CHAPTER TWENTY
Life at Bright Renewal took on a miserable monotony that did more to break Molly’s spirit than anything else.
Up before dawn, the light gray outside the few, high frosted windows.
Then a cold shower – in front of the ever-present Guardians, of course – with a hard scrub brush and harsh, lye soap, and a scrap of thin, scratchy cloth for drying.
“Hang it up, girls. Always in the same place. Don’t lose it! You get one, and one only. You will learn to appreciate all the Goddess provides.”
Shivering, half wet, they pulled on their “uniforms” – drab wool skirts and shapeless cotton tunics, stockings and cheap canvas shoes. Molly’s uniform was a size too big and hung from her. No one seemed to care as long as she was covered adequately.
“Modesty is vital for a proper young lady.”
Once dressed, bleary-eyed veterans and terrified newcomers like her marched in a single line to the cafeteria to break their fast with warm tea and cold porridge, laid out on long, narrow tables in the cafeteria, a vast room that would look less out of place in a factory than a school.
(She’d only ever seen glimpses of Bright Renewal Academy from the outside, but it had always seemed a grand mansion.
The inside left much to be desired.) The girls ate on one side and the boys on the other. Fraternization was not allowed.
On her first day, still stunned by her sudden change in circumstances, Molly had nevertheless scanned the tables of boys as she came in, seeking a familiar face.
Not many kids from Clementine ended up at Bright Renewal.
She’d heard tales of some Clem students going down a bad path but knew of only one personally: Cassie’s brother, Cole Graham.
So she’d dragged her feet, hoping to spot his curly red hair – so like Cassie’s – not knowing exactly what she was going to do if she did find him.
Cassie had been afraid for him; part of her just wanted to see if he was still alive.
“Stop dawdling!”
The blow caught her across her upper back and she gasped and whipped her head around, outraged, her skin stinging.
A short, thickset woman in trousers and a shirt buttoned up to her chin stood there scowling, a leather strap dangling in her grip – one of the many so-called “guardians” who kept the students in line.
“Take your place,” she hissed, “or you get another.”
Molly swallowed a retort – she’d never been hit in her life and still could hardly fathom this casual violence – and clambered over the benches next to the girl she’d been following and stood at the table.
She took her cues from the others and didn’t sit, not until she was instructed.
It wasn’t until after a long, droning prayer, led by a layman in the same trousers and shirt as the strap lady, that they were ordered to sit.
By then, her back had stopped stinging and her stomach was gnawing at her spine.
They’d eaten in silence that first day and every day since, the only sounds the clatter of spoons and soft slurping.
Molly didn’t even think about trying to find Cole again that first day, just eating her food and keeping her head down.
The girl beside her, the same one who’d slow-blinked at her – girls from the same rooms were grouped together – managed to touch her leg at one point: a quick, furtive pat.
Molly’s throat had tightened and it was all she could do to choke down the bland porridge.
That first day bled into the next, and the next.
After breakfast there were lessons – long, boring lectures. The students were then required to recite back scripture and pray to the Goddess. There was no science, no literature, no poetry or art, though occasionally they studied rudimentary mathematics.
Molly was baffled. Even the basic curriculum at Clementine was far beyond this claptrap.
It made no sense. She’d heard more than one adult, even her instructors at Clem, insist that Bright Renewal had a rigorous academic focus with an emphasis on discipline and obedience in order to prepare young, troubled minds for the world.
Bright Renewal was supposed to be reforming students, not merely punishing them.
It cost a mint to send children here, after all.
Frustrated, she wondered at first if she would be placed in a more challenging class once they assessed her work – but no, each day was the same: basic, boring, pointless.
She was terrified she was going to fall behind.
What would she do when she got back to Clementine Preparatory?
How could she make up all she was missing?
Soon, she realized all her lessons and other activities at Bright Renewal were designed to wear her down rather than lift her up, the afternoon assemblies in particular.
