Chapter 3: The Boarding School—The Dungeon
With only one way of escape.
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Violet jogged through the nearly empty hallways of the boarding school. She could not be late.
The biology teacher had held her back to discuss her latest assignment; she had barely achieved a passing grade on it. She listened to him drone on and on about academic excellence and the prestige of their school and it all made her want to roll her eyes, but she resisted. Now, she had to run for her life to her literature class.
The hallways grew more and more empty as the grey and blue masses filed into their classes, but as she passed a barren hallway with no classrooms on it, she almost collided with a burly kid twice her size. The guy cussed as he spun around and knocked into her.
“Watch it, kid,” he growled.
“I’m not the one who takes up half the hallway,” Violet muttered, weaving past him.
He muttered something foul under his breath again, but she carried on.
“Watch out; she might clout you like she did to Beth,” his friend snickered.
Violet rolled her eyes and continued down the hallway.
“Let me go!”
She turned and saw the burly guy and his friend had a small boy by the elbows. They were dragging him down the hallway.
“It’s time this smarty pants got in a bit of trouble with the dean,” the friend sneered.
“Let’s just get this over with before we all get caught,” the burly kid grumbled.
Violet heard a door close, and her heart skipped a beat. She turned and ran down the hallway. She flew through the wooden door just as the professor walked towards it.
“Nice for you to join us, Violet,” he said, pulling it shut behind her.
Violet slid into her chair and sat back, trying to bring her breathing down to a normal pace.
The professor stood at the front and began lecturing about Shakespeare’s Macbeth. As the class carried on and Violet’s sweat cooled, she wished she had worn a thicker sweater; she should have learned already that the classrooms were so cold. She pretzeled her legs closer together to try to keep them warm but did so as discretely as possible so she wouldn’t get called out for being “antsy.”
Yesterday a kid was forced to stand on his desk for the entire period as tall and still as he could because he wouldn’t stop tapping his toes. Another kid had his hand strapped for beating his pen on his desk twice (she later overheard him saying to his friends in the dining hall that he was only trying to get it to work). Violet was terrified the professor may see her shaking. She didn’t dare scratch an itch all day.
Violet wondered in the night as she laid in bed if perhaps spending many days with Josephine would be as bad as this. Perhaps she was wrong about that. But she was not wrong about the hatefulness that brewed inside her aunt—this school was evidence enough alone. Only someone who hated their child would send them to an institution like this. She knew that for certain after day two, and now at week four it was carved in stone.
The classrooms had more boys than girls. She found out from the woman who gave her a tour of the building the day she arrived that they had only started accepting girls last year. She also told Violet she should be very grateful of that—Violet didn’t reply.
The only thing Violet liked about the place was that it looked like a great castle, which she had always longed to see. There was a lovely painting in the dining room back home of a stone castle that her mother had apparently painted. Violet had admired the painting so much as a child, and each year she tried to recreate it—though it never met the glory of her mother’s art. “I think you’ve painted enough castles. You should try your hand at portraits, Violet,” her father had said. “I’m sure Aunt Josephine would be willing to pose for you.” Violet’s father had been turned away from her when he said it, and Violet had made a silent gagging motion. Matilda had slapped her in the side of the head with her duster for it.
The school, much like a castle, was a towering square building at the top of a hill encased with thick old trees, with peaked towers at each corner. A stone wall surrounded the building, extending upward half its height. “Students are never permitted to leave the premises, especially not climbing the stone walls. Anyone caught climbing over the walls will be severely punished!” the tour-lady had said. “Only if they get caught,” Violet had murmured. The lady had glared down at her but said nothing.
The tour-lady took her through the tall and wide wooden doors, which opened into a large entry way with tunnels leading in every direction. Students and teachers had been walking about, whispering and laughing as they went. Students had large books and notebooks under their arms and teachers carried leather briefcases and bags. Everyone looked the same; girls wore pleated skirts with a white and navy plaid pattern and navy sweaters to match. The boys wore the same sweaters with plaid sweater vests and tan pants. The teachers wore plain dresses and suits, all dull colours of black, brown, and indigo. Violet had felt self-conscious as she considered her mint green dress and bright white sweater. Now, she was adorned in the same dull, colourless clothes.
Finally, the teacher called the class to an end and the school day was over. He asked the students to pick up their assignments from last week as they passed through the door. Violet gathered her books under her arms and put her head down as she made her way to the wooden door. As per usual, kids pushed past her and knocked her to the side, leaving her at the end of the line. Barely looking at the professor, she murmured a “thank you,” and gently took the papers he handed her.
“Miss Bennett,” he said, “I’d like a word with you.”
Violet withheld a groan. She nodded and stepped backwards.
“You’re aware, I’m sure, at what kind of school this is,” he said.
She dared a glance up at him. Broad and mountain-like, the giant professor loomed over her more than any man she’d met, with thick greying brown hair and a beard just as thick around his neck and chin.
She would have liked to say, “Yes, a prison,” but she refrained and nodded.
“This school is for some of the most talented youth in our country. Parents pay good money to have their children here.”
