Sarah Benadine is Dead

Chapter VII, Part I

Allison Groves needed pencils. "The Infamous Pencil Snapper," she was sometimes called. Even the teachers said it occasionally, most notably Professor Diefenbaker, history. They meant no malice; it was merely the truth. Allison wrote hard and fast, a furious pace, got excited and got frustrated, and broke more pencils than perhaps anyone the good school of Briargate had ever seen. A fraction, of course, were on purpose, but a greater amount were purely accidental, and at any given time a person could find at least two or three pencil halves scattered around her dorm room—something that always drove Tuly Lewis insane. Allison Groves was the greatest threat to a yellow lead stick the world had ever known.

Unexpectedly, it was not because Allison was out of pencils—having snapped all of hers into pieces—that she needed them. She had three in her possession already that would have been perfectly serviceable. It was what came next that required more. There was work to be done. She needed a stash of them. Just in case. After all, she knew she was the Infamous Pencil Snapper just as well as anyone else did.

On the second floor of Briargate, in an offshoot from the West Wing, there was a little room that had until two years previous been used for storage—sheets, linen, pillowcases. In 1953 it had been transformed into a small shop that had once jokingly and then earnestly—as those types of things sometimes go—been called "Your Local Trashbin." It had been started by a group of five ambitious second years who realized profit could be made from lost pencils, pens, and erasers, and other various supplies gathered from home. All kinds of rumors swirled around about how those five had managed to convince Headmistress Lea to let them open the place: tales of bribery, blackmail, and begging on the ground. The truth was not nearly so exciting; a girl with the unique and unlikely name of Wylie Grace had simply gone and asked.

Two years after it opened, Your Local Trashbin was doing just fine. It was still run by the same group of students, fourth years now, only there were just four instead of five. All kinds of bits and bobs could be bought at the Trashbin by the students for a penny or two—including baked goods made on weekends by co-shop owner and cook extraordinaire, Stacie Rothschild. Of course, there were a good number of students who refused to go near the baked cookies or muffins, or even the Trashbin itself, because of ideas the students themselves could hardly fully understand, only perpetuate.

Allison Groves was not one of those students. Every few Sundays she'd stop in and see what Stacie had cooked up—the scones were immaculate—and she was constantly buying new pencils there. It goes without saying the Trashbin was where she went now to stock up.

Shannon Malone had never been to the Trashbin when Allison insisted she tag along. They'd gone together to hunt down Caleb, pounding an incessant rhythm on his dormitory door on a Wednesday, during lunch. (A casual observation made by many who attended Briargate: Shannon Malone, Allison Groves, and Caleb Vance—and later others as well—rarely ate lunch.) Finally, the door was jerked open, and Caleb stood in the threshold. He looked affable enough, but there was a big black-and-blue bruise painted on his right eye. Shannon gasped in horror when she saw it, but Allison merely frowned.

"Dean or Vince?" she asked dully.

"Stephanie," Caleb replied with a grin—a private joke. Stephanie Procter was Dean's twin sister, and though she was as verbally nasty as he was she would never have dreamt of getting in a physical fight. She might mess her pretty face.

There were six of them in total. Six students that picked on Caleb for things he couldn't control: Dean and Stephanie Procter, Vince Masterson, Pearl Horne, Karen Bonner, and their ringleader, Quintus Zima. Six schoolyard bullies who, because of their malice, got themselves mixed up in the whole thing, too. Shannon Malone's experience with them thus far was minimal, but her time would come.