The Education of Bet by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

Author:Lauren Baratz-Logsted [Baratz-Logsted, Lauren]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Ages 12 & Up
ISBN: 9780547223087
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Published: 2010-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter eight

I remained seated, frozen to the spot.

"Well, Gardener," Mrs. Smithers said when I refused to move, "are you going to take off your clothes or am I going to have to take them off for you?"

At last, as though a mesmerist were controlling my actions, I slowly began undoing my fencing tunic, one excruciating button at a time. Then the protective gear, moving slightly quicker now. By the time I got to the last layer of covering between my body and the world, the material that bound my breasts tight, my fingers were working with rapid speed to remove the mummy casing. It was as though it had finally struck me that the end was near, my exposure imminent, and now I simply wanted to be done with it.

In truth, after the battering I'd received at Hamish's hands, it felt good to be free like that. And hadn't I not so very long ago been contemplating leaving anyway?

I sat in my chair, trousers still on, my mummy material dangling uselessly from my fingers, and waited for doom to fall on me. And yet, curiously, I felt a strange combination of defiance and detached acceptance about it all. If I'd ever given the matter enough thought, surely I would have realized that eventually it would come to this. Or if not exactly this, then some form of it. Let whatever is to happen, happen, I thought.

Mrs. Smithers barely glanced at my upper body, perhaps both shocked and embarrassed at the sight of my semi-nakedness, before turning away from me to fill a basin with water. Then she took a cloth, immersed it in the water, and began gently bathing my injuries.

Hamish's efforts had not broken the skin anywhere, I saw now, but there were more bruises than I could count, the coloration of those bruises already changing to a startling array of hues, angry purples and reds and sickening yellows.

As the cloth made contact with my skin, I involuntarily flinched back, from both the coldness of the cloth and the sensation of pressure against my injuries.

"Sorry," Mrs. Smithers apologized curtly. "If I'd known one of you boys was going to get yourself half killed today, I'd have made sure to heat some water in preparedness. As it is..."

"One of you boys"? Was Mrs. Smithers insane? Was she blind? Could she not see that, whatever else I might be, I was not "one of you boys"?

"Whoever did this," Mrs. Smithers went on when I did not speak, beginning to apply some sort of ointment to the tender skin covering my ribs, "wanted to do as much damage as possible."

Of course she was right, there had been grave malice in Hamish's behavior, but what was going on here? Why was Mrs. Smithers not acting shocked? Why was she not sounding the alarm, sending for the housemaster, sending for the headmaster? Why was she not...

No, I told myself. Of course she wouldn't do that, couldn't do that while I was still half naked. It wouldn't be proper.

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