"Today we're going to start on the Psalms," Miss Brigham said the next morning. "There are quite a few. Get as far as you can before lunch."
"All right, Miss Brigham." Samantha waited for her teacher to get down the pathway towards the meadow before she pulled aside the rug and opened the trap door.
In the two weeks since her first visit, Samantha had improved the cellar. She had smuggled in a dozen candles, which she placed at intervals along the walls. As she crept through the cellar, she lit each candle to banish the darkness. Rebecca had given her a bouquet of wildflowers that Samantha scattered around the cellar to improve the smell.
Her explorations had yet to uncover anything about what had happened to her or the other children's parents. And while she could now remember highways, computers, and moving pictures, she still could not remember anything about herself.
As she had done over the last two weeks, Samantha removed the bassinette from the lid of the trunk to reveal the treasure trove of books. She had finished Rebel of Love in three days and since then read through Rebel Heart, Rebel Dream, and Rebel Yell. She picked up the next book on the stack, Rebel Paradise, in which Remy and Vienna flee to a tropical island to escape Vinny Torelli's evil minions. From looking through the trunk, Samantha knew there were ten more books in the series. In all, she counted sixty-nine of the slim paperbacks and thirty-two magazines with titles like Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and Vanity Fair.
On their covers, the magazines promised how to get boys to like you, a subject Samantha had little interest in. She liked the magazines for their pictures of beautiful women. Whenever she saw one with her same hair, eye, or skin color she imagined that woman as her mother kissing her goodnight or asking about her day. Because of this, she never showed the magazines to any of the other girls.
That night, the girls all pretended to sleep on their pallets until they were positive Miss Brigham had gone back to her cottage. As one, they threw the covers off and filed into the other room, where they sat in a semi-circle three-deep around the bed. Samantha sat on the bed and opened the book to begin the nightly reading.
The story began with Remy and Vienna landing on the island of Jamaica. "Where's that?" Rebecca asked.
"I'm not sure, but it's far away," Samantha said. She described Vienna walking along the beach in a bikini. Helena stopped her to ask about bikinis. "They're for swimming. One part is like a very small pair of underwear and the other part goes over your chest."