My first placement had been crappy too, so I wasn’t really surprised, even at seven years old. When your parents cared more about getting their next meth fix than making sure you were getting a single square meal a day, and the generous folks who took you in next had a sport of seeing who could cause the most pain without leaving any visible marks any time you annoyed them, you have to be really dim not to figure out that someone being a grown-up meant shit-all about whether they were going to look out for you.
I couldn’t completely hate the Fricks, though, because they’d brought me and Cade together. I’d been standing there in the cold room, clutching my bag and gathering my fortitude, when he’d come breezing in: tow-headed and scruffy with dirt and bits of grass from working in the front yard, all of eight but with ash-gray eyes as bright as if they contained decades of fiery energy smoldering beneath.
“So, they got you too, huh?” he said, looking me up and down with a sympathetic grimace. “They’re assholes, but you’ll be okay once you get used to it. Just stick with me, all right?”
Just like that, I’d felt safe for the first time in years. And that was the beginning of everything.
My fingers tightened where I was gripping the door handle. I couldn’t let this be the end. He’d been there every time I needed him, and sometimes when I hadn’t even realized I did. I couldn’t stop until I reached him.
That thought was running through my head when I stepped into the last of the bedrooms at the end of the hall. A dormer window high on the wall let sunlight stream over the six beds in their now-familiar configuration. A girl with a dark cloud of curly hair was sitting on one, her back mostly to me, her pen scratching as she wrote something in a notebook. Like the previous two rooms, I spotted one bed that was totally bare of any personal belongings, the top of its bedside table hazy with dust. Resolve rose up to grip my chest.
“Hey,” I said. “Is anyone using that bed?”
The girl glanced over at me when I pointed, and my stomach lurched at the sight of her face. One side—the side I’d seen a sliver of when I’d come in—was regular olive-toned skin, smooth other than a sprinkling of faint acne marks on her cheekbone. But a rippled line cut across her forehead and nose and down her other cheek, touching enough of her mouth to pull that corner down with the patchwork of scars that spread out all the way to her hairline and neck.
They looked like burns, mottled pink from pale to vicious, in some places raw red as if they hadn’t totally healed yet. Her right eye, lost in that mess, squinted under a lumpy eyelid. She stared at me defiantly.
I held in my shock as well as I could and forced my lips into a stiff smile as I gestured again. “Sorry to bother you. I just wondered if that bed is free.”
“No one’s using it,” she said in a clear, almost melodic voice that didn’t fit her rough appearance at all. Then she turned back to her writing.
The rapping of shoes with sturdy heels carried up the stairs. When I glanced back, a middle-aged woman with a heap of cocoa-brown hair piled on top of her head was striding down the hall toward me. She came to a stop, lifting her thin nose with such an air of authority that I immediately pegged her as one of the teachers. The dim light in the hall gave her skin an ashy pallor.
“I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” she said, clipped and nasal. “The dorms are our students’ private space.”
The scarred girl made a noise that might have been a muffled snort. The woman in front of me ignored her.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m not ready to leave. Something happened to my brother here, and I can’t go until I know where he went.”
The woman let out a huff. “I’m sure you’re mistaken. If you’ll follow me—”
“I’m not,” I said firmly. The idea that had tickled up in the back of my head a minute ago reasserted itself. If it was a strange request, oh well. Everyone and everything here was strange enough to handle that. “There’s a spare bed in this room. I’d like to stay, just until I figure out what happened. I’ll pitch in with the chores and everything the students do while I’m here—I can earn my keep.”
She eyed me for a long moment. “That would require the dean’s permission. Admission at Roseborne comes by invitation only.”
“I’m not asking to be admitted as a student,” I said. “I can stay out of the way of anything to do with the actual classes.”
“I’m afraid that wouldn’t be acceptable. Our approach to education only works if all participants are fully committed.”
The way she said those words sent a shiver over my skin with the memory of how that one group of students had looked as they’d come out of the classroom downstairs. I still wasn’t sure what the hell kind of classes they taught here anyway. What kind of weirdo policy was that—to say anyone staying on the premises had to become a student, whether they were qualified to attend or not?
But really, how bad could things be? Strangeness aside, it was a college, not a torture dungeon. And in the past nineteen years, I’d survived plenty of torture as it was, not to mention plenty of classes I’d had no plans to get invested in.
I shrugged. “Let’s go ahead and see if the dean will agree to it, then.”
If Dean Wainhouse refused to give permission, well, they’d have to drag me off campus kicking and screaming, and then I’d march right back through the gate. I’d clamber over the fucking wall if I had to. I’d come here for a reason, and no amount of haughty stares was going to make me back down from it now.
Chapter Three
Jenson
I’d be lying if I said laundry duty was my least favorite job around Roseborne College, but it couldn’t have been much lower on the list. The ancient machines sputtered and groaned through every load of sheets and towels like a kraken awaking from the deep. It was probably a miracle they worked at all. The fabric came out of the washing machines heavy, wet, and chalky-smelling, and then out of the dryers with a flood of rose scent that must have seeped through the ventilation.
Everything in this damned place smelled like roses. My nose had adapted enough that I could ignore it most of the time, but the flood that washed over me when I heaved the linens out of the dryers made my gut clench.
This morning’s duties were worse than usual. This morning, Trix Corbyn was scheduled to the same shift as me, taking turns hauling baskets down from the upper floors and folding the stuff once it’d run through the gauntlet. It seemed like no matter where I looked, her orange hair was blazing at the edge of my vision. It sent a stinging sensation through my chest, as if scraping at a cut inside me that had only just started scabbing over.
I didn’t want her here. I didn’t want her anywhere near me at all. We’d both be better off if she got the hell out of here and never looked back. She shouldn’t have ended up at Roseborne in the first place, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to get any kinder to her now that she had.
It would’ve been a lot easier to convince her of that if she hadn’t been so fucking stubborn. Telling her off when I’d first seen her clomping her way toward the school hadn’t done a thing. I’d spent most of my life figuring out what made people tick so I could sway them into doing what I wanted, but this girl was a design all of her own.