The Academy (20 page)

There was no rational reason for it. She knew that. But even as she stood behind the baked-goods table, collecting dollar bills and handing out brownies, Myla felt nervous. Reba, next to her, did not seem to notice anything amiss, and neither did the girls from the pep squad or Idakas who were helping out at adjoining tables. The boys from the Key Club were selling sodas across the way, and parents and teachers were everywhere. Yet she might just as well have been sitting alone inside a haunted mansion. For that was the way she felt: anxious, frightened, vulnerable.

The worst thing was that she desperately had to go to the bathroom. She’d been holding it for a long time, planning to tag along with Reba or one of the other girls if they had to go. But no one did. And it was starting to become an emergency.

She told herself that the campus was so crowded there were bound to be other women or girls in there—parents, teachers, students—but logic had nothing to do with the way she felt, and she didn’t want to walk down that long hall and go into that bathroom unless she was with someone she knew.

What exactly was she afraid of?

She didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to make those fears concrete.

Myla pressed her thighs together, bit the inside of her cheek. She took a dollar from a mother, handing over two chocolate-chip cookies. If she waited any longer, she was going to wet her pants, and even as scared as she was, she knew that she had to walk over to the bathroom now.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” she told Reba. “I need to use the restroom.” She glanced around. “Does anyone else need to go?” she asked hopefully.

No one did, and she moved out from behind the table, made her way through the crowd and started down the hallway to the nearest girls’ room. The crowd thinned out as she headed away from the quad.
Why can’t the restroom be closer?
She knew the classes around her were filled with mothers and fathers checking in with their children’s teachers, and she even passed several pairs of parents on the way, but after the noise and bustle of the tables, the corridor felt long and empty. The fear and dread she’d been experiencing all evening long intensified, and she was sure that if some practical joker jumped out at that moment and yelled “Boo!” she would die of a heart attack.

She reached the girls’ room not a moment too soon, hurrying into the first stall in what was practically a crouch. Her heart was pounding, and she was aware that something about the restroom seemed off, but she didn’t allow herself to think about it until she was finished. That was less than a minute, however, and even before flushing the toilet, she became conscious of the fact that she was the only one in the bathroom and that she couldn’t hear any noises from outside. The tiled room was totally silent save for the amplified beating of her own heart. She quickly flushed, pulled up her panties and jeans and pushed open the swinging metal door. To her left, the light above the far stall was flickering, the bulb ready to go out, and the jittery illumination cast eerie swirling shadows over the back half of the restroom.

Myla quickly hurried away from that strobing area, toward the sinks—

And saw something in the mirror.

It was only a glimpse. If that even. A rapidly moving shape, small and dark and formless, that dashed behind her and disappeared.

Before she could run away, the door opened. And in walked a teacher. Mrs. Gauthier.

Myla was filled with relief. She turned on the water in the nearest sink, soaping up her hands. The teacher smiled at her, said hello, then walked back to the far stall and closed the door.

The far stall?

Myla’s heart started pounding. Why would she choose to go in that darkened corner rather than one of the closer, more well-lit cubicles?

It wasn’t any of her business. She should just finish washing her hands and leave. But she turned her head to the left, saw that intermittent light, those swirling indefinable shadows, and was filled with a sense of dread. There was no noise, no sound coming from the stall at all. It was as though Mrs. Gauthier had walked in and disappeared. On impulse, Myla crouched down, just to make sure the teacher’s feet were visible under the metal barrier.

They weren’t.

Panic set in. She didn’t know what to do. Should she call out the teacher’s name? Should she go and get help? Should she check the stall herself?

No. That last one was out. She was not walking back there. She was not even going to ask the teacher if anything was wrong. In her mind’s eye, she saw Mrs. Gauthier crouched on top of the toilet, grinning insanely in that flickering light, waiting to leap on and devour whoever opened the stall door.

Devour?

It did not seem as far-fetched as it should have.

From the corner of her eye, she saw movement in the mirror again.

Myla ran.

She pushed open the door, sped down the corridor and did not stop running until she had reached the quad and was once again in the midst of a crowd.

“What is it?” Reba asked, staring at her as she made her way back behind the table. Myla could tell from the expression on the other girl’s face that she probably looked exactly the way she felt: frightened and completely rattled.

She took a deep breath. “Nothing,” she said. “Everything’s fine.” She forced herself to smile, and glanced over the stack of wrapped brownies on the table. “So. How are we doing?”

*

“I swear to God, I’m going to quit this fuckin’ job.” Carlos looked over at Rakeem, who was taking down a butcher-paper banner that had been taped to the outside wall of the library.

Everyone else was gone and the campus was quiet, but the quad looked like it had been hit by a tornado. Trash was everywhere, and the tables they had set up for the PTA and various clubs so they could sell drinks and goodies had been piled one on top of the other until the wobbly stack was higher than he was.

Rakeem laughed. “They’re jus’ kids, man. They’re jus’ playin’ around.”

“Yeah, but we have to clean up their mess.” Carlos looked down at the ground. His eye was caught by a photograph that lay between a discarded Lay’s potato chips bag and one of the metal legs of the bottom table. He picked the picture up off the cement. It had the faded, washed-out look of a 1970s Polaroid, but it was of tonight’s festivities.

