Free Devilish by Maureen Johnson

themselves anxiously. Even Cassie was all wound up about it in calculus.
    “It’s like a secret admissions committee,” she said. “They plant people. They get reports back.”
    “Who?” I asked.
    “The schools!”
    “Which schools?”
    “I don’t know,” she said, shaken. “But if you’re in the Poodle Club, you’re in.”
    “Who told you this?” I asked.
    “Everyone knows,” she said. “I guess we’ve finally made it onto their radar. It’s probably because of us. You and me.”
    Cassie was one of those people, I could tell, who would fall for absolutely everything she heard in college. That story about automatically getting all A’s if your roommate dies. Rumors of dorms that had pools on the roof.
    There was a squawk, and the intercom came alive.
    “Jane Jarvis,” it said, “please report to Sister Albert’s office at once. God bless.”
    Cassie gave me a look that said,
See
?
    Sister Albert was the principal of our school. She and I had spent some quality time together—and with Brother Frank’s warning, I was definitely not happy about being called in.
    “What are you here for, dear?” Sister Bernie asked, leaning over her counter. She leaned in close enough that I got a good look at a jagged tear running down the arm of her habit, which she had sewn up in rough, Frankensteinystitches. This was also the kind of thing that always got to me. It reminded me that the sisters really were poor.
    “I don’t know,” I lied.
    “All right, then,” she said happily. “Mother Mary be with you, Jane, dear.”
    Sister Albert’s office was high-ceilinged and poorly lit. For some insane reason, she was running the air conditioner, even though it was kind of cool. It was probably some technique to make us confess. Maybe a leftover from the Spanish Inquisition.
    Sister Albert herself was an enormous, boxy woman with a square head, square fingers, square torso, and square man-boobs. My deepest fear in dealing with her was that on one of these visits, she’d say, “Okay, Miss Jarvis, enough talking. We’re going to settle this with some good old-fashioned wrestling. Get on the floor!”
    I don’t really know why I thought that. I’m told I have an overactive imagination.
    “Sit down, Miss Jarvis,” she said.
    I sat down under the huge latch-hook rug portrait of the Virgin Mary that covered the wall across from Sister’s desk. On the desk itself was a very fat manila folder, which I knew at once was my personal file. I could see layers of strata detailing my various types of offenses and achievements—many inches of pink paper, a few inches of green. Pink was disciplinary report paper; green was for academic achievement records. Just looking at my folder, I realized that it wasn’t something you read—it was just somethingyou
weighed
. Sister opened it and shuffled through the papers a bit.
    “These are your records, Miss Jarvis.” She looked up and fixed me with a stony stare. “You have a reputation for questioning and mocking this school and everything it stands for.”
    “I don’t mock,” I said. “I just ask questions.”
    “So, you are saying that you have nothing to do with this Poodle Club? Don’t try to tell me you haven’t heard of it.”
    “I’ve heard of it,” I admitted. “But I don’t even know what it’s supposed to be.”
    “Jane,” she said, closing my file. “Do you really want to be here?”
    “Here, as in …”
    “As in St. Teresa’s,” she said. “You have never really seemed happy here, never seemed like you fit in. We don’t like to make anyone stay here who isn’t committed to what our school stands for.”
    “I’m committed, Sister. Totally committed.”
    We listened to the air conditioner hum for a moment.
    “We had to open your locker this morning because of the leaking,” she said. This was such an obvious lie that she had to turn away from the searching gaze from the latch-hook rug. “We found this.”
    She held up the crumpled flyer