The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls (17 page)

Victoria had just made her first mistake.

“SUCH BEHAVIOR, VICTORIA,” SAID MRS. CAVENDISH,
the poisonous, honeyed words dripping from her mouth. She held her face very tight and still. Her long, pretty fingers drummed the polished tabletop.

Victoria backed away from Lawrence and forced her face blank, trying to ignore Jacqueline’s little head shake of
no
. All right, so she maybe shouldn’t have yelled quite so loudly, and maybe Mrs. Cavendish was picky about people running indoors, but that didn’t explain why everyone was looking at her with such horrified expressions.

Lawrence averted his eyes and shoved his hands in his pajama pockets.

“I’m sorry, but I only—” Victoria started to say.

“Don’t be sorry, Victoria, just be quiet,” said Mrs. Cavendish. “Pockets, Lawrence.”

Lawrence slid his hands quickly to his sides.

“Sit down, everyone. Eat your breakfast.”

The children obeyed, pulling out their small, dark chairs, unfolding their napkins, and picking up their cutlery. Victoria noticed that some of them looked green in the face as they dug into their plates of steaming eggs and meat. Others looked grim and determined.

Victoria and Lawrence made to join them, but Mrs. Cavendish said, “Oh. Not you two.”

They froze in place.

Mrs. Cavendish rose from her seat. She glided toward them and clucked her tongue. She circled them slowly, smoothly. Victoria felt like a piece of meat being inspected for quality. She caught a whiff of Mrs. Cavendish’s light, floral perfume. Mixed with the eggs and meat, it was rather stinky.

“You must understand that there are rules here, Victoria,” said Mrs. Cavendish. She stopped in front of them, and even in her fright, Victoria couldn’t help looking over Mrs. Cavendish approvingly. She looked much better today than she had the night before—glossy hair, clear skin, impeccable (if somewhat old-fashioned) clothing. Mrs. Wright would
call it
vintage
and ask Mrs. Cavendish for shopping tips.

Victoria’s throat tightened as she thought of her mother, but Mrs. Cavendish kept on.

“. . . of course, I understand that you’re new to our Home, Victoria. It can be difficult to adjust.”

Some of the other children had stopped eating to watch. Mrs. Cavendish noticed and slid her eyes sideways.

Mr. Alice whispered, “Eat, eat,” and the children resumed, some of them with such vigor that they smeared egg on their faces.

Victoria kept trying to catch Lawrence’s gaze, but he wouldn’t look at her. He stared at the floor, his gray eyes sharper than they had ever been, and the skin of his cheeks saggy, like he’d had something sucked out of him.

“Mrs. Cavendish,” Victoria began, putting on her most effective polite voice, the one she used on her professors, her parents, everyone. It was the voice that bent people to her will. They couldn’t help themselves because the voice had a curve to it that said, “Oh of
course
you know
best
, for
give
me for asking, but
please
, if you wouldn’t
mind
 . . .”

“I’m really, really sorry for—” Victoria said, but Mrs. Cavendish put two warm fingers over Victoria’s mouth.

“Shh, shh, shh,” whispered Mrs. Cavendish. “Listen to me carefully, Victoria.”

Victoria couldn’t decide whether to be offended or scared out of her mind, but she did not look away and forced herself not to blink.

Mrs. Cavendish knelt and dragged her fingers from Victoria’s lips to her hair, twirling her curls. She examined Victoria’s face.

“I’ve decided to go easy on you this once,” said Mrs. Cavendish. Her voice was so soft and sweet that Victoria suddenly wanted to fall asleep in her arms. “You’re new, and I can be lenient. But only to a point. We don’t misbehave around here, do you understand?”

Victoria’s cheeks flushed at being treated like such a child. “But it’s not like I meant—”

Something sharp dug into Victoria’s skin—Mrs. Cavendish’s polished fingernails, cradling her neck.

“Now, now,” said Mrs. Cavendish.

