by Harrison, S.
“You know something don’t you?” I whisper to Bit.
“Maybe I do?” Bit says with an uncharacteristically sly, and, I must admit, quite disconcerting smile.
“Tell us, sir!” Dean McCarthy shouts from the back.
“Very well,” the Professor says with a huge grin. “This year, on the last Saturday of next month, the most deserving students will accompany me on the school jet, and we will be flying abroad to spend the entire day at the central research and development complex of . . .”
Everyone has gone so silent that you could hear a butterfly’s wingbeat.
“. . . Blackstone Technologies.”
The whole class erupts into whoops and cheers and Bit looks at me with a proud, self-satisfied smile. “You wanted to see your father,” she whispers. “Well, now you can.”
I don’t cheer. I don’t even smile. Instead, my mouth goes as dry as sand and my stomach lurches. I’m completely at a loss for words.
As the day wears on, my anxiety worsens. In only a few days’ time, I may very well find myself standing before my father. Face to face. What will I say? What will he say? I did tell Bit that I wished I could see him, but I didn’t think for a second that she was actually going to make it happen! I knew she was good with computers, but seriously, how the hell did she pull this off? This is way too much for me to process right now. I feel stunned at the ridiculousness of this situation, like I’ve been slapped in the face with a wet fish. Do I laugh? Do I cry? I honestly don’t know. At the moment, I’m finding it hard enough just to breathe. Hopefully I’ll feel differently when we’re all actually there, but right now, I really can’t see it.
I can’t eat a thing at lunch and just stare at the walls in most of my other classes. Even the news that some new troublemaker student is enrolling soon doesn’t interest me. He’s just going to be another billionaire’s brat, more trouble than he’s worth.
After one of the longest days I can remember, I trudge to the dorm, take a long, hot shower, shovel down some pepperoni pizza that Bit 3-D printed, and try to watch a movie with her, but my mind won’t let me relax.
That night, lying in my bed, which I love more than almost anything, I find it hard to get to sleep. Please don’t dream tonight, brain. I know it’s only been four weeks since I’ve been able to dream at all, and I should be glad that I can finally do it, but sometimes I miss the peace of a dreamless sleep more than anyone could imagine. I close my eyes, pull the blankets over my head, and hope for the best.
CHAPTER THREE
No such luck. My hand shimmers through the dark as rainbow-colored ribbons trail behind it. The shiny black polish on my nails flakes apart and evaporates into the ether as my fingers suck back into my knuckles and plump like tiny sausages. Suddenly a voice echoes through the black.
“Come, child . . .”
A spindly leathered hand reaches down from out of the void and grasps my wrist.
“. . . the men would like to see you properly.”
Nanny Theresa’s talons dig into my skin as she jerks at my little arm. I do my best to escape, but her grip is as tight as an owl’s claw squeezing a mouse. On she drags me, through the reception lounge and the trophy room, past the gallery, through the grand ballroom, and past the library. I’m pulled all the way across the house until eventually we arrive at the long passageway that leads to the east wing and the red drawing room.
Nanny Theresa’s heels clack on the polished floorboards as we go, echoing down the hallway like a ticking clock counting down to something awful. I can feel it in my bones.
I hear the men’s voices long before we enter the room.
Nanny Theresa tugs me through the open doorway. All of the men are gathered in a small circle, chatting and laughing, puffing on fat cigars and drinking liquor. They’re standing beside a long serving table that has been especially placed in the center of the huge red-and-gold Persian rug. The table is cluttered with silver platters of colorful foods of every kind, more than I’ve ever seen before. None of the men seem to be very interested in eating, though; the food has hardly been touched, but the moment that they notice me and Nanny Theresa, their muttering ceases.
The men all turn and glare, craning their necks, watching intently as she leads me toward them. “Here she is,” Nanny Theresa announces. “These are your father’s business associates,” she says, looking down at me. The closer we get, the more unnerving the glares and silence become. A gap opens between two of the men and I’m unceremoniously shoved into the middle of their circle. Nanny Theresa backs away; the men part to let her pass, and I lose sight of her through a forest of trouser legs.
