A Wounded Name (Fiction - Young Adult) by Hutchison Dot

Author:Hutchison, Dot [Hutchison, Dot]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Carolrhoda Books
Published: 2013-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 20

It’s a relief when classes start again. Surrounded by people, always with places to be or things to do, it’s harder to drown in the endless weeping of the drowning sun in my chest. I’m a sophomore this year; I have no classes in common with Dane and Horatio, who are both seniors.

Dinner during the week is a haphazard affair at best. Those of us who live here year-round can choose to dine in the mansion with the other students or eat in the private dining room of Headmaster’s House. Or if one is cowardly and weak, in Father’s study with a tray and a pile of papers that need to be typed. Where other students have laptops and privacy, I have a father whose idea of parental controls involve his being in the room. Consumed with a million details, Father doesn’t notice my self-imposed isolation. Or at least, I think he doesn’t; he might choose to let me keep myself separate for a time, but I don’t believe he could make that decision without comment. Whatever he does, whatever he decides, Father will always have a speech to make on the subject.

It would be easier if I could say that Dane hated me for walking away.

Sometimes I can say that. Sometimes I can feel his eyes on me in the halls, feel the glares that smoke and blaze between my shoulder blades as though with a single glance he could flay all the flesh from my body and leave it to rot. On those occasions, he passes by in sullen silence or even knocks the books from my hands for the simple pleasure of causing me pain.

Sometimes the only way to make a pain bearable is to make others feel it too.

But then there are the days where he acts as if nothing has changed, where he sits beside me at lunch and laces his fingers through mine, where he traps me in corners and kisses me until breath is just a faint memory with no meaning. The days where he drags me into hidden alcoves in the gardens we know so well and traces fire across my skin with hands and lips.

Then there are the days that set everyone to talking.

The third day of classes, Dane swept through the halls in tights; a long, sleeveless leather coat; a blouse with billowing sleeves; a long cape, all black edged in silver; and a gaudy gold crown perched lopsided on his sable hair. He answered all questions put to him quite solemnly, with no indication of a prank or a game or anything at all out of the ordinary.

The next day he spoke entirely in German—not just in the halls but in classes as well, speaking over the professors with rambling, disjointed monologues. Rumors filtered through the lower grades, but Horatio met me in the gardens that night and told me the truth of them. Some of it was poetry, he said, or bits of plays or even operas;

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