The Unseemly Education of Anne Merchant. Joanna Wiebe

have no idea what he’s referring to—I haven’t had more than one art show. It occurs to me that my dad may have played up my successes to get me in here, so I say nothing and hope not to shatter Villicus’s illusion. Besides, right now, I’m not thinking about art. All I’m thinking about is the unseemly presence of this man’s hands on my shoulders. I try to slink out from under his hands, but his grip is unyielding. It’s not that his touch is some creepy sex thing. It’s worse. It’s the energy he emits, something oppressive that’s intensified the moment he nears me; it strikes something uncomfortable buried deep inside, an unplaceable but overpowering sensation, like a feverish nightmare exhumed.

      At last, his hands slip from my shoulders, stripping away the sense of dread. He lurches toward his war medal case and stares through it while I try to shake off the memory of his touch.

      “Let me be clear.” He turns back to me. “Our admissions criteria are intentionally exclusionary, designed to keep out people like you. It is only by the kindness of those better than you that you are here today.”

      Don’t react to his insult, I tell myself. After all, my housemother isn’t exactly raving about me. And I’m sure my reaction to Harper this morning didn’t put me in a great social position. Freaking out on the headmaster now could put a quick, ugly stop to this “fresh start.”

      “How do you feel when I say such things?” he asks, looking at me as if he knows me.

      Sarcasm is my best defense. “What things?”

      He smirks. “Very well. We might have had a rather enlightening conversation, but you insist on being a child. I am compelled to tell you that you are here today because you have a benefactor.”

      “A benefactor?”

      “Senator Dave Stone—a friend of your father’s—has made it possible for you to be here.”

      Villicus sits at his desk again and pensively temples his fingers under his chin while I put two and two together. Dave Stone is Pilot’s dad. A cold wave of embarrassment rolls over me as I think of Pilot’s dad telling him about the charity case he has to sponsor for this rich-bitch boarding school. To say nothing of how odd it is to learn that my dad, who spends all of his time in a dark funeral home, is connected to a senator. I know Atherton is filled with the country’s wealthiest and most powerful people, but I didn’t know my dad knew any of them.

      “I’m sure you know that you ought to thank him.” He waits for me to nod, and I comply. “He put himself out there for you. Cania Christy accepts only people of a certain net worth and only on invitation. You meet neither criterion.”

      Stiffly, I utter, “I’ll be sure to thank him.”

      “And I’m sure I know how you’ll thank him.” Like perched black crows taking flight, Villicus’s eyes narrow in the cloud-like gray of his face. “You’ll thank him as all girls with your background thank men, especially men of affluence. And I do believe such appreciation will suit his tastes fine, nubile fraulein like you.”

      Tongue-tied at the shock of his comment, I can only blink. I’ve never even properly kissed a guy, and he thinks I’m going to sleep with some old friend of my dad’s to thank him for sending me to this place? In what world?!

      “Now, for the reason I actually called you here today.”

      “It wasn’t just to insult me?”

      Villicus snaps his fingers twice. His door flies open.

      And in waltzes this skinny beanpole of a guy—this tall, lanky thing with pockmarks on his cheeks and probing, miniscule, steel eyes. His frenetic leer lunges toward me.

      “Miss Merchant,” Villicus says, “meet your Guardian.”

three

       MY GUARDIAN

      SINCE FIRST HEARING ABOUT THIS WHOLE GUARDIAN idea, I’ve been naively filling in the blank after the word Guardian with the word angel. Guardian Angel. Part of me had expected that my Guardian would be ushering me through life here, helping me make decisions.

      But this scrawny man-child is no guardian angel.

      A mouth-breather no older than yours truly, he looks like someone you’d expect to crawl out from under the floorboards in a Wes Craven flick. Pale irises, greasy hair, and bumpy gray skin with little orange hairs poking out all over his jawline. I look from him to Villicus and back. A prerequisite to work at Cania must be that you be the ugliest son of a bitch alive.

      “I’m Ted Rier,” my Guardian says. He’s got a German accent, just like Villicus. “You may call me Teddy.”

      “Ted is my newest assistant and the ideal Guardian for you,” Villicus adds, just as my pathetic excuse for a Guardian shuts the door and scurries to take the seat next to me.

      Trying to catch my gaze, Teddy lifts my hand and kisses it. It is impossible not to notice the white flecks in the corners of his mouth. It is nearly impossible not to cringe—yet I manage—knowing my hand is so close to that or not to pull away too quickly when he smoothly says he’s charmed to make my acquaintance.

      “It would be great,” I say as Villicus sits and Teddy opens his cheap-looking briefcase, “if someone could explain what exactly a Guardian is supposed to do. I assume there’s a connection between a Guardian and a PT, but I’m fuzzy on both.”

      “If I may?” Teddy asks Villicus, who nods, allowing Teddy to field my questions. “Miss Merchant, first things first. I understand you attended a school prior to this one, and at that school you earned top grades.”

      “Top of my class and top of the Dean’s List each year,” I admit.

      Teddy smirks. “I didn’t know they had ‘deans’ at public schools.”

      “Which is supposed to mean what?”

      Neither Teddy nor Villicus seems to appreciate my tone much. As if they’re allowed to imply insults, but I’m not allowed a defense.

      “You and I are on the same team,” Teddy tells me. “If I have offended you, forgive me. But the fact is that you are familiar with and comfortable in an academic environment that breeds much lower expectations than Headmaster Villicus demands here at Cania Christy. You were a top performer in California. You excelled among the uninspired. But now you’re among a new class of people. And you are competing for a title that, I give you my word, every student here wants more than you want to go to Brown on full scholarship.”

      I’m about to ask how on earth he could know that when I realize that my dad must have put that info on my application form. So I skip to my second question: “I’m competing to be valedictorian, you mean?”

      Teddy drops a leaflet in the hand he kissed, which still feels icky. I read its headline.

      “The Race to Be Valedictorian: Only the Supreme Survive.” Dropping the sheet momentarily, I look from Teddy to Villicus, who is watching me with a small smile tipping the corners of his lips skyward. “Like ‘only the strong survive’?”

      Teddy glowers at me, and I immediately realize that this may be the one school on earth where “stupid questions” actually do exist.

      “What I mean is,” I backtrack, “if evolution—perhaps the most complex process in the universe, a process requiring unimaginable patience and rewarding natural talents—is all about the strong surviving, attaining the Big V must be an incredible challenge if only the supreme survive?”

      Villicus stands and stoops behind his desk like a bird of prey, beady eyes glowing. He begins to speak—slowly, like one of those dictators