everyone thinking she was better, and no one would have known otherwise until the day they woke up and she wasn’t in her bed anymore. If she’d just stayed calm a little while longer—”
“I heard a rumor that we were going to be allowed to play cricket when the weather turns,” said Emily abruptly, voice loud and bright. “Do you think it might be true?”
Sumi blinked, and was about to ask why cricket mattered, when the matron behind her said, in a cool voice, “Spending time on rumors is a waste of yourself and others. Have more pride, Emily.”
“I’m sorry, matron,” said Emily, looking suitably chastened. “I was just excited by the idea of playing an organized sport during physical education. Running laps isn’t as challenging as a good game.”
The matron considered this, expression thoughtful. Cora held her breath. Sometimes thoughtful people weren’t thinking about what you wanted them to be thinking about. Sometimes thoughtful people were thinking about all the ways you could be punished for daring to question what they knew was true.
The matron smiled. Cora exhaled, struggling to keep it from turning into anything that could be interpreted as a huff or a sigh or any number of other forbidden sounds.
“I don’t think cricket would be good for your progress, dear,” said the matron. “Too many of the rules depend on chance. But I’ll talk to the headmaster about finding something more suitable for you to play. Croquet, perhaps. Finish your breakfasts, girls, it’s almost time for class.” She turned and walked away, leaving the table staring silently after her.
“All games have an element of chance,” said Stephanie. “All games. That’s what makes them games and not, I don’t know. Arts and crafts.”
“Dance classes don’t have an element of chance,” said Emily wistfully. “I wouldn’t care about sports if they’d let us have a dance class. I’d take anything. Ballroom, tap, anything.”
“Did you go to a dancing world?” asked Sumi.
Emily and Stephanie shushed her in unison. It was like being scolded by a choir of very large snakes. Sumi cocked her head and considered them more closely.
Emily was a beautiful girl: anyone with eyes could have seen that. She would have been even lovelier if she’d been allowed to choose her own clothes, dressing in colors that were more flattering to the darkness of her skin, and hair, and eyes than the drab Whitethorn uniforms. She carried herself like a dancer.
Stephanie was an almost perfect contrast, so pale Sumi could see the veins moving beneath her skin like serpentine bruises, dark and harsh and somehow delicate. They all kept their blood under the surface like that, but most of them hid it a little better. Stephanie’s hair was swan’s-down white, cropped close to her head and lying flat as a cap of feathers, like she might peel it off and toss it away at any moment. Even her eyes were pale, gray-blue trending into white, until it seemed they might bleach entirely into nondescription at any moment.
She didn’t move like a dancer. She was frail, fragile, but she moved like a bruiser, like she was constantly challenging the world to a fight, and had no doubt that she’d be the winner when it finally agreed to throw down.
“Don’t stare,” snapped the girl without a name. Sumi glared at her.
“Who do you think you are, the headmaster?” she asked, in a jeering tone.
The headmaster didn’t usually come to breakfast. He was content to leave their daily care to the matrons and instructors and each other; someone must have shown him a bucket of crabs at some point early in his academic career, pointing to the way they would police themselves, pulling down any individual who looked too close to breaking free and escaping. “Leave the crabs in the bucket and they’ll take care of the rest” seemed to be his philosophy where the student body was concerned.
The girl without a name smiled a small, mean smile and leaned a little closer to Rowena, whispering something in her companion’s ear. Rowena giggled, hiding it behind her hand like that would somehow make it less obvious. Cora bristled, and didn’t say anything. None of the matrons were approaching. They seemed to have a sixth sense for the difference between camaraderie and bullying. The first, they squelched as quickly as possible. The second, they all but encouraged. A student body preoccupied with eating itself alive was a student body that wasn’t making trouble for the administration.
“It’s not polite to whisper about people,” said Cora.
“I’m closer to graduation than you are,” said the girl.
“That just makes you a better liar. You still can’t lie and say something’s your name when it’s not,” snapped Cora, and immediately felt bad about it as the girl paled and shrank away. She was a hero. Everyone in the Trenches knew it, even if the people here treated her like a juvenile delinquent who couldn’t be trusted with a pair of safety scissors. Heroes weren’t supposed to be bullies.
