Cardinal Caged (2 of Cardinal Series)

Prologue

Prologue

It was hot in the building.  School had been canceled for the first time I could ever remember for something other than snow.  Apparently the place was built like a greenhouse.  It wasn't really something you noticed either until the air conditioning puttered out on probably one of the hottest days before school lets out.  

Say what you will, but the teachers here were resilient.  Students had been hoping for another cancellation, I'm sure, but when it hadn't been announced, everyone showed up surprised and disappointed that something had gotten fixed so quickly.  How quickly they were even more disappointed when they saw the eclectic and numerous amount of fans popped up like fungus all over the sweltering building.

Tempers were running a little high today in direct correlation to the high temperatures.  Students that didn't know what deodorant was were repelling the river of students during the passing period as if they had their own personal force field.  Teachers were itchy and sweaty in their professional dress which made them somewhat quick to snap. Some students had shed an indecent amount of layers, but nobody was saying anything to them today because they were probably wishing they could do the same thing.  This made the boys in the upper grades even more volatile as their budding testosterone flared in the presence of so much skin.

There had been several fights before the tardy bell even rang at the start of school.

I had wisely decided to hole up in the computer lab during lunch, deciding to avoid that boiling time-bomb.  The onset of puberty unsurprisingly hadn't done anything to solve my bullying problem. In some ways, it actually made it worse.  Their pigtail pulling and mean names had morphed into more serious threats and actions.

I wasn't only in here to avoid bullies either.  I had a task as well.

I logged on to the school computer.  My hands were sweaty and not just because of the heat.  I was doing something most likely illegal, but it was with the best of intentions.  If I got caught, maybe they would go easy on me. I was a good person. I hadn't been to the principal's office, behaved in all my classes, got good grades...home life aside, they'd at least give pause before throwing me into prison...right?

It didn't matter.  I had to do this.

Yesterday, my dad had sat me down to tell me about my mother.  My real mother.

It explained so...much.

But, he'd also explained that he was really my only family left.  In a way, he was right. Marie hadn't spoken to me in a couple of years now--though, half of the time I wouldn't be able to talk with her even if she was still interested in being the big sister I once knew.  Mother--my stepmother--had gotten creative with her corrective methods.  Lemon juice and vinegar had been her latest brand of punishment for when I inevitably messed up.

I'd scoured the internet most of the night after Dad's talk with me, looking for the password breaker that I'd need.  Vehemently, Mother hadn't wanted me to have access to a computer, but Dad had insisted. It was the only time I remember him ever putting his foot down.  As a compromise, he'd had to install hefty parental locks and filters to appease her, though she'd still taken her frustration out on me later. It hadn't mattered.  I'd had access to a computer.

It had done wonders to ease the boredom of being locked in my room most of the time.  I'd put to use my knowledge from the Coding for Dummies book Dad had got me for Christmas.  The parental filters had been the first thing I'd hacked, out of curiosity.  That had been a colossal mistake that I was still scarred from, so I'd put the parental filters back up, but altered them to fit my needs.  It was hard to search for anything with such an overzealous filter, so I'd smartened the coding up, made it better able to sort out by expanding its context knowledge.