Page 2 of Heartless Heathens

The reality is—my story doesn’t have a shocking start. No blood curdling event that would pull you in and make you think it’s even worth listening to.

Or let alone me telling it to you.

A story is only worth telling if the lie is worth listening to. And that’s just the thing about me. I’m not worth listening to.

Hesaid so.

Headmaster Frollo, the Archbishop. That’s what most people call him around here.

I call him Father, you know, in theholyleader sort of way.

He’s not my real parent and he doesn’t miss the opportunity to remind me of it. I’m just a burden he was strapped with, a dirty secret he has to keep from the world.

You see, I’m a myth around here.

An urban legend.

You grow up locked away in the belltower of a religious university and you end up as the ghost that everyone whispers about. They walk past with their necks strained, looking up in their search for me.

The headmaster’s secret ward.

They’re desperate to get a peak of the girl born of sin.

Father Frollo said my mother was a whore who came to him for help when the sickness hit. She was pregnant and had nowhere to turn to. She died in labor, and the pious Cläude Frollo was a man of virtue. He’d never turn away an innocent in need, no matter what others in his position would have forced him to do in the name of purity and God.

He raised me. Kept me a secret from the church he now leads and the school he rules. They would look down on him for helping someone as tainted with sin as my mother and taking in her shameful offspring.

So here I stay, locked away inside, where no one even knows I exist. To protect his virtue, and my own.

And that’s how it’s always been, as far back as I can remember. But I’m not a little girl anymore, and this is the year I promised myself that I would convince Father Frollo to let me join the students in class. I’ve excelled in all of my homeschooling, and I’m more than ready to be out there with them.

I’m desperate to know what people are really like. All I know is how they appear from a distance. The far off sound of their laughs and conversations entwined with the music of the wind brushing through the thick cover of trees that surround the campus.

Until the leaves start falling.

Summer is wrapping up, and soon everyone will return to campus for the year, new and old students. I don’t bother to get to know them by their faces. They’ll be gone in time, and I’ll still be here, just like Laverne. Weathering away like the clock on the bell tower of this very chapel.

Two decades ago, an illness spread. More than two-thirds of the world’s population ended up dying in the first five years from it before they could produce a vaccine. Some thought this was the world’s way of ridding itself of the very generations that were killing the planet. But, the devout—those like Father Frollo—were certain this was God’s will.

A test of faith.

The gauntlet to Heaven.

My mother died of it while giving birth to me, so by his reasoning, I should have died too. Just by existing, I had failed his Holy test. It was nearly impossible to feel the urge to redeem my eternal soul, as Father Frollo called it. Sighing, I tuned in toMr. Rogersfor the fifth time today on the only TV channel I got. In a couple hours, my tablet’s screen time restriction would be up, and I’d be able to play some games to dull the ache of boredom. Nothing else but the games worked on it, anyway.

Everything I learn goes through him first, and that’s for a reason. I just haven’t figured out why yet.

“Do you wanna hear my speech?” I asked Laverne, pulling the crumpled-up piece of paper out of my pocket. “He won’t be able to say no once he’s heard my speech. Actually, it’s more of a bullet point list, but I hear those are popular too.” I shrugged.

Laverne gave me that stoic look that said I was stupid to hope Father Frollo would ever let me take classes with the other students.

“Well, maybe if you weren’t so negative, things might actually go my way. I think you’re conspiring against me.” I frowned, leaning on her with a little too much of my weight.

She didn’t respond. Typical.

“Watch it, Laverne.” I patted my best friend’s cold stoney head before turning back inside the bell tower. “I’m always only a kick away from sending you tumbling down to the depths.” I reminded her with a sinister chuckle.

I’m pretty sure she let out a sarcastic “HA” at me, but it could have been the crow that landed on her head. How do you survive eighteen years of your life in solitude, with no one but an adoptive father who resents and despises your very existence, without going completely bonkers?