The Unseemly Education of Anne Merchant. Joanna Wiebe

so far, life at Cania Christy feels like life in a bad dream, like life on some planet filled with probing aliens.

      “Everyone does it,” Teddy states crossly. Classic that he would use the line teachers and parents have condemned for years.

      “My signature isn’t enough?”

      “Thou must bequeath it solemnly!” he cries finally. With his hands trembling, with a hysteric gleam in his eye, he stomps on the spot.

      “Teddy, come on! I mean, aren’t I supposed to be questioning stuff? That’s my PT, right? If I just gave in, wouldn’t I be, like, in violation or something?”

      Settling down, though his chest still heaves, he agrees. “I understand. Well done. But now that you’ve questioned it and learned that it is what you must do, you must do it.”

      Mental note: my Guardian will make up the rules as we go.

      “What we have here is a learning opportunity,” Teddy declares, taking my hand and pressing the soft pad of my fingertip. “Once you learn who’s in control, I’ll learn that you’re worth fighting for on graduation day.”

      With the needle, he pricks my finger and squeezes a drop of my blood onto the lower corner of each form. I press my thumb into the crimson drop; as I pull away, I stare for a moment at the fingerprint I’ve left behind, at the lines that swirl around the center like the walls of some fiery tornado around its funnel, at the mark they use to identify criminals, not students. I look at the tiniest flecks that the lines of my fingerprint leave, and I think of how those ridges are designed to fire signals to the brain when a surface feels dangerously sharp, dangerously hot.

      Not long after, Teddy heads to campus for an evening meeting of the Guardians, and, relieved to be alone, I bolt downstairs to the kitchen, where an old-school telephone—the rotary kind, black—clings to the wall. I need to talk to my dad. I need to know how much this place is costing him and if he has any idea he’s sent me to a place where creepy Guardian-people crawl into your soul and suggest you get by in life on your back.

      I pick up the receiver for the phone. But there’s no dial tone. A quick glance shows me there’s no cord connecting the two pieces.

      “Ten bucks says Teddy took the damn thing with him.”

      Restless and still shaken by the PT exercise, I slide on my boots and Gigi’s big, stinky jacket and head out the front door into the night air.

      There are two ways I could go: up-island to campus or down-island to the verboten village. Creeping over the grass under the twilight sky and onto the road, I look north at the endless stretch and then south through the haze to where a distant village I’m not supposed to enter sits in wait. Behind me, I can feel the presence of the Zin mansion, where the golden glow of warmly lit rooms fills just enough ornate windows to make me long for a life as pleasant for myself.

      I turn left. And, emboldened by my “look closer” PT, walk toward the village.

      Taking their cue from the cool weather, the leaves have started changing color. Spots of orange and violet spread through the woods on both sides of the road, their colors diluted by the gray air, which is crisp enough to turn my nose and fingertips red. Outside the village, I spy a craggy wooden sign that shows the population: 212.

      My PT may have given me the push I needed to head in this direction, but it hasn’t empowered me to such an extent that I actually intend to go into the village. Given everything I’ve been told today, especially if I want to be valedictorian next year, that would be a career-limiting move worthy of detention, demerits, suspension, or whatever they do at Cania to punish disobedient students. Veering away from the village just as its old pale fishing shacks come into view, I head toward the flash of a lighthouse that passes through the woods on the west side of the island. On my way, I wander by a hillside spotted with enormous Cape Cod–style homes that are anything but what I expected the villagers to live in. These people are the inhabitants of an old whaling village, after all. They should live in shanties with dimly lit porches. They should have tattered clothes that reek of fish guts. And yet, judging by their homes, you’d think they were all millionaires.

      “That’s not fair!” a man hollers suddenly. I can’t see him. He’s somewhere far ahead, on the other side of the woods.

      For a moment, I worry he’s shouting at me, and I scramble away. But when it’s obvious he doesn’t know I’m here, I inch toward his voice, to the edge of the woods and to the top of a low cliff overlooking not only the vast, smooth ocean and the distant twinkling lights of the Kennebunkport coast but also the marina, which houses more mini-yachts than it seems to be built for. Standing on the dock below me, deep in a fiery conversation, are three men. Two I recognize instantly: Headmaster Villicus and the spectacularly handsome Dr. Zin. But I don’t know who the third man is. He’s Indian, and he looks truly angry—the kind of anger where you expect he might stomp on the spot while steam pours out of his ears.

      Behind the trio, a sign warns visitors to report to Cania Christy or risk prosecution.

      The men stand just a dozen yards away from me. At any moment, Villicus could look up and see me here, wandering the outskirts of the village like a prize moron, standing in the passing beam of the lighthouse. Sure, I live on the village side of the line, so I’d have an excuse if it came to that. But something tells me Villicus isn’t one for excuses.

      I duck behind a tree. Shielded by its thick, furry trunk, which gives softly under my fingertips, I peek down.

      “But Lord Featherly promised!” the Indian man, who has a strong Scottish accent, shouts. Unmistakably new to the world of the wealthy, he wears dark-wash jeans, a Gucci-print shirt—collar flipped up—and an enormous pink-gold watch that flashes as he throws out his arms, exasperated. “He said you’d take care of me, Dr. Zin. Or are you just this old freak’s lackey?”

      “Lord Featherly has been loose with his information about this school,” Dr. Zin retorts coolly, his voice low and smooth like a cocoa-dusted truffle, like a deeper version of Ben’s. “And, allow me to remind you, he was in a different position than you are when he came to us, Manish.”

      “A different position? My company went public last year. Public! How rich do I need to be to send my daughter here?”

      “We are not talking about money,” Villicus interrupts. “You misunderstand the mandate of my institution.”

      “I just want what you’re giving these kids,” Manish says, lowering his voice. I inch closer to hear more. “My wife and I want it for our little girl. A future. As I said, I’ll pay anything—”

      “Our school starts in the ninth grade,” Dr. Zin explains. “Even if you had been invited and were not acting with such impropriety, your daughter would not qualify on age alone.”

      “But her grades were exceptional. She could make a go of it as a freshman.” He looks wildly between the two powerful men. “Lord Featherly said something about special tuition. I can give you anything you want. What will it take?”

      “Frankly, there’s nothing you could offer,” Dr. Zin says.

      “Please,” Manish begs, dropping to his knees. He throws himself at Villicus’s feet and wraps his arms around his old brown shoes. “Please. If you are the man I’ve been told you are, you can do this.”

      My eavesdropping is cut short when I hear leaves crunching behind me. My heart stops with a dull thump. My fingers claw into the tree bark. I close my eyes, and I freeze in place.

      I’m sure I’ll turn around and see Teddy. If not him, then some wild animal’s about to maul me. I don’t know which worries me more.

      “Man,” a girl says—and I promise, I nearly pee my pants. I suck my lips in to keep from screaming. “It’s hard to hear them when they whisper, isn’t it?”

      Whipping around, I find a black-haired girl smiling at me as she lightly punts the kickstand on her bike. She tiptoes to