RIOT HOUSE (Crooked Sinners #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,25
we all sprawl out on beanbags, pillows, and cushions, and watch Love Actually, which everyone’s amused to learn I haven’t seen before. We share popcorn. We talk about our respective countries, our childhoods, and our differing yet oh-so-similar upbringings, and everything feels both new and very much the same.
I was thrilled when I learned that I was coming back to the States. I would have been thrilled to get sent anywhere, so long as it was away from him. Now that I’m here and I’m actually making friends, though, it feels like I could actually be happy enough here. I’m enjoying my classes, and even Damiana seems to have defrosted a little. The only potential thorns in my side are the Riot House boys, and not a one of them has even so much as looked in my direction since Tuesday.
My room is as cold and drafty as a morgue, and the lights flicker every time I turn them on. My bed is lumpy and uncomfortable as fuck, but with Colonel Stillwater on the other side of the world, I haven’t slept this well in…well, ever.
Wren aside, I’d say, as first weeks at new schools go, this one’s been fairly successful.
Saturday morning arrives, and my bedroom door crashes open with an earsplitting BANG! I hurl myself out of bed, heart slamming in my chest, adopting an automatic fighting stance that has Carina, dressed in a bright orange jumpsuit, arching her right eyebrow at me like I’m certifiably insane. “Whoa, now, Jackie Chan. What the hell is this all about? Are you about to karate chop my neck or something?”
I take a calming breath, straightening out of my defense stance as quickly as possible, laughing nervously under my breath. “Ahh, y’know. Military father. He used to drill me harder than he drilled his men.” This is not a lie. It’s the truth. Just not the whole truth. She’s been amazing and welcoming, but I don’t know Carina well enough to be spilling that shit just yet. Maybe I’ll never know her well enough.
Carina cringes, patting me on the shoulder sympathetically. “I literally thank god every day that my parents are just lazy shits and not army personnel. I’m not cut out to be duck rolling from beds and preparing to fight a split second after I wake up. You amaze me.”
Uneasy, I tug at the oversized Real Madrid soccer jersey I slept in last night, wrangling it into position so that it covers the tops of my legs. Seems like Carina bought my half-truth, or at least she didn’t suspect that it was only a half truth. Catching sight of the old digital clock on the nightstand, I groan at the time. “Oh my god, Carina. What are you trying to do to me? It’s six forty-five!”
“That’s what time we always get up.”
“During the week! It’s Saturday. Am I not entitled to a lie-in? A little R and R? It’s cruel to wake a girl up before eight on the weekend.”
Carrie laughs. “If you’re not up and out before seven thirty on Saturdays, Harcourt makes you help serve community breakfast in the dining hall. You get stuck cleaning pots and pans until midday. And if you’re not out of the building by eight on a Sunday, Mr. Clarence makes you attend his non-denominational gratitude service, and that, my friend, is a fate worse than death itself.”
Ah. Damn. I guess there’s still a lot to learn where the day-to-day operations at Wolf Hall are concerned. Community breakfast sounds like torture. And non-denominational gratitude service? Yeah, fuck that. “How long do I have to get ready?” I ask, already bee-lining for the closet to grab an outfit.
“Twenty-five minutes,” Carina advises, checking the time on her cell phone. “Shower, makeup and hair. Let’s go. One second over and we’re gonna be stuck ladling porridge onto food trays like convicts on mess hall duty, and I did not wear this jumpsuit to be ironic. Go, go, go, go, go!”
For the past five days, my world has been Wolf Hall. The classes, the people, the building itself…it’s all been so overwhelming, so much information thrown at me all at once, that my mind hasn’t considered the world beyond the edge of the academy’s immaculately kept lawns. Now that I’m in Carina’s beaten up yet classic Firebird, speeding down the long, winding roads with the wind blowing in my hair, I suddenly feel free. Like absolutely anything might be possible.
New Hampshire is a breathtaking feuille morte kaleidoscope: