Rain drums its fingers on the garden shed.
They call it a garden shed, but in truth there is no garden on the grounds of Merilance, and the shed is barely even that. It sags to one side, like a wilting plant, made of cheap metal and moldering wood. The floor is littered with abandoned tools and shards of broken pots and the stubs of stolen cigarettes, and Olivia Prior stands among them in the rusted dark, wishing she could scream.
Wishing she could turn the pain of the fresh red welt on her hand into noise, overturn the shed the way she did the pot in the kitchen when it burned her, strike the walls as she longed to strike Clara for leaving the stove on and having the nerve to snicker when Olivia gasped and let go. The white-hot pain, the red-hot anger, the cook’s annoyance at the ruined mash, and Clara’s pursed lips as she said, “It couldn’t have hurt that much, she didn’t make a sound.”
Olivia would have wrapped her hands around the other girl’s throat right there if her palm weren’t singing, if the cook weren’t there to haul her off, if the gesture would have gained her more than a moment’s pleasure and a week’s punishment. So she’d done the next best thing: stormed out of the stuffy tomb, the cook bellowing in her wake.
And now she’s in the garden shed, wishing she could make as much noise as the rain on the low tin roof, take up one of the neglected spades and beat it against the thin metal walls, just to hear them ring. But someone else would hear, would come and find her, in this small and stolen place, and then she’d have nowhere to get away. Away from the girls. Away from the matrons. Away from the school.
She holds her breath and presses her burned hand against the cool metal shed, waiting for the ache in her skin to quiet.
The shed itself is not a secret…
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