RIOT HOUSE

by Hart, Callie

  I discard my bags at the foot of my new bed, walking to the window, wanting to get a better look at the view. It’s only when I’m standing right in front of the glass that I can make out the gloomy shape of a large, complex maze in the center of the lawn between the building and the trees.

  A maze? Perfect. That wasn’t on the damn brochure. It has to be very old, though, because the hedges are tall, taller than any man, and so dense that there would be no way to peek through them on ground level.

  I don’t know why, but I shiver violently at the sight of it. I’ve never been a fan of mazes. At least from here, in the daylight, I’ll be able to memorize the route to its center. Not that I plan on going inside the damn thing.

  The showers are easy enough to find. At the end of the hall, two bathrooms face opposite each other, doors propped wide open. A large white sign hangs from the tiled wall inside both—I know, because I check—which says, ‘Three-Minute Showers Enforced. Violators Assigned Latrine Duty.’

  Latrine duty? Christ. It’s worse than I thought.

  I give the sign a hard eye-roll as I strip out of my travel clothes and shower, taking way longer than the allotted three minutes. Who the hell’s going to know? And fuck it, anyway. They can’t police that kind of shit with a student who hasn’t even officially enrolled at the academy yet. I use the carbolic soap attached to a frayed piece of rope inside the shower, wrinkling my nose at the smell and promising myself a better wash with my own shower gel in the morning. Then, I use a scratchy, paper-thin towel to dry off before putting on my PJs and hurrying back to my room with wet hair.

  I already have plans to dye my long, blonde locks dark brown again. Most fathers wouldn’t want their daughters bleaching their hair at seventeen years old, but Colonel Stillwater can’t stand the sight of me with my natural hair coloring. He’d never admit it in a million years, but he can’t handle me with brown hair. I look too much like her with brown hair.

  Short of forcing me to wear contacts, he can’t alter the blue of my eyes. There’s little he can do about the freckles that smatter the bridge of my nose, or the bone structure of my heart-shaped face. Without dropping some serious coin on a very talented plastic surgeon, he can’t alter my high cheek bones or my almond shaped eyes, all of which are gifts I received from my mother. But he could make me a blonde, and so he did. And I’ve hated every second of it.

  Back in my room, I notice for the first time how bitterly cold it is. Compared to Tel Aviv, it’s practically sub-arctic here in New Hampshire, and it doesn’t seem as though the Wolf Hall administration have deemed heating a necessity for its students. After a lot of rummaging, I eventually find a cracked and yellowed Bakelite thermostat in the closet by the window, but when I crank the dial all the way to the right, nothing happens. The old fashioned and extremely ugly radiator on the wall gives a single choked cough, a bone-jarring rattle, and then falls resolutely silent.

  Luckily, I’m so tired that even the cold can’t keep me from sleep.

  3

  ELODIE

  The morning smells like rust and burning toast.

  I crack my eyes and wince at the plume of fog that gathers on my breath. Somehow, it’s even colder in my room at seven a.m., which is impressive since I’m convinced it dropped down to somewhere in the twenties in the night.

  If my father cared one iota about me, he would not have sprung this transition on me mid-semester. The smallest kindness he could have shown me would have been to relocate me during a break, but no. Colonel Stillwater decided that uprooting me out of the blue on a weekend was the best course of action. Far be it from me to disrupt his schedule; since he needed to disappear off on a training exercise at oh-four-hundred hours on a Sunday, it seemed perfectly logical to turn my shit upside down and expect me to be fine with moving country, having my world turned upside down, and starting class at a new school all within a thirty-two hour period.

  This is the least of his sins. He has done much, much worse.

  So here we are. Monday morning. My new life. From the strict itinerary my father shoved into my backpack, I’m supposed to be downstairs at the administration offices twenty minutes before my first period of the day, which leaves me forty minutes to get myself showered, dressed and organized. Since I showered last night, I normally wouldn’t bother showering again, but I still feel gross from the journey somehow, and honestly, I think I’m going to need to soak my feet in some scalding hot water in order to defrost them anyway. It’s only the middle of January; it’s probably going to get colder before it gets any warmer here in New Hampshire, so I’m definitely going to have to do something about the climate control in this room.