Sort of.

He recognized the front of the office and saw groups of milling parents on the sidewalk, but there was something else—or rather some
one
else—on the roof of the building. The colors in the photo were bleached, and the figure stood in the darkness above a shining spotlight on the building’s edge, so it was hard to make out specifics, but Carlos saw what appeared to be a bearded man wearing an old-fashioned coat staring down at the parents below.

Feeling suddenly cold, he glanced over at the office, saw nothing there, then hurried up to Rakeem, holding out the photograph. “Hey, man. Look at this.” He pointed to the figure on the roof.

The other custodian froze. “Where’d you get that? Who took it?”

“I don’t know,” Carlos admitted. “I found it over there, by the table.”

Rakeem took the photograph, looked at it carefully. “I seen that man before,” he said, and his voice was hushed, scared. “He peeked in at me once when I was cleaning the office. I saw him through the window, standin’ there in the dark. I woulda gone out and told him to get off the property, but I could see that he wasn’t really there. He was more like a reflection.”

“Reflection?”

Rakeem hesitated. “Ghost.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

The other custodian shook his head. “I don’t know. Embarrassed, I guess.”

Carlos understood. He’d done the same thing. More than once.

“I thought I saw him again one time.” Rakeem pointed at the photo. “Right there. On the roof like that. But when I looked again, he was gone, and I couldn’t tell if I imagined it or not.” He exhaled loudly. “Guess not.”

“You think someone
wanted
us to find this picture?” Carlos asked.

“Wouldn’t surprise me none. Lotta weird shit goin’ down these days.”

Carlos nodded.

“You know, I don’t like to clean the office anymore. Just like you don’t like the sports complex.” Rakeem grinned at his friend’s surprised expression. “Oh, yeah. I know about that. In fact, the only reason I do the office is habit. And ’cause it’s close to the classrooms. But there’s also not that much to clean these days. The principal’s office is off-limits. Everything down that little hallway is. Basically, all I have to take care of is that one big room and the supply closet.”

“Why you tell me this now? To rub it in?”

Rakeem glanced down at the photo again before looking up at Carlos. “Because I think it’s gettin’ dangerous. I don’t think we should split up anymore. I think we should work together.”

“It’s gonna take longer.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” Rakeem handed back the picture. “But it’ll be
safer
.”

Carlos pointed toward the stacked tables. “You wanna give me a hand with that?”

The highest one was above both of their heads, but they could reach the legs, and they each grabbed two, lowering the table to the ground. Even before they’d brought it all the way down, though, something slid off the tabletop.

Another photograph.

Carlos placed his end of the table on the cement and picked up the picture. This one, also faded and washed out, looking at least thirty years old, showed Rakeem and himself, from just a few moments before, talking by the front of the library. It appeared to have been taken from atop the stacked tables.

Behind them, in the shadows, barely visible, was the bearded man.

“Shit!” Carlos cried, dropping the photo.

Rakeem picked it up, then looked around frantically.Carlos did, too, but there was no sign of the ghostly figure.

They met each other’s eyes. “What you wanna do?” Carlos asked.

There was no discussion of how the photo had gotten there, who had taken it or what exactly it was. They were already way beyond that. “I’m gettin’ the fuck outa here, and tomorrow I’m goin’ to the district. I’m transferrin’ to another school. No way I’m puttin’ up with this shit.”

“I don’t think we can transfer,” Carlos began. “Enrique said—”

“Fuck Enrique! And if I can’t, I can’t. I’ll just quit and go somewhere else. But I’m not stayin’ in this place another fuckin’ minute.”

“Me either,” Carlos said.

“Let’s go, then.”

They’d both parked in the far lot near the sports complex, which meant that they had a long way to walk. Carlos would just as soon have gone out to the street and walked around the block, but Rakeem had already started off through the center of the quad, and Carlos followed him.

Once out of the quad and by the lunch area, he hazarded a quick look back. The shade in one of the classroom windows was swinging, as though someone inside the room had been peeking out at them and had moved away so as not to get caught. He walked faster.

Something dwarfish and dark darted between the lunch tables away from the cafeteria entrance.

Carlos heard laughter, low masculine laughter. Not the giggle of a child or something that would have corresponded to the small speeding shape, but a deep terrifying chuckle that seemed to come from something much, much larger.

“Ow!” Rakeem cried out. He’d bumped his knee on the edge of a brick planter, and he must have bumped it pretty hard, because he was holding the knee with both hands and hopping on the other leg.

Only the planter hadn’t been there before. Carlos knew every inch of this campus intimately, and while this rectangular brick construction contained mature established geraniums and looked to have been there for decades, he recognized that it was in a previously empty spot. Of course, Carlos told himself, Enrique and the principal had approved a lot of landscaping changes recently. This could very well be one of them.

But he knew that was not the case. He had walked by this area earlier and there’d been no planter in place.

“Come on,” Carlos prodded. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Son of a
bitch,
that hurts!” Limping, Rakeem followed Carlos past the lunch tables.

And promptly tripped over a rock.

Rakeem was the most coordinated and athletic guy he knew. For him to be suddenly so clumsy and awkward was not only weird but unbelievable. Now his
other
leg was scraped and in pain, but Rakeem continued to hobble toward the parking lot.