There are probably ten men in all surrounding me. Their circle closes tighter around me, all of them grinning and staring. Some, with their beards and moustaches, look older than others. Some are wearing glasses; some are not. Fat and thin, short and tall—all of them are different, and yet somehow strangely all the same.
I’m enveloped by thick clouds of pungent cigar smoke. It stings my eyes and nose and I begin to cough. A man with a pencil-thin moustache, a blue-striped suit, and a deep-red tie leans forward, staring inquisitively. “Remarkable,” he says, and promptly blows a cloud of milky smoke right into my face. I cough again and try to wave it away. He smiles, takes a sip of his liquor, and then with raised eyebrows offers the glass to me. I’m only a little girl! I’m far too young for liquor! I frown and shake my head emphatically.
Another man, an older looking one, bends forward, squinting. He’s leaning on an intricately carved, silver-handled cane. He steadies himself on the shoulder of the man beside him and with a quick jab, pokes me hard in the ribs with it.
“Ow!” I yelp, rubbing my side, and all the men burst into hearty laughter. A fat man with a moustache like a walrus mimics me by clutching his ribs and puckering his hairy lips into an “ow” shape as the others chuckle along with him.
I’m beginning to get scared. What am I doing here? I try to see through the gaps in the men’s legs, searching for Nanny, but she’s nowhere to be seen. She’s abandoned me, too.
A skinny man with red cheeks and a gray suit leans down, his pasty, scarlet-patched face only inches from my nose. With breath that smells like cigars and burnt toffee, he asks me a question in the slowest manner I have ever heard.
“Tell-me, what-is-your-name?”
“M . . . my name is Finn Blackstone,” I say meekly. I hold out my tiny hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
The entire group erupts in a round of raucous laughter. I stand there, bewildered. I slowly withdraw my hand. I don’t like this at all.
“And how old are you, Finn?”
I look around at the men in the circle. They all have the same wide-eyed, hungry look on their faces as they glare down at me from above.
“I’m . . . six years old tomorrow.”
They all grin at each other, nodding and murmuring like they’re sharing a secret.
These men are horrible and scary. I want to go. “Excuse me, sirs,” I say, doing a clumsy little curtsy. I’ve seen Mariele do it a thousand times and it seems like the right thing to do. “I would like to go to my room, please.”
“Oh no, no, no. That won’t do at all,” a gentle voice says from behind me. I’m about to turn my head to see who it came from when two big hands forcefully seize the back of my dress. The wads of material clenched in their fists tighten across my neck, choking me as I’m raised up onto my tiptoes. I lose my breath and gag as I’m yanked backward. My mind fills with panic. The hands jerk apart roughly. There’s a terrifying ripping noise as with one jarring stroke, my beautiful dress is torn apart at the seams. I feel hot cigar smoke breathed onto the bare skin of my back and I shriek in terror. The men crowd closer to see as I struggle in vain to get free. I feel hands reaching inside the gash in my dress. Fingers pinch at my skin. Fingernails scratch me as I’m tugged and pulled from side to side
like a rag doll. I scream again but it’s completely ignored. The men vie for position to watch and grope, seemingly oblivious to my panic. One of them grabs my ankle, wrenching a shoe away from my foot. Another begins to tug at my underwear.
This can’t be real. This must be a nightmare. My mind is white with fear.
“Help! Don’t! Please! You’re hurting me!” I plead, but they don’t listen. Where is Jonah? I need Jonah!
A gruff voice barks, “Put her on the table.”
I screech in protest, “LET ME GO!” My futile demand, just like my cry for mercy, falls on deaf ears. “JONAH!”
Four of the men band together and lift me into the air by my wrists and ankles.
“You there! Maid! Clear some space!”
Mariele looks on, frozen to the spot, her face a wide-eyed mask of shock and horror.
“Are you deaf? Make some room!” The man with the walrus face is grabbing platters of food and shoving them into Mariele’s arms.
I’m slammed onto the table and I cry out in pain. “MARIELE!”