  I pull back the thin sheets, my teeth chattering uncontrollably, and I make sure to grab my own towel and my wash bag this time. In the hallway, a number of the doors to the other rooms are open, and a line of girls has formed against either wall, waiting for the bathrooms. My heart sinks. Things were miserable at home, but at least I had my own fucking bathroom. Having to share the facilities at Wolf Hall is going to take some getting used to.

  I join the end of the line waiting for the bathroom on the right-hand side of the hallway, and the girls ahead of me fall quiet in unison. Eight pairs of baleful eyes look me up and down. None of the girls seem all too friendly. One of my new classmates angles away from the redhead she was locked in conversation with and turns to me, offering me half a smile.

  Her brown hair is curled tightly into an enviable afro. Her skin is almost as pale as mine, though. Her doe-eyed features and deep brown eyes give her the look of a young Natalie Portman. “Hey. Four sixteen, right? You must be Elodie.”

  I give her a tight-lipped smile in return. “Guilty as charged.” This whole new girl thing isn’t actually new. I’ve had to do this at least four other times since I reached high school age. It’s been a while, though. After three whole years back at my last school in Tel Aviv, I allowed myself to get comfortable.

  Big mistake.

  “I’m Carina,” the girl says, holding out her hand. “Glad you made it here in one piece. Some of us waited up for you last night, but it got late and…” She shrugs.

  I shake her hand, a little warmed by the idea that some of the girls here might have shown me that kindness, had the hour allowed. “All good. I totally get it.”

  “Curfew here’s pretty strict,” the redhead chips in. She’s tall. Like really tall. Almost as tall as the miserable bastard who gave me directions to my room last night. “We have to be in our rooms by ten thirty,” she says. “Although Miriam, our floor monitor, turns a blind eye sometimes if we bribe her with chocolate. It’s cold as shit up here but count yourself lucky. First floor girls don’t have it so easy. Their floor monitor’s a fucking bitch.”

  “Hey!” the girl first in line for my bathroom snaps. “Watch your mouth, Pres. Some of us are friends with Sarai.”

  “How could I forget,” Pres, the redhead fires back, pulling a face at her. “You’re shoved so far up her ass, it’s a miracle you haven’t earned your Sphincter Patrol badge yet, Damiana.”

  Damiana’s a cool name. Shame the girl herself doesn’t seem that cool. She’s three shades blonder than me and wearing a full face of makeup even before she’s stepped foot inside the bathroom. Maybe all that eyeliner is tattooed on.

  “Wow. Your comebacks are getting a little better, Satan Spawn. Still need work, though. Maybe you need to practice in the mirror some more.”

  The bathroom door opens, and a beautiful girl with a mass of black curls and cinnamon colored skin steps out, dressed in a towel. She immediately rolls her eyes. “God, not even seven-thirty and you’re already sniping, Dami. Give it a rest.”

  Damiana growls as she shoves her way into the bathroom, nearly knocking the other girl off her feet.

  “Rashida, this is Elodie,” Carina says, nodding in my direction.

  Hiking her towel up and pinning it under her arm, Rashida gives me a perfunctory shake of the hand, too. “We’ll talk onc
e you hit the three-month mark,” she says, then hurries off down the hall, walking into room 410 and slamming the door closed behind her.

  “Sorry about her,” Carina says, leaning back against the wall. “The last couple of girls who arrived mid-semester all transferred out again pretty quick. I s’pose making the effort to get to know people if you’re not sure they’re gonna stick around is more difficult for some of us than others.”

  “Transferred out?” Pres says, her eyebrows rising up her forehead. She sounds as if she disagrees with the term Carina used, but the other girl shoots her a sharp look.

  “Don’t,” she warns. “Not yet. Jesus, let the girl settle in a little first before you go dredging up that shit, yeah?”

  Uh…this has me slightly worried. “Dredging up what shit?”

