Winter's Tale Read Free

departure.
Apparently, this wasn’t normal behavior for their liege. They took
a moment to recover, after which they pelted December even more
unabashedly with questions about Switzerland and skiing and which
designers Europeans were wearing on the slopes.
    December enjoyed being the center of
attention, but knew it wouldn’t last. Maintaining a circle of
sycophants took time and determination she didn’t have. Girls like
Nina were better suited for it. They believed being top monkey was
worth something.
    Hans , December mused with an
unoccupied corner of her mind.
    She might doubt lots of things in this world,
but not that Nina was right about the name.
    ~
    Getting kicked out of French class after
lunch was a breeze. The instructor’s command of the Gallic language
was shaky, to say the least. Muttering corrections of her tenses
beneath her breath achieved December’s goal handily.
    “Go then, if you’re so clever,” the weary
woman said. “Bring me a short biography of Victor Hugo before start
of class tomorrow. A thousand words . . . en francais, s'il vous
plait .”
    Since this was an assignment she could do in
her sleep, December curtsied and said merci .
    The dusty computer lab was between the
student’s common room and the library. The units were five years
old, but they accessed the Internet. To her delight, the Kingaken Courier ’s digitized records went back to the 1850s.
A search of earlier articles for anyone named Hans got results. A
farmer by that name won a plowing race at a fair. Another, a
blacksmith, had a daughter who married the mayor of Kingaken’s son.
Two different Hans’s in two different years crashed their jalopies
into the same pharmacy’s storefront. Sadly, none of these men
seemed likely to have been the subject of the statue. Her Hans was
handsome, and he’d had some big scandal attached to him. The
examples she uncovered were unremarkable.
    She came up short on her other searches as
well. Clearly, local records didn’t cover what she was looking for.
Was her mystery man older than they were? Did he perhaps predate
the cemetery and the school?
    I have to sneak out to him again , she
thought. See if I can find more clues .
    She gripped the edge of the dinged-up carrel
in which she worked. She didn’t think she was afraid to return. To
be honest, as she sat there staring sightlessly at the wall, she
wanted to squirm in her chair for different reasons than
nervousness.
    ~
    Rackham’s architects must have believed
privacy led young ladies into temptation. The dormitory housed
girls in groups of ten. Hospital-style curtains separated narrow
beds, each of which were supplemented by a wardrobe, a nightstand,
and a chest for sitting on or storing possession. Despite the
equalizing effect of uniform furnishings, Rackham’s students found
ways to declare which rung of the ladder they wished to claim.
    Nina, December noted, slept in an
honest-to-God Parisian lace peignoir. At the moment, she was rather
ostentatiously pretending to be unconscious. December expected this
was because she herself was undressed.
    She smiled with private amusement as she
donned a pair of white-piped dark gray pajamas. She hadn’t missed
that every open eye in the place was checking out her figure. Her
mother often tried to make December feel bad about her body. They
saw each other maybe once a year, and the first words out of her
mouth would be, “Good Lord, December, those pants make your hips
look enormous.” Meredith Worth didn’t realize that, in all their
time apart, December had made peace with her own lushness. She was
healthy, and boys liked the way she looked. More importantly, she
was fine with it herself. Whatever Nina’s clique of twigs might
whisper behind their hands, she knew some part of them was
jealous.
    I’m what they won’t let themselves be ,
she thought.
    She climbed into bed and dug out her
e-reader. Lights Out was harder to enforce in the age of
batteries.
    “Aren’t you sneaking