I saw the shock on his face before he had a chance to recover. “You have a brother?”
My chest was wound so tightly that I could hardly breathe. “Yes. A twin.” Should I have been telling him this?
The headmaster reached out and grabbed a green folder, opening it and placing it in front of him. Every muscle inside my body begged me to move forward just a bit, to see what was inside, but I didn’t want him to think I was digging, so I stayed still in my seat. A few pages were flipped, the headmaster licking his finger once or twice, before he set it back down and brought his gaze back to mine. “So, where is your brother, then?”
If only I knew.
A few seconds passed as I had an internal war with what I was supposed to be sharing with the headmaster. I didn’t trust him, but there was a very strong part of me that wanted to. I didn’t know why. For some bizarre and unexplainable reason, he felt familiar to me, and not in the way that I’d seen him passing by on the street. It was something more. Something that made me feel safe, which, in the same breath, made me feel unsafe.
A knot made itself known in my throat. My chest grew even tighter, and the girl inside of me that longed for her brother, and longed for a way out, banged her fists against the contents of my brain, but at the exact same time, there was a door being slammed and a lock being clicked. Don’t trust.
“You know what?” I switched my eyes back to him as he smiled. “Never mind that, okay? I called you in here for a few reasons, actually, and none of those were discussing your trust with me.”
The headmaster, again, stood up from his desk and came around and plopped himself on the edge in front of me. One of his legs was touching the ground, the other was hiked up over his knee. “Your uncle wants you to check in every Monday with him, and he wants you to use the phone directly from the school instead of your cell phone. I told him you could come down here each Monday evening before curfew.”
Can’t wait. “Okay, thank you.”
He nodded and glanced away for a moment. “I need you to know something, though.”
I wavered before reluctantly saying, “Okay?” which came out more like a question than anything.
“As headmaster of this school, I take my students very seriously. I like to give them freedom and a chance to make their own decisions.” Heavy silence filled the office before he continued. “You don’t trust me, and that’s okay because you don’t know me. But you can come to me with any problems you may have…” His sentence trailed at the end as we had some weird, muted conversation with one another. I couldn’t be sure, but I felt like he was skirting around what he truly wanted to say, and before I could nod my head in understanding, he leaned forward and lowered his voice. “And I mean any problem. It doesn’t have to pertain to school… Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”
Don’t trust. Don’t trust. Don’t trust.
My pulse quickened at his words, and the fear and loneliness I’d felt almost all my life—even more when Tobias left—came crashing down at the exact same time thunder rolled above the school. I jumped in my seat, taking that as a sign to keep my mouth shut. If he only knew just how badly I wanted to trust him. But I wouldn’t. The only person I could truly trust was myself, and sometimes, I even questioned that.
“Also,” the headmaster moved right along after I didn’t answer him, and I was thankful. I was thankful because I wasn’t sure what to say. “Mrs. Fitzpatrick was impressed with your artistic ability.” He laughed, moving around to his desk again, acting as if we didn’t just have a heavily deep conversation about trusting one another. “Actually, that’s putting it mildly. She said you were brilliant. That you had the skill of Picasso himself.”
That brought an instant smile to my face. A real, down-to-my-soul smile. “Really?” I asked with true surprise. I surely thought Mrs. Fitzpatrick would think poorly of me after seeing me pop out of a closet with Isaiah on my heels. Jerk. A hot jerk, but still a jerk.
“Yes, really.” He grinned before pulling the green file open again. After flipping through a few papers, he read aloud, “Gemma has the potential for a full-ride scholarship to almost any prestigious art school in the nation, with a portfolio. Each and every piece she created for me in her few months of attending Wellington Prep blew me away, and I have been an art teacher for almost twenty years. Please give her a safe place to let her creative streak shine, because if you give her a chance, she will flourish.”
My lips parted, and my cheeks were on fire as I sat there dumbfounded.
“I took it upon myself to contact your old school for transcripts since your uncle has yet to get them to me.”
There was a reason for that, I was sure.
“Oh,” I whispered, wondering what else he got from Wellington Prep. Did they tell him about my journal? About what was inside? About what Richard, my not-so-real uncle, had told them? The tips of my fingers prickled with the need to snatch that green folder from his hands.
“So, after talking with Mrs. Fitzpatrick, we’ve decided to let you use the art room at any hour of the day, except for after curfew or, of course, during your other classes.”
Hope blossomed in my chest, warming me up from the inside out. “Are you serious?”
He nodded, this time grinning so big I could see his white teeth. A flash of something whipped through my head at the familiarity of his smile, but after a fleeting second, it fell, just as the feeling of warmth had vanished. “Just…”—he glanced away—“your uncle has made it very clear that you are to focus on your studies and not art.”
That wasn’t surprising in the least, especially considering what had happened at Wellington Prep.
“But…you’re allowing me to use the art room? Why?” I couldn’t help the words tumbling out. I was beyond confused. There were too many mixed emotions floating around my head, jumbling up my thoughts. From the second I stepped my wet shoe into St. Mary’s expansive entryway on Monday, I’d been in complete disarray. Isaiah, the headmaster, Sloane…all together, mixed with the thick walls of this place, tucked away in the middle of the forest on the very brim of Washington…made me feel something that was almost taunting in a way: safe. I felt safe.
But I wasn’t. I wasn’t safe until I was far, far away from Richard. He had ties with this school in some way, and even if Headmaster Ellison had been all but forthcoming about his rocky skepticism regarding Judge Stallard himself, I wasn’t totally sold on the idea that I was untouchable here.
If Richard knew of even one tiny misstep from me, I’d never ever get a way out. For all I knew, he was putting together a plan right this second to fend off the social worker and any unanswered questions and take me back. But still, I wanted to know why the headmaster was allowing me to do something my uncle forbade. I needed to make sense of it all.
“Because,” the headmaster whispered, finally answering me, “you remind me of someone.”
Chapter Thirteen