The Unseemly Education of Anne Merchant. Joanna Wiebe

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      Even before I spy Headmaster Villicus hobbling like the old man he is toward his desk, I am assaulted by the unbearable heat of his office. An enormous orange fire roars in the largest stone fireplace I’ve ever seen, belching smoke into the chimney but letting a small trickle escape from either side of the fire enclosure and rise to create a haze near the ceiling.

      “Miss Merchant,” Villicus greets. “Take a seat. Dr. Zin was just leaving.”

      My gaze follows Dr. Zin as, with a nod in Villicus’s direction and none in mine, he retreats. The door closes with a faint click behind him.

      “Sit,” Villicus commands me.

      He turns to me, crossing his arms over the back of his high-back chair, and smiles. If you can call that a smile. His nearly brown teeth are crooked—much more crooked than mine—and his left eyebrow is permanently arched, with a large mole bursting out of it. It’s taking everything in me not to stare at it as I approach. Not to stare at his bristly hair either or the hunch in his shoulders or the potbelly that he tries to hide under a brown suit that fits like a paper bag. It’s as wrinkled as the cloak of a dead Franciscan friar, and I can smell the BO that clings to it. As the heat and odor make my head swoon, as I grip the wooden arm of my instantly uncomfortable chair, I flick my gaze toward the little window and inhale deeply through my mouth—like I’m breathing in the cool air.

      He draws the shade.

      In the dimness, he runs his stare over me again and again. Just as it seems he might be done looking me over, he drags his gaze up from my toes to my bare knees, all the way up, pausing where he likes and ultimately settling restlessly on the top of my head. Then his gaze drifts downward. For the first time, it occurs to me that these ultra-small uniforms are designed to give old men like Villicus something to feast their pervy eyes on.

      I glance uneasily away, to an old framed map of Germany. Next to it, a cabinet holds what look like war medals, hundreds of them. Villicus’s broad desk is bare except for a pen with a huge black plume, a jumbo hourglass that counts away the days, and a complex-looking case encrusted with flame-shaped sapphires.

      “Thanks for inviting me to meet you,” I begin, my voice cracking the excruciating quiet like a hammer on glass. “I have a few questions I’d love to get cleared up. For starters, I’ve been hearing a lot about Guardians and PTs, but I have no idea what those are.”

      My implied question hangs in the air.

      “Mizz Merchant,” he coos at last, “did you ask me to come to your office?”

      He slinks around his desk and sits on it, just opposite me. Our knees are close enough to touch. I adjust my leg away.

      “No.”

      “Then allow me to direct this conversation, dear.”

      I fold my hands on my lap.

      “You do realize that, at Cania Christy, we accept only the best of the best.”

      “Okay,” I say cautiously.

      “Okay? Hmm.”

      Unsatisfied, he pushes off his desk and wanders behind my chair. There he stands, breathing heavily. With a short shudder, I stiffen as I feel his hands—his long, thick nails—brace my shoulders.

      “Do you believe you are the best of the best?” he asks, still holding my shoulders.

      I am frozen in his grip. “I’ve never really thought about it.”

      “Of course you have. Certainly your first art show must have given you a distinct amount of confidence in your abilities.”

      My pieces showed in an LA gallery when I was ten. “We didn’t sell much.”

      “Not at that one, no,” he whispers. His breath catches in my hair. “But at others.”

      I have no idea what he’s referring to—I haven’t had more than one art show. It occurs to me that my dad may have played up my successes to get me in here, so I say nothing and hope not to shatter Villicus’s illusion. Besides, right now, I’m not thinking about art. All I’m thinking about is the unseemly presence of this man’s hands on my shoulders. I try to slink out from under his hands, but his grip is unyielding. It’s not that his touch is some creepy sex thing. It’s worse. It’s the energy he emits, something oppressive that’s intensified the moment he nears me; it strikes something uncomfortable buried deep inside, an unplaceable but overpowering sensation, like a feverish nightmare exhumed.

      At last, his hands slip from my shoulders, stripping away the sense of dread. He lurches toward his war medal case and stares through it while I try to shake off the memory of his touch.

      “Let me be clear.” He turns back to me. “Our admissions criteria are intentionally exclusionary, designed to keep out people like you. It is only by the kindness of those better than you that you are here today.”

      Don’t react to his insult, I tell myself. After all, my housemother isn’t exactly raving about me. And I’m sure my reaction to Harper this morning didn’t put me in a great social position. Freaking out on the headmaster now could put a quick, ugly stop to this “fresh start.”

      “How do you feel when I say such things?” he asks, looking at me as if he knows me.

      Sarcasm is my best defense. “What things?”

      He smirks. “Very well. We might have had a rather enlightening conversation, but you insist on being a child. I am compelled to tell you that you are here today because you have a benefactor.”

      “A benefactor?”

      “Senator СКАЧАТЬ