The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls by Claire Legrand

Author:Claire Legrand [Legrand, Claire]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Speculative Fiction
ISBN: 9781442442917
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2012-08-28T00:00:00+00:00

BEHIND VICTORIA, IN THE DARKNESS, THE ENTIRE Home stretched and sighed. The ground felt suddenly wet and shifty. Grunts and wing beats whispered at Victoria’s heels.

She hurried past the door and closed it.

Past the door lay a long, high-ceilinged room lined with clean white cots, a more conventional setup than Victoria had expected. An empty fireplace stood at the far end. Each cot also had a tiny lamp overhead, but they of course were not lit.

“Lights-out,” Victoria whispered.

The only reason Victoria could see anything was that moonlight was coming through the only window in the room, high in the corner near the ceiling, far too high to ever reach.

The cold stone hurt Victoria’s feet, so she hurried to each cot, checking for the empty one. She saw girl after girl after girl lying in the cots, all in the same pajamas as her own. Some of their faces were very thin, and some were very pretty. A girl in the corner lay completely unmoving and awake with her eyes wide open. She didn’t move even when Victoria waved her hand over the girl’s face.

“Hello?” Victoria whispered.

The girl didn’t move. Victoria turned away with a shiver, folding her arms over her chest.

Victoria tried to count the number of cots but kept losing her numbers. She blinked a few times and tried again, but her brain kept turning to mush. Finally she gave up and found an empty cot near the fireplace. A dark nameplate on the wall above it said VICTORIA. She climbed into the soft white sheets and realized that she had lost her book bag somewhere. Alone and cold, she lay down and tried to sleep. In her dreams, her parents held her and said, “We love you, Victoria,” over and over. It felt wonderful and warm and safe. But then they said, “Time for bed, Victoria,” and it wasn’t them anymore; it was Mrs. Cavendish, and she shoved Victoria into a box and locked it.

Two hands grabbed Victoria’s arm and shook her awake.

“You’re the new girl, right?” said a voice.

Victoria awoke with a start and sat straight up. She was not in a box. She was in her cot, in the girls’ dorm, in the Home.

Sunlight from the window in the high corner made a white square in the middle of the room. Several girls were lining up at the door. Some of the girls were Victoria’s age, some younger, and some a little older. Some of them seemed to be avoiding Victoria, looking anywhere but at her. Some of them whispered and glanced at her with mean or frightened faces. Some seemed sad for her. A couple of them tried to smile.

“You—what?” Victoria said to the girl who had shaken her awake, trying to notice everything in case she needed it later. A dozen girls. Twenty girls? She couldn’t be sure.

The girl repeated, “You’re the new girl,” but then she saw the nameplate on the wall. Her jaw dropped. She moved closer. “Victoria?”

Victoria narrowed her eyes at this girl.

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