Chapter 1

Yep, that's what it's called, The Great Adventure Girl's Academy. To the girls who live here, it's 'The Prison.'

I was in my office buried deep in the bowels of the main building when I heard the distinctive whump of a dropped book. Since my office is in the sub-basement I rarely hear anything other than the pipes creaking in the winter or occasionally a maintenance guy coming down to ask me a question.

I'm the maintenance manager of the Prison, I mean the Academy. As long as the two guys who work for me keep the place running smoothly people leave me alone. The only time my phone rings is when something is broken. And they always want it fixed now. Nobody has any sympathy for the fact that the Academy is a hundred miles from civilization and parts have to come overland by wagon train. Nope, they want it fixed now.

The big dyke, Grace Halliday, who set up the Academy, bought this place and refurbished it into a fortress where parents could send their troubled little brats. Girls, between the ages of twelve and seventeen, who need additional help with their life skills, are helped at the Academy. Yeah right. And Alcatraz helped people with their job skills.

What the little brats needed was a parent while they were growing up. You've seen the kind of girls who wind up at the Academy. The kids who run through stores knocking people down or scream at the top of their lungs in restaurants while their parents preen, 'Isn't little Jenny just darling. I don't want to inhibit her little psyche.' You know watching those brats that they are going to grow up to be axe murderers or lawyers. So Jenny grows up to be a cast iron little bitch, and her parents, unable to control her now, ship her off to be someone else's problem. I'd bet most of the girls have either been pregnant or kicked out of at least one school. This place isn't a finishing school for debutants.

So Miss Halliday set up the Academy for these girls. It's not cheap for the parents to get their kids locked up, I mean educated in our fine facility. The girls all come from money. I think Halliday modeled the Academy after a convent run by the Sisters Who Cause Perpetual Suffering. Marine boot camp would be nicer. There is no Easter or Christmas break. Part of the normal 'course of study' is summer intensives. That way, the parents don't even have to be bothered seeing their little brats once a year. Most of the girls only leave when they graduate. And believe me, they have an incentive to graduate and get out of this place.

Sure the girls get outside the walls during supervised tours. Like the trip in a dusty hot gut-jouncing bus across the dirt roads of Chaco Mesa to see a bunch of Indian ruins. Or the trip in the middle of a hot New Mexico summer to study desert cacti with Miss Jordan, the science teacher. I'm sure the little darlings really look forward to a three hour trip in an un-air conditioned bus when the thermometer is busting a hundred and ten.

Don't get me wrong. The girls do get educated. They don't have a choice. We have the numbers to show it too. Over ninety percent of the girls get accepted into college. The class work emphasizes the basics. These girls will know English and Math and Science and History when they graduate. Classes start at 8:00 and run until 4:00. The rest of their time is spent doing duties or homework. They don't have a lot of free time. If they don't max their SATs they pay for it. In reality, the main course here is discipline.

Miss Halliday had a great idea in setting up this place. She makes the girls do most of the menial work. The school laundry is run by the girls. The girls do most of the housekeeping. The cafeteria is staffed by the girls. Our chef, Georgette Dyson, can make a damn fine meal. But she's always complaining, at least to me, that her budget won't let her feed the kids the way she'd like. The staff eats pretty well. It's hard sometimes watching the girls assigned to the staff dining room practically wiping the drool from their chins as they watch us eat. Georgette says the girls swipe food from the staff plates before they send the plates through the clippers to be cleaned. The girls get 'healthful' food; soy burgers, tofu ice cream, veggie this and that. Okay, I admit there aren't a lot of fat girls at the Academy. The fact that this stuff is also cheap has nothing to do with it. Right.

I can see you asking, why the hell do people stay if it's such an awful place to work? Money. I'm not really book smart; most of my learning has been with my hands. But I know everybody at the Academy and I know how to listen. Joan Taylor, the accounting geek, told me that Miss Halliday set this place up as a non-profit organization she could hit the parents up for additional tax free donations. Most of the money the parents spend is a charitable deduction. It's understood that the tuition only covers 10% of the costs of locking up, oops, educating their little brat. The parents get to deduct most of the cost and get rid of the problem they created at the same time. It's win-win for everyone except the little terrors.

Grace is perfect for this setup. She is from back East money herself. She moves with elegance and is always dressed in a suit that highlights her tall willowy figure. I know she's over forty but doesn't look it. I don't know if Lady Clairol is helping yet but she has a wondrous mane of dark thick hair. So, the money bags think of her as one of their own and gladly fork over the big bucks so that she'll take care of their little problems with the utmost discretion.

One of the things about the setup, according to Joan, is that we take in more that it costs to run the place. Now Miss Halliday has a pretty good rake off as the Director. But Joan told me that the IRS takes a dim view of charities where all the money goes to the honcho. So to keep the auditors at bay, Dyke Halliday pays above average wages. In fact, she pays top dollar and explains that we need high wages, including her take, to attract people to the boonies. This does keep the staff from complaining out loud.

You've probably noticed that just about all of the names are female. Other than me and the two maintenance guys, who have no contact with the girls, the only other male around is Jerry Beckworth, the school counselor. He is supposed to help their damaged psyches. He does talk to the girls, once a quarter, in between his efforts to bed every skirt on the staff. Well, except for Halliday. She doesn't swing that way. So the girls are protected from men.

One nice thing about so few men within a hundred miles is that the female staff who aren't dykes have limited choices. The two guys who work for me have some hygiene issues and Jerry is so predatory that the women kind of shun him unless they are really horney. That just leaves yours truly. Every once in a while one of the ladies will sidle up after dinner and say, "I have something in my room I'd like to show you." I like that kind of show and tell, if you catch my drift.

With our meals and board covered, that big paycheck goes straight to the 401 and other investments. I figure with a little recovery in the market, I can bust out of the Prison and retire when I'm fifty. That's worth a little inconvenience and keeping my mouth shut about what I see.

I got up from my desk and poked my head out of the door. There was nobody in the hall. Then I smelled the smoke. Cigarette smoke. No reason for any of the staff to hide down here to smoke. I snuck down the hall. The door to the boiler room was ajar. The smell was stronger. I opened the door a little more. Sitting on a chair with her books in her lap and puffing on a cig was one of the little darlings. She was dressed in the school uniform: white shirt, black and white plaid skirt, white socks and black shoes. The only color allowed on the girl's uniforms was the school crest. It was a different color for each dormitory. Hers was red, for the junior-senior dorm.

I pushed the door open. She looked up; panic flooded her face as she flung the butt down and put her foot on it before looking up and trying to smile.

"And what are you doing down here... smoking?" I asked.

"Oh no," she said. "I was just... resting."

I stepped into the room. "Lift your foot." She stared at me, not moving. "Lift it."

Slowly, like a convict climbing the scaffold, she lifted her foot. I bent down and picked up the butt, inspecting it while looking at her. "It's not mine," she said.