Mr. Alice chuckled and wiped his mouth with his napkin to clean away meat flecks.

“We don’t run indoors. We don’t disobey our elders. We don’t speak too loudly. Sometimes we don’t even speak at all, hmm? Sometimes children shouldn’t say a word.”

With an elegant flourish of her free hand, Mrs. Cavendish made a zipping motion over Victoria’s mouth. Those polished fingernails scraped so close that Victoria thought
Mrs. Cavendish might rip her face open.

“Do you understand?”

“Yes, Mrs. Cavendish,” said Victoria. She sounded braver than she felt.

“Unfortunately, I can’t let misbehavior go unpunished. Someone has to face consequences.”

Mrs. Cavendish turned to Lawrence and pet his drooping cheek. He didn’t move, but his eyes flinched.

“It’s too bad that you have to suffer for your friend’s poor judgment, isn’t it, Lawrence?” Mrs. Cavendish smoothed Lawrence’s hair and slowly gathered up his collar in her hand. “It’s not your fault Victoria behaved so poorly, but you want to help me teach the others, don’t you?”

Rising to her feet, Mrs. Cavendish came to horrid life. “Breakfast is over,” she said, and everyone dropped their forks and knives onto their plates, and as she yanked Lawrence out of the room, everyone else followed, like this was routine. The gofers began cleaning up, shoving whatever they could into their misshapen mouths. Some of them fought over the biggest meat scraps, slobbering over one another’s scabbed, knobby hands.

“Quickly,” said Mr. Alice, his gloved hand on Victoria’s neck, pushing her forward.

“But I haven’t eaten yet,” said Victoria.

“Oh, you’ll get your chance.”

Mrs. Cavendish led them down a hallway. The columns on either side were snakes with long, sculpted hands that clutched the carpet. As she stumbled alongside Mr. Alice, Victoria felt those sculpted fingertips inching toward her feet.

“This is yet another example of what we’ve talked about, children,” Mrs. Cavendish called out. “Rule fifteen. Do you remember?”

Some of the children recited brightly, others choked back tears:

Be careful of what friends you pick.

You’ll catch their faults, they’ll make you sick.

“This morning, Victoria demonstrated to us some of her faults,” said Mrs. Cavendish. She opened a door in the wall and pulled Lawrence down a staircase with pictures of swings and trees and ship planks hanging from banister to ceiling. “Can anyone tell me what they are?”

“Being impetuous,” said one of the boys.

“Yelling indoors,” said one of the girls. Another said, “Speaking out of turn.”

“Associating with
degenerates
,” said the tallest boy. They all came out at the bottom of the stairs into a low, deep room
of damp stone. The tallest boy kept his hands folded at his waist and a cruel smile on his face. His sharp face also looked like something had been sucked out of him, but instead of looking tired and gray-faced about it, like Lawrence, this boy had glittering eyes and a hard smile.
I know him
, Victoria realized, startled.
He goes to the Academy
. Remembering him was like trying to remember a dream.

Some of the children snickered in Lawrence’s direction. The word “degenerates” lingered in the air.

“Very good, Peter,” Mrs. Cavendish said to the tallest boy. She smoothed his collar lovingly. “Maybe—just maybe—it’s near time for you to leave us.”

Some of the children huddled as close together as they dared. Victoria couldn’t tell if it was because they were afraid or excited. Peter kept his eyes on Mrs. Cavendish, smiling. He didn’t look quite right; the smile was too automatic. Victoria remembered how Mr. Tibbalt had talked about when his little brother, Teddy, came home: “He was someone else, like someone had broken the old Teddy and built a new one.”

That was exactly it. Although Victoria’s memories of this boy Peter—yes, she had to have known him; the longer she stared at him, the more flashes of Academy memories came back to her—were a bit fuzzy, she could tell he looked . . . 
different. He looked not-quite-right, false,
new
. The tight smile on his face stretched his cheeks like rubber.

