Nightmare Academy (24 page)

“. . . if he's the king, what does
that make the rest of you?”

Alex listened, his eyes never leaving Elijah and Warren. Finally, relaxing just a little, he said, “Okay” The whole crowd began breathing again. “We've got a party going on here.” He shifted his weight forward and pointed in their faces. “But your time's coming, so you be ready.”

Elijah persuaded Warren, “You've got a nice face. I've got a nice face. Let's just, you know, leave 'em that way. Come on.”

They left.

Alex got back his old smirk and turned to collect the spoils of war.

Elisha was gone. Cher, Britney, and Madonna just shrugged, knowing nothing.

In his room, safe and with his face still nice, Elijah did some figuring, scratching figures on a sheet of paper. “Okay, base of right triangle . . . tangent of the angle . . .” Scratch, scratch, figure, figure. “Archtangent . . . hoo boy . . . no, try it again . . . okay, 47.17. Cool.” Then he consulted his time records taken during the day. “Okay, it was high noon here exactly 7.72 hours after it was high noon in Greenwich, England, which means the earth rotated for 7.72 hours. At 15 degrees per hour, that means the earth rotated 115.80 degrees. Greenwich, England, is at 0 degrees longitude, so that puts us at . . . 115 degrees, 50 minutes west of Greenwich. Fabulosity!”

He'd borrowed a road atlas from the library. He flipped it open, hurriedly paged through it, and found the map he was looking for. One quick horizontal measurement, one quick vertical measurement, and he had his answer.

The party was still in full swing in the Rec Center. Hopefully, Elisha would be alone in her room. He turned off the lights, grabbed his flashlight, and went to the window. A few lights were still on in dorm C, but Elisha's window was dark, meaning she was waiting for him to signal.

He blinked out the hailing code: “E E S.”

She was watching. She replied, “GLAD YOUR FACE IS STILL NICE.”

“RT (Roger That). HAVE LOCATION. PLEASE COPY.”

“READY.”

“4 7 1 0, 1 1 5 5 0. NORTH CENTRAL IDAHO. ROAD TO WEST. TOWN TEN MILES MAYBE. WORTH A TRY.”

“RT. WE MUST GET OUT OF HERE. SUGGEST TOMORROW NIGHT.”

“RT.”

“LY.”

“LY.”

Elijah clicked off his flashlight and relaxed on the floor below the window, his back against the wall. “Thank you, Lord.”

After all this madness, with so many things denied and unknown, the universe God made was still there, still precise and predictable. Because it was, he knew he and his sister were still on planet Earth, in a real place he could see on a map. Working from that, he also had a pretty good idea of how to get somewhere else, and boy, was that comforting.

Elisha threw back the covers and hopped into bed, glad and relieved, the numbers Elijah sent her discretely scribbled on her forearm where she couldn't lose them. Before she dozed off, she began formulating ways she could pack and carry food and water. It wasn't unusual for kids to carry extra food out of the cafeteria for late-night snacks, so she and her brother could stock up on provisions during lunch and dinner. Now, if the bears could just be elsewhere. . . .

It would be a long time before she or her brother would sense such peace again, before they would ever rest easy again, or see their rooms, or lie alone in the quiet, in the dark.

The next morning, Nate and Sarah stood in the middle of a plowed field at the end of a dirt road in central Illinois. A farmer on his tractor spotted them, which wasn't hard to do—they were the only standing feature in several acres. He steered toward them, they walked, and eventually they met in the wide, open, dusty middle.

“Can I help you folks?” he asked, shutting down the tractor engine.

Nate was carrying some information and a map in his hand. “We understand there used to be an academy around here. The Knight-Moore Academy?”

The farmer started chuckling. “Yeah, there surely was.”

“Could you tell us where it is?”

He pointed straight down. “You're standing on it.”

That was not good news.

Sarah had to verify, “You mean, right here?”

“The government tore it down two years ago and sold me the land cheap. I'm letting it lie fallow for now. Can't plant it 'til I get all the junk out of it. You shoulda seen the mess they left here. I keep plowing up bricks and concrete and pipes in the ground. Found some wires yesterday. 'Sgood thing I didn't get electro­cuted.”

Nate dug lightly with his finger and unearthed a piece of charred wood. “Looks like they did some burning.”

“They burned the whole thing. Burned it all down, then bulldozed the foundations, and left a big mess for me to clean up. But like I say, I got it cheap, and it's good ground once you work it.”

Sarah looked at Nate. “They burned it.”

“Had some complaints about the smoke,” said the farmer, “but that's the government. Long as they're the ones doing the polluting, what do they care?”

Nate found a chunk of concrete.

“Yeah,” said the farmer. “You find that stuff all over the place.” He looked all around as if trying to imagine it. “Hard to believe what used to be here. Buildings, sidewalks, everything. Can I get you folks some coffee or something?”

Nate didn't have to ask Sarah. He could see it in her face. “Thanks. We have to be going. We're, uh, we're in a pretty big hurry”

10

FIR
S
T STRIKE

E
LISHA SLEPT IN LATE. Breakfast was not vital today; sleep was. Her first class, art appreciation, taught by a male-hating, clipped-haired teacher named Ms. Fitzhugh, didn't start until ten. Elisha felt no need to hurry out of bed. The voices of excited girls in the hall and outside the window kept creeping into her consciousness, but she tried to pretend they were only a faraway part of her dream.

Then Cher shook her awake. “Sally! Sally! Wake up! It's all coming down!”

Elisha opened her eyes, irritated. Cher was prone to overstating things. “What's coming down?”

“Mr. Easley got fired, and we're all going on strike!”

That
had
to be an overstatement. “What are you talking about?”

“Mr. Easley got fired!”

“Who says?”

“Mrs. Meeks! She told us this morning. She said there wasn't going to be any discussion group or volleyball because Mr. Easley got fired, and you know why?”

“No, Cher,” Elisha said dully. “I don't.”

“Because he stole pop out of the pop machine last night! Can you believe that?”

Elisha sat up, brushing her hair aside, trying to make sense of this—as if anything ever made sense in this place. “I thought nobody owned anything so you couldn't steal anything.”

“Well, somebody narc'd on him, and he got in trouble, and now he's fired, and Alex has called a strike!”

“What does Mrs. Meeks think about that?”

“She's all for it! She's
joining
the strike!”

Elisha began to wake up and hopped out of bed. “I've got to find my, uh, you know, my friend, uh . . .”

“Jerry.”

“Yeah, Jerry.”

“I think he's outside waiting for you.”

She found Elijah in the field, standing still while girls and boys moved past him, heading for the big iron gate. He was in his uniform, and so was she, but there weren't many uniforms visible this morning. The kids gathering around the gate were wearing anything they jolly well chose to wear; they were making a
point
of it.