by C T Rhames
I was reduced to glaring at him, as Ms. Bastille began to give instructions on how to open up our piglets and remove the organs. This time, I let Melatiah take the lead, leaning away from the pig.
The second the scalpel slid into the piglet’s skin, I felt the blood drain from my head. The entire room started to swim and all I could see was the knife sliding into Sara’s tiny body. With a thud, I fell off the chair and hit my shoulder blade and head on the flagstone.
I could blurrily make out students gathering around me, but staring up at the ceiling, all I could see was blood. It rained down on me until I was choking on it, thick and hot and suffocating.
Someone rolled me onto my side and I winced as their hands roughly prodded my back, right where my wound was. My cheek rested against the cold floor and my eyes closed against the sight of blood creeping across the floor toward me.
“It’s not real,” I whispered to myself. “It’s not real.”
“Get up off the floor and stop being dramatic,” Ms. Bastille’s exasperated voice broke through my fuzzy head. “The rest of you, get back to your projects.”
Someone pulled me to my feet and I realized that Melatiah was holding my arms to my side, supporting me. He held me up, facing the irate teacher.
“If you can’t hack my class, you won’t be getting a passing grade,” she snapped. “Now sit down and do the work or fail by walking out that door.”
My first instinct was to walk out the door, but I had no idea how that would affect my standing in witness protection. So I let Melatiah sit me on the stool closest to the wall. He let go of me and I leaned against the wall.
“The pig no longer gives any import to what we do,” he informed me.
“Why do you talk so weirdly?” I asked, my vision still blurry. Fortunately, the blood vision seemed to have faded, though I still felt my skin was drenched with it.
“Why do you?” He retorted, turning back to the pig. I looked up at the ceiling to avoid watching.
A few minutes later, something flew through the air and hit me on the side of my face. I twisted and looked down at my lap, where the sloppy thing had landed.
It was a heart. Small and perfect, cut expertly from a piglet and thrown with perfect aim. The preservation fluid was seeping into my jeans as I gingerly picked the heart up and put it on the table, wishing I’d bothered to put on those darn gloves.
Looking back, I saw one of the dark haired girls that followed Jeanine around. She was smirking in my direction and everyone else seemed to be having a laugh at my expense, too.
It wasn’t blood, thankfully, so I took a deep breath and coughed, wishing I hadn’t. The strong odor of the preservation fluid was everywhere. I grabbed a wet wipe from a packet on the table and wiped my face and then my hands.
The teacher wandered over and looked at our pig. “Very good, Mel. Be sure to let our dramatic friend here do some of the work.”
I donned gloves and took the scalpel from Mel, hoping I could actually do this. My mind shrieked at me as I detached the liver with care not to nick the intestines, and set it on a plate. Mel measured and weighed it and wrote the information down, while I tried not to actually look at the pig splayed out ahead of us.
By the time class was over, I had absolutely no appetite. I was ready to head to bed, but there were still three more classes after dinner. It was going to be a really long night.
Chapter Seven
Things did not get better after my first day. I struggled through French and Spanish lessons that everyone else seemed to excel in. I spent my free time on homework or with Karen, who was always in a great mood.
The Jeanine pack had taken to calling me Booboo after my falling off the chair incident in Biology. It seemed to catch on and spread like wildfire and pretty soon, I heard it being called out in prissy voices all over the school.
“Can’t they come up with anything more original?” I muttered at lunch a week after I’d started at school. I was in a lousy mood. I was behind in homework and I couldn’t sleep for the nightmares that plagued me every time I closed my eyes.
“At least it’s not something really awful,” Karen pointed out. “I mean, it could be so much worse, don’t you think?”
“I guess.” I bit into my ham sandwich and looked around. “Hey, how many students are there in this school?”
Karen shrugged, “I dunno, maybe 150 or so?”
“So why is this dining hall so tiny? You can only fit like 20 people in here.”
Karen laughed. “I think it’s to foster closeness or something. Besides, they have weird schedules here.”
“Yeah, but don’t you think they should at least consider making more space for students to eat? I mean, the Jeanine gang never eats here and I haven’t seen Mel or that weird ice eyed guy either.”
Karen looked at me. “Ice eyed guy?”
“Yeah, you must have seen him . . . his eyes are super pale and he has longish blond hair?”
“You mean James,” Jack said with a laugh from down the table. “Ice eyed guy.”
“It suits him,” Karen agreed, now that she knew who I was talking about. “He is really cold looking, but damn, he has great bone structure.”
“Right?” I shook my head. “I feel like half the guys and girls here are ridiculously hot, don’t you?”
“Thanks,” Jack winked at me.
“She’s not talking about you, Jackie boy,” Karen rolled her eyes at him. Then she turned to me. “I know what you mean. It’s like stud city out there. Who knew Alaska would attract so many hotties?”
“But no one ever seems to date each other here,” Jack pointed out. “They’re super hot, but dead inside.”
“Weird.” I shook my head. “This place is far stranger than I anticipated.”
“But you have to admit, it’s not all bad,” Karen said. “I mean, the ham sandwiches are pretty darn good.”
