AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Luke moves across to one of them and unfastens the buckles. “They are for our dependents.” Inside, containers of food are stacked on top of one another. The containers seem to breathe now that they don’t have the wicker basket lid cramming them in. I tilt my head, making out pastries, fruit, cereal. The sweet scent of cinnamon lingers in the air.
“Dependents?”
Finlay stands beside me. “The dozens o’ weans scarred by the fuhrer’s mad sanctions.” I stare at him, nonplussed.
But then a conversation from long ago this morning drifts back to me: Arabella explaining her aunt changing the breakfast menu to howls of disapproval, because obviously that’s the most important thing going on in the world right now.
“You’re feeding the younger kids the stuff theyusedto get fed?” I blink down at the vast quantities of food. It’s not like they could just whip it up out of nowhere. “But then… where did all this come from?”
“The chefs,” Luke explains. “They prepare it for us to take up at night.”
I’m amazed. How could they have gotten away with this, hauling literal baskets of food up for the junior kids? “But what if Baxter finds out?”
Rory laughs, a bitter sound. “Baxter’s a hypocritical old boot. As long as itlookslike she’s doing something progressive, she doesn’t care about going back on her principles. She authorized this.”
“What?”
Rory’s smile stretches. “Baxterauthorizedthis. One complaint from my father and she was begging to do whatever he demanded.” His proud chin tilts up. “Most people are wise to follow his orders. He’s not a particularly forgiving man.”
Finlay fastens the baskets again. “Her idea o’ looking good is tae have kids starvin’ in her school. Does that sound like a principled woman tae ye?”
This doesn’t exactly sound right. Even I can hear it’s half a story, or at least a story manipulated for the trio in front of me to look good themselves. Part of me feels like I should defend her, but then I realize she’s the one that has me doing detention on my first day at a new school.
“Breakfast wasn’tthatbad,” I say, confused.
“Sassenach, you probably ate dirt for breakfast before coming here. Don’t start.” Luke’s tired tone is almost enough to distract me from the gentle way he calls mesassenach. “When you grow up eating the best, and then it is taken away from you…? That is the stuff of riots.”
“And your idea of rioting is having Rory’s dad blackmail the headteacher?”
Luke’s smile freezes on his face. “Do not speak to me about riots,sassenach. Not when you talk to the poster boy for people’s ideas of hope and glory.”
I stare into his deep, dark eyes, almost feeling like this is the same biting sarcasm from earlier. But it’s not. Luke genuinely believes himself some kind of beacon of hope for the British public.
Finlay picks up two of the baskets and passes one across to Luke. “It’s just business. Sometimes ye cannae be a saint when ye want somethin’ badly enough.”
“And you guysreallywant… pastries?” I frown at Finlay. “Besides, I thought you’d like having oatmeal every morning.”
Finlay gives me a baleful look. “Porridge. And I see, I’m just a stereotype tae ye.”
I flush. It’s not what I’d intended, but as the only guy in school insisting on wearing a kilt, he does kind of bring it on himself.
“It’s not just pastries,” he explains. “It’spromises. Come on,” he calls to the others. “We have hungry mouths to feed and the saint has a detention to nobly suffer through.”
Part of me is sad he called methe saintinstead ofour saint. There had been something nice about that word, theourword. But again, I’m exhausted and my brain might not be working correctly.
The guys begin to walk upstairs, carrying the heavy baskets of food in their arms. Muscles bunch together, bulging beneath their school shirts.
“Night,sassenach,” Rory says, surprising me. “I hope your second day will be better than your first.” I’m about to thank him for these unexpectedly kind words, but there’s a gleam in his cold gray eyes that makes me think he’s mocking me.
And I’m right. Because by the end of day two, I’m begging to return to the relative innocence of my first day.
