The Unseemly Education of Anne Merchant (8 page)

Until Teddy comes knocking on my bedroom door.

“We must get to the matter of your
prosperitas thema,”
he says as he enters my room and looks slowly around. His voice squeaks often, like he’s still going through puberty. “We shall declare and document it right now.”

“Right now? Do you think you know me well enough to make a call like this already?”

“It specifically says in my Apprentice Guide that the subject’s PT must be declared within twenty-four hours of arrival on the island.”

“You’re an apprentice?” My sucky, creepy Guardian doesn’t even have any experience?

“Never mind that. Stand and face me.”

I’ve barely risen from my chair when Teddy scoops my hands into his clammy mitts. “Close your eyes.”

“Why?”

“So I may proceed with the reading.”

“The reading?”

Teddy’s reply is a cold glare. “Would you like to see these steps outlined in my guide?”

Reluctantly, I close my eyes. The problem with closing my eyes, though, is that it heightens my other senses—so, all at once, I can hear Teddy breathing loudly through his mouth, and I can feel the damp milkiness of his too-warm hands. He starts humming, and I open one eye a little to find him concentrating with his eyes closed. Like he’s meditating.

“Close your eyes,” he commands without opening his.

His fingers squeeze mine. I watch his thick, overgrown fingernails press deep into my palms, making me wince. As Teddy repeats his command, I glance at the Zin mansion lit by twilight beyond my window and allow myself to think not of Teddy but of Ben. Pretending Teddy is someone else—someone who I already recognize as the secret crush of my junior year—is the only way to get through this. I snap my eyelids shut and visualize Ben’s thick hair, piercing eyes, and crinkle-nosed grin.

Moments pass like this. I’ve never had a reading done, but they’re common enough where I come from that this isn’t completely absurd. Just semi-absurd.

All at once, though, a shudder overtakes my body, and I’m caught off-guard by the strongest sensation of being
not entirely myself
any longer—of being invaded by some sour presence that lumbers its way around under my skin.

“Wait,” I begin, but my voice catches in my throat.

I twitch involuntarily, as if my body is shaking out an intruder.

It’s as though Teddy’s reaching into my soul, and my soul is trying to shove him out. But that’s impossible. Teddy is just a guy. The effect, the unnerving sense of having company under my own skin, can only be the result of some manipulated pressure point on my hands.

“Remain absolutely still, Miss Merchant,” Teddy warns.

Keeping still is the last thing on my mind. A wave of nausea runs over me, and I suck my tongue to avoid getting sick right there on the creaking wooden floors, squeeze my eyes shut tighter, and tell myself to breathe. What’s happening? Moments creep by. The sense that this might never end washes over me.

But still I stand, motionless, doing as I’m told, finally realizing that this—whatever this is—is the manner by which all students have their PTs selected. And I, like everyone else, am expected to stand quietly while I’m mysteriously, telepathically prodded.

Opening my eyes during a brief moment of calmness, I watch Teddy’s long head rumble on his neck, teetering and bouncing like a bobble on the end of a radio antenna; his eyes are still closed. My stomach is once again on the brink. My skin feels tighter every second. And the idea, the absurd notion that Teddy could somehow be penetrating my soul, my aura, whatever you want to call it—that idea is flipping over and over in my mind. Without a resolution. My brain tells me it’s impossible. My body makes a shockingly compelling argument against my brain.

“Yes.” Teddy’s tongue slithers. His tone is peril personified, but I’m glad for the noise, for the promise of this all being over soon. “I see it. It’s you. I see your PT.”

See my PT
?

“Your soul is very old yet invigorated. It is…so seductive.”

“
Gross
.”

“Hush now. A shadow hovers over you.”

With a sharp, unexpected gasp, Teddy suddenly lifts my hands high in the air. My eyelids pop open. His eyes flash wide, glowing oddly, bloodshot beyond repair as his gaze fuses with mine. Briefly, in that moment, I feel, in spite of myself, as if our souls are real, as if our souls are touching each other, as if I can see his and—to my great surprise—it’s not all dark. But then, without warning, he whips my arms down.
Hard.
So hard, I hear a
snap
, and my shoulders feel like they’ve popped right out of their sockets as he releases me.

