The Academy (7 page)

“Hey, Myla,” Ed said. “Did you find a new boyfriend in Denver?”

Leave it to Ed to just blurt it out. Brad reddened, but he watched her face carefully to see the reaction. Myla blushed. “Of course not.” She kept her eyes focused exclusively on Ed. “Did either of you?”

“No!” Brad said quickly.

She met his gaze for the first time, a look of relief on her face. “I thought—”

“No.”

“
I
think you two have some issues to discuss. I’m out of here.” Ed held up a hand. “Later days.”

“See you in math,” Brad said. He met his friend’s eyes, hoped his gratitude showed on his face. He turned back toward Myla. “So . . . what’s your first class?”

“PE.”

“At eight in the morning? That’s rough. Let me see your schedule.” Before summer started, they’d both tried to arrange it so they’d have as many classes together as possible. Now they compared printouts. Sure enough, they each had third-period biology, fourth-period English and sixth-period economics. Their hands touched accidentally, and both quickly pulled away, folding their lists of classes and putting them back in their binders. Brad’s skin tingled. All the feelings he’d had for Myla last semester were still there, though he’d known that already. “So you didn’t meet anyone else—?” he began.

Just at that moment, the bell rang. Students started rushing to get to their homerooms, but the two of them remained where they were.

Myla shook her head. “Why would you even think that?”

He wanted to explain, wanted to talk it out, but she had to get all the way across campus to PE, and he had to go to the next building over for Spanish. “We’ll discuss it later,” he said. “You’d better get going. I’ll see you in biology.”

The disappearance of Van Nguyen was big news all over the school. It was mentioned in the morning announcements, and each teacher read a statement to his or her classroom from Van’s parents and the police. The boy disappeared about a month ago after playing basketball at the school with his friend Kurt Jensen. They were going on the assumption that he was abducted, and everyone was warned to watch out for strangers, suspiciously parked vehicles or anything out of the ordinary.

Brad was surprised he hadn’t learned of this until now. It had to have been on the news or in the newspaper.

He must have just spaced it out.

Kurt was in the same second-period Algebra II class as he and Ed, and Brad wanted to ask him the details of what had happened. So, apparently, did everyone else. A huge crowd gathered around him as Kurt entered the room, but he made it clear that he wasn’t talking. He seemed genuinely freaked by what had occurred—even now, a month later—and he kept repeating that the police had told him not to talk about the case, although Brad knew that had to be a lie. There was something in the boy’s refusal to speak that made him uneasy, and he had the feeling that there was more to the disappearance than either Kurt, the police or Van’s parents were telling.

His friend Brian Brown was on the student newspaper, and Brad decided that when he saw him, he would suggest to the reporter that he interview Kurt for a story on the kidnapping.

“You think he’s dead?” Ed whispered when Mr. Connor turned his back and started to write on the blackboard. “Seems like something would’ve turned up by now if he wasn’t.”

“I don’t know,” Brad said. He looked out the window of the classroom and saw a PE class shooting baskets on the outdoor courts at the edge of the field. From this angle, the gray metal backboards resembled nothing so much as tombstones on poles.

He didn’t like those basketball courts, he decided.

And he wished he’d signed up for tennis.

*

At lunch, Brad and Myla met up with Ed by the lockers before heading over to Senior Corner. Since they were all seniors now, they thought it would be fun to eat at the small grassy area that they’d been barred from entering since freshman year. But the jocks and the cheerleaders had taken over the picnic table in the center as well as every available inch of space on the three-foot-high wall surrounding the spot, and they were unable to find a place to sit.

They ended up eating in their usual place, on one of the tables outside the cafeteria. Myla’s friends Cindy, Reba and Cheryl were also there, and though neither Brad nor Ed was a big fan of the student-council girls, at least they
were
girls, and it was cooler hanging with them than with the dateless losers who would otherwise have been their lunchtime companions.

Brad ate his turkey sandwich and thought about the day so far. Math sucked, biology was okay and Spanish was Spanish, but he was excited about English. Besides having Myla in the class and being able to sit next to her, he’d been inspired by Mrs. Webster’s choice of reading material. They were going to be tackling Günter Grass, Kurt Vonnegut and John Fowles this semester, and something about those choices made him feel smart and adult, as though he was really being prepared for college.

Ed was eating his lunch: Nacho Doritos and a Dr Pepper. “So,” he asked, “how do all of you on the student council feel about this charter thing?”

When no one answered and it became obvious from the expressions on their faces that they were afraid to express an opinion, he added, “Because I think it sucks.”

“Is your mom going to volunteer?” Brad asked. “They’re supposed to volunteer
forty
hours.”

Ed snorted. “My mom? Shit no. She’s planning to blow it off. Although my guess is she’ll have to pay the fine. She’s pissed off about the whole thing.” He did a dead-on impression of her. “ ‘I pay taxes to support public schools and now they expect me to work there, too? Or pay tuition like a private school?’ ” He grinned. “I told her to think of it as a user fee. She damn near attacked me.

“My mom loves user fees,” he explained to Myla. “Hates taxes but loves user fees. Hmmm,” he said, stroking his chin as if in deep thought. “Maybe I’ll tell her it’s called an ‘education tax.’ That should get her good and riled up.”

“My mom
says
she’ll volunteer,” Brad said. “We’ll see if that happens.”

