CHAPTER FIVE #2
“Who?” Molly asked again, curiosity getting the better of her. “What is this all about? Tell me something. ”
Cassie bit her lip and her eyes cut to the side. Then she grew very still and spoke in a low, monotonous tone. “I gave her a letter Cole sent me. From Bright Renewal.”
Molly sighed. This again. Cole was Cassie’s brother, her twin brother.
He’d been the first student from Clem sent to the Academy in ages, after he and some other boys broke into the school one night on a dare.
His co-conspirators ended up earning a few demerits, but Cole was sent to Bright Renewal Academy.
It wasn’t fair, and it had devastated Cassie. Still…
“I know it stinks, Cassie, but it’s for his own good, right? It won’t be forever. Just remember: ‘Bright Renewal Academy rescues children from themselves.’ ”
“No, it doesn’t,” Cassie said flatly. “I can’t tell you any more than that. I mean, I won’t. It’s not safe.”
“I think you’re being dramatic,” Molly said, a bit harshly, but she was starting to get fed up.
Cassie always made mountains from mole hills.
She rested her arms across her knees and frowned at her friend.
Her calves were starting to ache in this position.
“You want attention or something, and all you’re going to do is get us both in trouble.
I don’t know why I was even worried about you. ”
With a low moan, Cassie covered her face with her hands and almost seemed to sink into herself. She looked so small and frightened, Molly felt immediately sorry for being so mean. “Cassie, I–”
“I saw her body.”
A hiss of a whisper. So soft, and so terrible. Molly dropped onto her bottom, not caring that she landed in a puddle of dirty water. “What?” Her face felt numb. It had to be a lie.
“I saw her. In the woods. Under a full moon. She was so white, so limp. Like a doll left in the rain, tossed away and forgotten.”
“You’re lying!”
“Her tongue was gone, Molly. Torn out.” Cassie pulled her hands away from her face and reached for her friend.
Those clasping desperate fingers closed on Molly’s wrist and it was all the other girl could do not to yank her arm away.
Cassie dragged her closer, her eyes wide and her cheeks chalk white.
“I told her something I shouldn’t have, and it got her killed.
They’ll make me pay, they said, make me pay if I tell anyone else! ”
Her sheer terror was contagious. Molly’s heart thundered and she was sweating again.
She wanted to wrench herself away and flee.
She wanted sunlight and warmth and a crowd around her.
Stuck in here with her mad-eyed friend spewing nonsense – frightening nonsense – she felt trapped in a nightmare. Frozen, as if a demon sat on her chest.
“It’s okay, you don’t have to tell me,” she said, trying to pull back without seeming like it.
“Come on, calm down. Let’s go find a teacher.
Sister Violetta will write a note for class, and you won’t be in any trouble.
Okay? You’re just upset, that’s all. It was probably just a dream.
I have strange dreams sometimes, too, about Sister Catarine. She was so nice.”
“She believed me when no one else would,” Cassie said.
“Who would believe a Graham?” she added bitterly, and Molly winced.
Despite their deep ties to Havenside, the Grahams were a very…
colorful family, known for tall tales and exaggerations.
“They slaughtered her to shut me up, and to send a warning to Cole. They need him, or I think he’d be dead, too. ”
Her friend sounded insane. Talking about some mysterious “they” who murdered nuns and were conspiring to do…
what, exactly? And what did any of it have to do with Bright Renewal Academy?
Maybe Cole was just complaining about his circumstances and Cassie had blown it all out of proportion.
Had it gotten Catarine killed? She doubted it.
She doubted all of this. The only thing she knew for certain was that she wanted to be anywhere but here right now.
The door swept open behind her and light poured in. Cassie winced, her eyelids fluttering, and released Molly to lift a hand against the glare. Molly scrambled to her feet, almost grateful to whoever had caught them.
“Here, now! What are you girls doing? Get out of there at once!”
Cassie bounced to her feet while Molly whirled around to stand at stiff attention before the headmistress herself.
The woman was all of five feet tall, with cherubically round cheeks and eyes like a fawn, but her voice was whipcrack sharp and she wasn’t afraid to redden her palm on a recalcitrant child.
Every student lived in fear of her, and not a few grown men and women, too.
There wasn’t a teacher on campus Molly wouldn’t rather deal with than Revered Mother Isabel Francesca.
“Well?” the revered mother demanded, hands clasped at her cincture, knuckles white as if she were restraining herself from striking one of them. Her soft eyes had turned to shards of black diamond and her cherubic cheeks burned red, giving her a truly terrifying visage.
“We – we…” Molly stammered uselessly. What excuse could she give?
Shockingly, her throat closed with a painful ache, and she felt hot tears well in her eyes.
No, no, this was not the correct response to such a question from the revered mother.
Blubbering girls did not evoke any sympathy from this nun.
Beside her, Cassie dissolved into inconsolable weeping, which didn’t make it any easier for Molly to fight back her own tears.
But then, a miracle. The revered mother, abbess of the Celestial Order of the Shield Convent, headmistress of Clementine Preparatory, a woman with no discernible heart, unclasped her hands and spread her arms wide.
