Lawless by Jeffrey Salane

Author:Jeffrey Salane
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Piccadilly Press

Two things had just been handed to M and she wasn’t sure if she wanted either of them. The black envelope sat on her dorm room desk. M stared at it from her bed. She needed distance from everything for a minute. Distance from her father’s romantic and scholastic past. Distance from her professors, her lessons, her friends, and even from herself, or at least the current role of M Freeman that this school was writing for her. Distance from the new, strange Cal who came bearing a flat, black cloud with a wicked scent of something unknown and dangerous.

M was considering all of her options when Zara walked into the room.

‘Whoa,’ she said upon seeing the envelope. ‘Did you do something awful to someone in a former life, M? You’re a Class Clash captain.’

‘So I’ve been told,’ replied M, ‘by the first honorary member of my crew, Calvin Fence Watts.’

Zara winced and made a short sucking sound of air through her teeth. ‘Ouch, that’s a stinger. I wasn’t supposed to say anything to you, but Cal is, like, persona non grata.’

‘You knew and you didn’t tell me?’ asked M. ‘Why not!’

‘M, I don’t tell you how to run your life,’ said Zara. ‘Well, maybe I do a little bit, but rest assured there’s a long list of things I don’t tell you. Cal was one of them.’

‘At least tell me why he’s “persona non grata”, then,’ demanded M. ‘I mean, he’s Ms Watts’s son, so it seems like he’d be a shoo-in here.’

‘No, he’s got ronin written all over him,’ Zara said casually, as she walked over to M’s desk and picked up the envelope. ‘Rumor is that his dad was a Fulbright. Very scandalous. And Ms Watts never mentioned having a son. Nobody even knew he existed until last year, when he just showed up to another student’s interview.’

‘Crazy’ was all M could say. Say what you want about coming from a family of criminals, but at least she came from a sort of happy and functional home. She couldn’t imagine what life would be like with parents who were split between Lawless and the Fulbrights, good and evil, and forced you to choose between the two. But besides the rumors of Cal’s home life, there was another word that had caught M’s attention. ‘Zara, what’s a ronin?’

‘What’s a ronin?’ echoed Zara. ‘What have they been teaching you over the past few months? Ronin is what we call the kids that can’t cut it at Lawless.’

‘You mean people can flunk here?’ M was surprised. It hardly seemed like anyone would be allowed to attend Lawless and then move on to a normal life.

‘Not a lot, but a few do fail,’ answered Zara. ‘They’re, like, doomed to roam the earth masterless, or some other dramatic samurai term. All ronin are on a watch list. Lawless keeps tabs on them at all times. It’s a lockdown life, not something I would wish on anyone. Not that you should be worried about flunking out if someone has bestowed you with this little envelope.

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