The Melliford Academy library is exactly what I'd expect from a posh school with too much money and too many students willing to set things on fire. A hawk-eyed librarian—or book defender, as the case may be—glances up as I let the door fall shut behind me. Behind him, the room opens up into an labyrinth of shelves that are trying to be mahogany, but are probably just bloodied oak. I sidle past the librarian with my best not-a-pyromaniac impression. Then I dive amongst the shelves. There is an abundance of books, but I can tell none of them are first-rate. Most are cloth-bound, with the tatty look of copies inherited from an attic box at the estate sale of a reclusive centenarian. Melliford Academy stocked its library, a pricey undertaking in and of itself. But it didn't flaunt its wealth much farther than that barest minimum.

My eyes keep drifting to the shelves. I soon take back my first impression of this book hoard. Some aren't in quite as poor a condition as I judged at first glance, and there are leather-bound specimens among them. I pause beside one particularly ample tome. My fingers drift up of their own accord to trace the golden lettering down its spine. I can already feel it in my hands. If that's a novel and not some old man's circumlocutory philosophical proofs, that's a whole lot of story.

I start to pull the book down, then catch myself. I'm not here to study. There's a part of me that aches to grab the tome anyway, but I'm Exie-hunting at the moment, and I'll never live it down if she catches me with a book in hand after my display in class this morning. I also have no plans to be remediated. Melliford Academy won't be the place I admit to wishing I could read better. Knowing what my parents expect of me, I'd rather make it through the semester without reading at all.

I'm not the only student in the library. The mousey boy with the aristocratic haircut has occupied an armchair beneath a vaguely phallic lancet window. That's Colson, I think. He doesn't look up as I approach. I scuff a foot to test it, but he's so lost in his book, I'm sure it'd take a horse-sized chicken riding by to unglue him. In the next aisle over, two more students rifle through the shelves with clumsy hands and lowered voices. Probably a project pair. I give them a wide berth and let my feet carry me to the library's farthest corner. My search is instantaneously vindicated.

Exie is a near-mirror to Colson three aisles over. There's a book in her lap that could sink a Spanish galleon, and she's curled around it like she's trying to incubate it into hatching. She too remains oblivious to my approach. A candle-flame of satisfaction flares to life inside me. It's a cheap blow to feel superior over something as streetwise as situational awareness, but if this school proves malevolent and all goes to hell, at least I have a survival edge against Exie.

"Studying already?" I say.

Exie spooks. Her cannonbook slips sideways, and a second, smaller volume flees its pages and clatters to the floor. My eyebrows shoot up. I can't read the title before she snatches it again, but I don't miss the angel embossed on the cover.

"Studying so studiously." I amend. "Deceiving librarians, are we?"

Exie jams the slim book back inside her literary shield. "That's none of your business."

"But you're not denying it."

"Have you just come to be a bother, or do you actually have something useful to speak with me about?"

I clench every muscle in my body to keep from flinching. What little amusement I gleaned from needling Exie evaporates, replaced by all-too-familiar obstructionism. I sit on the floor and regret it as the frigid stone sets about ice-boxing my posterior. "We're supposed to be working together, aren't we?"

She's gone back to her book like I'm not worth her time. "Do me a favor and stay out of my way."

"You're asking me to freeload?"

"I'm asking you not to drag me into your hovel of demerits before the semester is two days old. Some of us care about our academic performance."

Something rings false in her words. I tilt my head, then lean sideways to see her face around the cannonbook. "Is that really what you're here for?"

"And why wouldn't it be?"

"Because something tells me that's not the real point of this school."

It's my turn to startle as Exie slams the book down in her lap. "Of course it's not," she hisses. "Did you even bother to research this place, or did you treat your acceptance with the same flippancy you treat everything else? This school's original name is Melliford Remedial Academy for Troubled Youth. They just edited it within the last decade because they wanted to put lipstick on a pig and squeeze more money from the aristocracy."

The floor's chill has spread up through my body, rooting me in place. I still manage a sneer. "Only me? I'm sure you're so perfect, then, to have been sent here yourself."

"That is entirely my business. Give me peace or read something useful for this stupid project, for the love of God."

"Tell me what you're researching."

"No."

I launch a guess based on an angel-shaped hunch. "Going behind Mrs. Hardwork's back and looking into Melliford Academy? I'm sure she'd be thrilled."

"I've already picked the Santa Clarissa Cathedral in Vries-del-Mar."

"You're actually working on it?"

"Like I said, one of us cares about our academic performance."

"If this place is so rotten, what do you stand to gain from graduating with honors? A fancy degree from a remedial academy? Is that what you're after—becoming one of those great-name alumni?"

The book snaps shut. In all of a moment, Exie has fixed me with a glare that sends alarms through my follicles: there's a dangerous look in her tiger-stone eyes.