  “Nothing.” Carina says this firmly, eyeing the other girls. She’s daring them to open their mouths and breathe another word, which none of them do. Apparently, they’re willing to defer to Carina, because everyone standing in the hallway, Pres included, looks down at their feet.

  “Okaaaay.” If there’s one thing I hate, aside from my father, it’s secrets. There have been so many in my past, far too many things kept from me over the years, that I have a really low tolerance for this kind of shit. It’s my first day, though. I just met these girls ten minutes ago. I can’t go demanding one hundred percent candor from them before I’ve even properly learned their names. I do my best to shrug it off.

  “Hey, knock on my door before you go down, okay?” Carina offers. “I’m student-teacher liaison. I can take you to the office and grab your paperwork with you. And then we can head to English together if you like? I think a lot of our classes are gonna match up.”

  I might be small in stature, but I’m still a big girl. I’m perfectly capable of finding my own way to the office and onto class. I learned my lesson a long time ago, though. If someone offers you an olive branch in the cutthroat waters of international schooling, you grab hold of that fucker and you don’t let go.

  “Sure. Thanks. That’d be cool.”

  * * *

  The excursion to the office is uneventful, which is to say that the world doesn’t end while I’m filling out my health questionnaire and grabbing all of the reading lists and mandatory textbook titles I’ll need to order for my classes. Carina acts as mediator between myself and the decrepit, mostly deaf octogenarian behind the desk, shouting when the poor old girl can’t hear my responses. The lenses on her glasses are so thick that they make her eyes look eight times their normal size. Despite the visual aid, she squints at me over the top of a stack of paperwork, like it might actually help her hear me better.

  Once we’re done, Carina snatches the map the administrator gave me out of my hands and tosses it straight into the trash, dragging me down a long, crooked hallway, lined with bunches of flowers in vases. “Won’t be needing that,” she sing-songs. “You have me to be your personal Wolf Hall tour guide. I can tell we’re gonna get on just fine. I knew the moment I saw the fishnets.”

  I glance down at the fishnet tights she’s referring to. I’m wearing them under my favorite pair of ripped jean shorts. The Doc Martin boots I picked out are potentially overkill, but my look wouldn’t be complete without them.

  I know it’s cold, but my outrageous clothes were first in a long line of protests I have planned for my stay at Wolf Hall. Tragically, when I came out of my room and saw Carina’s clothes, it became apparent that the students here can wear whatever the hell they feel like and get away with it. Her bright yellow bomber jacket and red jeans clash so violently, there’s a risk I’ll develop a migraine soon just from looking at her.

  The other students’ clothes are a confusion of different styles and colors, too. There are enough ripped jeans and band t-shirts kicking around to make it look like we’re all about to walk through the gates of a music festival.

  Quickly adding two and two together, I realize that Carina’s taking me straight to class. “Shouldn’t I drop my stuff off at my locker first?”

  “Psshhh. We don’t have lockers. If you don’t wanna carry a bag around with you, you’re gonna have to run up to your room between periods, and trust me, there is not enough time for that shit. Come on. You’ll be fine.”

  The room falls silent when Carina coerces me into English. Heads whip around, conversations come to a grinding halt…and the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention. On a battered leather couch underneath a massive picture window, the guy from last night is laid out like he downed a bunch of Special K for breakfast and the drugs have just kicked in.

  He’s the first thing I notice.

  The second thing I notice? There aren’t any desks.

  Well, not in the traditional sense anyway.

  A little stunned, I gape at the room as I take it all in: the armoires, the ottomans, the over-stuffed arm chairs, and the worn old writing desks dotted around the vast space. Most surprisingly, there are book stacks toward the rear of the room, wooden benches, and, low and behold, there is a monster of a fire roaring in the open fireplace.

  I’ve never seen anything like it before in my entire life. “What…our English class is in the library?”

  A chorus of snickers go up, courtesy of the other students draped over the armchairs and leaning against the writing desks. Two guys, sitting on the floor by the other large window trade a droll look, as if this whole what-the-hell-is-going-on bit is really old to them. I feel like I’ve just walked into Doctor Who’s TARDIS and made the mistake of exclaiming, ‘Wait a second! It’s bigger on the inside than it is on the outside!’