But then, she supposed she wasn’t the only hero at the Whitethorn Institute. Most of the children she’d met from the other side of the doors were heroes, in their own specific ways. Maybe heroes could be bullies, if they were scared enough. If they were trapped enough. If the sides weren’t clear.
How could you choose good over evil when no one was really sure what evil was? Under enough pressure, the only good that counted was saving yourself.
Rowena clutched the nameless girl’s shoulder with one hand and glared at Cora, imperious and cold as a queen. “At least she’s trying,” she snapped. “At least she wants to be better. You say you do, but you keep dyeing your hair. You’re going to flunk, and then we’re never going to have to look at your stupid face ever again. Come on,” and her lips moved in soundless static, unreadable. A brief look of despair washed across her face. Whatever private name she’d been using for the girl she now tugged off the cafeteria bench had clearly reached the end of its usefulness: the strange magic surrounding the nameless girl had recognized it, and so it, like everything else, had been washed away.
Cora watched them go before glancing back to Emily and Stephanie, a frown on her face and a question in her eyes. “What happens if you flunk? Regan sabotaged her own graduation, and she’s still here.” Maybe flunking meant the same thing as expulsion. Maybe she could be thrown back to the Drowned Gods if she didn’t try harder.
“We don’t know,” said Stephanie. “No one does.”
Sumi frowned. “Oh,” she said. “That probably means it isn’t good.”
Emily nodded, expression grave. Then she leaned forward, opened her mouth, and said, “But I heard—”
Whatever she’d heard was cut off by the bell ringing to signal the end of breakfast. Cora rose with the others, automatically gathering the detritus of both her meal and Sumi’s, stacking the trays neatly and efficiently. The Logic girls left their dishes strewn willy-nilly across their tables, some of them looking back at the mess with clear agony in their eyes, like leaving things out of place was causing them active pain. The oatmeal girls put their own trays on the busing station, then moved to clean up after the waffle girls, Nonsense children making order out of the chaos left behind by the Logicians.
Sumi twitched like she was going to start scavenging the abandoned waffles. Cora reacted without thinking, clamping her hand around Sumi’s wrist.
“No,” she hissed. “A matron will see you.”
“But—”
“No,” echoed Stephanie. “We’re your dormmates. We’ll teach you the rules.”
Emily was waiting at the door. Sumi only glanced back once as Cora dragged her to the other member of their sudden alliance, and then they were moving into the hall, merging smoothly with the tide of students. By the time the bell rang again, the hallway was empty, and the Whitethorn Institute was at peace.
9 MICE IN THE WALLS
THE CLASSROOM MIGHT AS well have been a medical exam room, or a cardboard box exaggerated beyond all reason. The walls were devoid of anything, even educational posters or homework charts; the fluorescent lights had no covers, and hummed quietly to themselves as they illuminated the barren, institutional desks and their solemn, empty-handed occupants. No one drew on the desktops or used their protractors to etch initials into the wood: no one even breathed without permission from the matron at the front of the room, who was droning on about the history of the world, pausing occasionally to remind them that this was the only history that mattered, this was the only history that could be believed in.
It took most of Sumi’s attention to keep herself from interrupting, pointing out how it was funny how “real” history seemed to be all about white men doing important things while everyone else barely existed except when they needed to be shown the errors of their ways. It made sense that the self-made heroes would have written history to make them look as good as possible. It didn’t make sense for everyone else to be expected to believe it. It was like saying water was dry and the sky was red, and somehow making that the law of the land.
Sometimes she felt like the world where she’d been born was the most nonsensical of them all. Sure, gravity always worked and clouds didn’t talk, but people told lies big enough to block the sun, and everyone just let them, like it was nothing to revise the story of an entire world to make yourself feel better.
Cora sat next to her, hands folded, attention on the teacher. Sumi tried to study her without being obvious about it. The rainbows on her skin were faded, almost gone, and the blue-green of her hair had lost some of its impossible luster. She looked more like a girl with a questionable dye job than a mermaid. Sumi wanted to be angry at her. This was what she’d wanted, somehow. This was what she’d been looking for.
All she succeeded in feeling was tired. Tired of this place, tired of Cora’s trauma; she’d barely been at Whitethorn for an hour, and she already felt overwhelmed and exhausted. This place was a vampire. It would drain her dry if she let it.
