The Last Academy (10 page)

“He was not in the right mind-set to mete out punishment. Did you know,” he added, after a pause, “years ago, Mr. Graham’s own sister disappeared, never to be seen again. Now he attempts to save them all.” He made a
tsk-tsk
sound.

Another missing girl. My legs got the shakes, like they wanted to take over and bolt on their own.

“You are afraid of me?” he asked, but not like he was surprised.

“Did you take Jessie?” I asked back. His breath stopped midexhale. It was almost as good as hitting him.

“And who would suggest something like that to you? What little bird?” Fingertips drummed his thigh. “Brynn Laurent, next door, perhaps?” He seemed like a slow shark in the water, circling me there on the couch, lazily debating the merits of attack over swimming silently away.

I didn’t answer.

“I’ve brought you something.” Barnaby Charon pulled up a brown gift bag by its handles and put it in my lap. There was something heavy inside.

He stood, finally putting space between us. I glared hot fury at the back of his knees. Like it was an afterthought, he dug around in his pocket as he turned to me.

“I have something for your nosy little friend as well. Pass this along to Brynn. She’ll know what to do with it next time I find her.” He opened his fist and dropped something small and gold into my lap. I thought it was one of his cuff links as it hit my thigh. It was so gross — like he had dropped a cockroach on me. I shoved the bag off my lap. It fell onto the floor with a
clunk
. I jumped up, finally ready to give him a hard crack to the face, no matter how much trouble it meant for me afterward.

Barnaby Charon was gone.

I stood there, gasping for air, trying not to breathe in any more of that soap smell he’d left behind. The gold thing he’d left me to give to Brynn turned out to be a coin. It was tiny — smaller than a dime, with no ridging on the sides or writing or anything. The picture on the front looked drawn by a kid and it was stamped into the metal unevenly. An eerie sense of familiarity overwhelmed me as I studied it. There’d been a gold coin on Jessie’s desk. Next to her brother’s photo, the last night I’d seen her at school.

I kicked the brown bag like a soccer ball. The paper split and gave birth all over the industrial carpet floor. It was Jessie’s broken Ouija board.

“S
o what do you think?” I asked Nora, after I’d finished telling her what had happened. We were sitting in the secret room the next day. The coin and the Ouija board lay between us.

“The guy sounds creepy to a factor of ten,” Nora said.

“He practically admitted he took Jessie. He had to have been in your room, too, to get the Ouija out of her closet.”

Nora frowned. “He still might have been acting with the school’s permission.”

“What about Brynn? He pretty much threatened to get her next,” I said.

“That’s not what he said,” Nora countered. She picked the coin off the floor.

“You weren’t there,” I told her. “Plus, I’m pretty sure I saw a coin like this on Jessie’s desk, the night she disappeared.”

“Maybe it was Jessie’s and he took it.” Nora turned the coin carefully over in her palm. “My dad used to collect coins. I’ve seen a lot of them. This one is old.”

“Can we look it up or something, find out more?”

“Sure,” Nora said. “The school library might have a coin reference book. It doesn’t look like a typical old European coin. If you’re supposed to give it to Brynn, it might be some sort of message.”

I took the strange coin from her. That fishhook in my chest still tugged whenever I thought about Brynn. She was selfish, but she’d defended me at the dance. She’d shoved me in the secret room, but mad as I was, I couldn’t let twisted old Barnaby Charon use me to get to her. Simmering under those ideas was the sad feeling that maybe Brynn was trying to be a friend to me in her own warped way. I thought again of Lia. If my ex-bestie ever got in trouble, I’d want someone to protect her.

I closed my hand and said, “If Charon wanted Brynn to have this coin so bad, he could have given it to her himself. I’m not giving it to her until we know what it means.”

“Comments?” Dr. Falzone asked, shuffling through his papers during announcements, a few days later. I realized
I’d been spacing out, staring at Jessie’s empty spot, and looked away. Across the chapel, Shane raised his hand. Dr. Falzone tipped his coffee mug in the guy’s direction. “Yes, Shane?”

“Um. Yeah. There’s a new group on campus. Anyone interested in joining the Karma Collective, meet at the
chapel
today after lunch.” He laughed once and shrugged. “Yeah, we’re gonna
shake things
up around here.”

People shifted in their seats. Dr. Falzone frowned, no longer perusing distractions on his paper, but watching Shane with measured concentration.

“Ooo … kay. Thanks, Shane,” Dr. Falzone said. “Anyone else?”

Another hand went up. “Alan?” Dr. Falzone said.

A red-faced sophomore boy with brown hair stood. “Hey, Shane — Can you reschedule the Karma Collective? See, we’re starting a group on campus, too. The No-Class Pranksters are meeting in the chapel today after lunch.”

“Yeah, sure,” Shane called, across the seats. “I wouldn’t want to make your club disappear.”

