The Unseemly Education of Anne Merchant (3 page)

The Zin mansion looms to my right. My hometown is filled with houses designed to make neighbors and tourists sick with envy, and it appears Dr. Zin’s mansion was designed with the same thing in mind. But I’m not envious. Really, I’m not. After all, it looks like Dr. Zin’s place, cloaked in fog, with sharply pitched roofs stabbing up through the mist, is about one lightning storm away from haunted house status. I turn onto the long, narrow, and empty road and start toward the school. In the distance, over the treetops and through the fog, I can just make out the peaks and steeples of the campus. Even from here, it looks nothing like the big-box school I used to go to.

“What did Dad get me into?” I ask myself and watch my breath freeze.

Until this morning, I’d heard nothing of getting a Guardian or choosing a PT, which, if I had my way, would be txt shorthand for getting Pretty Teeth or Perfect Tests. Having never been to a private school—never mind the most elite one on the planet—I guess it makes sense that I don’t know. Maybe Guardians ‘n’ things are standard at these places.

“It’ll be fine,” I assure myself. “You’ll figure it out.”

That’s when I notice it: a red line painted across the road right before the Zin property begins. The paint is bright. I near it. I spy layers of faded red below it, as if it’s been painted and repainted weekly. For decades.

With a little hop, I cross it. I tell myself to disregard it.

As I start jogging, hoping not to be late, a loud Ducati whizzes by me, sending small rocks and twigs swirling into the air; I have to slow to pick a particularly wiry twig from the wilds of my hair. As I do, I hear the crackle of leaves underfoot and glance over my shoulder. A uniformed girl with a short brown bob and little bangs is walking far behind me. When I look again later, she’s gone. I jog the rest of the way to school, alone on the road.

Cania Christy is one towering stone building backed by smaller converted houses and outbuildings, which I can barely distinguish beneath the slowly lifting perma-cloud that drapes campus. Just two things catch my immediate attention: the main building, over the front doors of which the name
Goethe Hall
is etched, and the silence. The campus is so noiseless that a part of me wonders if I’m a day early. I hear only the squealing protest of door hinges opening and closing and the caw of gulls muffled in the foggy seascape and absorbed by greenery that is so lush it’s suffocating. In the rare moments a breeze blows a hole through the fog, I glimpse the odd student meandering silently into or out of Goethe Hall; I’m at once comforted to know I didn’t arrive on the wrong day and curious to find that, without fail, every student is walking alone. It’s a strange but welcome relief to think that this student body may be comprised of people similar to me, people who haven’t always been in the in-crowd, people who are more focused on their goals and ambitions than on trying to be popular.

Perhaps there are no cliques here. Perhaps they’re progressive enough at Cania Christy to ban bullying and the exclusionary cliques that help create it.

“Now what’ve we got here?” a girl with a drawl says.

I turn to find four girls in uniform watching me with their arms crossed. They’re impossibly well groomed and flawless. Obviously besties. Proof that I was dead wrong about my anticlique idea.

Their cool gazes roll up and down my body, assessing me in a way with which I’ve grown unfortunately familiar. Every girl knows this drill. These are the cool girls, ostensibly, and they have come to weigh and measure me. Their bodies, hair, makeup—even the way they rock their uniforms—are undeniable signs of their power on campus and their expectations of a perfectly charmed life, which their daddies will guarantee them. Like four slightly oversexed dolls, they stand at arm’s length from me, thrusting out their cleavage, tossing their straightened silky hair over their shoulders, and pursing their pouty, glossy lips. Their skin is so unblemished it glows. Their eyes are so clear they might see right through me.

With my curls, crooked tooth, and stunningly empty bank account, I am their antithesis. Or, as I prefer to see it, they are mine.

I’ve never gotten along well with the popular girls. And something in their collective scowl tells me I’m not about to become the fifth member of this particular clique.

