The Academy (39 page)

Fighting?

What fighting had they done? None. They’d talked about it a lot, but there’d been precious little action, and while he knew that was partly because there were only so many hours in a day and in addition to these troubles they had to deal with family and homework and the ordinary stresses of everyday life, part of it was also because they didn’t know
what
to do.

That had to change. It was up to them to make more of an effort.

Dane and Laurie were called behind the partition by a woman behind the curtain, and he and Myla moved to the front of the line. Brad craned his neck and looked over Myla’s head to scan the gym. He wondered where Ed was, hoping his friend hadn’t gone home. It suddenly occurred to him that it might be dangerous to exit through the carnival gates. He recalled the hunger he’d seen in the eyes of those massing outside and found himself pondering why they were there in the first place. They couldn’t have come just to watch, and in his mind he saw them ganging up on Ed as he tried to leave, a horde of angry disenfranchised kids setting upon his friend and attacking him. He hated himself for even considering such a thing—was he becoming one of
them
?—but the scenario was not that far-fetched, and he could definitely see the evening ending in some sort of class riot as the revelers started to go home. And not class as in freshman-sophomore-junior-senior, but class as in upper and lower, haves and have-nots.

His gaze fell upon Ed, still standing alone by the drink table, ignored by everyone, and Brad felt a sense of relief.

“Next!” the woman behind the curtain called.

They walked around the edge of the partition to where the photographer was taking pictures of Dane and Laurie.

Only it wasn’t a professional photographer. It was Mr. Swaim, the art teacher. And he was lying on the floor in front of the couple, clearly trying to shoot up Laurie’s dress. The two students were awkwardly posed on what appeared to be a crate with a sheet draped over it, and they were obviously uncomfortable with what was going on. Both were attempting to hold fixed smiles that were strained far beyond any comfort level, and their eyes kept darting down to the teacher on the floor. Laurie pressed her legs closer together as Mr. Swaim shifted his position. The backdrop behind them was a blown-up photo of a decomposing pumpkin.

“You have a choice of three packages,” the woman who’d called them said robotically. She was seated behind a table on which were strewn order forms and pens, and had the white-trash look of a stripper gone to seed. He thought he’d seen her working in the office. “Package number one includes one eight-by-ten, three four-by-fives and six wallets. Package number two—”

“Spread your legs a little, dear,” Mr. Swaim told Laurie.

She stood up, kicking at the photographer. “Go to hell!” she shrieked. “I’m not going to let you do this!”

“This is bullshit!” Dane said, trying to sound strong but coming off more than a little scared. “We don’t want any pictures!”

Mr. Swaim sat up and grinned suggestively. “That’s okay. I think I got what I need.” He looked over at Brad and Myla. “Your turn.”

Brad grabbed Myla’s hand and pulled her back behind the partition as the two of them strode away.

“Next!” the woman called.

“I don’t believe this,” Brad said. Still holding Myla’s hand, he dragged her over to the drink table, where he told Ed what they’d seen.

“No shit?”

“The good thing,” Brad said, “is that we were talking to some other couples in line and word’s getting out.
Everyone’s
unhappy with the school this semester.”

Ed gestured toward the dance floor with his cup. “Really? It doesn’t look like it.”

Brad frowned, looking beyond the dancers. “Wait a sec,” he said. The doors of the gym had remained open, and from outside he could see flames. It looked like the carnival area was on fire. Leaving Myla and Ed behind, Brad ran across the gym floor and over to the doorway to see what was happening.

It was a bonfire. While the rest of them had been at the dance, someone had taken down the booths and banners and had built a large fire in the center of the field. Sticks, branches and lengths of lumber were piled into a high pyramid as tall as a house, and volcanic flames were shooting up from the burning pyre and into the sky like birds released from captivity. A group of students—he couldn’t be sure from this far away, but they looked like scouts—were dancing around the blaze.

Myla and Ed had come up behind him. A whole host of students were now moving toward the open doorway to see what was going on, and some of them were pushing past him and heading outside.

“Let’s check it out,” Myla said.

The three of them joined the crowd and started across the grass.

“Did you know about this?” Ed asked.

“No,” Myla said, and Brad couldn’t tell whether she was angry or afraid.

It
was
the scouts who were dancing around the bonfire, he saw as they got closer. He could see their uniforms lit by the flames. There were girls as well, although whether they were dates or female scouts he could not be sure. Other kids from the gym were starting to join in, and while it appeared spontaneous, it could just as well have been rehearsed. There was a uniformity to the movements that suggested this was all part of some preplanned ritual.

Brad, Myla and Ed stopped several yards in front of the fire. They could feel the heat even from here, and the brightness of the blaze made the surrounding darkness seem that much darker. The flames were growing higher, and Brad turned his head to the left to look toward the fence. Flickering orange firelight glinted in the eyes of the kids pressed against the chain link. If before they had seemed hungry and feral, they now seemed sad and doomed, and there was an eerily similar look of resignation visible in all their faces.

More and more students joined the group dancing around the bonfire. They were singing. Or chanting. It was hard to tell which above the roar of the flames. The wind had picked up and was now biting rather than crisp, its cold sting drawing even more people to the heat of the blaze. A couple of the jocks, he saw, had taken off their shirts, and when the dancers had come around again, one of them was completely naked.

Brad’s muscles stiffened. This was getting out of control.

One of the girls from the dance had pulled down the top of her dress, exposing her breasts, and was frolicking wildly about the perimeter of the bonfire.