Scattered laughter echoed in the cavern of the chapel. A couple of kids twisted around, like they were trying to figure out what the joke was. Maybe twenty pairs of eyes
landed on me. My stomach did a slow somersault. They were talking about
me
. About how I’d snuck out of my room after curfew and shook the chapel wall. I remembered the cheap rubber skeleton that had ended up in my dorm room. Apparently, the pack of sophomore bullies had me on their radar.

Dr. Falzone frowned, his internal Spidey sense, keen from decades of teaching, perhaps going off.

Shane half got up and corrected, “Karma Collective, meet up after —”

“OK, that’s enough,” Dr. Falzone interrupted. “I think we can stop here. All new groups must be approved by a faculty member.”

“Sorry, Dr. Falzone,” Shane said contritely. “It just … snuck out.”

More laughter.

“Enough,” Dr. Falzone repeated. “I want to see you and Alan down here after announcements.” He didn’t ask if there were any other comments before muttering, “Dismissed!” and making a shooing motion for us all to vacate.

I grabbed my stuff and headed out of the chapel, worried. I needed to get in trouble for sneaking out like I
needed a hole in my head. As I made my way toward my next class, Shane called out my name, loud. He smiled like a shark, his group of buddies in tow.

“Hey, you should sign up for both those groups!” he called out, as he walked by. “I think you’re a no-class prankster
and
you’re going to get your karma.” His friends cackled. The smile dropped off his face. “Everybody’s going to know what you did,” he said.

I guess that’s another thing about boarding school: There are no secrets for long. And apparently, the subsection to this rule is that if someone finds out your secret, they can get a lot of enjoyment out of tormenting you until the story comes out.

For the first couple of days, it was taunts from Shane’s pack of sophomores. I ducked away, ignoring them. Later that week, Troy became part of their group. He looked greenly unhappy to be there, but still he walked with them whenever they laughed at me. Whispers started up, same as when Jessie had first disappeared, except now they hushed as I walked by. I caught scraps of the rumors, though — I was a creeper, hated by my own roommate. I’d cruelly
tormented fragile Jessie, chasing her across a dark campus and pretending to be her dead brother.

On Friday, I got out of the shower and my towel was gone. I stood next to the pink plastic shower curtain, dripping wet. And amazingly, for the first time in recorded history of dormitory bathrooms, no one came in or out as I pondered what to do. I was practically air dried by the time I understood what my choices were, took a deep breath, and darted down the hall naked, toward the relative safety of my room.

That one got to me, and I started getting angry. And scared of what they’d do next.

Nora stayed my friend, despite my new status. She’d sit with me at lunch when our schedules matched up. We met up to whisper about the strange coin and discuss Mark Elliott and Thatch. And when people said mean things about me under their breath, Nora would stare them down until they got uneasy and moved on. And they always did. Guess everybody knew that when a person like Nora chose to be friends with someone, it stuck.

In the meantime, I’d hidden the gold coin meant for Brynn in the toe of my favorite dress-up pumps, located in
the back of my closet. Every few days, I took out the coin to look at it and wonder what it meant. It was odd, but holding the coin comforted me, like Barnaby Charon had put a spell on it, binding me to the thing. That was ridiculous, of course. It was only curiosity that kept drawing me back to it, and the idea that I was protecting Brynn was what felt comforting.

I also spent lots of my time in the library, trying to identify it. As it turned out, it wasn’t easy to track down a coin if it didn’t have any writing or dates on it.

A couple of times I considered trying to talk to Brynn. She wore Troy like a gangly, groping suit of armor. That kept not just me, but anyone with a gag reflex, a good ten feet away at all times. I figured it was better that way, at least until I knew what I was going to do.

The following Monday, when it was time for student announcements, Shane raised his hand and got up. Before he even started, my stomach dropped out the exit hatch.

He said, “Sign up to volunteer at our charitable faculty car wash Saturday. The Karma Collective will be washing
teachers’ cars and collecting a donation fund for the family of Jessie Keita. You can also donate old towels to help the cause!”

Tamara held up my towel, the one that had disappeared from the showers. She waved it above her head and shouted, “Hey, Shane, I have one for you!” She pranced down the chapel aisle. Of course Tamara was the one behind it. I wondered if she’d been hiding the towel somewhere in our room all along.

“All right.” Dr. Falzone raised his voice. Tamara popped into her seat and grinned. Students whispered, not deterred by Dr. Falzone’s frown or the hushes of advisors peppered through the chapel.

Dr. Falzone said, “Whatever this …
production
is about, it’s gone far enough.”

“But, Dr. Falzone!” Shane argued. “We’ve got permission and everything!”

“Yeah,” Alan whined. “Mr. Weber signed off on our group.”

All heads turned to Mr. Weber’s seat. He was asleep. One of his advisees nudged him. He let out a big snore. I got the feeling it wasn’t the first time he didn’t know what was going on.

“Next person making reference to this topic can expect five hours of work crew.” Dr. Falzone frowned at us like the entire student body was something smeared on the sole of his shoe. Tamara pouted. Alan and Shane smirked. Maybe three kids out there in the sea of my classmates looked like they still didn’t understand what was going on.