“If you like ham and cheese, yes,” I admitted. They did use artisan bread and fancy cheeses, after all.
“Well, I’m good with it,” Jack stuffed the last of his sandwich in his mouth. “I’ll see you two later, I’m going to enjoy my weekend.”
“What’s there to do on a weekend around here?” I asked Karen.
“Homework, mostly,” she said dryly.
“No, seriously. Aren’t there any parties or anything?” I missed hanging out with Lily. We’d always gone to as many parties as possible on the weekends. It was just a fun way to stay out of the house and I loved hanging out with other people and loud music to blot out my thoughts. Now I could use that more than ever.
“Sometimes,” she shrugged. “But we’re not usually invited. We’re not as cool as the hotties.”
“Oh.” I sighed. “Maybe we could crash a party?”
“I don’t think that would be a great idea, we’d probably get reported and end up on cleaning duty for a month.”
I groaned and dropped my head to the table. “I’m bored.”
“Okay, tell you what . . . we’ll go hiking tomorrow. There’s this neat cave near here that you’ll love.”
“A cave? That sounds nowhere near as exciting as a party.”
“You’re going to love it,” she assured me. “But you have to get up earlier. The sun will be up by 9 and we want to be back before lunch is over.”
“Fine, I’ll be up by then.”
I set my alarm for 8:30 the next morning and groaned when it went off. I was already accustomed to the schedule here at the academy. The late nights and late mornings were actually really a good schedule for teens, I had decided. Getting up this early was a pain.
After a shower, I blowdried my hair to make sure I didn’t freeze outside. Then I dressed warmly and at 9 am on the dot, I headed for the door.
Karen was coming out of her room and grinned at me. “Okay, let’s go! I already cleared it with the headmaster.”
“You have to get permission to leave?”
“Yeah, something about school liability or somet
hing. They always say yes, but you have to know where you’re going.”
We stopped by the dining hall to have some oatmeal and coffee before heading out the back door of the castle.
Outside, the air was cutting, even with the sun up. I looked up at the clear blue sky and realized that I hadn’t seen the sky since the day I’d walked into the academy.
“Isn’t it weird there’s no windows in the castle?” I looked back at the towering stone walls. “I kinda miss the sun.”
“You get used to it. Besides, you can always go into the courtyard during breaks.”
“What courtyard?”
“Oh, did I forget to show you? There’s a courtyard .” She grinned at me and started walking down a narrow trail that led through the forest.
“How far is this cave?” I asked. I wasn’t fond of hiking on the best of days and today was cold. There was a smattering of snow, but the ground crunched under my feet.
“Maybe half an hour walking,” she said, dancing ahead.
It was more like 45 minutes, though Karen insisted that was because I was a slowpoke. When we finally saw the crack in the base of what looked like a huge mountain, I was actually pretty warm from the walking.
“That’s the cave? It looks like a slit in the rock.”
“Wait until you get inside.” She pulled a couple flashlights out of her coat pockets and handed me one. “It’s so cool.”
I was doubtful about the cave being as amazing as she said, especially judging from the outside, but it had to be better than standing out in the chilly wind that was already sucking the heat out of me.
“Come on!” her voice echoed from the other side of the crack and I turned sideways and squeezed in after her.
At first glance, it seemed that we were just in a really weird tunnel. The rock was shattered, so it formed broken walls and a jagged roof. Daylight from the entrance fell on the sandy floor, but that dropped off quickly as we moved deeper into the cave.
“Are you sure this is safe?” I was getting nervous.
“I’ve been here lots,” Karen assured me. “Just hang on.”
The air suddenly shifted and the coldness became a damp chill. I realized we’d emerged into a larger space and shone my light around.
The cave was roughly the size of the dining hall and had a high roof, several feet above our heads. I was checking for bats when Karen called me over to the far end of the cave.
“You have to see this.” She was striking a match and before I realized it, she had a tidy little fire going on the cave floor.
The light flickered on the back wall of the cave and I saw something on it. Moving closer, I realized there were figures etched into the wall and filled with something white.
“What is that?”
“I think it’s lime or something that they used to fill in the scratches they made. It’s ancient. I don’t know how old, but imagine cave men in here billions of years ago?”
“Wow.” I peered closer at the images. There were what seemed to be women cooking over a fire, with babies on their backs and children playing ball nearby. Men hunted mammoths or deer and built houses that were rounded on top.
“I told you it was cool.”
“You were right.” I breathed. “This is amazing.”
Another pang hit me in the heart. The thought that Brett and Sara would have enjoyed this, every part of it. Hiking through the woods, exploring a cave.
Tears welled up in my eyes and I moved along the wall to keep Karen from seeing.
There was nothing I wouldn’t do to bring my family back, but here I was, stuck in this place, alone. I couldn’t even tell Karen about Brett and Sarah. It could mean the end of my protection if I did.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I lied, pointing my flashlight at another section of the wall. “Just checking out these drawings here.”
The drawings covered the entire back of the cave and seemed to show every single activity these ancient people had enjoyed. There was even a section on the sun setting and the long periods of darkness. It showed monsters with jagged teeth hunting the villagers and in one section, a man killed one of the monsters by chopping off its head. But not before there were a lot of dead people piling up. The lines for these were tinted red.
