All the Birds in the Sky (12 page)

What the hell had Mr. Rose told them, that he was building a bomb?

Laurence’s brain was as hot and oxygen poor as the inside of this car. He felt an acute pain, like the skin of his life breaking as his future was ripped away. His parents were already walking up the dirt path to the cement bunker that said “COMMANDANT” without waiting for him to follow. He ran after them, shouting that they couldn’t do this, and he already had a fucking school lined up, goddamn it.

“The new and improved Coldwater Academy is all about helping the individual reach his full potential,” said Commandant Michael Peterbitter, who sat rigidly behind a fake wood desk with a Windows XP computer on one corner. Laurence couldn’t help snorting. “We see discipline as a means, not an end,” said Peterbitter, who had a lopsided handlebar mustache and a sunburnt nose under his buzz cut. “We believe in the age-old ideal of a sound mind in a healthy body. After a semester here, I bet you’d hardly recognize Larry.”

Blah blah, physical fitness, learning to strip a rifle in under two minutes, self-esteem, blah. Finally, Peterbitter asked if anyone had any questions.

“Just one,” Laurence said. “Who died?”

“That’s a sensitive matter, and we deeply regret—”

“Because that’s what the flag at half-mast means, right? How many kids has your awesome school killed, anyway?”

“Some people don’t take to the rigorous and enriching course of study we offer here.” Peterbitter put on a sober expression, but also glared at Laurence. “When offered a choice between flourishing in a high-powered environment and pointless self-destruction, some people will always choose to self-destruct.”

“We’re leaving now.” Laurence’s mother touched his arm.

“Great,” Laurence said. “I’m ready.”

But they meant a noninclusive “we.” Not for the first time, Laurence thought this was one of the annoyingly incommunicative features in the English language. Much like the inability to distinguish between “x-or” and “and/or,” the lack of delineation between “x-we” and “in-we” was a conspiracy of obfuscation, designed to create awkwardness and exacerbate peer pressure—because people tried to include you in their “we” without your consent, or you thought you were included and then the rug got pulled out from under you. Laurence dwelled on this linguistic injustice as he watched his parents walk back to their car, across the crunchy parking lot, without him.

Peterbitter had a bored smirk. “So, you go by Larry?”

Laurence was acutely aware that too many ginormous bruisers were staring at him already, from the front green with the teetering football goal. “No, I fucking don’t, I don’t go by Larry.”

“That’s right. As of right now, your name is B2725Q, but people will mostly call you Dirt. You don’t earn the right to be called Larry until you reach Level One, and you are currently at Level Zero.” Peterbitter scrutinized the trainees, who were doing push-ups, and waved at one of their instructors, who came jogging over. Peterbitter introduced Dirt to Dickers, one of the Seniors and one of his trusted lieutenants.

“C’mon, Dirt,” Dickers said. “I’ll find you a bunk. Afternoon Colors in an hour.” He had a chunky head covered with pale red fuzz and looked way older than eighteen.

As they walked to the “barracks,” Laurence noticed that one classroom building had boarded-up windows and others had cracks in their walls. Kids in camo fatigues jogged past in no particular formation, and there was a .50-caliber gun lying half-assembled behind a slanty shed. He wouldn’t trust this military organization to defend a candy bar. The only new thing seemed to be a scrim of barbed wire draped over the electric fence around the outside of the campus.

“Yeah, we had some runners,” Dickers said, following Laurence’s gaze toward the perimeter. “The school almost got shut down by the state last summer, but that was before the new management.”

Dickers started telling Laurence that once you reached Level Three, life was pretty sweet: You got an hour of unsupervised computer time per day, and the school had just gotten
Commando Squad
(a game Laurence had beaten in a single day, two years ago.) At Level Four, officer level, you sometimes got to watch movies in Peterbitter’s apartment after lights-out, but that was a secret that Dickers absolutely had not told Laurence. Most of all, you did not want to get bumped down to Level Minus-One, because Dickers could not swear that they had gotten rid of all the MRSA in the Isolation Hole. Again, Dickers had not told Laurence about the MRSA, any more than he’d told him about the action movies (and microwave popcorn and pizza, delivered from outside) for Level Fours. Laurence said Dickers’s secrets would die with Laurence, which was probably true.

