The Unseemly Education of Anne Merchant
Read The Unseemly Education of Anne Merchant Online
Authors: Joanna Wiebe
Praise for
The Unseemly Education of Anne Merchant
“From the very first pages, I was spellbound by this deliciously dark tale of mysterious attraction, cutthroat ambition, and how far we will go to keep the ones we love.”
—
A
MY
P
LUM
, international bestselling author
“An original, breathtakingly written, and often chilling tale of what lengths people will go to for love. Joanna Wiebe has crafted a book that is unputdownable, so much so that I was forced to read part of it at work because I couldn’t stop thinking about Anne and Cania Christy. (Shh, don’t tell!) Joanna has officially made my instant-buy list.”
—
L
INDSEY
R. L
OUCKS
, author of
The Grave Winner
“She had me at the introduction of the spooky setting—the kind of stuff readers can lose themselves in. Joanna Wiebe is a fun new author to be on the lookout for!”
—
W
ENDY
H
IGGINS
, author of The Sweet Trilogy
“School grounds shrouded in mystery, beautiful student body obsessed with the race to be valedictorian, and a gorgeous, infuriating, unobtainable guy. Welcome to Cania Christy.”
—
A.E. R
OUGHT
, author of
Broken
THE
UNSEEMLY
EDUCATION
OF ANNE
MERCHANT
THE
UNSEEMLY
EDUCATION
OF ANNE
MERCHANT
By Joanna Wiebe
BenBella Books
Dallas, Texas
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Joanna Wiebe
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
BenBella Books, Inc.
10300 N. Central Expressway, Suite #530 | Dallas, TX 75231
www.benbellabooks.com
| Send feedback to
[email protected]
First e-book edition: January 2014
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wiebe, Joanna.
The unseemly education of Anne Merchant / by Joanna Wiebe.
p. cm.
Summary: From the moment Anne Merchant arrives at Cania Christy, a boarding school for the wealthiest teens, she has questions that remain unanswered, including why everything is a competition to be valedictorian and what mysterious reward comes with that title.
ISBN 978-1-939529-32-9 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1-939529-33-6 (electronic) [1. Supernatural—Fiction. 2. Boarding schools—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction. 4. Wealth—Fiction. 5. Islands—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.W63513Uns 2014
[Fic]—dc23
2013027277
Editing by Glenn Yeffeth
Copyediting by Debra Kirkby
Proofreading by Amy Zarkos and Michael Fedison
Cover design by Kit Sweeney Photography & Design
Text design and composition by Silver Feather Design
Printed by Bang Printing
Distributed by Perseus Distribution |
www.perseusdistribution.com
To place orders through Perseus Distribution:
Tel: (800) 343-4499 | Fax: (800) 351-5073 | E-mail:
[email protected]
Significant discounts for bulk sales are available. Please contact Glenn Yeffeth at
[email protected]
or (214) 750-3628.
CONTENTS
sixteen
| The Many Lives of the Girls of Cania Christy
seventeen
| Death and the Maiden
eighteen
| The Quick and the Dead
twenty-two
| Nighttime in Heaven
twenty-three
| Portrait of the Artist’s Mother
twenty-five
| Stranger Than Fiction
HERE’S SOMETHING NOBODY TELLS RICH PEOPLE: THEY
die, too.
There’s this sense, you know, this
misconception
that wealthy people are invincible. Like when Fortune 500 execs get cancer or something equally awful, they think they can coerce a massive, aggressive, bumpy tumor straight out of their body by throwing bundles of cash at it. As if you can swipe a black American Express card through your armpit, and—
ch-ching!
—you’ve just paid off the Grim Reaper, you’ve gloriously extended your life of leisure…and you’ve been given a bump in your Air Miles account to boot.
Idiotic.
But strangely common thinking among the wealthy.
In lovely, sunny Atherton, California—the most expensive neighborhood in America and my home up until, oh, yesterday—this notion that rich people are invincible is so prevalent, people go into a state of absolute shock when someone in our fancy 94027 zip code gets sick. Or crashes their Bentley. Or accidentally inhales Beluga caviar (which happens way more often than you’d think). I see it every day.
Scratch that. I
saw
it every day.
I saw it before my dad shipped me across the country to doom-and-gloom central, aka Wormwood Island, Maine, for what one might call a “fresh start.”
I saw those delusional richies on a regular basis, back when I would sit quietly in the shadows at the top of the stairs and, with my sketchbook in hand, observe black-veiled parades marching somberly through the hallways of my house. See, our home is the second story of the Fair Oaks Funeral Home, where my dad’s the lowly mortician and terribly paid funeral director and where we Merchants have the distinct pleasure of being the only broke-ass family for miles.
Yes, that means I’m
that
girl.
I’m the weird mortician’s daughter. The creepy girl the kids at school call Death Chick or Wednesday Addams. The eerie girl they shy away from whenever I wear black or look unusually pale. The poor girl raised with dead bodies in the basement, zombies scratching at the cellar door, and ghosts around every corner. I’m that girl.
“No, you
were
that girl,” I remind my reflection as I adjust a blue-and-gold tie over the crisp white shirt of my new school uniform. “Now you’re just Anne Merchant, a junior at the Cania Christy Preparatory Academy. No one knows anything about you, which means—” I pause to tweak the tie so it draws a little less attention to my chest “—you can rewrite your history.”
I am standing in front of a small mirror, which is on top of a small dresser in the small attic bedroom of the small cottage that’s going to be my home for the next two years. I’ll be here until I graduate from Cania Christy. Fingers crossed: I’ll graduate as valedictorian. Becoming valedictorian is a critical part of my plan—my future hinges on it. If I don’t graduate at the top of my class, I won’t qualify for the scholarship money I’m going to need. But if—no,
when
—I graduate as the valedictorian, I’ll be almost guaranteed a full scholarship to the school of my dreams, Brown. From there, my life is perfectly plotted: spend four years in undergrad, open a gallery in New York City, promote my own art while discovering new artists, and make enough money that my dad can leave behind his life of death to come out east for a fresh start of his own. Since I first put chalk to paper as a toddler, I’ve known my life’s purpose: to create art. Art that presents a different version of the world to the world; art that looks closer. I lost sight of that vision over the course of the last two years, but it’s back now. In full force. And to realize that vision, I’ll need to be valedictorian. Which shouldn’t be too hard. After all, I spent the first sixteen years of my life at the top of my class—the upside of being shunned as Death Chick is that you have plenty o’ time to study.