The Academy (17 page)

“Have you read our charter’s fine print? I’m not sure tenure even applies in this brave new world.”

Linda frowned. “You’re not caving, are you?”

“Of course not. Never.” Diane sighed. “But I think, from here on in, we’re going to have to pick and choose our battles.”

Linda was late getting back for fifth period, and there was a new student standing next to her desk when she arrived. She told the rest of the class to read silently for ten minutes—they were halfway through
Cat’s Cradle
—while she got the new student settled. She read the sheet he handed her. His name was Brandon Cowles, and he was transferring from Washington High.

Washington High?

That was a magnet school for science.

He was one of Jody’s ringers, Linda realized, and although she knew it was wrong and petty of her, she found herself hoping that he was a poor student in English. She would love to be able to give one of Jody’s handpicked replacements a failing grade. The boy also had an air of privilege about him that she found more than a little off-putting. Still, she smiled as she issued him a book and assigned him a seat.

When she decided that she’d given the students enough reading time and started to ask questions about the novel, Brandon was the first to raise his hand.

Damn it, he was smart.

She looked impasssively over the rows of students before her and called on someone else.

*

“I want to speak with the principal. Right now!”

Libby Vernon glared at the officious bitch who tried to pass herself off as the school’s public face. She’d dealt with bureaucracies before, and she knew that the only way to get anything done was to go straight to the top and not waste time and energy dealing with flunkies. She’d forgotten the bitch’s name already, but she squinted at the name tag pinned to her flat chest. “Bobbi,” she ordered. “Get your boss.”

“I’m the administrative coordinator—”

“I don’t care if you’re the emperor of China. I want to talk to the principal!”

Clearly insulted and angry, the other woman turned on her heels and strode briskly away, walking across the open area behind the front counter and down a short hallway into an office. She emerged a moment later with another woman in tow, a well-dressed, dark-haired woman who looked like the wife of a Midwestern politician. The principal. There was a nasty expression on Bobbi’s face, nasty and almost triumphant, but Libby didn’t have time to analyze the look because the principal was there, offering a well-manicured hand to shake. “I’m Principal Hawkes. How may I help you?”

“My son. Luke Vernon. He’s apparently been—”

“Expelled,” the principal said.

“I want him reinstated. Now.”

The principal fixed her with an insincere smile. “I’m sorry, I cannot do that.”

“Luke has never been suspended or even had detention. He’s never been in trouble before at all. And now he’s been
expelled
?”

The smile remained frozen. “According to our physical education instructor, your son refused to follow directions and complete the assignment given him. ‘Gross insubordination,’ I think, is the term the instructor used.”

“Insubordination? What is this, the army?”

“No, Mrs. Vernon. It is a high school.”

“That’s not even a cause for keeping him after class, let alone expelling him. Besides, it’s the teacher’s word against Luke’s, and I’ll take Luke’s every time. So unless you want a lawsuit on your hands”—she leaned forward—“I suggest you rescind that expulsion pronto and put my son back in his classes before he falls even farther behind due to your
gross
incompetence.”

“Why don’t we step into my office for a moment,” Principal Hawkes offered. “We can discuss this matter in private.”

“I’d just as soon discuss it right here.” She glanced around the room. “We’ll need witnesses for our lawsuit. By the way,” she said, “my husband’s a lawyer.”

“Come into my office. I’m sure we can find an amicable way to resolve this issue.” Still smiling, the principal motioned for her to walk behind the counter.

“Fine.”

Libby followed the principal through the open area and into the short hall that led to her office. The second she passed through the doorway that framed the truncated corridor, she hesitated, caught her breath. It suddenly felt as though all the oxygen had been sucked out of the atmosphere. The air was not appreciably colder—there were not even any visible air-conditioning ducts—but goose bumps popped up instantly on every inch of exposed flesh. Her heart was pounding. The passage might be short and well lit, but it was creepier than any long dark hallway she had ever seen.

No, it wasn’t creepy, exactly.

It was wrong.

Yes. There was something wrong with the brief hall, and when she forced herself to walk again and follow the principal, Libby felt slightly off-balance, unsure on her feet.

Jody Hawkes pushed open the door to her office and led the way inside.

What was this?
Libby stepped forward slowly. Behind her, the door closed with a muffled click. The room was unlike anything she had ever seen. It certainly wasn’t what a high school principal’s office should look like. Her eyes took in the purple-striped walls, the dirty broken furniture, the lone window smeared with mud. Beneath her feet, the floor was cracked concrete. From the ceiling hung a single bare bulb on which was drawn a frowning face. There was the smell of rotten fruit in the air.

The principal strode to the other side of her scarred and lopsided desk. From the jumbled pile of odds and ends atop it, she withdrew a bamboo cane. She used it to point at a rickety, rusted folding chair in front of Libby. All trace of conciliation was gone from her voice. “Sit your ass down,” she ordered.

Libby did as she was told. She’d come in here angry and out for blood, full of righteous indignation, but after going through that hallway and seeing this incomprehensible office, she felt cowed and effectively subdued. The balance of power had shifted, and she looked up at the principal, who was still standing on the other side of the desk and holding the cane.

