Fallen

“Who are you and what are you in for?” Kandace asked.

The red-headed girl spoke first. “I’m Aurora Duncan. I’m sixteen, from Arkansas. I got here three months ago. I’m a chronic cutter.” She lifted her nightgown where seemingly hundreds of short red scars crisscrossed her milky thighs. “I’m self-destructive, socially awkward, and a rebellious academic failure, to name just a few.”

“Wow. You sound like a royal mess.”

“The mess part? Yeah.” Aurora pulled her nightgown back down and drew her legs to her chest.

“How long are you here for?”

“Until I show improvement.”

Kandace’s eyes widened. “No specific end date? Wow, that’s rough.”

The girl nodded. “Some girls stay here for years. I’m pretty sure my parents would be just as happy if I never returned at all.”

“I relate. My mother’s latest husband is a judge and they’re both worried sick that I’m going to publicly humiliate him and ruin his chances for re-election.” She picked at a hangnail for a minute. “They sent me here as much to reform me as to hide me away.” Kandace paused for a moment and then looked to the other girl. “And you?”

“I’m Sydney Dennison. I got here a few weeks after Aurora. I’m seventeen, from San Diego. Drugs, alcohol, chronic sexual promiscuity, general lowlife behavior.”

“Nice.” It seemed Kandace wasn’t the only lowlife, after all. She leaned back on her elbows. “So . . . no one’s ever reported this place? At the very least, seems like an animal cruelty charge would stick.”

Sydney shrugged. “If they have, no one’s believed them. We’re not exactly . . . trustworthy people.”

The truth of that statement trickled down Kandace’s spine like a slow drip of ice-cold water. Damn, that truth hurt. Of course, Sydney was right. “No,” Kandace murmured. “I get it. My mother wouldn’t believe me at this point if I said the sky was blue. If I told her what happened when I got here, she’d say I was lying because they took my drugs.” And truthfully? That was far from beneath her. She’d done a lot worse than that.

Aurora lowered her feet to the floor. “You brought drugs in?” She shook her head. “You’re on her radar then. Fly low.”

Kandace sat up too. “It’s not like she can do us actual harm. That would leave marks, evidence.”

The girls exchanged a look. “Like we said, we haven’t been here long so we don’t know if it’s true. But there are rumors . . . they do things that will heal before we leave or that make it look like we did them to ourselves. Ms. Wykes’s trained dog is only too happy to carry out her sadistic punishments. That’s what we’ve heard anyway. And sometimes there are . . . screams and then one of the girls is absent from class for a couple of days. When she comes back, you can tell she’s been smacked around.”

“Seriously? Jasper?”

They both nodded. “Another student told us about this girl named Beth who got sent home right before we arrived. Apparently, she was making trouble about something, and then all of a sudden, she was found in her room, having overdosed.”

“She smuggled drugs in too?”

“That’s the thing. We all know no one smuggles drugs in here. But they put out a story that she’d had someone secretly meet her on the property and that person had supplied her. Addicts will be addicts, and all that. Sneaky bastards who go to great lengths to get a fix.”

The sad thing is, Kandace thought, that’s the truth.

Another wave of coldness moved through her. And it very suddenly occurred to her that perhaps she wasn’t as tough as she’d made herself believe. Perhaps, instead, what she’d done was turn herself into the perfect victim.

Just like every single one of the girls here at Lilith House.

“She didn’t even bother telling anyone the truth later,” Kandace guessed. “Because no one would have believed her.”

“Probably,” Aurora said. “Or maybe she was so happy to be home that she did whatever she had to do not to be sent back here.”

“Do you know what she was making trouble over?”

The girls glanced at each other. “She said someone had molested her.”

“Molested her? Who?”

Aurora shook her head. “She didn’t know. She just said she could tell.”

Kandace raised an eyebrow. “And we’re sure she really wasn’t on drugs?”

Aurora shrugged. “I wouldn’t stake my life on it or anything.”

The lights in the room suddenly went out. “Damn,” Sydney whispered.

“Why did the lights go out?” Kandace whispered back.

“They shut off the lights at nine o’clock. Our bedtime. There’s a nightlight in the bathroom if you need it.”

What the actual fuck? Nine?

“I don’t even have a toothbrush. They took all my things.”

“There’s a clear cosmetic bag on the sink for you,” Sydney whispered again. “Just the basics. We’re not allowed makeup or lotion or anything like that.”