With a howl of shock and pain, I hobble away. I balance myself after a spell of stumbling and lean against the foot of my bed, rubbing one shoulder, then the other. The only consolation, and it is a significant one, is that I feel like myself once again, even if I’m struggling to catch my breath, even if a dull creaminess coats my tongue.

“I have seen your PT. You have in your aura a tendency toward—” Teddy hesitates, standing in the midst of a great, long,
exaggerated
pause “—seduction.”

I collapse against the bed and, baffled by the whole experience, start laughing. “Are you kidding me?”

“Miss Merchant,” Teddy says, holding his hands up, “I assure you that your spirit does, in fact, lean toward a hyper-sexualized state.”

“Or you wish it would,” I counter, glaring up at him as the smile leaves my face. “If my PT were to sleep my way to the top, or whatever it is you have in mind, then tell me, dear Teddy, how would
you
grade me on that?”

He flinches. “You can’t be suggesting…”

“Having your way with me here? Nightly stripteases in your bedroom, Teddy? Is that close to what you were thinking?”

“That would be an abuse of power! I would never!”

“I’ll have you know that my uniform is as tight as it is because someone got my measurements wrong!” I get to my feet, wincing at the pain, and stride to the top of the stairs, gesturing for him to leave the attic. “I won’t sign anything that says
that’s
my PT. In fact, maybe I’m not interested in the Big V after all. Maybe I’ll be just like Pilot and turn my back on this idiotic race.”

“Wait!” Teddy cries, coming after me. “You need to do this, Anne.” His expression is softer—almost kind—as he looks at me now. “There
was
something else in your aura.”

“Surprise, surprise. What is it?”

“I would encourage you to choose the one I mentioned, though. It is your greatest strength. There are many ways to use your sexuality to your advantage. It doesn’t have to be as obvious as you might think.”

“That’s BS. What was the other one? Tell me.”

Reluctantly, Teddy nods. “It is because you are an artist that this is in you at all,” he stammers, which, in combination with his thick accent, makes him that much harder to understand. “But I warn you that, although you are an artist in
this
life, you may not have been in other lives. Your soul has spent much longer in the role of the seductress than the artist.”

“Teddy! Just tell me.”

“Your alternative PT, Miss Merchant, is that you will succeed in life by looking closer. Beyond the surface. By asking questions and never accepting things at face value.”

“Looking closer?”

I can’t help but smile a little. It’s
exactly
right. I feel it immediately, and knowing that Teddy was able to land on this assessment of my strength—a strength that one art curator once commented on—makes me wonder, for the briefest moment, if he was actually somehow in my soul, reading it.

“This might only cause you trouble, Miss Merchant,” Teddy warns.

“It’s perfect. Let’s do it. What do I sign?”

“Very well.” Teddy’s voice shakes as he lifts the form to me. I scribble it down and turn to let him go.

“Not so fast,” he says. Turning back, I find him lifting a long, silvery needle from his case and holding it out to me.

I stare at it. “What’s that?”

“To seal the deal.”

“To what?”

“We seal our official forms with blood at Cania Christy. It’s in my guide.”

“You’re really funny tonight. But you should probably leave now.”

Teddy just holds the needle out to me.

“So we’re in the Middle Ages now?”

“Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit,” Teddy says. “Signing in blood is a tradition of this school, a tradition that goes back generations.” He thrusts the needle at me.

If I was alone, I might actually pinch myself to see if I’m dreaming because, so far, life at Cania Christy feels like life in a bad dream, like life on some planet filled with probing aliens.

“Everyone does it,” Teddy states crossly.
Classic
that he would use the line teachers and parents have condemned for years.

“My signature isn’t enough?”

“Thou must bequeath it solemnly!” he cries finally. With his hands trembling, with a hysteric gleam in his eye, he stomps on the spot.

“Teddy, come on! I mean, aren’t I supposed to be questioning stuff? That’s my PT, right? If I just gave in, wouldn’t I be, like, in violation or something?”

Settling down, though his chest still heaves, he agrees. “I understand. Well done. But now that you’ve questioned it and learned that it is what you
must
do, you
must
do it.”

Mental note: my Guardian will make up the rules as we go.

“What we have here is a learning opportunity,” Teddy declares, taking my hand and pressing the soft pad of my fingertip. “Once you learn who’s in control, I’ll learn that you’re worth fighting for on graduation day.”