“You must be the new girl. The junior?” the ginger begins frostily, her tone warm like a Savannah summer but her eyes dead cold. Her followers—a Thai girl, an Indian girl, and a stark blonde—glare at me. “The California chick who thinks she’s some sort of artist?”

“Unless there are two of us,” I reply. My years of dealing with rich, bitchy, and beautiful girls have given me a bit of a bite. “Why? Are you the president of my fan club?”

“As if Harper would
ever
be your fan!” the Thai girl exclaims and looks at the ginger—evidently named Harper—for approval.

I narrow my eyes. “I just meant how do you know so much about me?”

With her friends mirroring her every move, Harper curls her lip and glares up at me. She’s barely five-two but is filled head to toe with piss and vinegar. “Everyone knows about you.”

“And
not
in a good way,” the stark blonde adds, her words thick with a Russian accent.

“It’s like when a circus freak walks into a room,” Harper drawls. “It’s hard for everyone else not to notice.”

“Gee,” I begin, “I’d love to hear more about how your parents met, but I’ve got to get to school.”

I try to cut through the foursome, but Harper shoves her hand against my chest, stopping me. Not cool.

“Truth is, Merchant, we know who you are because it’s not every day Headmaster Villicus lets in some poor chick with a crazy mom who killed herself.” Harper smirks. “Word gets around.”

“Well, you know nothing about my mother. But I’m sure you know
all about
getting around.”

Removing her hand and pushing through their stunned crowd, I take the stairs into Goethe Hall two at a time and ignore the girls’ voices as they tell each other that I’m not worth the hassle, that I’m ugly, that I totally need braces, and that I’m never going to get the “Big V,” which sounds like something sexual but hell if I know. Inside the ornate Goethe Hall, I somehow find my way into the long queue where I try to shake off my encounter, try to stop seeing red, and wait impatiently to collect my orientation package from an old, wrinkled secretary who spits when she speaks.

“Did you say your name’s Martha Cennen?” the secretary asks me as she shuffles through disorganized stacks of orientation packets. She smells like the bottom of an ashtray. She is wearing an enormous emerald brooch. Behind her, a dozen secretaries, also wearing massive pendants, type on typewriters, one finger at a time.

“No, it’s Anne Merchant.”

“Maybe you remind me of someone I used to know.”

I sigh. “I’m a junior in the Fine Arts stream.”

“A junior. Fine Arts. Tanner Chanem.”

“
Anne Merchant
,” I correct.

“It’s not Nate N. Nemrach?” Her gaze meets mine.

There’s an odd, out-of-place playfulness in her expression. And then I realize where she’s getting all those other names from.

“Are you just turning my name into anagrams?” I ask.

Like a caught child, she quickly shakes her head
no
and dives, with a giggle, back into searching the stacks. Or at least putting on a show of searching.

The ticking of single typewriter keys quickly becomes grating. Behind me, a Mandarin guy and an Italian girl—who are, like everyone else in the queue, coldly ignoring their peers—have started grumbling in their respective languages. I assume the wait and the maddeningly slow secretary are getting to them like they’re getting to me. At last, the secretary pokes her head out of the pile of packets, lifts one victoriously, and yanks a sticky note off the front of it.

She reads the note, and a slow smile spreads across her face. “Message for you, Anne.”

“From my dad?”

She shakes her head, but, before she can explain, a PA announcement interrupts her:
“All new students, meet at Valedictorian Hall by nine o’clock for your campus tours. All new students.”
A glance at the clock shows it’s nearly nine already, and I don’t even know where Valedictorian Hall is. I look expectantly at her.

“You wanna go on the campus tour, don’t you?” she asks me. I don’t have much patience at the best of times, but she’s
killing me.
She knows I have to go. It’s like she’s taking pleasure in dragging this out and watching everyone in line squirm as we wait helplessly for her.

“I’d like to go, yes.”

She glances at the sticky note. “Is your dad named Mr. Merchant?”

“Yes.”

She glances at it again. “Well then your dad didn’t leave a message for you.”