“My poor dears,” she said, her sharp voice suddenly honey.
“There, there. I know we’re all upset this terrible day. ”
And Molly found herself gathered against the mother’s plump shoulder, Cassie collapsing in a puddle against the other.
For a moment, though shocked to her core, she let emotion overwhelm her and gave in to her grief.
Not for long, though; her sobs quickly turned stiff, muffled, and she pulled herself together and was released from the revered mother’s embrace.
Her friend remained sheltered in the mother’s comforting arms while Molly stood sniffling and scrubbing away her tears.
Mother Francesca caught her eyes above Cassie’s head. “Go to class, Miss Franke, and tell Father Kellan I held you back for a private talk.” Those eyes of hers grew deep and soft. “I’ll take care of Miss Graham. I think she needs a moment to pull herself together. Don’t you agree?”
“I – y-y-yes, Mother. I – thank you!” She blurted out this last part, already turning on her heel to escape.
She gave them one last glance before rushing down the main hallway and saw Revered Mother Francesca escorting Cassie in the opposite direction – taking her to the school nurse, no doubt, for a drop of calming tincture or a balm of mint.
Hopefully, Cassie would keep her strange confession to herself and not drag the mother into her fantasies.
With any luck, she’d avoid being sent to the Academy like her poor brother.
Most of the kids at the Academy deserved to be there, troublemakers and malcontents from Otherside, and Molly had little sympathy for them.
What kind of future did they have, anyway?
Bright Renewal might just manage to mold them into good citizens.
But Cole Graham was different. He’d been one of them , a Clem Prep student, a promising scholar and athlete.
Nevertheless, he should have known better.
Molly felt bad for him, but not too bad.
Whatever he might have told Cassie could only be nonsense.
It had nothing to do with Sister Catarine.
She told herself this and pushed everything else out of her mind. Cassie had to be lying!
Getting to her next class happened in a blur of wood and glass, light and shadow, and Father Kellan either didn’t notice her slip in late or didn’t care.
He was writing on the blackboard, his hand moving precisely, producing a swirl of neat, even text outlining the last battle of the Great Civil War.
She took her seat in the back corner of the room beneath the tall windows that looked out onto the quad, struggling to slow her pounding heart and stop panting before he turned around.
She needn’t have worried. A dull and listless mood hung over the classroom.
No one, not even the ever-spiteful Shane Goody, took the opportunity to call out her tardiness.
And when Father Kellan turned around at last, his eyes red-rimmed and his cheeks dark with stubble, he seemed hardly aware of his own surroundings let alone the antics of one wayward student.
He even stumbled a little as he returned to his desk, drawing a small gasp from some of them.
“No talking,” he muttered – well, slurred, really. He flopped into his chair, and it rolled back from his desk a foot or so. Instead of pulling it back into place, he scrubbed his hands through his mop of chestnut hair and stared at the ceiling, his head resting on the back of the chair.
An uncomfortable silence descended. The students waited.
Molly caught the attention of her friend Julie, and they exchanged identical looks of consternation.
Had Father Kellan been that close with Sister Catarine?
Why else would he be so distraught? Usually, he was one of the more enthusiastic instructors at Clementine, a man in love with history and service to the Goddess and her Blessed Branch.
A rustle of papers broke the stillness, a shifting of chairs, a few quiet sighs.
Abruptly, Father Kellan stood, his face unusually pale. “Mr Faraday,” he said, pointing to Simon Faraday, the smartest kid in school and a notorious brown-noser. “Take over a second, please. I–” Astonishingly, he dashed from the room. A startled murmur arose among the students.
“Quiet!” Simon ordered, only too happy to be a martinet, the little turd. He stalked to the vacated desk and took a seat, hands folded on the blotter. “No talking until Father Kellan returns. I’ll tell if anyone gets rowdy.”
A few sniggers greeted his pronouncement, but the perpetrators were quickly hushed. Simon would gleefully rat out any agitators. Shane made a slashing motion across his throat to his sneering buddies, but even he remained compliant.
The uncomfortable silence returned, growing long, then longer.
Restless, Molly stared at the clock tower through the tall, arched windows.
It was why she liked to sit where she did.
Not only was the ornate stone-and-brick edifice beautiful, it also held a massive bronze bell in its rounded cupola.
The tolling of that bell meant one more hour closer to freedom, and she liked to watch the hands of the clock creep closer and closer to when it would ring.
So, as it happened, she was staring right at the clock tower when a figure appeared in the cupola, small and pathetic beside the great bronze bell – a student, judging by the plaid, pleated skirt and crisp white blouse. She was too far to see their face, but Molly knew that head of curly red hair.
Cassie? What was she doing up there?
The girl wavered, one hand on the bell, every line of her body taut as she looked over her shoulder. Whatever she saw sent her running – right off the edge of the tower.
Molly screamed, half-rising, arm outstretched, pointing at the windows. A dozen heads whipped round in the same direction, just in time to see Cassie Graham plummeting to the quad.