With the needle, he pricks my finger and squeezes a drop of my blood onto the lower corner of each form. I press my thumb into the crimson drop; as I pull away, I stare for a moment at the fingerprint I’ve left behind, at the lines that swirl around the center like the walls of some fiery tornado around its funnel, at the mark they use to identify criminals, not students. I look at the tiniest flecks that the lines of my fingerprint leave, and I think of how those ridges are designed to fire signals to the brain when a surface feels dangerously sharp, dangerously hot.

Not long after, Teddy heads to campus for an evening meeting of the Guardians, and, relieved to be alone, I bolt downstairs to the kitchen, where an old-school telephone—the rotary kind, black—clings to the wall. I need to talk to my dad. I need to know how much this place is costing him and if he has any idea he’s sent me to a place where creepy Guardian-people crawl into your soul and suggest you get by in life on your back.

I pick up the receiver for the phone. But there’s no dial tone. A quick glance shows me there’s no cord connecting the two pieces.

“Ten bucks says Teddy took the damn thing with him.”

Restless and still shaken by the PT exercise, I slide on my boots and Gigi’s big, stinky jacket and head out the front door into the night air.

There are two ways I could go: up-island to campus or down-island to the
verboten
village. Creeping over the grass under the twilight sky and onto the road, I look north at the endless stretch and then south through the haze to where a distant village I’m not supposed to enter sits in wait. Behind me, I can feel the presence of the Zin mansion, where the golden glow of warmly lit rooms fills just enough ornate windows to make me long for a life as pleasant for myself.

I turn left. And, emboldened by my “look closer” PT, walk toward the village.

Taking their cue from the cool weather, the leaves have started changing color. Spots of orange and violet spread through the woods on both sides of the road, their colors diluted by the gray air, which is crisp enough to turn my nose and fingertips red. Outside the village, I spy a craggy wooden sign that shows the population: 212.

My PT may have given me the push I needed to head in this direction, but it hasn’t empowered me to such an extent that I actually intend to go into the village. Given everything I’ve been told today, especially if I want to be valedictorian next year, that would be a career-limiting move worthy of detention, demerits, suspension, or whatever they do at Cania to punish disobedient students. Veering away from the village just as its old pale fishing shacks come into view, I head toward the flash of a lighthouse that passes through the woods on the west side of the island. On my way, I wander by a hillside spotted with enormous Cape Cod–style homes that are anything but what I expected the villagers to live in. These people are the inhabitants of an old whaling village, after all. They should live in shanties with dimly lit porches. They should have tattered clothes that reek of fish guts. And yet, judging by their homes, you’d think they were all millionaires.

“That’s not fair!” a man hollers suddenly. I can’t see him. He’s somewhere far ahead, on the other side of the woods.

For a moment, I worry he’s shouting at me, and I scramble away. But when it’s obvious he doesn’t know I’m here, I inch toward his voice, to the edge of the woods and to the top of a low cliff overlooking not only the vast, smooth ocean and the distant twinkling lights of the Kennebunkport coast but also the marina, which houses more mini-yachts than it seems to be built for. Standing on the dock below me, deep in a fiery conversation, are three men. Two I recognize instantly: Headmaster Villicus and the spectacularly handsome Dr. Zin. But I don’t know who the third man is. He’s Indian, and he looks truly angry—the kind of anger where you expect he might stomp on the spot while steam pours out of his ears.

Behind the trio, a sign warns visitors to report to Cania Christy or risk prosecution.

The men stand just a dozen yards away from me. At any moment, Villicus could look up and see me here, wandering the outskirts of the village like a prize moron, standing in the passing beam of the lighthouse. Sure, I live on the village side of the line, so I’d have an excuse if it came to that. But something tells me Villicus isn’t one for excuses.

I duck behind a tree. Shielded by its thick, furry trunk, which gives softly under my fingertips, I peek down.

“But Lord Featherly promised!” the Indian man, who has a strong Scottish accent, shouts. Unmistakably new to the world of the wealthy, he wears dark-wash jeans, a Gucci-print shirt—collar flipped up—and an enormous pink-gold watch that flashes as he throws out his arms, exasperated. “He said you’d take care of me, Dr. Zin. Or are you just this old freak’s lackey?”