Chapter 7: Poison Apples for the Outsiders
“TAKE care of the table and the bookshelves today.”
At Charles’ orders, I wiped down the table with a wet cloth.
Unlike my upperclassman’s room, the prefects’ rooms consisted of a bedroom and two parlors each. They needed a quieter atmosphere to handle visits from housemasters or sit down and give advice to their students.
Dorm brothers were in charge of cleaning these rooms. The twins complained that I shouldn’t be doing something like that, but a little cleaning wasn’t more than I could handle. Besides, Charles only asked me to do simple tasks like dusting the bookshelves and wiping down furniture.
The other dorm brothers have it rough since they get worked to the bone. At least Charles does most of his own cleaning.
I wished the twins would learn from him.
Dum and Dee had always left their toys on the floor, pretended to be witches whenever someone handed them brooms, and left their clothes unfolded after being cleaned.
But they’d undergone slight changes since coming to Ark School.
Their room was rarely messy when I visited them (though they were usually sprawled out in bed and eating candy). They’d also started rounding up their own laundry for the cleaners.
It was a loose definition of “cleaning,” but felt acceptable for boys like them. It seemed like sending them to boarding school was the right choice, after all—ignoring the demon and their traps, of course.
Lost in thought, I got my skirt caught on the splintered table.
Charles saw this and bent down to free me.
“I feel like a father when I watch you, Miss Alice. I thought Robins would be the only person at this school to make me feel that way.”
“You two are close, aren’t you? How long have you been friends?”
“Since we first enrolled in school. I used to get beat up by upperclassmen back then.”
“What?!”
I could hardly believe the shocking past Charles revealed to me next.
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WHEN Charles first came to this school, it was an unwritten rule that the younger kids who didn’t become dorm brothers were allowed to be treated like slaves.
Charles wasn’t a dorm brother that year. The upperclassmen would call him over to them and beat him up for the made-up reason that his oversized tailcoat “pissed them off.” They were the sons of noblemen, so even the prefects pretended not to know about it. Teachers told him that students were always getting into fights with each other. They didn’t take him seriously.
The violence only worsened with each passing day. He cried out for help but was told it was his fault for being weak. Charles grew into a student who neither smiled nor cried over time. He shoved his bruised body into his uniform and focused only on his survival.
One day, Charles was punched so hard that he fell onto his back on the grassy plaza. He opened his eyes when he felt something cool against his cheek. Overhead, dark clouds were starting to roll in.
That was when he remembered the prefect telling him a storm would come later that day. Thunderstorms were common so close to the sea. It was dangerous to be outside the dormitory once he started to hear the roar of thunder.
He figured that was why the plaza was so empty.
But Charles still didn’t move.
He’d been abandoned by his teachers, the other students, and his own family. Everyone would be happier without him around.
Charles stood up, enduring the pain of his aching body, and pleaded up at the sky. “Strike me. Just end it all, already!”
The sky rumbled. The next moment, a spear of light brighter than anything he’d ever seen shot down. The lightning bolt splintered down from the sky toward Charles.
It would be the end of his cruel fate.
Amid his hope and anguish, a massive wing suddenly shielded him. He’d never seen a creature like that before. It was an incredible being with the body of a lion and the head of an eagle.
He realized that it might be the monster said to live at Ark School.
The lightning struck the monster instead of Charles.
Charles lost consciousness there and then with its silhouette burned into his retinas. When he awoke, he was in a bed in Unicorn Dorm for some reason.
“Are you all right?”
It was a fellow student looking down at him with concern—a student named Robins.