Acceptance

"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.