“Your child was insubordinate!” the principal thundered.

Mention of Luke brought back her courage. “I want him reinstated.”

“Silence!”

Libby shut up.

The principal walked slowly around the side of the broken desk, twirling the cane in her hands. “I will give your child one more chance,” she said coldly. “
One.
But if his score on the president’s physical-fitness test does not improve, he is out of here.” She leaned forward. “And there
will
be consequences.”

That sounded like a threat, and although Libby would have gone into attack mode if that statement had been made when she’d first walked into the building, she now accepted it without protest, grateful that the principal had nothing more to add. She was afraid of the other woman, and not even for Luke was she willing to face her wrath.

“Now get out of my office,” the principal said, pointing the cane at her. “And don’t come back.”

Libby stood quickly and hurried out, down that horrible short hallway into the larger open area. Was that officious little bitch smirking at her? She didn’t know, didn’t care. All she wanted was to escape, to get out of this building and as far away from the principal and her hellish purple-striped room as possible. She felt like a coward, a traitor to her son, but fear and self-preservation overrode love and loyalty, and she strode so quickly across campus to the parking lot that she nearly knocked over a timid young girl hurrying to class, clutching her books to her chest.

She did not breathe easily until she was in her car and off school property, speeding down the street away from Tyler High as fast as the law would allow.

Eleven

His parents weren’t there when Ed came home from school, and they still hadn’t returned by the time dinner hour rolled around. For the past two years, he’d gotten nothing but grief from them about the importance of eating together, his mom going on and on about how teenagers who ate meals with their parents were more successful academically and less likely to use drugs or get involved with gangs. Now
they
were the ones who were not here.

Maybe they’re dead. Maybe they were killed in a car accident.

He pushed the thought out of his mind. What would make him even think such a thing?

Working at the library.

Yeah. That would do it. Ed walked into the kitchen. Mrs. Fratelli was, without a doubt, the freakiest person he had ever met. The other day, he had come across her licking something small and black off her index finger. He hadn’t asked what she was doing, but she volunteered the information anyway. “I like to pull out my eyelashes and eat them,” she said. “They taste salty.”

He’d nearly gagged, but had managed to leave her presence without commenting or reacting or drawing attention to himself. He’d had a dream that night that he’d come upon her in her office and she’d been breaking the arms off a dead infant lying on her desk. “I like to pull their arms out and eat them,” she said.

“They taste salty.” It was one of those dreams where after he woke up, he wasn’t sure if he’d dreamed it or it had really happened, and to his mind, that said more about the librarian than anything else.

Mrs. Fratelli also seemed to have a strange hold on the other students who worked as library assistants. It was not something he could even pretend to understand, but with the exception of himself, all the boys and girls who worked in the library, in all periods, had the same dour, subdued, almost anesthetized demeanor as Mrs. Fratelli herself. It was almost as though she had hypnotized everyone—except him.

Then why, he often wondered, did she keep him around?

He was not sure he wanted to know the answer to that question.

Rummaging through the kitchen cupboards, he found an open, half-empty box of Cheez-Its, and he took it out, shoving half a dozen of the little orange squares into his mouth. He grabbed a can of Coke out of the refrigerator and headed back out to the living room. He’d finished his homework, so he turned on the TV, flipping the channels until he found something worth watching.

It was dark out now. And his parents still weren’t home.

The phone rang. He picked it up immediately, heart pounding. “Hello?”

There was a mechanical click and then the recorded voice of his school principal: “Good evening, parents. This is Jody Hawkes, principal of John Tyler High School. I want to remind you that our Back-to-School Night is this Thursday. We will be—”

Ed hung up the phone.

It rang again immediately.

He picked it up, and once more there was a mechanical click, followed by the principal’s voice: “How dare you hang up on me?” It was a recording, but the voice sounded angry. Startled, Ed hung up the phone again.

Immediately, it started ringing.

He backed away, feeling frightened, though he knew he couldn’t be harmed by a phone call.

There was a beep as the answering machine picked up, and then another recording of Principal Hawkes’ furious voice, low and dangerous. “Pick up the phone, you little shit. I know you’re listening.”

He backed into the kitchen, peeking around the corner, afraid even to be in the same room as the telephone.

“You will never graduate,” the recording of Principal Hawkes’ vicious voice promised. “I’ll make sure of that.”

Ed found that his hands were shaking. What exactly did she mean by
that
remark? That she was going to make sure he didn’t have enough credits to graduate?

Or that she was going to make sure he was dead before the end of his senior year?

There was a click and then silence as the message ended. He waited several minutes, hiding in the kitchen, just in case the phone rang again. But when it became clear that the calls were over, he stepped carefully back into the living room, keeping his eye on the red blinking light of the answering machine. Even that light seemed eerie and intimidating to him, the way it kept flashing like a robotic eye, but it also told him that he had captured the message, that he had proof, and he walked over to the end table and pressed the PLAY button. Instead of Principal Hawkes’ angry voice, however, there was only a muffled hum that sounded like the engine of a boat as heard from underwater.