Page 42 of A Scandal in Homeroom
“So child services took you away and placed you in Thornfield Home.”
“How do you know about Thornfield Home anyway?”
“I was told,” I answered.
“By who?”
“Bywhom,” I corrected her.
“You’re better than me at Chemistry, not English.By whois perfectly acceptable.”
My lips twitched. She wasn’t wrong. “That’s right. You’re in AP English. AP Chemistry, AP American History…”
“How do you know my schedule?”
I sniffed and waved my hand in the air. “This is Haddonfield. Not a major metropolitan city. Getting access to what I want at school and other places is fairly trivial.”
There was no point in letting her know I’d already found and read her mother’s criminal record, as well as the CPS file on her.
Upon arriving in Haddonfield this summer, I’d offered my services as an intern at Town Hall. Expressing a deep affinity for criminal justice and all things related to local government, I’d been given menial task work throughout the various different offices. Which, of course, gave me unfettered access to all the information I cared to have.
Security was not a pressing concern for the Haddonfield Police Department.
I knew Irene had been abandoned in an empty apartment in Camden, a city in southern Jersey riddled with drugs, crime and poverty. She’d been under nourished and clearly traumatized and had actually made the call to CPS herself.
According to her physical examination, it didn’t appear that she’d been physically or sexually abused. Which answered one question I’d feared.
However, reading facts from a folder wasn’t enoughthoughto satisfy me. I wanted more.
“Okay, why did you go find my schedule?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Because.”
“That’s a shit answer. Locke, cut the crap. What do you want from me?”
Everything. I want everything from you, and I don’t know how to make it stop.
“Why don’t you want to talk about Thornfield Home? Did something happen to you there?”
“No,” she answered quickly. “Nothing happened. Not to me. I don’t like to talk about it because it was a shitty place to be.”
“It had to be better than where you’d been.”
She stood then, doing her own version of pacing, which was more or less rocking from her toes to her heels and back. Irene had amazing balance.
“Sure, but that wasn’t hard to beat. Thornfield was just a dorm. We all wore the same uniforms. We all ate the same food, woke up at the same time, went to bed at the same time. It wasn’t a prison, but it felt like it. The worst part about it was that you knew exactly what you were. No mistaking the kids from Thornfield Home. They wereunwanted. It was like walking around with a U pinned to your chest. You were condemned for it even though it was totally out of our control.”
“You had Janie,” I said.
“I had Janie,” she agreed. “She kept me sane. Janie has this…serenity about her. Like she can take body blow after body blow and simply absorb it. You would think maybe that makes her weak, but it doesn’t. It makes her so incredibly strong. I wanted to be that strong. I still do. It’s why I…”
She trailed off, and I could see by her expression she’d nearly forgotten who she was talking to. “Why you what?”
She shook her head. “There is nothing you need to know about Thornfield Home. It’s abandoned now. Empty.”
“Interesting, because I’d heard a report about lights coming from within the building.”
She whipped her head toward me. “Lights? No way.”