All the adults seemed to have disappeared. There were none around anywhere, not a chaperone or a club adviser or even a janitor. They were probably all at the dance, but Brad had the feeling that they had chosen not to be here at this time. There was a genuine feeling of anarchy and violence in the air, the sense that anything could happen here tonight, and Brad had never been more afraid of anything in his life. If something happened here this evening, it would wash over them like a wave, and there would be nothing they could do about it.

He wanted to drag Myla and Ed back into the gym to protect them—he could hear the faint sound of the band through the open doors; the dance was still going on—but he also wanted to see what was going to happen, and he knew that his friends would not allow themselves to miss whatever was coming next.

The students dancing around the fire were no longer singing
or
chanting. They were screaming. Primal frenzied cries that bore no resemblance to any form of human speech. From somewhere in another part of the field, through what sounded like a portable amplified speaker, came the voice of a man who seemed to be reciting a prayer. Brad thought he heard the words “thankful” and “sacrifice.”

There was a sudden commotion at the fence, movement and jostling, along with additional cries and shouts, these definitely more earthbound and angry.

Ed elbowed him, pointing toward the bonfire. “Look!” he shouted above the noise. “It’s Cheryl! She’s naked!”

He was right—she was, though the sight was more disturbing than erotic. She seemed to be performing some type of cheerleading routine, but there was a desperation to her exaggerated movements that made Brad think of one of those hamsters running on an exercise wheel.

A group of scouts was heading toward the bonfire from the part of the fence where the dustup had occurred. They were moving through the darkness, and he couldn’t be sure, but it almost looked as though they had someone with them, a prisoner who was being hemmed in and herded toward the fire. It was Brad’s turn to elbow Ed. He squeezed Myla’s hand to get her attention. “Look over there!” he told them.

But just then the scouts disappeared around the other side of the bonfire. Brad looked back toward the portion of the fence from whence they’d come, and saw that all the kids outside the chain link were gone. There was only emptiness and blackness beyond the border of the festival grounds.

More and more students were joining the wild dance. More and more of them were stripping off their clothes.

Suddenly Myla’s grip in his tightened. Her nails dug into his palm, and her other hand reflexively clutched his arm, digging into the skin. Her eyes were wide with horror, and she was saying something, but he couldn’t make out what it was amid the tumult all about them. He looked to Ed on the other side of him. Like Myla, he was staring at the blaze, and Brad followed their eyes, his own gaze fixed on the conflagration, trying to make out whatever it was that they were seeing.

And there it was.

A figure in the flames.

A boy.

His hair and clothes were gone, and he was little more than a black shape within the raging incandescence. He was writhing in torment and against all odds appeared to be trying to crawl
through
the fire and out. A burned hand reached up as if to call for help or clutch a rescuer’s arm, and then he collapsed, his still form joining the pile of blazing wood on the pyre.

Brad ran forward, Ed at his side, trying in vain to swat at the leaping flames, looking desperately around for water or a fire extinguisher or something to dampen the raging inferno. “There’s someone in there!” he yelled. “He’s on fire! He’s burning up!” He wanted to reach in and grab the kid, but he could feel his eyebrows singeing and the hair on his arms scorching as he got too close. He backed away helplessly. “Put out the fire!” he cried. “Save him!”

A girl he didn’t know, naked and dancing, leaped past him, her breasts brushing his arm.

“Get a hose!” he called, trying to grab a boy who was cavorting by. “Get some water!”

“Help!” Ed screamed next to him.

But no one heard them, no one cared and the celebration continued. Looking into the fire now, he could not even tell where the boy had been. The blaze was so hot it had already eliminated any trace of him.

Brad was still yelling for help, but he stopped in midscream. It could have been his imagination,
must
have been his imagination, but in the darkness on the far side of the fire, he thought he saw Principal Hawkes.

Staring into the flames.

And laughing.

Twenty-one

Ed punched his locker, feeling not just angry, frustrated and scared but an emotion so far beyond any of those that there was not even a word for it. “Someone died out there, dude!”

“I know it,” Brad said.

“Then why . . . why . . . ?” Ed was at a loss for words. “Why isn’t anyone
doing
anything about it? Why aren’t the police investigating it? Why isn’t it all over the news? Why isn’t this place crawling with cops? Why isn’t the school shut down? Why aren’t people being arrested?”

“My mom wouldn’t even believe me about it,” Brad said. “She’s pissed off ’cause she thinks I was drinking.”

“My parents won’t believe me either!” Ed fumed. “I don’t know who that was, but that was a kid in the fire. He burned up and he died. And we were there, man. We were witnesses. Fuck, we were part of it.”

“I know.”

“His parents must know about it. He has to have been reported missing by now.”

“Maybe someone should check it out,” Brad suggested. “Go to the police station and see if anyone has filed a report.”

Ed snorted. “Who? Your reporter buddy Brian Brown? That worthless piece of dog shit?”

“Us, I guess. After school, we could head over there, ask some questions.”

“Then what?” Ed shook his head. “Who’s going to believe us?”

“Someone will.”

Ed was not so sure. His faith in institutions had never been strong, and after everything that had been happening this semester, he didn’t trust anyone. If the administration could form its own militia and build a prison wall around the school without anyone in the community batting an eye, then what hope did they have of alerting the public to anything that went on here? Besides, most of the things that were happening were not of the type that could be remedied by inspections or citations or even arrests. Like that skeleton captain said in the first
Pirates of the Caribbean
movie, they’d better start believing in horror stories. They were in one.