Academic Assassins (9 page)

I couldn't look at her anymore. My eyes drifted across her desk, halting on a framed photograph. It was turned just enough that I could make out half of a face.

A boy's acne-riddled cheek.

Leaning over Merridew's desk, I turned the picture frame toward me.

Compass…?

What was a school picture of Compass doing framed on Merridew's desk?

“Ah.” She let out a lighthearted sigh. “I see you recognize my grandnephew.”

She picked up the picture frame and smiled at the image of Compass.

“Jim had such potential,” she said, drifting off into her own thoughts. “Our family had such high hopes for him. He could have changed the world.”

She lowered the frame. Her smile diminished, lips sinking to a slit of pink.

“Then you came along, Mr. Pendleton, and you took that away from him.”

How could she be blaming me for this? Compass had runaway long before I met him.

Merridew placed the picture back on her desk.

I need to get out of here.

I need to get out of here.

I need—

The smile leapt back onto her face, like a spider hopping onto its feet.

“I have been aware of your exploits from the very beginning,” she said. “Burning down your school. House arrest. Camp New Leaf. The list goes on and on….Such a rascal!
But wherever you go, other children follow. Whatever you say, other children listen. You are a leader, Mr. Pendleton. A natural-born leader.”

She brought the C.R.U. up for me to see. Her rusted-red nail polish looked more and more like dried blood.

“Once our Conduct Response Units make their way into schools across the country,” she said, her sugary breath drifting over me. “It will be because of your painstaking input.
Thanks to you, students with behavioral problems everywhere will finally have a chance at becoming model citizens once and for all….”

So that was Merridew's master plan. Mass-produced dog collars for the nation's student body. Fresh off the assembly line and onto the necks of kids everywhere. Armies of zombified
Stepford Students marching through every school.

Sugar and spice and everything fried.

Zaps and jolts and electrified bolts.

P's and Q's and curtsies and bows.
Yes, ma'ams
and
no, sirs
heard all across the country. If Merridew could convince the Board of Ed that her torture devices
worked in an academic environment, students all across the country would soon be choking on her patented brand of brutal collars.

We're not just talking about Kesey. Teachers everywhere could shock their kids into submission with the mere touch of a button. Classrooms everywhere would be the backdrop of mass
shock-a-thons. Kids would become nothing but shuffling hordes, their brains fried from too many jolts.

“You are the perfect specimen,” she said. “If I can rebuild you, rehabilitate you,
reclaim
you—then I can reclaim absolutely anyone. I want you to lead my program
into the future, Spencer—and I want all the other rabble-rousers to follow right along behind you, just as the children of Hamelin town followed the Pied Piper into his cave. Will you do
that, Spencer? Will you be a leader for me?”

I could just picture it: A nation of electroshocked lemmings.

You better believe I wasn't going to be Merridew's test subject.

I'm nobody's lab rat.

Y
ou hear more than you see in the Ant Farm. Sounds come at you from all different directions, but you never see their source.

The chain-gang jangle of an orderly's keys.

The crashing static on a two-way radio.

The distant shouts of an ant as he's wrestled into a four-point restraint by the Men in White.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm really hearing all these different sounds or if they're just the noises bouncing off the inside of my skull.

How did the ol' saying go again?

If you aren't crazy coming into Kesey, you sure would be by the time you left.

If
you ever left.

It was social hour. Ants were free to roam about the ward, though I chose to hole up in my pod. I could hear the others murmuring just outside my cell, but I didn't feel like socializing
yet. I was busy with a little science experiment:

How to Disarm a Battery-Powered Electroshocker
.

I studied my distorted reflection in the steel latrine, struggling to get a good look-see at my collar. The battery was encased inside a black plastic box fastened to the back of the strap,
positioned directly on top of the vertebra in my neck. A small electrode snaked out from the black box—like the sucker on a red-and-green-wired remora. Those deep-sea parasitic suckerfishes
attach themselves to the belly of a shark and feed off whatever leftovers funnel out from their host's mouth.

This collar was a parasite, alright—and it's feeding off of me. It wasn't going to let go until it had sucked me dry.

I tugged on the collar to examine the electrode fastened to my neck.

What's stopping me from tugging it off? I can just peel the pad like this and….

All of a sudden a jolt of electricity rushed through and I instantly feel like
I'm a fish with an electrified hook stuck in my mouth I can't wriggle free there's electricity
in my teeth there's lightning behind my eyeballs
DAD YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO PICK ME UP AN HOUR AGO
there's an ice pick in my eardrums there's a jolt in my spine there is a
burning white-hot coil of electricity the filament on a lightbulb don't touch it
YOU PROMISED DAD WHERE WERE YOU
don't touch I just touched an electric fence I stuck a coat
hanger in a wall socket I plunged my tongue straight into a broken lightbulb stop please my mind is on fire
and the shock finally stops and I flop back against my cot. I couldn't breathe.
My lungs had locked. Coughing, I peered out of my pod and found a surveillance camera positioned directly outside the Plexiglas partition. Its lens tightened on me, the angry red eye of its
indicator light burning bright.

I limply waved hello to whoever was watching.

Scratch that plan.

“Hey—fresh meat.” A scrawny ant leaned against the entrance to my pod. He had heavy gray bags under his eyes, as if he hadn't slept in weeks. “You seen
Mickey?” He wiped his runny nose against his fingers, revealing a crude tattoo of a circle—an O or maybe a zero—etched into the skin between his thumb and index finger. “You
deaf? Has Mickey come around here or what?”

I had no idea who this Mickey was, and I wasn't about to open my mouth to tell this punk that.