“This here’s Dirt,” Dickers told the dozen or so massive teenagers in various stages of getting changed from athletic gear, toweling off, and changing into fatigues, inside a small white-brick dorm room. “He’s stayin’ here a few days, see how he takes to it. He needs a bunk and some gear. Show him a good time, girls.” Then Dickers was gone.

Laurence drew himself up, kept his shoulders squared. “Hi. I’m Dirt, apparently. It’s not the worst thing I’ve been called this week. So, where am I supposed to sleep? He said you had a spare bunk here?”

The room was maybe three times the size of Laurence’s bedroom at home and had bunks crammed so tight it was like how Laurence imagined a submarine. He couldn’t breathe this methane-nitrogen atmosphere, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to sleep in here. His head spun.

“Nope.” One dude with a DIY chest tattoo and a nose that had been broken multiple times rolled out of his bunk. He towered over Laurence. “No spare bunk here. You’re Dirt? You sleep on the floor.” He gestured at the dark far corner, which had a fresh spiderweb. Laurence looked for a bunk that was unoccupied, but he couldn’t see past the ring of massive kids on all sides.

The part of Laurence’s brain that stood back and analyzed shit told him he was being hazed. This was part of the “breaking you down” program, and also normal social dynamics.
Don’t let them get to you,
he told himself.

But what came out of Laurence’s mouth was: “What about the kid who just died? Maybe I can have his bunk.”

Probably the wrong thing to say.

“No way dude,” said someone farther back in the room, in a rumble like a forty-year-old truck driver. “You did not just disrespect Murph. You did not just piss on the memory of our fallen comrade. Tell me I didn’t hear that.”

“Now you’ve done it,” said the noseless kid. “Now you’ve done it.”

“I don’t give a shit about your stupid friend,” Laurence shouted as they lifted him over their heads so he could see the stains on the top-bunk mattresses and the deep fissures in the load-bearing beams. “This place got him, but it won’t get me. You hear me? I’m getting out of here.”

His voice cracked. Fluorescent lighting tubes rushed toward his face until he braced himself for a faceful of glass, and then he was spinning as cheers erupted around him. He gave in to panic at last, as the candy shell of anger split open, and let out a hoarse scream as he was cast, headfirst, into space.

14

Patricia: Where is Laurence?

CH@NG3M3: I don’t know. He hasn’t logged in for a few days.

Patricia: I’m worried something happened to him.

CH@NG3M3: Worry is often a symptom of imperfect information.

PATRICIA TRIED CALLING
Laurence’s house to find out what was going on. Laurence’s mother picked up. “This is your fault,” she said. Then she hung up.

Half an hour later, the phone rang at Patricia’s house and her dad picked up. He greeted Laurence’s mom and spent the rest of the conversation saying, “Oh. Oh dear. I see.” After he hung up, he announced that Patricia was grounded indefinitely. At this point, Roberta was too busy with the high-school musical and schoolwork to wait on Patricia hand and foot, so Patricia’s parents went back to sliding food under her door. Her mother said this time they really were cutting their losses with her, once and for all.

Patricia: I keep wondering if I should have told Laurence the whole story, about what Mr. Rose said to me.

CH@NG3M3: What do you think would have happened if you’d told him?

Patricia: He would have thought I was making it up. He would have thought I was nuts. That’s why it was the perfect trap. Whatever I do, I lose.

CH@NG3M3: The trap that can be ignored is no trap.

Patricia: What did you say?

CH@NG3M3: The trap that can be ignored is no trap.

Patricia: That’s a weird thing to say. I guess a good trap should be camouflaged, so you don’t realize you’re walking into it. On the other hand, you have to
want
to walk into it. A trap that doesn’t make you want to fall in isn’t much of a trap. And once you’re caught, you shouldn’t be able to ignore the trap because you’re stuck. So a trap that you can just pay no attention to is a failure. I guess I get it.

CH@NG3M3: Society is the choice between freedom on someone else’s terms and slavery on yours.

*   *   *

CANTERBURY ACADEMY SMELLED
so bad, Patricia’s nostrils burned. She kept expecting the fire alarm to go off, it was such a hot smell even on a freezing day. Nobody could find the source of this odor. It was exactly like something had died.

