AllFreeNovel
Share Us
In a quiet voice, I say, “You expect us to swallow their lies and submit to their programming and not to suffer?” To his credit, Dr. Moncrieff doesn’t look away. “You expect us to always be pillars of strength in the face of pure evil? To know that all it would take for them to stop is for adults to grow a spine and say no? We’re workingalone. There are so few of us, and all of us are demonized daily as wrongthinkers.” I stare at him. “Wouldn’t that take its toll? Wouldn’t that make anyone depressed?”
“Are the chiefs causing you trouble?” Dr. Moncrieff asks, sounding genuinely concerned.
I scoff at him. “Don’t be ridiculous. They’re the only ones keeping me sane.”
He rifles through the stack of essays he pulled from his briefcase. “Incidentally,” he murmurs, drawing one out and inspecting it, “I’ve graded your latest essay if you wish to see it.”
It’s a bad idea. I know he’s trying to cheer me up when the world seems so hopeless — my words, to him, so melodramatic — but I want nothing to do with schoolwork. When I announce my apathy with a shrug, he steps forward and places my essay on my desk. The bright red A+ evokes a small prickle of joy, but it’s distant, as though sensing it from another room.
“You’re doing incredibly well,” Dr. Moncrieff enthuses, and the encouragement in his voice stings the back of my eyes. I should be happier than this. I should be cheering at the dizzy heights I’ve reached, having successfully turned around my academic career from its miserable bleak depths. But I’m not. I stare stony-faced at the essay and think about how pointless it all is. I’ve outgrown school. “Your reasoning was convincing, your arguments compellin—”
“I don’t care.” Taken aback, Dr. Moncrieff’s mouth snaps shut. I blink away the heat burning the place behind my eyes. “You treat us like children. Wearen’t. We deserve better. We deserve the truth.”
“Jessa,” he says softly. “I think you’re studying too hard.”
It’s enough to make me laugh. Knowing I won’t get answers here, I hoist myself up, blinking hard.
“I hope you enjoy Dunhaven,” he adds with a smile that doesn’t quite meet his eyes. “I think you could do with the break.”
43
After three hours of being jostled on a bus, my whole body is as stiff and sore as if I’d danced without stretching. The condensation-slick windows provide little entertainment, shrouded in silvery mist so thick it obliterates the Scottish countryside and makes me wonder how the driver knows where to travel. I drift in and out of a dissatisfying sleep, using Danny’s shoulder as a pillow. After my fourth failed attempt at snoozing for longer than ten minutes, I sit upright and fold my arms moodily across my chest.
“What’s that?” I nod down at Danny’s lap. During my last catnap, he pulled out a pen and paper from his bag. If he’s about to study on the bus, then full credit to him. I’m planning on taking this trip in the spirit Dr. Moncrieff advised and doing precisely fuck-all reading, even if it makes my stomach churn with nerves. Trying to study on this bus, I think I’d go cross-eyed, anyway.
But Danny doesn’t answer at first, and his pen doesn’t write anything down. It hovers above the paper as though something blocks it from its descent. His face is a rare mix of disquiet, as though doubting what he’s about to do.
“It’s, um.” Danny glances out the obscured window and clears his throat. “My dad. I’m writing a letter to my dad.”
I stare at him. “What?Why?”
“Because… I feel like I should.” He licks his lips, his fingers bunched tight around his pen — a pen with Captain StarStrike’s handsome, glowering face. “I’m not — I have no plans to return home.”
“Never?” I ask with some surprise. I’d said the same thing in the heat of the moment, shouted it in my mom’s face once, but I guess in some way and for some silly, childish reason, I’d always held onto home as an option.
“No.” His voice is definite. “So this is me, writing my feelings, giving him grace, telling him he’ll never bully me again.”
Determination is in the straight-set line of his mouth. It’s in the assured square of Danny’s shoulders. He runs a hand through his short brown hair and then begins writing, neat little letters that belie the gravity of Danny’s message.
“I think you’re incredibly kind,” I murmur. “I’m not sure I could give grace.”
Danny glances sidelong at me. “To your mum?”
“To your dad. Honestly, I wish I could punch the jerk for the things he’s done to you.”
He shoots me a soft, sad smile. “Vengeance, hate… They aren’t particularly useful emotions to be burdened with. I don’t wish for my soul to be twisted and fester because of him. So really, in the end, this is an entirely selfish endeavor.”
Only Danny could consider this an act of selfishness instead of outright bravery. I leave him be, letting him write in peace what his soul dictates. Gradually, the sheet of paper fills with Danny’s stop-start sentences.
Though I’m happy for Danny to claim his slice of power over his dad, my mind is — perhaps deliberately — far from family matters. All I can think about is getting my hands on The Daily Toot, as if it were some kind of exclusive shiny collector’s edition. I glance down the aisle of the bus. Someone here must know where it is. Someone must have a copy. My eyes narrow in on Arabella’s painstakingly uniform plait. She sits in silence with Li, far from Dr. Moncrieff who commandeers the very front seats of the bus. She probably has one. Despite what Dr. Moncrieff said about them not being close, he probably managed to bung her a copy.
“Do you think you’ll go back home?” Danny asks, achingly curious, the top of his pen poised by his lips. His question jolts me from my glaring.
“To my mom?” I ask, blinking hard, and the usual panic when considering my home-life bubbles up my throat. It feels like a whole other universe, completely at odds with icy winters and soft, delicate boys who write forgiving letters to an abusive father. With a disconsolate shrug, I mutter, “She’s scared me too many times. I know she’s suffering, but what method of coping is it to make the others around you suffer, too?”
Danny frowns. “The standard one, I imagine.”
I hadn’t expected that response, but thinking about it, I suppose it’s kinda true. What’s that pithy line? Hurt people hurt people. Yeah. And don’t we fucking know it. “I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe you’re right.” I’m suffering. I’m hurting. What if my mom thinks the exact same about me? Do I make everyone else around me suffer, too, the way I’ve blamed her for doing for years? A chill ices my spine.