“Who did?”

Her grin spreads. It’s yellow enough to be pure gold. “Headmaster Villicus. He’d like to see you. Which I guess means you won’t be going on the campus tour.”

Handing me my packet, she points me down a long, dark hall, which brings me to a set of empty wooden benches outside the headmaster’s closed door. I take an uncomfortable seat, wait to be called in, and briefly admire a selection of Beksinski’s beautiful nightmares condemning me from their frames on the walls. I start absently reviewing my class schedule and syllabuses—all while trying not to stew over my encounter with the girls outside and failing miserably. It sucks to have
already
made enemies of what are surely the most popular girls here, but it’s not exactly new territory for me. I thought it’d be different at Cania—I thought I’d have a clean slate and the protection of this school uniform—but tales of my California life seem to have preceded me.

I can feel the slightly optimistic outlook I brought to the island receding like an ocean wave, exposing the oppressive heft of my unshakable life story.

There are no rewrites in store for me here. No blank canvases. What was will continue to be. That Harper and her pack of perfectly coifed skanks knew where I come from—that they knew about my mother’s sickness and subsequent suicide—reinforces what a part of me already guessed: if I want a better life, I’m going to have to fight for it. As Anne Merchant. Not as some watered-down, poser, more acceptable version of myself.

A commotion at the end of the hall interrupts my thoughts, and I glance up to see three silhouettes hurriedly heading my way. Two are tall and lean, and the other is shorter and marginally buff. It’s clear that one of the tall guys is hauling the other two toward Villicus’s office, in spite of their reluctance. Their bickering reaches me before they do.

“It’s called the First Amendment,” the shorter guy cries. His voice seems to be holding back a laugh, and, as they come into the light, I can see him grinning. “Freedom of speech. Freedom to assemble.”

“That’s enough, Mr. Stone.” One of the tall guys is, in fact, a tall
man,
who is dressed impeccably in an expensive-looking suit with a cashmere scarf and overcoat. His dark hair is brushed elegantly away from his face, and his frosty blue glare glows against his olive skin. Obviously, he’s a member of the faculty. I hope he’s not my teacher, though, because it would be tragic for my GPA if I spent my class time gawking at the teacher and stammering through my comments.

“I should be allowed to protest the Big V race,” the Stone boy insists, “without your kid getting on my butt for it and without Villicus tearing me a new one!”

“Pilot, your picket sign read ‘The Only V I Want Is Between Her Legs,’” the tall boy says and, frustrated, sits on the bench across from me. He drops his face into his hands and sighs. “That’s not protesting. That’s peacocking. Aggressively.”

Pilot Stone smirks. His dark gaze dashes my way, and he smiles mischievously. I raise my papers in front of my face so it’s not quite so obvious that I’m eavesdropping.

“Dr. Z, come on,” Pilot says as he squeezes into the bench next to me, forcing me to shove down when there’s hardly space to do so. He smells clean, and his leg and arm against mine are nice and warm. “I won’t tell Villie about Ben here destroying my property—”

“Your property! It was offensive garbage on craft paper!” the tall boy cries out.

“—if you just let this whole thing go.”

The negotiating stops quickly with a long, heavy pause. I wish now that I wasn’t holding my syllabus up as high as I am so I could see their faces. Relying on my peripheral vision, I strain to make out Pilot’s expression, but all I can see is that he is looking in the direction of Dr. Z, who is standing in front of Headmaster Villicus’s office.

“Wait to be called in,” Dr. Z orders before rapping on the door and abruptly disappearing inside.

I lower my syllabus to see Pilot mockingly salute the spot where Dr. Z was just standing and the tall guy with the swimmer’s build—Ben, I believe his name is—run his hands through his thick sandy hair.

At once, both Pilot and Ben turn their gazes on me.

I have to tell myself not to blush. Because if these guys are even remotely representative of the male population in this student body, well, I can feel my optimism returning already.

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