The smell drove Patricia out of her head, just like everyone else. She imagined this was how being drunk would feel. She kept seeing Mr. Rose observing her through the open door of his office, whenever she was between classes. In the girls’ room, Dorothy Glass and Macy Firestone each grabbed one of Patricia’s arms and shoved her up against the mirror, smeared with unidentifiable effluvia. “Tell us what you did,” they hissed at her. Patricia held her breath until they let go.

At lunch, she couldn’t stand it in the library. She kept thinking about the look Mr. Rose had been giving her, when he thought she wasn’t looking. She was sure: He was responsible for Laurence’s disappearance and this debilitating cloud of foulness. The two things were no coincidence. She was surer than caution.

She stalked down the hallway, lockers vibrating with her strides, and she hardly cared that she was getting a faceful of the death stench, with the exertion.

Just as she reached his doorway, a phrase popped into her head: “The trap that can be ignored is no trap.” She caught her breath—maybe CH@NG3M3 was wiser than it knew—but then she breathed in once again, and the maddening decay got in her nostrils again. She was going to confront this monster, once and for all.

“Miss Delfine.” Mr. Rose looked up from his computer and beckoned her to come sit in the nearest carpety chair facing him. The odor was strongest here in Mr. Rose’s office, but he seemed unbothered. “Always a pleasure to see you.” The door closed behind her.

The smell, it was beyond describing. You might as well have punched Patricia in the nose over and over.

“Uh, hi.” Patricia tried to sit still, but she couldn’t help fidgeting. She was at the epicenter of foulness. “I hope I’m not bothering you at a bad time.”

“I’m always here for you, just as I am for all the students here. What’s on your mind?”

“I’m wondering, umm, about Laurence. I haven’t seen him since Tuesday, and it’s Friday, and it seems weird that nobody’s even mentioned him. I was, umm, wondering if you knew what happened to him.”

Mr. Rose spread out his left palm on the desk. “I know as much as you do.” His right hand was doing something under the table. Patricia realized that “I know as much as you do” could be a loaded sentence, since there was a lot that they both knew. Or he was hinting he knew
everything
she did.
Trap trap trap.

“Okay then.” Patricia raised herself out of the chair with both hands.

Mr. Rose still had one hand under the table. He was trying to be subtle about fiddling with something. “Wait a moment, Miss Delfine,” he rasped. “Now that you mention Mr. Armstead, it does put me in mind of our conversation several weeks ago.” He gestured at the empty chair with his free hand.

“You mean the one that you said we would never talk about again.” Patricia resisted the impulse to obey the summons back to the chair. Instead she backed away.

“Well, if one were to infer that you had decided to ignore the advice I gave you on that occasion, one might well conceive that I decided to take matters into my own hands. Hypothetically speaking.” There was a kind of smile, a mutated species.

“You’re a revolting man.” Patricia had reached the door. The handle was stuck. “I don’t believe you. You’re just a crazy old crazy manipulative crazy person.” She tugged on the doorknob, with everything she had. “If you’ve done
anything
to hurt Laurence”—she heard her voice rising—“then I promise you I will
hunt
you
down
and use all my so-called witch powers to tear you apart.” The door came open with a lurch, just as she was saying the part about her witch powers.

Behind her, she heard a “clump” sound, like something soft and heavy falling. She turned just in time to have an impression of wet fur and teeth bared in agony, on the chair where she’d just been sitting. The day’s terrible stench came stronger than ever when she looked at that bundle of bloody fur in that chair. She could just make out one aquiline cloudy eye, staring at her from under the nearest chair arm.

“My god,” Mr. Rose was saying loud enough to ring through the crowded hallway. “What have you
done
?”

Patricia turned, and everywhere she looked people stared. The whole school had just heard her yelling threats of witchcraft and violence at Mr. Rose, and then she’d appeared to throw a smelly dead animal into his chair. This was never going to come right.

She ran. The doorway to the back lot opened with a crunch of the panic bar, and Patricia was sprinting into the cold. Skidding downhill. The stream that had stopped Laurence and her from going to the
pew-pew-pew
lake was still frosted over even in March, and Patricia hesitated. She heard people shouting. Horrible names. She stepped on the flattest rock and almost spilled into the water. She regained her balance and stepped on the next stone, which dislodged. She toppled forward and somehow turned her falling momentum into forward momentum. She careened onto another rock, then another, and at last she was teetering on the opposite bank. The shouting was louder and more directional. Someone had spotted her school jumper. She ran on, into the trees.