19. Trinity
Chapter 19
Trinity
I’m famished by the time lunch comes around. I head for the dining hall as quickly as I can. While the day had been sunny for the most part, gray-bottomed clouds are scooting in from the horizon. Every time one of them passes over the sun, the temperature drops a few degrees.
The fact that the smell of stew makes my mouth water is a testament to how hungry I am. There are about thirty students in the hall when I arrive, most seated with their trays in front of them.
I hurry over to the tray table, already reaching for one of the covered trays when something catches my eye.
A bright pink post-it has been attached to one of the trays nearest the edge of the table.
TRINITY MALONE
The tray is isolated by now—obviously no one dared touch it.
I pick it up and grimace.
More gruel.
Gray. Pasty. Disgusting.
The other trays are heaped with vegetable stew and fat slices of chunky bread spread thick with butter.
This. Is. Such . Bullshit.
I take my tray and make a beeline for the kitchen. I hurry up to the first cook I spot and thrust out the tray with its blatantly pink sticker. “What is this?”
The cook—a guy that could have been my age or a year younger—gives me a condescending scan before sneering at me. “Your food,” he says.
“Why don’t I get stew?”
“Because we don’t make special food around here.”
I frown at him. “Special? What are you talking about?”
He dismisses me with a flick of his hand and then pushes me aside with his shoulder. I start after him before someone calls out a few yards behind me. “Orders from the top.”
I turn to another cook. “I don’t understand.” I put the tray down on a nearby stainless steel workbench. “I don’t eat anything special. I just want normal food like everyone else.”
“Well, we got told you’re vegan and have these—” the guy shrugs, working his shoulders for a second “—lactose-gluten-sodium allergies and shit.” He points at the tray. “That’s pretty much all we got that you can eat.”
“But…I’m not.”
He shrugs and turns back to peeling potatoes.
“Can’t I—is there any normal food left? Even just some bread?”
“Not for you. Not unless our orders change.”
“Okay, so who?” I storm up to him, stabbing a finger at the floor. “Tell me who gave the order.”
Another shrug. “Ask Apollo. He’s the one who came and told us.”
Apollo?
The guy with the video camera?
What. The. Actual. Fuck?
It couldn’t be a coincidence.
What if Sister Miriam’s the one who told me to film you in the first place?
But that doesn’t make any sense. None at all. Sister Miriam can pretty much watch me all the time. More so than Apollo can, if she wanted. I mean, she literally stripped me down in the laundry room to take my measurements.
Another prank then? I’d thought breakfast was my own bad luck, but maybe someone had taken off the post-it at the last minute, seeing it was the only tray left uncollected.
Or maybe he wanted to make sure I got another serving of gruel.
Why?
Why the hell was I being targeted like this?
My mind scrambles as I head back to the dining hall, leaving my disgusting lunch behind. I’m starving, but I’d rather pass out from hunger than be subjected to a prank like this.
I meet Apollo as he’s coming back inside the kitchen. He’s wheeling a much smaller trolley than the one he uses for the students. There’s still one wide, covered tray on it that looks similar to the one Reuben brought to Father Gabriel’s room the other night.
“Hey!”
He’s walking backward, dragging the trolley after him as he pushes open the door with his back. He smirks at me over his shoulder. “How ya doing, pretty thing?”
“Who told you I couldn’t eat normal food?”
His smirk turns into a grin. “I don’t kiss and tell.”
“I knew it,” I say, stabbing a finger at him as I pass. “You made it up.”
“You gonna tell on me?” he calls.
My hand is on the door, but I don’t push it open. I stand there for a second, listening to the sound of the trolley wheels squeaking. Then a pair of sneakers coming closer.
Apollo comes into view from the corner of my eye. He leans against the wall near the hinge of the door and crosses his arms over his chest.
“Because you can go rat me out if you want, but it won’t change anything.”
“I’ll get to eat proper food again,” I snap.
“Maybe. Maybe not.” He sighs and leans his head against the wall too, scratching at his forehead with his thumbnail. There’s a mark there, under the hair hanging in his eyes. A star-shaped scar. An old sports injury maybe?
“Wouldn’t it just be easier to leave? I mean, this place sucks ass. Why the fuck would you want to come to school here anyway?”
I gape at him. “What the hell does it matter to you where I go to school?” I take a step closer and poke a finger in his chest. “I don’t need your permission to be here.”
His smile becomes a grin. “You’re cute when you’re mad.”
“Fuck you!” I blurt out. “You’d better stop?—”
My only warning is the sudden stutter of his eyes as he catches sight of something behind me. I spin around, already clamping my mouth closed.
Too late.
I’d been so caught up with yelling at Apollo I hadn’t spotted Sister Miriam coming into the kitchen.
“Sister, he—” I point behind me, and even turn a little to make it clear who I’m accusing.
Don’t ever turn your back on an angry nun.
She grabs my ear and yanks so hard I swear it almost comes off. I yell and shoot to my tiptoes so my ear doesn’t tear free.
“Enough,” Miriam snaps. “Enough, enough, enough !” The last word booms through the kitchen like a bomb going off.
Where there’d been the idle clatter of pans and cutlery, everything cuts off. The handful of people inside the kitchen are all staring at me.
Then Sister Miriam does the unthinkable.
She drags me out of the kitchen and through the dining hall…by my fucking ear.
Tears streak down my cheeks from the pain and humiliation, but I already know that whatever’s coming next is going to be a thousand-fold worse.
This is what happens when you fight back, Trinity.
Should’ve eaten the goddamn gruel. But no. Suddenly, you think you deserve a slice of normal.
Wrong.
So very fucking wrong.
No one in this place is your friend. They’ll never be your friend. Even Gabriel’s already trying to get rid of you. Maybe you should pack your things and start walking.
The forest will be more hospitable than this place.