That’s when it hit me. Those bullies had me trapped because I was afraid people would find out what I’d done. But that was a trap I could let myself out of. I raised my hand.

“Anyone else?” Dr. Falzone asked. He did not see me.

“Me,” I said, and gave a single wave.

“Yes?” He leaned against the stage and folded his arms across his chest. The auditorium went silent. Shane, Tamara, and Alan seemed very uncomfortable all of the sudden. In fact, Alan looked like he might puke. That was pretty satisfying, even though I felt like I might hurl, too. But mostly, I thought about this time when I was a little kid:

In fourth grade, a boy in my class brought a model dinosaur for show-and-tell. He and his dad made it, he told everyone. When I held it, I broke the tail.

“You owe me a new dinosaur!” the kid screamed. “They cost fifty dollars!”

Being supercool, like always, I cried all the way home. I owed fifty bucks I had no way of getting. And the worst was I
had
broken the kid’s toy. Just like he said.

It took my mom until dinner to pry the story out of me. When I finally told her, she didn’t scream at me. Or cry. Or wring her hands. Or any of the things I’d seen her do in my head. Instead, she put two twenties and a ten-dollar bill into my hand. It was the most money I had ever seen at one time.

“But it’s just a stupid tail,” I sobbed. “Some glue would fix it.”

“Honey,” she said. “You broke something that belonged to someone else.”

I took the money to school the next day, sure the kid would tell me the dinosaur really cost a hundred dollars.

“What’s this?” he asked me, when I shoved the sweaty, crinkled ball of money at him.

“For the dinosaur.” I held it out, mostly trying not to cringe and bawl at the same time.

He shrugged and smiled at me, practically unrecognizable from the angry, red, screaming thing he’d been the day before. “It’s OK. My dad fixed it. You know. With glue.”

And like that, I was free.

That’s what I was thinking while Dr. Falzone crossed his arms and Alan looked like he was going to pee himself. I said it all in one breath.

“I snuck out of my room and scared Jessie Keita in the chapel a few nights before she left school. I was playing a prank. Jessie was my friend and I didn’t mean to hurt her.”

I could actually hear the delicate plopping noises of mouths falling open.

“Someone came and got Jessie the night she disappeared,” I continued, my heart racing. “I think something bad happened to her.”

The auditorium roared. Most of it was a tidal wave of “She didn’t just …” and “Did you hear that?” swelling around me. Then “
Got
her?” started like a riptide.

In the sea of shocked faces, one pair of eyes met mine. Mark Elliott’s. While everyone else was freaking, he sat, perfectly calm. The corner of his mouth turned up in a slow, amazed smile. And I couldn’t be sure, but I thought he said,
Wow,
as he raised an eyebrow at me. The word was an arrow, piercing my chest, pinning me to my seat.

“Dismissed!” Dr. Falzone yelled over the noise. Everyone stood at once, and Mark Elliott disappeared in the
crowd. Dr. Falzone’s finger hung in midair, pointing at me. “You. Stay.”

In two breaths, the entire auditorium was empty. Dr. Falzone walked slowly up the aisle, hands in the pockets of his pressed khakis.

“Sounds like we have some talking to do in my office,” he said.

The “we” who had “some talking to do” turned out to be something of a faculty party. Dr. Falzone called in the headmistress, Miss Andersen, and Mrs. Sibley’s secretary, Jude, who took notes like a court reporter. We all sat in the headmistress’s office. They drank coffee. I sat in a chair with no arms.

“Well, Camden. Let’s begin,” Dr. Falzone said.

I told them half the story, as if what happened involved only Jessie sneaking out with the Ouija board and me feeling left out enough to sneak after her. I didn’t name a single other person. Each of the adults scowled at me, sighed, and asked questions. I probably should have been scared of getting expelled, but I wasn’t. I guess it felt like free fall.

“If it was just you and Jessie who snuck out, how’d Alan and Shane find out?” Mrs. Sibley asked. The bell rang like it
was punctuating her question. A moment later, I watched students flood out of their classrooms. In an alternate reality, I was going to lunch.

Miss Andersen gave me an encouraging smile. “Maybe you went with your roommate, Tamara, and she told Alan and Shane.” She shrugged. “Is that how they knew? Or did all four of you sneak out together?”

Dr. Falzone tried, “You shouldn’t have to take all the blame if you weren’t the ringleader,” and “Shane and Alan are already getting five points. They’re going to assume you told us their part in it, anyway.” He tapped a pencil on his notebook, drawing out the silence I was supposed to step into. “Maybe when you tell us what happened, we’ll see they don’t need the points.”

They didn’t know about the sweaty ball of money for the dinosaur, or how I didn’t owe them anything. I looked out the window and waited for it to be over. It felt good not to tell.

In the end, they gave me eighteen hours of weekend work crew. Ten for sneaking out of my room. Five for commenting during announcements after Dr. Falzone had promised five points for anyone commenting. Three for being unhelpful during my own disciplinary meeting.