“Yes sir,” she replied, staring down at her shining black shoes. They only reminded the students of this every day.
“I’ve graded many essays in this classroom, many impressive ones. I’ve taught here for ten years and three months. And never have I ever read a paper with such…” he paused. She scrunched her body up, waiting for the blow. “With such… beauty.”
She caught her breath and stood taller. “Pardon, sir?”
“Your writing is beautiful, Miss Bennett.”
She blinked. “Thank you, Professor Williams.”
“It is a natural gift, young lady. Do not squander it. Continue to work hard. I spoke with your other teachers after reading your work. They say you do not excel so well in sciences or mathematics—in fact, you’re doing quite poorly. They thought I had you confused with some other student because of how highly I spoke of you. ‘It cannot be possible, Professor Williams,’ they said, ‘that you speak of that Miss Violet Bennett. She makes sloppy mistakes in arithmetic and has no sense when it comes to chemistry. She cannot be your best student.’ And yet, she is. Get to work, Miss Bennett. You need to get the rest of your schoolwork caught up the level of your writing abilities.”
Tears stung her eyes. She felt as if she had been both crowned and stripped of her royal clothes before her kingdom in the same second. Hold your tongue, Miss Bennett. She heard Matilda’s voice ring through her mind so clearly it was as if she were standing right next to her. I’m going to make my tongue bleed from holding it so hard, Matilda. If it came down to it, she would let the words out—because scathing words were better than shedding tears of hurt, and scathing words usually fending the tears off. “Thank you, Professor,” she replied through her teeth, tucking a wayward strand behind her ear. “I will go back to my dorm to work.”
“Good idea, Miss Bennett. You cannot be satisfied with good work in one department and chaotic in another. Perfection in all is the only option. I will be writing home to your family to tell them and suggest that if your grades do not improve in the rest of your studies, that you stay with us for the entire summer.” Then he turned and sat down at his desk, and she darted from the room, rattling off every way of saying, “I hate you,” in her mind.
Violet kept her head down as she walked through the crowded halls. Usually, she would walk slowly through the stone hallways and listen to the clack of her shoes on the stone floors as she gazed out the tall, stained-glass windows that lined the hallway. But today she fought back tears, so she kept her head down and made her way through the maze of students littering the hallways and chatting around her. She only wanted to get back to her room.
At the end of the hallway, she pushed through the creaking wooden door and down the spiral staircase. She was going down one of the corner towers to the ground level. Once out of the staircase, she went down the hallway to the arched twin doors that lead to the courtyard. She heard the pitter-patter of the rain falling, as it always seemed to do in this place, but she pushed through anyway to the outside.
The school was like a thick rectangle with a hollow middle open to the outdoors. Stone walkways in the centre moved in perfect lines and corners, but no flowers or plants grew there other than the grass that was kept short and tidy.
There were four twin, arched doors, one on each wall; the one to the north led out of the school (it was well-guarded day and night, and no one passed through without a professor and a letter approved by the dean), the one to the south led to classrooms (where Violet had just left), and the ones to east and west led to the dorm rooms (east for girls, west for boys). Throughout, there were doors to get to the exterior of the school; there were courts and tables there within the walls for the students to play, lounge, and eat.
Violet made her way for the east doors so she could cascade into her bed and weep. She wasn’t sure what she hated more now—she hated Josephine even more now for sending her to such a forsaken place, but she equally hated this place and loathed the thought of staying the summer here. She had yet to see a sunny day on these grounds or even a flower. Either rain or fog hung within these walls, and not even a tree could be seen from within them. This place was no majestic castle but a dungeon.
Violet’s clothes clung to her body from the rain and her hair frizzed around her shoulders and face. She did not care. She did not like any of these students and could care less what they thought of her.
When she was about halfway across the lawn, she heard the west doors burst open. She paused and looked over as a boy (the one who had been drug down the hallway before class) was being hauled by his ear by the biology professor.
“Stop! You’re going to rip my ear off my head!” he squealed, limping along next to the professor.
“Climbing the wall is no small offense, boy!” the frail, old man growled, hauling the boy even harder by the ear. “This is the final strike! Your parents will be contacted immediately, and you will be sent home!”
The boy met Violet’s eyes and she looked away. She didn’t have the courage—she had her own problems, her own heartaches, and right now she couldn’t give herself to help that boy. She could only look away. The word home nearly buckled her inside—if only she could be sent home. But that didn’t stop him from what he did next:
“Wait! She saw! She saw Adam and Vincent hauling me down the hallway! They forced me to do it and ran away!”
Violet stood and watched while the professor dragged the boy across the lawn and towed past her. The professor had his eyes trained forward to the north doors but paused and glanced over at Violet. “No need to gawk, lassie! Be on your way now!”
Violet felt the words form in her mouth and then melt away. The boy strained to look at her as the professor dragged him away, but Violet quickly put her head down and plowed forward. The rain was picking up now, and her clothes were surely soaked. That didn’t matter. Her heart pounded in her chest because, at that moment, she realized that she may have found her way to get out of this dungeon—for good.
Ahh! Loved this chapter! My heart aches for Violet!