“It does seem weird,” Myla offered, “that they can charge people to go to a public school. It seems illegal to me. Isn’t everyone entitled to a free education? And what about poor kids? What if their parents work and don’t have time to volunteer, yet they can’t afford to fork over the four hundred dollars a year?” She shook her head. “Four hundred dollars. That’s a lot of money.” She looked over at Cheryl, the Associated Student Body president. “Maybe we should bring this up in a meeting, see if we can do something about it.”

The other girl looked uncomfortable. “I don’t think that’s really our place.”

“Not our place? The students elected us! It’s our job to look out for their interests!”

“I ran for treasurer because it’ll look good on my résumé,” Reba said. “I’m not out to change the world. If parents don’t like having to volunteer or pay money, let them go to the administration and do something about it.” She paused. “Besides, I think it’s good that parents are being forced to become more involved.”

“Yeah,” Cindy agreed.

“
Forced
to volunteer,” Ed said. “Isn’t that one of those ‘jumbo shrimp’ things? What’re they called?”

“Oxymorons,” Brad said.

“Yeah. Like ‘effective student council.’ ”

“Why are you even here?” Reba said with disgust. “Find your own table.”

Ed gathered up his lunch sack and tipped an invisible hat. “Ladies,” he said by way of farewell.

Brad smiled and got up to follow his friend. “See you sixth period,” he told Myla.

“Period!” Ed repeated loudly.

“Eww!” Cindy and Reba cried out together.

Brad laughed as they took their food to another recently relinquished table on the other side of the lunch area. “Making new friends everywhere you go.”

“It’s my job. How did Myla ever get caught up with those bitches? In fact, how did she ever get caught up in you? She’s way out of your league, you know.”

“She was elected; that’s how she got hooked up with them. As for me, I guess she just has an eye for quality.”

“Yeah. Right.” Ed craned his neck to look over Brad’s shoulder. “What’s going on over there?”

He turned to see a crowd of students gathering around the outdoor basketball courts. There were always a few fanatics who actually spent their lunch hours shooting hoops on the asphalt, but this was different. It was obvious that something had happened. One kid ran back toward the lunch area, shouting for a friend of his to come and see what was going on. “A bird, man! It just flew right into the backboard! And two more right after it! Boom, boom, boom! The second one actually bounced off and went through the hoop!”

Ed looked at Brad. “Did you hear that? Freaky. Let’s check it out.” He stood.

Brad shook his head. “I’ve seen dead birds before. I’m just going to finish my lunch.”

“Back in a sec.” Ed hurried off to join the growing crowd, but Brad did not even turn to watch.

Because he was afraid to watch.

He was not a superstitious guy, and maybe his mind was just running along these tracks after hearing the story of Van’s disappearance. He didn’t know Van all that well, but it was possible that he was more affected than he thought by what had happened to the boy. Whatever the reason, the basketball courts made him uneasy, and he remained in place, eating the banana he’d packed for dessert, while more and more students rushed over to see the suicidal birds.

Five

Although Linda arrived at school over an hour early and figured she’d be the first person on campus, Jody was already there. Not only that, but the principal, instead of being in her office, was standing alone at the far end of the empty hallway when Linda went upstairs to her classroom. The sight of the other woman gave her a start, and Linda laughed to cover her nervousness. “I didn’t expect to see anyone here,” she called out.

Jody said nothing but stared silently for another beat, then turned and walked down the stairs to her right.

Weird,
Linda thought. But as far as she was concerned, the principal had been acting weird ever since this charter thing had come up, ever since that school board meeting. It was as if the open, flexible, easygoing woman with whom she’d been working for the past several years had been replaced by an identical clone, a soulless pod person, an evil twin. She thought of how Jody had looked at the opposite end of the hallway, surveying the corridor before her. It reminded her of something, and as Linda unlocked and opened the door to her classroom, she figured out what it was: a prison warden. Standing solemnly against the far wall, the principal had looked like a warden inspecting rows of cells in a jail, and although the school year had just started, Linda wondered if that might prove to be an apt metaphor.

She walked over to the windows and looked down at the quad below. On the sidewalk between the trees, she saw Jody striding purposefully toward the office, looking neither left nor right but keeping her focus straight ahead. The campus was empty save for her—no other teachers, no students, no staff—and Linda was glad that the two of them worked in separate buildings. She did not want to be alone with that woman.

As though sensing her thoughts, Jody suddenly stopped walking and swiveled around, looking directly up at the window. Linda blanched and backed up, not wanting to be seen,
afraid
of being seen, though she knew such a reaction was stupid and childish. It was only when she reached her desk that she realized she’d been holding her breath, and she let out all the air in a great whoosh.

Her heart was pounding crazily, as if she’d just had an encounter with some deadly beast, and she could barely hear over the thumping of blood in her temples. She was trying to listen for the sound of doors opening or footsteps in the building, worried that Jody might be coming back.

Worried?

Why should she be worried? She was in her classroom, doing her job. The mere fact that she was hiding, trying to stay away from the windows, listening for footsteps, was ludicrous. Frank would be laughing his ass off if he could see her right now.

But try as she might to see the ridiculousness of the situation, she could not fully disengage herself. She did not know why, but she was nervous, frightened, and it took her several more minutes to gather enough courage to move forward and look out the window once again. She half expected Jody to be standing in exactly the same spot, unmoving, staring up at her, but when she glanced down, the quad was empty.