Fallen Read Free Page A

maybe it would be best for her to be supervised all the time. No, no, we wouldn’t want to interfere with your system.”
    Clearly her father had not seen the conditions of his only daughter’s supervision. This place looked like a maximum-security prison.
    “And what about, what did you say—the reds?” Luce asked the attendant, ready to be released from the tour.
    “Reds,” the attendant said, pointing toward a small wired device hanging from the ceiling: a lens with a flashing red light. Luce hadn’t seen it before, but as soon as the attendant pointed the first one out, she realized they were everywhere.
    “Cameras?”
    “Very good,” the attendant said, voice dripping condescension. “We make them obvious in order to remind you. All the time, everywhere, we’re watching you. So don’t screw up—that is, if you can help yourself.”
    Every time someone talked to Luce like she was a total psychopath, she came that much closer to believing it was true.
    All summer, the memories had haunted her, in her dreams and in the rare moments her parents left her alone.
Something
had happened in that cabin, and everyone (including Luce) was dying to know exactly what.The police, the judge, the social worker had all tried to pry the truth out of her, but she was as clueless about it all as they were. She and Trevor had been joking around the whole evening, chasing each other down to the row of cabins on the lake, away from the rest of the party. She’d tried to explain that it had been one of the best nights of her life, until it turned into the worst.
    She’d spent so much time replaying that night in her head, hearing Trevor’s laugh, feeling his hands close around her waist, and trying to reconcile her gut instinct that she really was innocent.
    But now, every rule and regulation at Sword & Cross seemed to work against that notion, seemed to suggest that she was, in fact, dangerous and needed to be controlled.
    Luce felt a firm hand on her shoulder.
    “Look,” the attendant said. “If it makes you feel any better, you’re far from the worst case here.”
    It was the first humane gesture the attendant had made toward Luce, and she believed that it
was
intended to make her feel better. But. She’d been sent here because of the suspicious death of the guy she’d been crazy about, and
still
she was “far from the worst case here”? Luce wondered what else exactly they were dealing with at Sword & Cross.
    “Okay, orientation’s over,” the attendant said. “You’re on your own now. Here’s a map if you need tofind anything else.” She gave Luce a photocopy of a crude hand-drawn map, then glanced at her watch. “You’ve got an hour before your first class, but my soaps come on in five, so”—she waved her hand at Luce—“make yourself scarce. And don’t forget,” she said, pointing up at the cameras one last time. “The reds are watching you.”
    Before Luce could reply, a skinny, dark-haired girl appeared in front of her, wagging her long fingers in Luce’s face.
    “Ooooooh,” the girl taunted in a ghost-story-telling voice, dancing around Luce in a circle. “The reds are watching youuuu.”
    “Get out of here, Arriane, before I have you lobotomized,” the attendant said, though it was clear from her first brief but genuine smile that she had some coarse affection for the crazy girl.
    It was also clear that Arriane did not reciprocate the love. She mimed a jerking-off motion at the attendant, then stared at Luce, daring her to be offended.
    “And just for that,” the attendant said, jotting a furious note in her book, “you’ve earned yourself the task of showing Little Miss Sunshine around today.”
    She pointed at Luce, who looked anything but sunny in her black jeans, black boots, and black top. Under the “Dress Code” section, the Sword & Cross Web site had cheerily maintained that as long as the students were on good behavior, they were free to dress as they pleased,with just two