“You're hopeless, man,” he said, giving up on me. “You see him, you tell him I'm looking for him. Mickey knows who I am.”

Just then, the bell rattled throughout the Ant Farm.

“Everybody line up,” Grayson shouted from the gallery floor, the jingle of his keys sounding like sleigh bells. “
Move it, move it, move it!
”

This scrawny kid nodded for me to follow him.

“Headcount happens three times a day,” he said. “Once in the morning just before breakfast, once following lunch, and once at night, right before lights out. If
somebody's missing during roll call, Grayson puts Kesey on lockdown.”

I shuffled out from my pod and saw the rest of the ants line up along the Yellow Brick Road. Everyone made sure his toes didn't cross the painted edge.

Walking down the gallery, I glanced past the glazed-over eyes of each resident—unblinking, as glassy as a pair of marbles sewn into a stuffed animal.

I took my place in line.

Babyface stepped up next to me, strapped in with his own dog collar. “Looks like they gave us the same accessory, huh?”

Buttercup followed a step behind Grayson, trailing after him like his own shadow. She held back as Grayson kept wandering down the row of ants. Her lips puckered ever so slightly at me, as if
she were waiting for a kiss. “Feeling at home? Finding everything you need?”

I stared forward, keeping quiet.

Is Buttercup flirting with me?

Grayson counted off each resident as he went—“One, two, three, four….”

I decided to do a little tally of my own. Five Men in White. The orderlies at Kesey weren't doctors or nurses, like the medically trained staff on duty. The orderlies had one job. All they
had to do was what the name implied:
Maintain order.
As in—keep things under control, uphold the status quo, and make sure nobody hurts themselves or anyone else….
Unless
they're the ones doing the hurting
.

Most of the Men in White I'd seen so far wore the telltale signs of past skirmishes—scars lining their cheeks, bite marks on their noses, missing chunks of cartilage.

We are at war
, Grayson had said,
and you punks are the enemy
.

He made his way down the row, the retractable key chain fastened at his hip rattling with each step, counting off—“Five, six, seven…”

Buttercup pressed her hand into the small of my back and pushed. One second she's batting her eyelashes at me—the next, she's shoving me around. I've heard of playing
hard to get, but this was taking it to a whole new level of insanity.

I stumbled forward.

Grayson halted, staring at the floor.

Looking down, I realized the tip of my left foot was off the yellow line.

I pulled my canvas shoe back as fast as I could.

Too late.

Grayson had his C.R.U.'s out, his thumb already on the button. “
Residents must keep their feet on the yellow line at all times
,” he recited. “
Residents who fail
to comply will receive a three-second response
.”

I held out my hands in hopes of showing him I meant no harm.

Just an accident, I wanted to say. Won't ever happen again, boss….

No dice.

Grayson pressed his thumb on the button and I felt the electricity surge down my spine and just before the jolt could flood my brain I thought
quick Spence think back to a happier moment
think back to something anything and block out the pain the pain oh man here comes the pain and
MOM TOOK ME TO SEE SANTA CLAUS AT THE MALL WE HAD TO WAIT IN LINE TO GET MY PICTURE TAKEN WHEN HE
ASKED ME WHAT I WANTED FOR CHRISTMAS I TOLD HIM I WANTED MY MOM AND DAD TO BE HAPPY AND SANTA SAID HO HO HO
oh no oh no help me oh no
HO HO HO HOW ABOUT WE GET YOU A BRAND-NEW FIRE TRUCK
DOES THAT SOUND LIKE A GOOD GIFT TO YOU KID and Grayson's thumb finally lifted off the button.

The electricity dissipated from my bones, releasing me from its steely grip. I folded over and landed hard on my knees, flopping like a rag doll.

“Get up,” Grayson said. “I said—
get up
.”

Babyface leaned over and grabbed my arm, trying to tug me up from the floor. “Just give him a second, alright? Let him catch his breath.”

Grayson tightened his eyes on Babyface. “Let him get up by himself.”

“Come on, man…Lighten up.”

Grayson stepped back and shouted—“Hear that, everybody? The rug rat here says I should
lighten up
.”

This drew a few chuckles from the Men in White.

“What do you think, #2643?” Grayson asked. “Should I
lighten up
?”

“No, sir!” Buttercup shouted back.

“Tell you what.” Grayson aimed his eyes at me and shouted, “Emergency pod inspection, courtesy of our two new residents here!”

Ants moaned as three more Men in White entered the gallery, keys jangling. “Be sure to show #347678 your gratitude whenever you have the chance.”

Grayson really wasn't making it easy for me to make new friends.

We were instructed to stay on the Yellow Brick Road while the Men in White tore through our pods. We had to watch them turn over our rooms, one at a time.

Before long, a small heap of confiscated goods piled up on the gallery floor.

See that soda can?

The bottom was cut out and hinged to make the Men in White believe it hadn't been opened. Perfect for hiding items nobody wanted found.

See that comic book?

Slipped in between its pages were a set of razor blades.

See that knife made from a shard of Plexiglas?

One end had been wrapped in duct tape for a handle, while the other had been sanded down to a fine point.

See that set of nunchucks made from broken chair legs?

Or that spear made from a scrap of metal from an old bed frame?

“Are we gonna find anything in your pod, #347678?” Grayson asked.

I shook my head—
nope
. What did he expect? I had only been at Kesey for a couple hours….

“Got something,” one of the Men in White called from my pod.

Say—
what?!

The orderly stepped out from my pod holding a toothbrush. Its plastic tip had been filed down to a sharp point. I'd never seen it before in my life.