  Carina kicks the boot of one of the guys sitting on the floor as she leads me past them toward an empty floral print couch. He lunges forward, baring his teeth and snapping them at her, but she ignores his performance. “No, the library’s way bigger than this. This is Doc Fitzpatrick’s den, as he likes to call it. He’s basically a god around here. Gets away with murder. He’s supposed to take his classes in the room they assigned him in the English block, but he says it’s easier to inspire his students in a more relaxed setting.”

  This is relaxed alright. I’ve never even seen a sofa in a teacher’s classroom before, let alone planted my ass on one.

  “Hey, Carina? Who’s that?” I jerk my chin in the direction of the guy who gave me such a warm reception last night; he’s taken one of the floral print cushions from the couch he’s lying on and has placed it over his face.

  Carina stills, arching an eyebrow at me in a way that makes me feel like I’ve made yet another faux pas. “Uhhh, yeah. That is Wren Jacobi. He’s more feral dog than human being. I…honestly…” She sighs heavily, making herself busy by pulling a large notebook out of the bag at her feet. “I’d tell you to stay away from him, but it’s kind of impossible to avoid anyone in this place. Plus, Wren has a way of bullying his way into your business whether you like it or not, so…”

  Wrinkling my nose, I tilt my head to one side, squinting at him. “Y’know…I’m pretty sure he’s wearing the same clothes he was in last night.”

  This earns me a brittle laugh. “Yeah. He is.”

  How the hell does Carina know what he was wearing last night? Unless…she said a few of the girls waited up for me. She was obviously waiting with him; he said he’d drawn the short straw and had to stay awake until I arrived. I don’t know the first thing about the guy other than he smokes, but somehow I can’t imagine Wren hanging out with a bunch of girls, waiting to greet a new Wolf Hall student.

  “Wren and his guys, they like to fuck with people, Elodie. And when no one’s willing to play their stupid games, to live by their stupid rules, they’ll fuck with each other instead. Pax bet him he couldn’t bag ten girls before Christmas break. And when he failed the challenge, his friends told him he had to wear the same clothes for an entire month when we came back. So yeah. Wren’s definitely wearing the same clothes he was wearing last night. He’s wearing the same clothes he was wearing two weeks ago
. I think they let him wash them every couple of days. But you can bet your ass he’ll be wearing that same black shirt tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, right up until February first. Because the only thing worse than losing a bet to a Riot House boy…is failing to settle the bill when they lose. No matter what it costs them or who gets hurt along the way.”

  “Riot House boy?”

  “Yeah.” Carina scowls. “Those three idiots have a house halfway down the mountain. They call it Riot House. Everyone does. They’re allowed to live there, for some unknown fucking reason, while the rest of us have to shiver our asses off here during the winter months and cook during the summer.”

  “The academy has off-campus housing?”

  Carina’s bemused by my confusion. “No. Wren’s loaded. His family owns the place. Or he does. I’ve never been clear on the details. All I know is that they can do whatever the hell they want down there and the rest of us have to stay up here and toe the line.”

  There’s a bitter note in Carina’s voice. She’s plastered a sunny smile on her pretty face when she looks up from her bag, though. “Anyway. Pax, Dashiell and especially Wren. Watch out for them is all I’m saying, girl. You’ll wind up regretting it otherwise, I can promise you that.”

  “Pretty speech, Carrie. Glad to see you’re giving lovely little Elodie Stillwater the lay of the land.”

  Neither of us have noticed the guy who was sitting on the floor get up and walk over to us. He’s handsome in the same dangerous way that snakes, and spiders, and wolves are beautiful to look at. His hair is shaved back to dark stubble. Tattoos peek out from beneath his long-sleeved white t-shirt. His blue eyes spark like they’re brimming over with live electricity; when they home in on me, pinning me to the back of the couch, I feel like I’ve wrapped my hand around a live wire and I can’t let go.