Page 3 of Dirty (Chicago Underground 5)
Would she let me, if I asked? But I wouldn’t, for the very same reason I hadn’t brought Ella here in the first place. Henri was on the hunt, and this place was a too-easy target.
I shook my head. “I just stopped by… I came here because…” Because I thought she could give me advice. Something without pity, because I knew she didn’t have any.
Her lips tightened. Her hesitation drummed in my ears. She had helped a thousand girls. Why not me? Was I beyond repair, a lost cause? Then put me out of my misery.
Finally she gestured me inside. “Come with me.”
Our shoes clopped on the rubber floor, the sound bouncing off the egg-speckled walls. The fluorescent lights burned into my eyes, but despite that, some of my shock thawed. My tension eased. Strange, considering I’d just entered the human equivalent of the pound. The unwanted, the abused all crammed into cages, waiting for the world to want them again. But the air was bright and clean, and that was more than most of us would have asked for. The two girls who passed us in the hallway glanced at me curiously from beneath lowered lashes. No fear.
The sound of laughter and clinking metal on ceramic floated out from the cafeteria as we passed, comforting, familiar. It was like high school without the confusing and soul-deadening home life. Still, I didn’t doubt this place had its demons. They must have been banished to the shadows—neat trick, that.
I realized I’d lagged behind, and I hurried to catch up. “What do you do when someone doesn’t follow the rules?”
She didn’t look back. “It depends on the rule.”
“A big rule. Let’s say one of them punches the other in the face.”
“We don’t allow violence here.”
“She’s a rebel,” I said about my fictional rule breaker.
“We have a sliding scale of punishments, depending on the severity of the offense. There are a series of warnings. Then certain privileges will be removed. And finally, there are punishments.”
I grinned slightly, feeling back on solid ground. “Don’t tell me you paddle their behinds. That’s very naughty, Ms. Faust.”
Marguerite flashed me a repressive look. “If a girl is truly a danger to the others, we separate them. They eat their meals in their rooms and are given study work until they’ve shown they can interact with the other girls.”
We grew quiet, passing girls filing out of a classroom, giggling and bumping into each other.
“So basically, solitary confinement,” I said when they were out of earshot.
She sighed. “This is why I didn’t want to tell you. I knew you’d frame it that way.”
“The truthful way?”
“The worst possible way. We do what we have to do to make this work. There are only so many ways to keep teenagers in line short of beating them, which no, we don’t do. Do you think some legalized group home does it better?”
“Hardly.”
“These kids don’t have the luxury of a two-parent support system and the family dog. We are their family.”
“What if someone wants to leave Casa Faust?”
“When they turn eighteen, we help each girl with placement and relocation.”
“And if they want to leave before then?”
She paused with her hand on a metal doorway. “Then we keep them safe. And that means here. Don’t flip out. You had to know we couldn’t let them run back to guys who would hurt them and force them to say where they’d been staying.”
“It’s always about you, Marguerite.”
She sobered. “No man is going to hurt me or any one of the girls here. And one day, that will include you. You know that, right?”
Well, that was both comforting and creepy. “But not today.”
“Not today,” she agreed, opening the door and waving me inside. I followed her up a dimly lit metal staircase. We exited into a hallway exactly like the one downstairs, except this one was quiet. Empty. Eerie.
“You aren’t going to lock me up, right?” I asked. “Because I asked about leaving?”
