Without Mercy - Lisa Jackson [21]
She expected Nona to shake her head, but it seemed she’d hit a nerve. “I know. Reverend Lynch is…”
“Old school.”
“Traditional. But Reverend McAllister, who everybody calls ‘Father Jake,’ he’s a lot more today. More relevant, I think. Spent time working in the inner city. You’ll like him. Everyone does.”
“Father Jake? Is he a priest?” Shay asked, thinking about the freckled, sandy-haired clergyman with the dimple in his chin and a smile in his eyes.
“No,” she said, smiling again, “but he did try it for a while, went to seminary school, I think, and discovered that he liked girls, so he switched.”
“Just like that?” Shay said.
“Who knows.” Nona shrugged. “Ask him. I’m sure he’d tell you.”
Shay said, “Anything here you don’t like? Anything not”—she made air quotes with her fingers—“perfect?”
“Sure. I hate Mrs. Pruitt’s tomato casserole. It’s gross.”
“Mrs. Pruitt?”
“She’s the head cook; everyone has to work with her, just like the other jobs around the school. We spend a week in the kitchen, a week in the barn, a week cleaning the dorms, and a week working outside around the grounds every month.”
“Free labor,” Shay said.
“It teaches us respect and responsibility and—”
“Yeah, yeah, I heard the drill already. The brainwashing starts from day one.”
Again Nona glanced to the sprinkler head. A warning? Or just a nervous habit? “So everything here is awesome?” Shay asked, and walked over to the desk. “Every little thing? I don’t think so.” She pushed herself onto the desktop and sat, her legs dangling as she looked at Nona. “I mean, other than the cook’s casserole?”
Nona shook her head, but there was hesitation in her gaze, a tiny bit of fear. As she glanced out the window, she shielded her hand with her body, blocking it from the doorway, then opened her fist where a short message was inked onto her palm: Camera & mic recording.
“Most of the food is okay,” Nona said, cutting Shay off before she could say a word, “but some of the chores are disgusting, like cleaning out the horse barn.” She exaggerated a shiver, but once more she glanced back to the doorway, then rolled her chair to the closet where she found a jar of hand cream on a shelf. With the aid of a tissue, she quickly erased the warning from her hand. When she glanced at her roommate again, her gaze said it all: Be careful. This place is dangerous. “Even mucking out the stalls is okay once you get used to it.”
“Don’t think I ever will.”
“It just takes time.” She tossed the smudged tissue into a trash can tucked under her desk. “Look, I’d better get to my homework. We’ve got a paper due in English tomorrow, and I need to study for a chemistry test.”
Shay nodded and tried not to stare at the phony sprinkler head. Wasn’t it against the law to have a camera and listening device set up without a resident’s consent?
She considered the myriad of papers she’d signed in the past few days, some of which she hadn’t bothered, in her agitated state, to read. Then there was everything Edie had put her John Hancock on while being so damned hell-bent on sending Shay down here. Dear old Mom…Edie would have signed anything to get her out of Seattle so she could be with that worm of a fiancé. It was all just sick.
Suddenly claustrophobic, Shay felt as if the walls were closing in on her. She could barely breathe. When she looked over her shoulder to the sprinkler head, her blood turned to ice. Who was on the other side of the small camera? Who was watching her every move? Listening to anything she had to say? She wasn’t one to scare easily, but there was something off about this place, something evil.
Stop it! That’s paranoid!
But as she glanced out the window to the darkening night, the towering hills seemed dark and forbidding, barriers to the rest of the world. She felt small and helpless.
Don’t go there! That kind of thinking is just what they want to break you down.
As Nona snapped on her desk lamp and opened a thick chemistry textbook, Shay continued to stare out the window. She saw her own pale image shimmering in the reflection