NINE AM ON Monday morning, my teacher, Ms. Dockery, arrives for our first day of homeschooling. I can’t say she and I had a particularly close student-teacher relationship, but she taught me math, so there was mutual respect in that she left me alone to figure most things out for myself while she gave more attention to those struggling. She had been at the forefront of pushing the homeschooling idea at school, and I assumed she was among the group of teachers that didn’t approve of my presence. She didn’t ignore me in class as some did, but she didn’t take me aside to offer a cuddle, either. Not that anybody did, for that matter.
I’ve learned that people aren’t cruel. Most people aren’t, anyway, apart from the Logans, the Colleens, the Gavins, and the Natashas of the world, but people are strong on self-preservation. And if something doesn’t directly affect them, they don’t get involved. I should know; I was like that up until last month. Those who do get involved usually have an agenda. Like Pia, like Mr. Berry, like Colleen. And now I wonder why Ms. Dockery has volunteered to face the onslaught of media camped outside my home, every day, to enter the house of a Flawed.
My mom is in the fashion industry, and this is not a lesson she has newly learned. She has always believed that everybody has an agenda, so we sit at the kitchen table with Ms. Dockery before I go to the library to begin.
“Celestine is the best student in my class by far, Ms. North,” Ms. Dockery says, in response to Mom’s rather forward question as to why she’s here.
“Call me Summer, please, and as you can see, and as you know, my daughter has been through a lot. Too much. I need to make sure that you have her best interests at heart, that you will not abuse her or treat her unkindly, and that you will give her every chance that she deserves to succeed.”
I look at Mom in surprise.
“Summer,” Ms. Dockery says, smiling, “I appreciate everything you have said, but I am merely here to teach. Anything else that has happened has no bearing on what will happen in our classes together. Celestine’s grasp of complex theorems is remarkable. She seems to understand and remember them almost instantly. She has a wonderful mind. I simply want to make sure my A student does not misrepresent me. Call it selfish, if you will”—she blushes—“but I believe my students represent me, my value as a teacher. For Celestine not to reach her full potential would be a personal failure to me.”
I’ve learned by now that I haven’t been a good judge of character. I always knew that Juniper was but never knew that I was so bad. I seem to have gotten it wrong each and every time, and I need Juniper’s strength of understanding and reading people to help me through. Though the irony is that I even misjudged my own sister. I think of Carrick and how he read every situation. A roll of the eyes; a square, untrusting jaw; black eyes that never moved when he found a target, that had the ability to sear the surface off everything, as though he were trying to analyze a person and cut right to the heart of the truth with one long look.
I am not in the mood for today’s schooling. I’m exhausted. I’ve lost all hope. Heartbroken by what Art and Juniper did to me, still sore from Friday’s beating, frustrated by Mr. Berry’s and the guards’ being gone, and now Carrick, the one I thought could help me, is impossible to find, managing to avoid even the Whistleblowers. No wonder he hasn’t come to find me. It’s too dangerous.
Mom seems satisfied by my teacher’s responses. I, on the other hand, am not so sure. Ms. Dockery and I go into the library.
“First things first,” she says in a no-nonsense tone, quite different from the one she used in the kitchen. “Call me Alpha, not Ms. Dockery. If I’m to be in your house, then we’re on the same level.”
I nod.
She retrieves papers from her bag and sits down opposite me. “Second, here’s our schedule of work, cleared by the school and the Guild,” she says in a bored tone. “I had to go through it with them so clearly and slowly that I should have charged them a teaching fee.”
I laugh in surprise at her sudden change in personality.
“Should anyone ask, and they most likely will, this is what we’re doing. But between you and me, we’ll be working on so much more.” She rolls up her sleeves. “And third, I should inform you of this.” She stands up and pulls her blouse out of the waistband of her trousers.
I look away, embarrassed by my teacher’s sudden show of flesh, her stomach so close to my face. But when I can see from the corner of my eye that she won’t cover herself up until I’ve looked, I slowly turn to face her. And there on her lower abdomen is a red F contained by a red circle. Not a scar, but a tattoo.
FIFTY-THREE
I GASP. “WHO put that there?”
“I did.”
“But I would do anything to get mine off and you put it there yourself?”