I struggle to get free, but they’re far too strong.
“We just want to see,” whispers a gravelly voice.
A cloth napkin is forced into my mouth and I’m flipped onto my stomach.
I scream muffled wails into the napkin as the men roughly tug at my underwear. Tears overflow from my eyes. I bite into the napkin and pray that it doesn’t hurt when they finally kill me.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen. That’s quite enough for today.”
I never thought I’d be so happy to hear Nanny Theresa’s voice. The men release me from their grip; I roll off the table, bolt through their legs, out of their circle of claws and grins, and scoot across the rug and out the open door.
I run as fast as my legs will take me back down the hallway, their cruel laughter echoing after me down the cavernous passages. Past the east-wing kitchen and through the gift-wrapping room I run. Past the billiards room, the smoking room, the blue drawing room, and the trophy room. The walls and doors blend into a blur as I flee. I don’t stop to catch my breath until I’m safely in the marble foyer by the front doors.
I crouch behind the banister, heaving, staring back the way I came. No one is following. I’m terrified and confused, sitting all alone, trembling at the bottom of the stairs. What remains of my hope for a wonderful day with my father is in tatters, just like my beautiful dress. Why did they do that to me? Why would Nanny Theresa let them? Why wasn’t Father here to stop them? Why isn’t he ever here at all?
I have no answers. As usual, the bitter taste of disappointment stings at the back of my throat.
I pull the ribbons from my hair and drop them on the cold marble floor. My eyes well with tears, and as I reach the top of the staircase they trickle down my cheeks like droplets creeping from between the cracks in a broken vase.
“Finn?”
My heart leaps and I spin toward the voice. “Father?” I squeak feebly.
Through my tears, I see the blurry shape of a man climbing the stairs, arms outstretched. He reaches the top and picks me up into a warm embrace. It’s not my father.
“I’m so sorry, Finn,” Jonah whispers, wiping the tears from my face.
I stare into his big, kind, brown eyes.
“Can you be my real father, please, Jonah?” I peep out between sobs.
He smiles sadly. “No, Finn, but I love you like you are my daughter. No matter what happens, never, ever forget that.”
I swear to myself that I never will. He puts me down and studies the rip down the back of my dress. “I’ll have the tailor sew that up for you. It will be just like new, I promise.”
“Why did those men try to hurt me, Jonah?” I sob.
Jonah sighs deeply. “I’m afraid that those men are too used to doing whatever they like. People like that sometimes get very carried away. Sometimes they forget the difference between right and wrong.” He takes off his suit jacket and drapes it over my shoulders. It envelops me all the way to the floor like Superman’s cape.
Jonah kneels down and gently wipes my cheek with his thumb. “Your Nanny Theresa should never have invited them. They’re not very nice at all. Someone really ought to teach them a lesson,” Jonah says with a soft tap on my forehead.
With my bottom lip trembling beneath my sniffling nose, I nod in agreement.
“I have to go, sweetheart. I’ll send Mariele to keep you company. I’ll be back later to say good night. I promise.”
Jonah turns and makes his way back down the stairs. “OK, Jonah,” I mumble, and slowly drag my feet down the hall toward my room.
I’m almost there when something small and metal falls from Jonah’s jacket and clacks onto the floorboards by the edge of the long carpet. I bend down and pick it up. It’s a little brass key. I know exactly what lock it opens, and suddenly I get an idea.
The best idea ever.
There’s something about revenge that makes me buoyantly happy. Nanny Theresa spanked my bottom red raw for tracking mud into the house last winter. I apologized and made her a cup of tea every morning for two weeks. She must have drunk half a gallon of my pee before I got bored of it.
I wipe the last tears from my eyes, throw off Jonah’s huge black jacket, and run back along the hall toward the first-floor landing. I leap down the stairs three at a time to the bottom, sprint down the hall of the west wing to Jonah’s room, and straight through the wide-open door. I find the box I’m looking for beneath his four-poster bed. I twist the key in the lock, grab what’s inside, spring to my feet, and compose myself before walking quietly and calmly out into the hall. I take a deep breath, stare straight ahead, and with determination in every step, I head off toward the east wing.
