True Heiress Never Lies! novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Cedar Hollow

Sonia's first night at the detention center ends with a warning she cannot report anything.

Cedar Hollow smelled like bleach and wet wool.

A woman in a gray cardigan met me at the intake door and said her title was director.

She had a soft voice and a kind face, and she called me sweetheart.

I almost believed her.

"Your father has already called," she said. "He wants you to have everything."

She took me down a hall with painted-over windows.

An officer unlocked a room with a metal chair in it.

"Sit," he said.

I sat, and a second officer came in with clippers.

"Hair rule," he said. "Everyone's the same length."

"It's already short enough to tie back."

"Everyone's the same length."

My hair had been long since I was nine.

My mother used to brush it every night, a hundred strokes, and count out loud.

It fell on the floor in long dark-gold ropes.

I watched it fall and did not say a word.

When they were done, I put my hand to my head and felt cold air where my braid had been.

They gave me a gray uniform and a number.

I was bed fourteen, row B.

The dormitory had twenty bunks and one window high up near the ceiling.

The girl in the next bunk was already awake.

She was sixteen, with a split lip and a tattoo of a star on her wrist drawn in ballpoint pen.

"Don't look at the night officer," she whispered when the lights went out. "Never meet his eyes."

"Why?"

"Because he counts it as a challenge."

"I haven't done anything to him."

"That's the point. You don't have to."

I lay on the thin mattress and listened to nineteen girls breathing.

At two in the morning, a flashlight went down the row.

It stopped at my bunk.

"New girl," a man said.

He was big, with a thick neck and a ring of keys on his belt.

"Hartley. Number fourteen."

"Yes, sir."

"Stand up."

I stood.

"Your daddy's rich," he said. "That right?"

I didn't answer.

"I asked you something."

"My father pays a lot of bills," I said. "I don't know about rich."

He hit me with the flat of his hand across my ear.

I fell against the bunk rail and bit my tongue.

My mouth filled with blood.

Nobody in the room moved.

"Manners," he said. "Next time you say 'sir' twice."

He walked on down the row.

The girl in the next bunk was staring at the ceiling with her eyes full of water and her lips pressed shut.

I sat on the floor for a long time.

I did not cry.

At breakfast I walked straight past the line of girls to the wall by the door.

There was a poster there with a phone number on it.

STATE YOUTH OMBUDSMAN. REPORT ANY MISTREATMENT.

Under it hung a clipboard with a pen on a string and a sign-up sheet.

Nobody had written on it for a long time.

The paper had gone yellow at the edges.

I picked up the pen.

I wrote my number, the date and what had been done to me and by whom.

I wrote in my neatest school handwriting.

Behind me, a girl hissed, "Don't."

"It says to report it."

"Please don't," my bunkmate said, very low. "Sonia."

I had told her my name only that morning.

I tore the sheet off the clipboard, folded it and put it in my sock.

I had meant to hand it to the first adult who looked like they cared.

At the end of the breakfast line, the director was waiting.

She was holding a coffee cup.

"Good morning, sweetheart," she said.

She held out her hand, palm up.

"What do you have for me?"

"Nothing."

"Your sock is lumpy."

My face went hot.

I had never been able to lie to anyone, and she knew it.

I took the paper out and gave it to her.

She read it all the way through.

Then she folded it in half and in half again, and slid it into her cardigan pocket.

"That's very brave," she said. "You write so well."

"I want it sent to the ombudsman."

"Of course you do."

She leaned down until her face was by mine.

She smelled like peppermint.

"Every complaint comes through my office," she said, in the same kind voice. "Every call, every letter, every visit."

She tapped my chest with one finger.

"Your father pays for me to be kind to you. He doesn't pay for me to be fair."

Then she smiled.

"Welcome to Cedar Hollow, Sonia."

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