She drops her voice. "You know what happens to people like you here? Oh no, you don't get kicked out. This place was made for you. You get chewed up and spat out again, lobotomized to finally make your parents happy. That's what I plan to avoid"

"I'm not going to let that happen to me. I'm going to be gone by next month."

Exie's smile could freeze the Devil's underwear. "You can try. But by all means, keep trying. Play right into their hands, like that will get you anywhere in life. Maybe you'll even find out why your parents sent you here and paid fat money to see you broken like all the others who make it out of this place alive."

She slams the book back open in her lap and returns to her reading. She's not even bothering to hide the smaller book inside it anymore.

My eyes aren't supposed to be stinging.

"So you are here for another reason," is all I can say. It's petty. Petulant. The kicked puppy has returned, and I hate it for its weakness. I hate myself to the core.

"Really?" Exie's voice drips with patronizing venom. "What gave it away?"

"You're trying to figure out what's going on."

"How astute of you."

"You're faking it."

Exie lowers the book with a sigh of exaggerated patience. "No, Des. I'm learning the rules of their game until I can play it better than they can. It's called strategy. You should try it sometime."

"Then why are you telling me all this? I could turn around and tattle to Mrs. Hardwick if I wanted to."

Exie shrugs. "You're free to try. See which one of us they believe."

I have no more comebacks. I want to scream, cuss, punch something. I want to rip that book from her hands and see what she's reading inside. Topple a shelf. Throw a novel out the window and see how fast that hawk-eyed librarian responds. But Exie's words echo back to me: Play right into their hands. This is a remedial academy. The staff have done nothing but ignore me thus far, and it's leaving me unmoored: Melliford Academy plays a different game than any school I've ever been to, and I don't know the rules. I'm nothing special here. Just one more delinquent child among a cohort of delinquent children, throwing tantrums that get me nowhere because they're exactly how the school expects me to respond.

If that's playing into their hands, I don't know the alternative. I can't pull off what Exie is: not without sacrificing my pride and dignity. Not without taking Mrs. Hardwork up on her offer of accommodation, which would put her influence well into my personal space. If that would be enough at all. I almost laugh, a crazy response to the too-many emotions scrapping for control over my body. My parents named me wretchedness, as if they knew from birth what a headache I would be. My father's spared no words in elaborating on it. I don't believe in fate—or rather, I don't want to—but there's always been a part of me that's given up on meeting anyone's prissy expectations. No matter how hard I try, they never seem to fall in my favor anyway.

Exie doesn't look up again as I push myself abruptly to my feet. I need air. Anywhere away from this wretched train of thought before it derails and spills its guts all over my attempts at sane decision-making. I storm out of the library. The school's front doors aren't open, so I slam both palms against them, and nearly stumble as they give way. Fresh air drowns me with the scent of fall. Half-blind, I run down the steps and around the school in search of solitude. There's no lake on the grounds. Just endless lawns pockmarked with gardens, a few trees, and a high, sheer stone wall.

Only the twittering of sparrows slows my stride. It takes me half a moment to realize why I recognize the sound. Ahead of me, against the school, is a bush where a flock seem to have congregated to debate the minutiae of their most recent statute on seed collection. Just past them is a window, open halfway. I opened that window. I know where this is.

There's something surreal about approaching my hideout from its other side. The sky's reflection glances off the window and darkens the room beyond; someone could be watching me from in there, and I'd never know. I approach with caution. A peek inside confirms the room is empty. I wrestle the window farther open. I could use the quiet of that room right now. An hour or two to skip class and lurk in the embrace of cold stone walls with only the sun and birds as company. It's only as the window groans wide that I notice something.

The building's foundation pushes just above the gardens. I'm only paces from its corner here, where an exceptionally large stone hunkers low amongst the dying daffodils. A cornerstone. It has something carved into it. I creep over to it and crouch among the flowers, an aster up my ass as I rub lichen from the engraving. It'll be the builder's name, if my paltry knowledge of architecture is to judge. I clean the lettering and go so still, I swear even the breeze around me forgets how to breathe.

It's not a name. It's the stone-laying date.

This building isn't old. It isn't even gothic. For all its rib vaults and compound piers, lancet windows and flying buttresses, stained glass windows and religious iconography, its foundation tells a different story. The building that houses Melliford Academy went up less than sixty years ago. Whoever built it must have had pockets the depth of the Dervin Channel in order to fund a project of this scale... yet for all my searches of the building and all the questions Exie posed in class, we still have no idea who the founder is. Clearly someone Mrs. Hardwork doesn't want us to know. Clearly someone who didn't even want their name carved upon its cornerstone. 

I need to get out of this school.

Like this chapter if you also want to know the history of Melliford Academy  🏰

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