Free Wake Unto Me by Lisa Cach Page B

feel is uniquely suited to the goals of the Fortune School.”
    “Really? My parents think I’m maladjusted and antisocial.”
    Madame Snowe chuckled. “I suppose they’d prefer you to try out for the basketball team and run for student council?”
    Caitlyn nodded. “They’d be thrilled.”
    “The students who enjoy such things will find their own way in the world. But those who are fundamentally different in their outlook—like you—are the ones who can bring unique talents into play, if given the proper opportunities. There is a price to these opportunities, however.” Madame Snowe met and held Caitlyn’s gaze for an uncomfortably long moment.
    “What is it?” Caitlyn asked nervously, her voice quavering.
    Madame Snowe smiled slightly. “The price is a loss of choice about your future. You will take the courses that the Sisterhood has chosen for you, and when you leave us you will attend the university of our choice—at our expense—where you will also study what we choose for you.”
    “But why would you want to do that?” Caitlyn asked, bewildered.
    “We don’t want to see our investment in you wasted.”
    “You don’t think I can choose for myself what my future should be?”
    “We will not make choices that are antithetical to your nature. As likely as not, they will be the same choices you would make for yourself.”
    “But if they’re not?” Caitlyn asked, growing alarmed. She was feeling the bars of restriction closing around her.
    Madame Snowe folded her hands on top of the desk. “I am asking you to make an adult decision right now, Caitlyn. You can take the free, superior education we offer, and with it our guidance, or you can return to Oregon and make your own way.”
    Caitlyn’s stomach dropped. She couldn’t go back to Spring Creek. “Why didn’t you tell me this before I came? I don’t remember seeing anything about this in all that paperwork.”
    “We did state that you must accept our decisions about your curriculum, both present and future. I am simply elaborating upon that clause.”
    “I thought you meant how many math classes I had to take, or credits of PE!” She frowned. “Wait a minute. Did I hear you just say you’d pay my college tuition?”
    “And room and board. A ‘free ride,’ I believe you call it in the States.”
    Caitlyn let the words sink in. She’d always thought that her path to a higher education would be two years at a community college before transferring to a state school. Part-time jobs, school loans, roommates, and cheap apartments: she knew that that was what lay ahead if she went back home.
    Having everything paid for by someone else would be so much better.
    “It’s the same decision the children of the rich are often forced to face,” Madame Snowe said. “Should they accept their parents’ money and live according to their rules, or seek the freedom of fending for themselves? Money is power, whether we like it or not, and it can persuade us to take actions we find abhorrent.”
    “You don’t sound as if you’re trying to persuade me to stay.”
    “As I said, Caitlyn, I’m asking you to make an adult decision. I will also expect you to abide by that decision, once made. There will be no going back on your word. You will be expected to give your full energies to the work we set before you. There will be no slacking off. Do you accept?”
    Caitlyn hardly needed to think about it. Surely she could bear the educational control of this Sisterhood of Fortuna for a few years; they did, after all, think she had potential.
    They believed in her. No one else ever had.
    “I accept.”
    Madame Snowe smiled. “Good girl.”
    “So do I have to sign a blood oath or something?”
    “We’re a modern institution. A DNA swab will do.”
    Caitlyn laughed, but Madame Snowe’s face remained impassive as she went to the wall and pressed a spot in the paneling that popped open a hidden cabinet door. She retrieved a narrow tube with an oversize