The school was built like a fortress, thick-walled, forbidding. From what she’d seen so far, the doors were alarmed; when someone opened one of them without first entering the correct code, they would screech and raise a ruckus, making any quiet exit impossible. Most of the windows were bolted shut. The few that did open had bars bolted to their frames, and not even Sumi could wiggle her way between them. If she had been able to, she wouldn’t have been able to get down; none of the windows below the second floor were on the list of possible escapes.
Even Antoinette hadn’t been able to find blueprints for the building online, and there were no convenient widow’s walks or bits of decorative moulding. It was like the people who’d designed this school had never read a single story that depended entirely on a heroic escape.
Or maybe they’d read them all, and used that knowledge to build the perfect academic mousetrap, capable of containing the perfect academic mice.
The grounds were no better. The wall Sumi and Cora had both seen on their way in circled the entire property, lined on the inside with razor wire and electrically charged mesh that hadn’t been visible from the road. Touching the stone meant drawing blood, taking a shock, or both. Cora had seen a dead deer hanging off the wall during one of her physical education nature walks. Its antlers had been tangled in the wire, and its eyes had been gone, replaced by hollow craters.
“That’s why we don’t touch the wall, children,” the matron leading the group had said.
The matron at the front of the room paused, looking at Sumi expectantly. Sumi realized, heart sinking, that she’d been asked a question without hearing a single word—and more, that everyone in the room was looking at her. Some, like Emily and Stephanie, were sympathetic. Others, like Rowena and the girl without a name, were on the verge of gloating, clearly delighted by her predicament.
Sometimes the only way out was through. Sumi sat up straighter, tilted her head to the side, and asked, in an utterly guileless tone, “What was the question again?”
“Do you think woolgathering is the best use of your time, Miss Onishi?” asked the matron. “You’ll be expected to rejoin the real world as a functional adult soon enough, and this sort of behavior will not be tolerated.”
“I know plenty of functional adults who do a lot worse than staring off into space, and no one punishes them,” said Sumi. “Why do you keep calling this the real world when you know it’s not the only world there is? Is this a ‘no other gods before me’ somehow turning into monotheism situation? Because I didn’t agree to go to seminary school. I’d make a terrible nun. No one would ever listen to any scripture I tried to share, and then we’d all wind up frustrated and probably start throwing things at each other. Better not to start, don’t you think?”
The silence that filled the classroom was so profound that Sumi could hear the blood rushing in her ears, a soothing personal ocean slowly pulling her away from the shore.
Moving deliberately, the matron put down her eraser.
“Miss Onishi, you’re new here, and I think you misunderstand your role at this school,” she said, voice stiff and diction precise. “You’re not here to argue with adults. You’re not here to confuse your peers. You’re here to learn from them. You’re here to be better.”
“Better than what, though?” asked Sumi. “You know this world isn’t the only one.” It seemed suddenly important, suddenly essential, that she get the matron to admit that. “The headmaster said so when he let me into the school. You know the doors are real. You know it’s all real. So why?”
The matron opened her mouth to reply. Then she caught herself, and really looked at Sumi, and she smiled.
It was a terrible thing, that smile. It was filled with shadows more dangerous than any wicked queen, more deadly than any sword, and Sumi drew away from it, as far as the limits of her chair would allow.
“Class, we’re very fortunate today; we’re witnessing a breakthrough in our newest student,” said the matron. “We know the doors exist, because every one of us has had an encounter with them. We’d be fools to pretend they weren’t threats. But that doesn’t mean we have to grant them the privilege of becoming ‘real.’ Miss Carlton, what is ‘real’?”
“Real is something you can see and touch and take comfort in,” said Emily, in a lilting, artificially high voice, like she was trying to make sure every syllable was perfect.
“Is a dream real?”
“While you’re sleeping, it can seem that way,” said Emily. “But when you wake up, your bed, that’s real. The morning sunlight, that’s real. The dream just … goes away, back where it belongs.”
“What would happen if you refused to let go of your dream? Anyone?”
The girl without a name put her hand up. The matron nodded to her, and she said, in a tight, piping voice, “You’d die. You’d starve while you were sleeping, or you’d get an infection from bedsores, or you’d just stop breathing. You can’t be a person and live in dreams.”
