Page 20 of Outcast

“That’s what happened,” I replied.

“Do you know who might have done this?”

“Edward Mercia, Blake Simpson-West, Charlotte Underwood, and their friends.”

Mr. Jenkins slumped back into his seat. “If Mr. Mercia is involved, there isn’t much I can do about it, I’m afraid.”

“What?” The word was more gasp than speech. I widened my eyes, trying to get a better look at the housemaster’s expression. From the sag of his posture, he seemed defeated. There was no amusement or defiance in his eyes, just the kind of apathy a person developed in the face of an overwhelming situation they couldn’t control. “Mercia threatened my life yesterday. Now it looks like he’ll stoop to any level to make me leave.”

The housemaster glanced away. “I’m sorry, but his family practically owns the school.”

“Mercia Academy is a charity.”

“Which exists because of the benevolence of the Duke of Mercia’s estate. Without it, where would we hold lessons?” He reached for a stack of papers and pretended to sort them. “You may speak with the headmaster, but he’ll give you the same answer.”

“So, Edward Mercia is free to do as he pleases?” I spat. “Even terrorize and maim?”

Mr. Jenkins dipped his head. “There is always one authority he can’t easily influence.”

My heart skipped a beat. “Who?”

“God.”

Shooting out of my seat, I yelled, “So, I should pray for a thunderbolt to strike him dead?” Angry blotches appeared on the man’s face, and he opened his mouth to utter a rebuke, but I cut him off and headed out of the door. “Thanks for the advice. I’ll know not to come here the next time they try to kill me.”

I slammed the door and stormed through the downstairs hallway. Mr. Jenkins was right about one thing. There was another authority that wouldn’t be as ineffective as him: the police. I took the stairs two at a time, rushed down my hallway and opened the door. Someone had made the bed. When I stepped into the bathroom, all the towels were back on the rack. I threw open the shower curtain to find the tampered shampoo was replaced by an unfamiliar British brand.

All the determination drained out of me in a wave of helplessness that made my legs buckle. I sat on the edge of the bath and rested my hands in my head. The bastards had even stolen my evidence.

I stayed in the bathroom, numb, hoarse and impotent with rage for hours. How could I report something that didn’t look like it had happened? My vision had cleared, and the redness in my eyes faded into an innocuous pink. Whatever they’d put in the shampoo hadn’t actually been as harmful as I’d thought. If I retaliated by throwing hot soup into their faces, I’d be the one facing charges. I shook my head. Splashing people with water was acceptable but scalding them was taking things too far.

At lunchtime, Rita stepped into the room and pushed the bathroom door ajar. “Why weren’t you in classes this—?” She clapped her hands over her mouth. “You’ve been crying. What’s wrong?”

Everything spilled out in a rush of emotion. Rita sat next to me on the rim of the bathtub and wrapped her thin arms around my back, giving me a measure of comfort. She listened to everything without any reminder that she’d warned me about the bullies’ viciousness.

It was the psychological aspect of the trick that had hurt most. Turning off the water to heighten my panic, then leaving me to pound at the door for their amusement, only to take away the towels when they finally granted me cold water. If they hadn’t mistimed the return of the plumbing, they might have caught me washing my face in the toilet. I hadn’t thought them capable of such cruelty.

She took my hand and guided me out of the bathroom and to the bed. “What are you going to do?”

“Huh?”

“Telling you to ignore them won’t work. They’ve taken their prank too far. Will you call your parents?”

I sighed. What could Dad do for me all the way in California and with no money? Mom was too busy with her new role as the millionaire mogul’s wife to even reply to my texts, and Rudolph viewed my time here as a baptism of fire. He already knew about the brutality of British boarding schools, so complaining to him would only prove I wasn’t strong enough for an internship in one of his companies or worthy enough for him to pay for my ivy league college.

“Install cameras around the room,” I said.

Rita drew back. “Won’t that give them something to spy on?”

“Not if we turn the cameras off during prep and while we’re changing. The footage goes to the cloud, so only I will be able to access it.”

“Alright,” said Rita. “Then what?”

“Then we wait for the next person to enter the room without permission.”

Rita guided me to the infirmary, where a medic took a look at my eyes and said I’d irritated my cornea but they were otherwise fine. He gave me a mild bottle of drops that would soothe my eyes and stop them from hurting.

I earned a string of demerits for missing classes, but no footage of me scrambling about the room, blind, naked, and with a towel over my head surfaced on the Mercia-Net. The shampoo prank had been designed to punish, not to humiliate.