On the far side of the room, a large bay window overlooks what I assume are the gardens to the rear of the academy. The world’s dark, all bruised purples and midnight blues, punctuated with coal black, but I can make out the shape of tall trees in the distance, still, as if no breeze, no matter how strong, could shake them.
I discard my bags at the foot of my new bed, walking to the window, wanting to get a better look at the view. It’s only when I’m standing right in front of the glass that I can make out the gloomy shape of a large, complex maze in the center of the lawn between the building and the trees.
A maze? Perfect. That wasn’t on the damn brochure. It has to be very old, though, because the hedges are tall, taller than any man, and so dense that there would be no way to peek through them on ground level.
I don’t know why, but I shiver violently at the sight of it. I’ve never been a fan of mazes. At least from here, in the daylight, I’ll be able to memorize the route to its center. Not that I plan on going inside the damn thing.
The showers are easy enough to find. At the end of the hall, two bathrooms face opposite each other, doors propped wide open. A large white sign hangs from the tiled wall inside both—I know, because I check—which says, ‘Three-Minute Showers Enforced. Violators Assigned Latrine Duty.’
Latrine duty? Christ. It’s worse than I thought.
I give the sign a hard eye-roll as I strip out of my travel clothes and shower, taking way longer than the allotted three minutes. Who the hell’s going to know? And fuck it, anyway. They can’t police that kind of shit with a student who hasn’t even officially enrolled at the academy yet. I use the carbolic soap attached to a frayed piece of rope inside the shower, wrinkling my nose at the smell and promising myself a better wash with my own shower gel in the morning. Then, I use a scratchy, paper-thin towel to dry off before putting on my PJs and hurrying back to my room with wet hair.
I already have plans to dye my long, blonde locks dark brown again. Most fathers wouldn’t want their daughters bleaching their hair at seventeen years old, but Colonel Stillwater can’t stand the sight of me with my natural hair coloring. He’d never admit it in a million years, but he can’t handle me with brown hair. I look too much like her with brown hair.
Short of forcing me to wear contacts, he can’t alter the blue of my eyes. There’s little he can do about the freckles that smatter the bridge of my nose, or the bone structure of my heart-shaped face. Without dropping some serious coin on a very talented plastic surgeon, he can’t alter my high cheek bones or my almond shaped eyes, all of which are gifts I received from my mother. But he could make me a blonde, and so he did. And I’ve hated every second of it.
Back in my room, I notice for the first time how bitterly cold it is. Compared to Tel Aviv, it’s practically sub-arctic here in New Hampshire, and it doesn’t seem as though the Wolf Hall administration have deemed heating a necessity for its students. After a lot of rummaging, I eventually find a cracked and yellowed Bakelite thermostat in the closet by the window, but when I crank the dial all the way to the right, nothing happens. The old fashioned and extremely ugly radiator on the wall gives a single choked cough, a bone-jarring rattle, and then falls resolutely silent.
Luckily, I’m so tired that even the cold can’t keep me from sleep.
3
ELODIE
The morning smells like rust and burning toast.
I crack my eyes and wince at the plume of fog that gathers on my breath. Somehow, it’s even colder in my room at seven a.m., which is impressive since I’m convinced it dropped down to somewhere in the twenties in the night.
If my father cared one iota about me, he would not have sprung this transition on me mid-semester. The smallest kindness he could have shown me would have been to relocate me during a break, but no. Colonel Stillwater decided that uprooting me out of the blue on a weekend was the best course of action. Far be it from me to disrupt his schedule; since he needed to disappear off on a training exercise at oh-four-hundred hours on a Sunday, it seemed perfectly logical to turn my shit upside down and expect me to be fine with moving country, having my world turned upside down, and starting class at a new school all within a thirty-two hour period.
This is the least of his sins. He has done much, much worse.
So here we are. Monday morning. My new life. From the strict itinerary my father shoved into my backpack, I’m supposed to be downstairs at the administration offices twenty minutes before my first period of the day, which leaves me forty minutes to get myself showered, dressed and organized. Since I showered last night, I normally wouldn’t bother showering again, but I still feel gross from the journey somehow, and honestly, I think I’m going to need to soak my feet in some scalding hot water in order to defrost them anyway. It’s only the middle of January; it’s probably going to get colder before it gets any warmer here in New Hampshire, so I’m definitely going to have to do something about the climate control in this room.
I pull back the thin sheets, my teeth chattering uncontrollably, and I make sure to grab my own towel and my wash bag this time. In the hallway, a number of the doors to the other rooms are open, and a line of girls has formed against either wall, waiting for the bathrooms. My heart sinks. Things were miserable at home, but at least I had my own fucking bathroom. Having to share the facilities at Wolf Hall is going to take some getting used to.
I join the end of the line waiting for the bathroom on the right-hand side of the hallway, and the girls ahead of me fall quiet in unison. Eight pairs of baleful eyes look me up and down. None of the girls seem all too friendly. One of my new classmates angles away from the redhead she was locked in conversation with and turns to me, offering me half a smile.
Her brown hair is curled tightly into an enviable afro. Her skin is almost as pale as mine, though. Her doe-eyed features and deep brown eyes give her the look of a young Natalie Portman. “Hey. Four sixteen, right? You must be Elodie.”
I give her a tight-lipped smile in return. “Guilty as charged.” This whole new girl thing isn’t actually new. I’ve had to do this at least four other times since I reached high school age. It’s been a while, though. After three whole years back at my last school in Tel Aviv, I allowed myself to get comfortable.
Big mistake.
“I’m Carina,” the girl says, holding out her hand. “Glad you made it here in one piece. Some of us waited up for you last night, but it got late and…” She shrugs.
I shake her hand, a little warmed by the idea that some of the girls here might have shown me that kindness, had the hour allowed. “All good. I totally get it.”
“Curfew here’s pretty strict,” the redhead chips in. She’s tall. Like really tall. Almost as tall as the miserable bastard who gave me directions to my room last night. “We have to be in our rooms by ten thirty,” she says. “Although Miriam, our floor monitor, turns a blind eye sometimes if we bribe her with chocolate. It’s cold as shit up here but count yourself lucky. First floor girls don’t have it so easy. Their floor monitor’s a fucking bitch.”
“Hey!” the girl first in line for my bathroom snaps. “Watch your mouth, Pres. Some of us are friends with Sarai.”