“This part is kinda creepy.”
“Yeah, right?” She came and stood beside me, looking at the images. “But let me tell you that I’ve been here through the Long Night and there were no monsters, so we’re good.”
“Good to know!”
I still felt heavy and sad as we left the cave. As we trudged back to the castle for lunch, I wondered if I would ever be able to feel happy again.
Karen is the only person she can talk to and she hates that she can’t talk about what happened. She’s being bullied daily and called names.
Chapter Eight
“Hey, Booboo, slaughter any small animals lately?” the guy calling across the Bio lab was trying to get a rise from me. I knew that and I tried not to rise to the occasion, but finally I spun around and faced him, fists clenched at my side.
He was grinning at me, his friend smirking beside him. These two were always together. I knew Ms. Bastille called him Tomas. He was tall, with curly black hair and a face that was always ready to laugh. In fact, he would have been adorable if that laughter wasn’t always directed at me.
His friend, Cash, was slight and much shorter than his friend, but they seemed to have the same sense of humor. That is, they enjoyed teasing people and making fun of them. I wasn’t sure where Tomas was from, but he had a strong accent. Cash was almost certainly Irish, judging from his brogue.
“Ay, don’t get your knickers in a knot, lassie,” Cash called out.
Malia, the brunette who was part of Jeanine’s squad, said loudly, “Oh, no, she’s far too frigid to kill an animal. You’ve mistaken her for someone who might actually be interesting.”
Ms. Bastille came in and the students settled down a bit. She gave me a warning glare and I knew I’d already been marked out for extra questioning this class. She seemed to hate me, as evidenced by her not even caring when I fell off my stool.
“Today, we’ll be studying human anatomy. Something I know a few of you know a little too much about.”
There were titters and snorts throughout the room. I pulled out my notebook and put it on the desk in front of me and clicked my pen, ready to take notes. Regardless of what everyone else apparently knew about anatomy, I was pretty clueless. If it hadn’t showed up in my fourth grade health class, I didn’t know much about it.
“Lyric Masterson, why don’t you come up and serve as my model?” Ms. Bastille gave me a tightlipped smile. This was her game today, I sighed inwardly.
I went to the front of the room and turned to face the class, hugging myself. Ms. Bastille pulled out an apron and pulled it over my head, tying the strings in the back. When I looked down, I realized it had organs printed on it.
“We all know how Ms. Masterson feels about internal organs, so she will demonstrate them instead of looking at them,” the teacher said. I pursed my lips, trying not to say anything. I could not afford to piss my teacher off.
“She looks delectable!” Tomas called from the back of the class. “That heart, positively juicy.”
“No, you’re quite wrong,” Malia said. “Her heart is as cold as ice.”
“At least it’s not all shriveled up and dried out like yours,” I called back. Ms. Bastille shot me a look and I fell silent. But at least I’d gotten one remark in.
The teacher used a wooden pointer to jab at the various body part. I was sure she was trying to poke me harder than needed on purpose, but steadfastly refused to let her make me yelp.
“Does anyone know how much blood we would get from Lyric’s body if we were to slit her throat right this moment?” Ms. Bastille asked.
“Excuse me?” My mouth dropped open. No one else seemed shocked by the casual discussion of my murder.
Cash raised his hand. “I do believe it would be around 9 pints, given her size.”
Mel didn’t bother raising her hand. “9.6 pints. She’s a little taller than the average woman when that statistic originated.”
“You are both more or less correct,” Ms. Bastille said. She tapped my neck with the pointer. “If we were to bleed Lyric dry, we would obtain around 9 pints.”
She looked me up and down and then looked over at Mel. “Now, if we were to drain Mel here, how much would we get?”
“Maybe two drops,” Malia chortled.
“I say he has at least a pint,” Tomas said, appraisingly.
“You’re all wrong, I haven’t fed since yesterday,” Melatiah shot back.
“The average man,” Ms. Bastille put emphasis on the man part, “Would have around 12 pints of blood in his body.”
“Can I sit down or are we going to actually drain and measure my blood?” I asked, tired of standing and being the center of attention.
“Very well, you may sit. Though it would be a good practical activity.”
I wondered if I could report a teacher for harassment. Would they even do anything? I needed to figure out how to get on her good side.
The rest of the class, we had to label diagrams of anatomy and I kept my head down, ignoring the whispers. I could tell they were whispering, but couldn’t tell what they were saying. From Mel’s smirks and snorts, he seemed to understand everything, but I was glad I couldn’t make out the words. I had no doubt they were making fun of me.
As soon as the class was over, I was out the door. If I could drop a class, it would be Bio. Not only was the teacher a bitch, it had the highest concentration of bullies. No one at school seemed to like me much, though I wasn’t sure what exactly I’d done to them, but certain students seemed to particularly detest me.
“You ran off so fast, you didn’t give us the opportunity to say farewell,” Cash’s Irish lilt came from behind me and he grabbed my bad shoulder. I winced as he spun me around.
“Where are you off to in such a rush?” he asked, green eyes twinkling.
