Without Mercy - Lisa Jackson [14]
She’d been given a schedule of her classes and the names of her instructors—something to look forward to. Getting physical in phys ed with hottie Cooper Trent. This G.I. Joe Hispanic guy named DeMarco taught chemistry and trig. Perky Dean Hammersley for the cheerful side of English and world history. Psycho Wade Taggert taught psychology, and, of course, she’d be studying all the reasons she’d be going to hell with the oh-so-reverend Lynch. Too bad she didn’t get to have sessions with the youth minister she’d met on the dock. He was interesting, his blue eyes warm, his smile sincere. But of course not. Her counseling sessions were scheduled with Reverend Lynch and Dr. Tyeesha Williams, who was hardly a soul sister. And something called outdoor activities with a drill sergeant named Flannagan. Oh, yeah, Mister Flannagan. All in all, her days were filled with classes, then chores with her “pod.”
It was all such a disaster. What had Edie been thinking?
Shay ran fingers through her hair and knew she had to get out. Find a way to go home. It wouldn’t be easy, though. This place really was the edge of the earth.
If you didn’t get out by seaplane, the only other route was a narrow, winding one-lane access road that sliced through the mountains. She’d seen it from the air on the day she arrived. A steep road that hugged the cliffs. Scary but passable. Of course, there was a massive gate and guardhouse about a mile or so from the heart of the campus. Good luck getting past that. But still, if there was a way for supplies and the staff to enter, surely someone with any brains at all could escape.
Pacing across the wood floor, Shay scratched absently at her arm where a bandage covered the needle marks from the tests. Nurse Ayres had punctured her and filled a syringe big enough for an elephant.
But Ayres was just doing her job. Carrying out the judge’s orders and buying Edie her freedom. Anger burned hot at the thought of Edie’s decision to send Shay here. Shay was supposed to have had a choice in the matter—the judge had allowed them to pick an institution—but Edie had taken Shay’s rights away.
Leave it to Edie to jump at the first school she found, just to get rid of the problem. Pain knifed through Shaylee’s heart, the same old pain of rejection that she’d always felt with her parents. Max and Edie Stillman, a short-lived union that had ended in divorce and her father walking away. The hard part was, he’d never really looked back. As if he never thought about Shay. She always said she hated him, but deep down, she wished he’d show he cared. Just once. That was all.
Maybe his rejection of his only daughter was because of Edie. Shay hoped so. You didn’t need a degree in psychology to realize that Edie was a mess. The fact that she had married Rip Delaney twice was proof enough that she always had to have a man in her life—no matter what.
Again, Shay thought of her father. Rich, affable, quick with a joke, and “as handsome as the devil,” Edie had often said, though Shay now suspected her mother’s fascination with Max was probably due to the Stillman Timber fortune that Shay had heard about all of her life.
Shay pushed Max’s image from her head and blinked against the heat behind her eyelids.
She couldn’t let herself give in to tears.
No matter how miserable she was.
Her throat was thick, though, and she had to clear it.
Her family. If you could call it that. She