“But, first things first. Lawrence, do you have anything you’d like to say to Victoria before we begin?” said Mrs. Cavendish, curling one finger around Lawrence’s jaw. “It’s her fault, after all, that you’re about to spend a day in the hanger.”

“The hanger?” Victoria opened her mouth to say, but Jacqueline shook her head again.

Lawrence said nothing, his skunk’s hair falling over his forehead. For once, it didn’t annoy Victoria.

Mrs. Cavendish slapped Lawrence’s face. Victoria felt like
she
had been slapped. She couldn’t contain her gasp. Fury turned her skin hot, but she clenched her fists till her nails pricked her palms. Speaking up might make things even worse.

“Do you have anything you’d like to say?” Mrs. Cavendish said again.

“No, Mrs. Cavendish,” said Lawrence, and that was the most terrible part, because there was very little Lawrence in his voice. All his Lawrence-ness—his mischievousness, his laziness, the things that made him annoying (like his humming and singing and waving his fingers in the air like he was playing an invisible piano), the things that made people
avoid him in the Academy hallways and made Victoria force her friendship upon him for his
own
sake—all that was gone.

“Hang him,” said Mrs. Cavendish. She turned, and the other children started following her out.

Victoria stared at Lawrence in horror.

A tiny lightbulb switched on, dingy and buzzing. It illuminated a device of thin, unfriendly straps, attached to the ceiling and hanging low to the floor.

“Hang him?” Victoria whispered. Her skin froze.

The
hanger
.

“No . . .”

Someone grabbed Victoria’s wrist—Jacqueline, pulling her out.

“No!” Victoria shouted, digging her heels into the cold, hard ground. She reached out toward Lawrence and hit Jacqueline and grabbed for the wall, but Jacqueline wouldn’t stop dragging her away. Just before a gofer slammed the hanger door shut, Victoria caught sight of Mr. Alice strapping Lawrence into the hanger. The walls surrounding him began to
move
.

The door slammed shut, separating them.

Lawrence was gone. Again.

“WHAT JUST HAPPENED?” SAID VICTORIA AS THE
gofers herded them upstairs. Speaking out loud made it harder not to cry. She stamped her bare feet on every step to distract herself. Her cheeks burned. She wanted to curl up and hide with Lawrence, somewhere far away from that awful, dirty room. “What’s the hanger? What are they doing to him?”

“The hanger’s for punishing degenerates,” Jacqueline said, hiding her mouth behind her shining red hair. “It’s for when she wants to make an example of someone. I’ll bet she’s hanging him because she doesn’t want anyone to like you or trust you. The hanger’s not as bad as the parlor, though. You remember that?”

Victoria nodded. That cramped, dark room, the
drip-drip
of water, the feeling of not knowing who or where or
when
she was—oh, she remembered the parlor, all right.

“The parlor’s for when you do something really bad, something so bad that she just wants you out of the way,” said Jacqueline. “Most people who go to the parlor don’t come back. Gabby did. She was in there for a week straight. She’s never been the same. She doesn’t sleep, she barely talks. Mrs. Cavendish just lets her get left behind everywhere, lets her get scared and go crazy. It’s to keep the rest of us in line, I think.”

“But will he be okay?” Victoria said, not caring about Gabby or parlors or anything but Lawrence. Well, and herself. And maybe Jacqueline, a little. Maybe, for now.

“I don’t know,” said Jacqueline. She wouldn’t meet Victoria’s eyes. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”

Life at the Home was like life in other places, but not
quite
. For one thing, they went to school, which was normal. But on the second floor, classrooms lined the hallways in a grand circle. Each classroom had one wall of windows that faced the main gallery, and two walls of dark murals and books, and one wall that consisted entirely of a giant picture window facing a dark space, like in Mrs. Cavendish’s parlor. Along the windows overlooking the gallery hung rows upon rows of those paper heads Victoria had seen before.