The five-minute walk seems to pass in five seconds. I stop and stand just outside the red drawing room. Inside, I can hear the men muttering and laughing like before and my blood boils. I’m angry. It’s almost as if the rage is bubbling up from my feet like molten lava, filling every inch of my body, burning the remnants of my fear clean away. It feels good. I grit my teeth, furrow my brow, and step out into the open doorway.
The men, unsurprisingly, are still standing in their circle, puffing away on their cigars and sipping brown liquor from large crystal tumblers. A full minute passes before any of them even notice that I’m there.
“Oh, look!” says Walrus Face. “It appears that we have a visitor.”
Almost in unison, the others turn to look. Here I stand, blocking the doorway, one shoe on my foot, both hands behind my back, my eyes red and puffy from crying, and the frayed edges of my torn dress hanging loosely by my sides. This is what you did to me. This is what I want you all to see.
Curious? Surprised? Perhaps a little puzzled? It really doesn’t matter what they’re thinking. I want to see their pompous smiles and sneers and glares erased from their arrogant, pampered faces like chalk from a blackboard. I want to stab their hearts with venom and infect their minds with fear, just like they did to me. I want to make it perfectly clear what a dire mistake they’ve all made, but what I want them to remember, more than anything, from now until forever, is that they’ve messed with the wrong girl. So I show them what I brought.
I show them Jonah’s gun.
Their expressions don’t change right away. Maybe they think it’s a toy? Maybe they think it’s a squirt gun? It must be quite a sight to take in, an angry, disheveled, almost-six-year-old girl with fury in her eyes, pointing a fully loaded semiautomatic pistol right at them.
All that changes the moment I pull the trigger.
With a loud bang, the gun kicks in my hand and the crystal vase by Walrus Face shatters, pelting him with pebbles of crystal shrapnel. He throws his tumbler, still half-filled with liquor, straight up in the air and dives for cover. With perfect aim and timing I pull the trigger again and the tumbler loudly bursts in a cloud o
f twinkling glass and brown mist. There are twitching moustaches and wide-eyed stares as a tangled blur of dodging and ducking men go diving behind whatever is closest. Some grab at one another, callously heaving their colleagues into the line of fire. Some throw themselves behind sofas and armchairs. One heavyset man launches himself without looking and goes sprawling across the food-laden table, landing hard, face-first into a large terrine of salmon mousse. Two men are man-handling each other, jostling and wrestling in an attempt to determine which will be the human shield as another man drops to his knees and curls into a whimpering ball on the carpet. The remaining men simply stare, rooted to the spot, their eyes wide, frozen like startled deer.
Blue Stripy Suit Man is among them, standing motionless in the center of the room like a trout-mouthed statue. I take aim, pull the trigger, and with a flash of gunpowder the gun jolts in my palm. The ornamental red glass lamp six feet above his head ruptures into a thousand pieces. His entire body flinches into action as he leaps awkwardly sideways, cartwheeling directly onto a small, antique table full of deviled eggs. With a loud crack its spindly legs snap under his weight, sending the serving tray, silver spoons, cloth napkins, and thirty eggs vaulting through the air, deviling the wall and the face of another man with thick splats of white and yellow.
Nanny Theresa erupts into the room from the far door. The look on her face alone is worth it. Men are screaming and running and cowering and hiding while I gleefully stand in the doorway, basking in the warm glow of the manic pandemonium unfolding before my little eyes. Skinny Red-Cheek Man’s entire face is red now. I notice a large, dark stain spreading down the front of his gray trousers. I actually giggle out loud.
On the other side of the room, Silver-Topped Cane Man is hobbling away in a pathetic attempt to escape. I take careful aim.
BANG!
My bullet finds its mark, splintering his cane in two. He teeters for a moment, wobbling off-kilter like a faltering spinning top. Almost in slow motion, he falls. He rolls over twice on the Persian rug and comes to a halt on his back, rocking from side to side, his arms and legs pathetically flailing in the air like an overturned turtle.
