The Whip by Karen Kondazian Read Free Book Online Page A

the rope, the great thin coil of it? She must have had it ready somewhere nearby—a rope to catch a child with.
    She returned to the dormitory, carrying the rope over one arm and intercepted Lee in the act of trying to leave the room through the window. One leg was already out. In this awkward position he was indefensible. Miss Haden got a good fix on him. She looped the rope around his two wrists and pulled it tight, tying it with expert speed into a packing knot. The knot held. She began to pull on the rope.
    “You think you’re going to get away from me, Mr. Colton? Then you have another thought coming.”
    All the girls in the dormitory were awake at this point. They were sitting up in their beds; they were staring with dropped jaws at the great drama unfolding before them.
    “Help me, girls,” demanded Miss Haden with clenched teeth. “Help me pull.”
    A couple of girls swiveled to their feet, and tripping over themselves in dutifulness, rushed to take hold of the end of the rope.
    “Pull, girls. Pull.”
    Together they dragged Lee in through the window, over the sill, and onto the floor.
    He was swearing all the curse words he’d learned in his nine years—mild stuff, but nonetheless goading to Miss Haden. She realized then that the new headmaster had failed. That he was both weak and ineffectual in the face of sin and here, corroborating her with every foul word, was the very incarnation of sin. It was she who would have to save him.
    Charlotte was screaming and crying. She pulled on Miss Haden’s dress to no avail. She was swatted away like a naughty puppy.
    Miss Haden pointed toward two of the older girls. “You two bring the lantern and follow me. And the rest of you go back to your beds.”
    She dragged Lee out of the dormitory, through the front door and down the porch steps. Then she pushed him toward the old basswood tree that stood in the middle of the bare yard between the main building of the orphanage and the new boys’ wing.
    He wasn’t fighting back anymore. He was refusing to move unless pushed or dragged. He was sullen, and his sullenness as it turned out, was the greatest insolence of all. She missed the glorious sensation she’d had a few minutes earlier of battling with her archetypal enemy. He was deliberately denying her that; she understood, and in retaliation she pushed him a little harder than was necessary so that he fell to his knees at the base of the tree.
    She wrapped the long end of the rope around and around the tree and finished it off with a series of duplicate knots strong enough to seal a fate.
    “I will not tolerate this shocking and deliberate misbehavior,” she said. She was panting.
    Lee just stared at the ground.
    “This cannot go on,” she continued.
    The tiny purple vein that followed the length of her neck was throbbing. “You don’t like your own bed, Mr. Colton? Fine. You may spend the night out here, and as many nights as it takes to teach you the difference between what is right and proper and what is wrong and evil.”
    Some of the girls were coming out of the front door, and they were collecting, barefoot and silent, on the entrance stairway.
    Then there was movement in the crowd: Charlotte pushing her way through. In a moment she emerged in the front and stood alone there, sobbing before she made her way to Lee and Miss Haden.
    “Lee,” she said whimpering. “I love you.”
    He wouldn’t look at her.
    “Charlotte,” said Miss Haden. “Be quiet. Go back in. Get into bed. Girls, all of you, go in. There is nothing to see out here. Nobody to see.”
    “No,” cried Charlotte. “I’m going to stay out here. I want to help my brother.”
    Miss Haden snatched her arm and brought her own face down right in front of Charlotte’s.
    “He is not your brother,” she said. “I cannot and will not allow this unnatural relationship to continue. You are not to speak to him. You are not to play with him.”
    Charlotte spat at her.
    Miss Haden slapped her