The Academy: Book 2 (14 page)

             
“Palmer!” Asa looked up to see Roxanne’s eyes locked onto his. Her frizzy blond hair was wild this morning, puffing three and four inches off her skull. Asa hadn’t noticed how tall she was yesterday, but now he saw that she had a couple inches on him. “Are you trying to talk to her? Do I need to remind you that if she so much as utters one word, it would be reasonable for a graduate to kill her on the spot?”

             
Asa didn’t know what to say; the only reason he had spoken was in response to Jen speaking, but he couldn’t tell Roxanne that. All he could think about was how he had been determined to take advantage of Roxanne’s open mindedness towards having the most hated student in the whole Academy on her Winggame team. Now, it looked like he was blowing his chances.

             
“Well I shouldn’t have to remind you,” she said. “And, while we are at it, what is play number ninety-five? It was in the handbook you were supposed to read.”

             
“I…Uh.” Asa had no idea. He had left last night’s meeting with intentions of reading the manual, but it slipped his mind when he had gotten home. He looked at Stan, who was relishing the sight of Asa being reprimanded.

             
“Well?”

             
“I don’t know,” Asa said.

             
She shook her head. “You didn’t read? I gave you one command, Palmer. Stan, do you know what ninety-five is?”

“Yes
m’am, it’s a three-three-fourteen split formation.” He glared at Asa, who wasn’t sure what a ‘split’ formation was.

“Perfect. And Palmer: you’re coming with me to my apartment after this. We need to have a talk. Chatting with the Fishie under the talking ban, and then not reading: I’m very disappointed in you.”

Asa’s heart was hammering. He nodded. His mouth was dry. He was given one incredible chance, and it was over after a single day.
She’s going to kick me off,
he thought. He was sure of it.

Roxanne’s mood changed quickly and drastically. She chimed off instruction as though nothing had happened: “Well, here we are. This is the road. Notice the red flags up ahead—you’ll just be following those; I don’t think that you all need any more instruction. Let’s get moving
, we’ll stretch afterwards.”

Asa liked to stretch before his workouts, but he certainly was in no position to be making demands. He felt numb, and he looked at Jen, who was smiling, before setting off.

His muscles were stiff, but he pushed himself forward. He was angry and upset; these emotions seemed to put a fire in him to want to work hard.

Stan shot off at an incredible pace, and Roxanne followed close behind. The Fishies, not yet being mutated beyond human capacity, were moving at a crawl compared to the rest of the students. After only a few short minutes, the gaps between the twenty-six teammates were sizable. Asa puffed out fog as he moved onward. Another second semester student, named Viola (Asa had heard her addressed by one of their classmates), was one hundred yards behind Asa. Her skin was pale, and the exertion made her blotch. She had been on Benny Hugh’s championship team last year, and so had undergone more physical mutations than Asa. Even though this was true, Asa was running at a faster pace; he spent more time in the gym than
most other students in the Academy, and so he was able to run faster than his mutations would have normally allowed. And, also, he was very upset.

A suffocating, nasty tension filled his throat and chest.
Why didn’t I read that book last night? I had one chance, ONE CHANCE! As though I wasn’t at enough of a disadvantage, and now I’m going to get kicked off my Winggame team. And why was Jen talking to me? How could she!? Does she not understand the circumstances I’m in? Or the danger in talking while the ban is in place? And who does she think she is, saying that she’ll cut through the Arctic jungle? She’ll die!

Asa was seething. He was mad at Jen, the Academy, Stan, and most of all himself.

As Asa ran, he thought of Jen’s cocky attitude in the face of danger.
I don’t care if I ever talk to her again,
he thought. But, for some reason Asa couldn’t explain, he kept using his echolocation to track her position. Though the entirety of the five-mile track was a circle, there were aspects of it that cut back, and zig-zagged. This allowed Asa to shoot his cries through the jungle periodically to see where Jen was.

He saw her after they had been running for two minutes. She was far behind everyone else, and didn’t seem to be exerting herself too much, though she was still jogging. But she hadn’t dared to try to cross through the
Arctic jungle.
Dirty liar,
Asa thought.
You’re not as tough as you say you are.

             
Towards the four-minute mark, the track made a drastic cutback, and put Asa in another position where he could use echolocation to see how the Fishies were doing. He let out frequent screams through the trees to catalog all of the runners. Mentally, he marked them off in his head.

             
Viola passed Asa as he did this; the echolocation cries took up too much energy for Asa to keep up a competitive pace while sending off his cries.

             
The last Fishie Asa saw was the red head with the streak through her hair. She was walking at this point, with her hands on her hips. She was far behind the others, and Asa guessed that he would detect Jen soon. He slowed down even more and continued to shoot out his cries into the jungle.

             
He didn’t detect her in the next half-mile.
She’s got to be back there, though. Surely she didn’t try to cut through the Arctic jungle.

