Mail Order Brat by Loki Renard

Author:Loki Renard [Renard, Loki]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stormy Night Publications
Published: 2014-06-07T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

Sunday soon came around. Annika found herself wearing an uncomfortably scratchy dress and sitting in a pew alongside Mary and John. She’d not been asked if she wanted to attend the service. It had been more or less assumed that she would. Mary had helped pick out a dress suitable for the occasion and had also made sure to come to the door to collect her in time to file in and get a seat.

They were seated about four rows back from the pulpit. The church was full, and the reason why was obvious. Steven. He was attractive, eloquent, and he made his sermons halfway relevant to issues his parishioners were dealing with in their lives. Annika listened quite entranced by his treatise on obedience.

“Obedience is a gift,” Steven said, glancing at Annika in such a way that made her feel as though he were talking directly to her.

Annika wasn’t sure she was buying what Steven was selling, but he did it so well that he could have been reading a shopping list and still have sounded compelling. Her mind drifted as he spoke, her eyes feasting on the lines of his shoulders, which were broad and strong in spite of the fact that he was wearing a dress. They called it a cassock, but it was definitely a dress.

“Disobedience,” she heard him say as she drifted back to reality, “has consequences. Now, Mrs. Wimpole will take the reading.”

A wizened woman took the lectern and began reading from the book of something. Annika wasn’t paying attention anymore. She was just waiting for the service to be over so she could get changed into something more comfortable and tease Steven about obedience and his dress, not necessarily in that order.

The reading seemed to go on for an awfully long time. Minutes ticked by into other minutes and still it continued. “Is she going to read the whole book?” Annika murmured the question to Mary. Mary giggled softly.

What seemed like a lifetime later, Mrs. Wimpole was still reading, still articulating every syllable of every word as if her life depended on it.

Annika was beyond restless. Steven’s little speech had at least been interesting. This droning was the antithesis of interesting. Annika had to do something to stop her brain literally dying of boredom.

Taking the sheet of paper announcing next week’s bake sale, she folded it into quarters, pressing her thumbnail along the seams. When they were nice and neat, she slowly tore along the lines, creating four rectangular little pieces of paper. Each of those four pieces was folded into four, and so on until she had sixteen rectangles. Annika had a plan. A boring reading had just turned into an experimental flight simulator. There would be sixteen prototypes, each tested for speed, distance, and stealth.

“Don’t do that,” Mary said when the first prototype had taken shape beneath Annika’s nimble fingers. Only Mary could see what was going on, and fortunately her tummy did an excellent job of shielding Annika from other prying eyes.

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