Flawed (Flawed, #1)(74)

My mom is in the fashion industry, and this is not a lesson she has newly learned. She has always believed that everybody has an agenda, so we sit at the kitchen table with Ms. Dockery before I go to the library to begin.

“Celestine is the best student in my class by far, Ms. North,” Ms. Dockery says, in response to Mom’s rather forward question as to why she’s here.

“Call me Summer, please, and as you can see, and as you know, my daughter has been through a lot. Too much. I need to make sure that you have her best interests at heart, that you will not abuse her or treat her unkindly, and that you will give her every chance that she deserves to succeed.”

I look at Mom in surprise.

“Summer,” Ms. Dockery says, smiling, “I appreciate everything you have said, but I am merely here to teach. Anything else that has happened has no bearing on what will happen in our classes together. Celestine’s grasp of complex theorems is remarkable. She seems to understand and remember them almost instantly. She has a wonderful mind. I simply want to make sure my A student does not misrepresent me. Call it selfish, if you will”—she blushes—“but I believe my students represent me, my value as a teacher. For Celestine not to reach her full potential would be a personal failure to me.”

I’ve learned by now that I haven’t been a good judge of character. I always knew that Juniper was but never knew that I was so bad. I seem to have gotten it wrong each and every time, and I need Juniper’s strength of understanding and reading people to help me through. Though the irony is that I even misjudged my own sister. I think of Carrick and how he read every situation. A roll of the eyes; a square, untrusting jaw; black eyes that never moved when he found a target, that had the ability to sear the surface off everything, as though he were trying to analyze a person and cut right to the heart of the truth with one long look.

I am not in the mood for today’s schooling. I’m exhausted. I’ve lost all hope. Heartbroken by what Art and Juniper did to me, still sore from Friday’s beating, frustrated by Mr. Berry’s and the guards’ being gone, and now Carrick, the one I thought could help me, is impossible to find, managing to avoid even the Whistleblowers. No wonder he hasn’t come to find me. It’s too dangerous.

Mom seems satisfied by my teacher’s responses. I, on the other hand, am not so sure. Ms. Dockery and I go into the library.

“First things first,” she says in a no-nonsense tone, quite different from the one she used in the kitchen. “Call me Alpha, not Ms. Dockery. If I’m to be in your house, then we’re on the same level.”

I nod.

She retrieves papers from her bag and sits down opposite me. “Second, here’s our schedule of work, cleared by the school and the Guild,” she says in a bored tone. “I had to go through it with them so clearly and slowly that I should have charged them a teaching fee.”

I laugh in surprise at her sudden change in personality.

“Should anyone ask, and they most likely will, this is what we’re doing. But between you and me, we’ll be working on so much more.” She rolls up her sleeves. “And third, I should inform you of this.” She stands up and pulls her blouse out of the waistband of her trousers.

I look away, embarrassed by my teacher’s sudden show of flesh, her stomach so close to my face. But when I can see from the corner of my eye that she won’t cover herself up until I’ve looked, I slowly turn to face her. And there on her lower abdomen is a red F contained by a red circle. Not a scar, but a tattoo.





FIFTY-THREE

I GASP. “WHO put that there?”

“I did.”

“But I would do anything to get mine off and you put it there yourself?”

“It’s different when the power is taken away from you,” she says gently. “And there are many more people with these tattoos. We see being Flawed as a strength, Celestine. If you make a mistake, you learn from it. If you never make a mistake, you’re never the wiser. These so-called perfect leaders we have now have never made a mistake. How can they have learned what’s right and wrong, how could they have learned anything about themselves? About what they feel comfortable doing, about what they feel is beyond the scope of their character? The more mistakes you have made, the more you have learned.”

I try to let this sink in, but I just can’t wrap my head around it. “Then I must be pretty wise,” I joke.

“The wisest,” she says seriously. “That’s my point. The Flawed court is Flawed in itself, Celestine. This doesn’t just represent that I feel we’re all flawed, it’s a symbol, showing that I support your cause.”

And I know that it has begun. This secret movement that Pia had warned me about, that Lisa Life is writing about. I am face-to-face with someone who is a part of it.

“When you get it right, Celestine North, boy, do you get it right. Your actions on the bus aside”—she waves her hand dismissively as if that was no big deal—“because we all have at least one random act of kindness in us, even the bad guys. But your quotes have been nothing short of perfect. Bang on the money.” She bangs her fist on the table, and I jump.

“Pia Wang’s articles have been distortions of the truth.”

“I’m not talking about Pia Wang. I’m talking about her alter ego, Lisa Life.”