After a simple lunch of sandwiches and juice, barely enough for growing teenagers, they were divided into groups in a vast fieldhouse.
Led by no-nonsense instructors, they knelt in circles and slapped hands on the ground repetitively, clapped and snapped their fingers, over and over in a simple, synchronized rhythm.
It was one of the few places where they could speak outside of prayers – well, chant, anyway, emitting meaningless, guttural sounds to match their hand movements.
They did this for hours, leather straps encouraging anyone who faltered.
Molly kept up as best she could, but no one avoided correction.
Those that lasted the longest and managed to maintain their rhythm and form received praise at the end of the session.
While others wept silently, wrung sore hands and nursed bruises, these lucky ones were allowed to partake of a refreshment table.
Some lorded it over the rest of them, smirking and making a big to do about their bit of cake and juice.
Others merely looked blank-faced. Yes, they were good at the “rounds,” as they were called, but their spirits were broken.
Molly wondered how long she would last before her own was broken and she too stared blankly at the walls.
Day after day for a week (she thought) the pattern repeated.
It felt eternal. She was exhausted yet restless, bored yet terrified.
She understood the faster she complied with every rule and circumstance thrown at her, the faster she would be set free, but somehow she was always getting marks against her, no matter how hard she tried.
Some students seemed preternaturally able to excel in this miserable place and rose in the levels, earning merits which allowed them to speak if they wished (only to others of the same level or those beneath them, and in that instance only to order them around), to read books from the library, to eat better food in the private lounges reserved for them – the upperclassmen.
Their elevation had nothing to do with age or schooling, merely compliance.
Try as she might, Molly couldn’t keep from smiling or giggling at someone’s antics (carefully hidden behind their instructors’ backs) or rolling her eyes at some new stupidity thrown at them in the classroom (yes, she knew long division already, dear Goddess!).
She even dared to whisper to her new friend, Rebecca, the two of them growing closer and closer each day, brought together through their mutual misery.
Somehow, Rebecca – one of those angelic-looking students whom the instructors loved – avoided the black marks, but even proximity to a favorite couldn’t keep Molly from losing points every single day.
At night, Rebecca snuck into Molly’s bunk so they could talk.
Not even the threat of dire punishment daunted Rebecca, who had assured Molly that their particular guard was a lazy sack who couldn’t help but fall asleep as soon as her charges were in their beds.
Molly had lain frozen in fear, at first, until she heard the heavy snores of their guardian.
After that, she felt no more than a quickening of her heart when they dared to snuggle close and gossip like regular girls.
Rebecca was from one town over, Plainfield, and she’d been sent to Bright Renewal by parents who thought she might benefit from its much-vaunted “rigorous academic training.” She’d done nothing wrong at all. It astounded Molly, but Rebecca seemed resigned to her situation.
“They want their daughter to be morally upstanding,” she’d told Molly one night as they shared Rebecca’s cot, whispering in the dark, the snoring of their guardian drifting in from outside the doorless doorway.
Molly thought she sounded far too understanding about it.
“I’ve almost earned enough points to be raised to an upperclassmen.
If I stay the course, I could even graduate early.
” She sighed, her warm breath bathing Molly’s cheek. “I’ve tried so hard to be good.”
Molly squirmed deeper beneath the thin cover, glad for Rebecca’s warmth.
“You are good,” she replied, feeling strangely protective of her new friend.
Rebecca never caused trouble, never misstepped – not where she could be caught, anyway.
Molly couldn’t believe she’d earned her friendship, but she appreciated it nonetheless, and the thought that she might be leaving her soon sent a sliver of cold fear through her belly.
What would she do if Rebecca moved into another room?
“Not like me,” she whispered mournfully.
“I can’t even control my face. I get marks for looking impertinent, and I don’t even know how I’m doing it. ”
Suppressed laughter shook the cot. “You do have a very expressive face. It’s all I can do not to burst out laughing when you give Mistress Blume such scathing looks.”
Molly stifled her own giggles. “I can’t help it. She’s so stupid .”