             
Asa couldn’t figure out why he cared. If she wanted to die, why not let her? He had warned her; how far did his responsibilities extend?

             
In addition to the Fishies on the other side of the jungle, Asa’s echolocation allowed him to see all kinds of creatures in the wild. There were spiders as big as dogs, with webs the diameter of a barn. Asa’s echolocation told him that monkeys lined the canopy, thicker than he would have ever guessed; some branches held as many as twenty. There were bears as big as rhinos in there, and smooth, dark ponds that his echolocation could not see into, but his imagination wouldn’t stop guessing what slithered beneath.

             
At last, Asa found Jen. Asa was alone on the small straightaway when he saw her. She wasn’t on the road, but was in the jungle, as Asa had feared.

             
Asa saw the picture so clearly. Her head was back, and she had something in her mouth—
A stick?
She stepped over a log and was moving forward, back towards where she thought the track began. She was going the wrong way. From Asa’s experience with running these roads he knew that she wasn’t making the progress she thought she would. And, more immediate, she was about to walk into a spider web. Asa had seen one of them up close before: in the dark of the jungle, they were almost impossible to see. The thin filaments had a tinge of green to them that blended in with the foliage surrounding. And these spider webs weren’t made for insects; they caught big things, like parrots, monkeys, and snakes. They were much stronger than a normal spider web was. Asa didn’t think that the enlarged spiders would consume Jen, but if she destroyed a web, they might get mad and inject her with lethal venom. And she was very close to one.

             
Asa took a quick look behind his shoulder and considered his options. Still, he thought that if he saved her this time that she would just put herself in danger again; there was no reasoning with Jen; she was too stubborn.
But, what’s the risk? I’m going to get kicked off this team anyways. So what if they catch me in the jungle? Could my teammates view of me get any worse?

             
Asa shot out another echolocation cry and saw that Jen had gotten even closer to the web. She was now holding the stick-thing by her hip, in between her index and middle finger. Asa saw that he was still alone on the road. He cursed quietly, and slipped into the jungle.

             
Instantly, he felt that the air was more humid. It was a cold humidity, and felt odd to Asa. Insects chirped and birds cackled and sound seemed to travel differently under the canopy. The light trickled down in small, pointed beams that shone on the jungle floor. A small, black cat hissed at Asa as he ran by it. Though he didn’t think that getting caught running off the set path would make Roxanne madder than she already was with him, Asa didn’t want to shout for Jen and give away their location to his teammates.

             
Or whatever animals might be around.

             
He felt somewhat suffocated by the thick, moist air, but he ran deeper in after Jen. The leaves atop became denser, and closer together, and soon he had reached a part of the jungle that was as dark as dusk.

             
He visualized Jen ahead, walking towards the spider web that stretched across two massive trees.

7

The Polaroid

              The air was cold, thick, and humid as Asa ran towards Jen. His breath fogged out of him in the chilled air, and yet, due to the humidity and his recent exertion, he was sweating.

             
He visualized her a bit further ahead—her short hair, her new stark-white suit, and the stick-like-thing in her mouth. It was white.

As he grew closer to her, he regretted the decision more and more, and went over the reasons in his mind that coming out into the middle of the artic-jungle to save Jen was a bad idea.
Asa was a perceived murderer who had been given a remarkable chance of redemption by his Winggame captain, and already blown it.

When she had asked him to come to her apartment after the run, he was sure that she would kick him off.
In his mind, he laughed at the idea.
No,
he thought to himself.
NOW I’m sure that she’s going to kick me off the team. Leaving the track to go help Jen, what am I thinking? It’s not as though she’s going to learn her lesson; she’ll probably just put herself in the same situation next run, no matter what I say.

             
Jen stopped walking and turned to face Asa; she had heard him coming. A smile spread over her lips and she raised the stick-thing, which Asa now saw was a cigarette, to her lips. She inhaled, took the cigarette from her mouth, and ashed red ember into the snow where it sizzled.

             
“Look at you, Palmer! You acted like you were too good to cut through the arctic jungle, but here you are. You should be ashamed of yourself, lying like that!” She laughed some and took another deep drag.

             
“Are you crazy? Smoking? Really? And I told you not to come out here.”

             
She poked Asa in the chest with the hand that held her cigarette; the smoke wisped up and burned Asa’s nostrils. “You’re not my daddy.”

             
Asa pushed her wrist from his chest. “Get that thing away from me!”

             
And then, she kissed him. Asa was given no indication that it was going to happen; she simply leaned forward and planted her lips on his. She tasted and smelled like smoke.

             
Asa pushed her off of him. “Stop it! What’s wrong with you? Let’s get back to the track before someone notices that we’re gone.”

             
“I don’t want to go with you,” she said, and walked off. “You don’t control me.”