Legacies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,15
though. They don’t like us to be out of uniform until after supper—no matter how many demerits some people want to collect.”
“Oh Addie! What are they going to do—send me home?” Muirin said mockingly.
“You know they won’t. But you wouldn’t like to be locked out of the music subdirectory, or lose your library privileges, or be restricted to your room when you aren’t in class,” Addie said reasonably. “So I’d consider being a little more careful in the future. And I think Spirit should be here at least a week before she starts collecting points. Where are you from?” she asked.
“Indiana,” Spirit said.
Addie nodded. “So you’re probably freezing.” Without waiting for either Spirit or Muirin to reply, she walked into Spirit’s closet and began rummaging through it. When she came out, she was holding a brown wool blazer with the school crest on the pocket, and a pair of matching wool pants. She handed them to Spirit and went over to her dresser, coming up with an ivory-colored turtleneck and a gold-colored pullover sweater.
“There,” she said, holding them out. “You should be warm enough in these. It’s after class so it doesn’t have to be a skirt.”
Feeling as if things were getting away from her, Spirit took the clothes and went into the bathroom. She was about to put them on when she glanced at the long, deep, bloody scratch on her arm again. Why hadn’t Addie or Muirin mentioned it? She didn’t want to think it was because injuries like this were too familiar to them.
She ran water in the sink and dabbed at it gingerly with the washcloth from the rack. It mopped up the blood, but it stung a lot, and she didn’t want to get blood on the ivory turtleneck. Without thinking, she opened the medicine cabinet over the sink. In addition to toothbrush, toothpaste, and all that sort of thing—all new, not the half-used items from the hospital—there were Band-Aids, gauze squares, a roll of gauze, adhesive tape, antibiotic cream, spray antiseptic, and bandage scissors. It only took Spirit a minute or two to squeeze salve along the scratch, cover it with squares, wrap that in gauze, and tape the gauze into place. It looked much worse than it actually was when she was done, but she was confident the bandages would hold.
Then she put on her new clothes, and she had to admit that she finally felt warm for the first time today. And she had to admit, even the blazer didn’t look nearly as dorky on as it did on the hanger. It was actually kind of cute, if you went in for that sort of thing. She brushed out her hair with the hairbrush and put it back in the drawer of the vanity, and when (on a hunch) she opened the top drawer on the other side, she saw a selection of barrettes, headbands, and hair-ties. Stupid place thinks of everything, Spirit grumbled to herself, before selecting a hair-tie and whipping her hair back into a quick ponytail. When she came out, Addie was getting a pair of brown loafers out of a box.
“Here,” she said, handing Spirit the shoes. “Socks are in your top drawer, but the ones you have on will do fine. As uniforms go, these aren’t bad—as long as you like brown, gold, and white.”
“Makes me feel like a box of caramels,” Muirin said with a snort.
Spirit stepped into the shoes. Everything fit perfectly, but that was hardly a surprise, since Oakhurst had bought all of the clothing she’d worn in the hospital and rehab. They ought to know her sizes by now.
While Spirit had been in the bathroom getting dressed, Muirin had gone to Spirit’s laptop and turned it on. The Oakhurst crest was on the screen, surrounded by icons. Spirit walked over and looked over her shoulder.
“You’re always connected to the intraweb, but assume the nannies are watching, because they always are. You can put on anything you want as wallpaper”—Muirin moused over the icons, talking as she went—“anything you can download, anyway. This goes to the school e-mail. Your default password’s your birthday—six numbers, so if your birth month’s before October it’s zero-something, and ditto if you’re born before the tenth of whatever. If it’s blinking you better check it, because it might be from a teacher or the admin. This is our school intraweb portal.”
She clicked on the small copy of the Oakhurst coat of arms, and another page of icons sprang open.