The Academy (40 page)

The morning was foggy, with a thick mist that cut off the tops of the buildings and hid everything beyond a twenty-yard radius behind a wall of white. Students walking through the quad looked like ghosts, and Ed thought that was entirely appropriate. It was like a Dorian Gray thing. This was what the school was
supposed
to look like.

As impossible as it seemed, he and Brad got lost. They weren’t really going anywhere—they were just wandering around waiting for the first bell to ring like they usually did—but the fog was so thick that his sense of direction had been knocked out. He couldn’t tell which way was east or west, north or south. Even the glimpses they got of the buildings made it seem as though they were in the wrong places, and within minutes they found themselves in what appeared to be a flat stretch of blacktop with no building in sight. There were also no students passing by them, no sign of anyone around at all. Ed didn’t like it.

Brad was still talking about the Harvest Festival.

“This has gone too far,” he said. “We’ve got to do something about it.”

Ed agreed. “But what?” he asked.

Instead of answering, Brad stopped walking. He looked around. “Where are we?”

“I was just wondering the same thing.”

“This school . . . ,” Brad began, but trailed off. He was peering into the mist, and Ed looked, too. At first he saw nothing, but gradually, a series of irregular shapes came into focus. He couldn’t place them at first. They were outlines, silhouettes, and some of them were moving, and he finally figured out that he was looking at a little kids’ playground, like the one they’d had at their grammar school. He saw a slide, a swing set, monkey bars, a teeter-totter. Children were playing there, flighty figures running and swinging and sliding and climbing.

“What is that?” Ed whispered.

Brad shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Slowly, carefully, they moved closer. There was a bigger figure among the small ones, riding alone on the teeter-totter, up and down, up and down, and as they approached, as the fog became less thick, they could see more details. The little kids, Ed noticed, all seemed to be dressed in old-time clothes.
Ghosts
was the word that came to mind, and the chill he felt while watching them play had nothing to do with the weather. The big figure, the one on the teeter-totter, was—

Burned.

He lifted one weak arm. Just like the boy in the bonfire.

“Fuck!” Ed yelled.

And then the playground was gone. The fog was still there, but what had looked like a vast expanse of blacktop turned out to be the sports complex, and to their left he could see the cafeteria. The bell rang, and students who’d been getting oatmeal-bar breakfasts from the vending machines started hurrying to their classes.

“Holy shit,” Ed said. “Did you see that?”

“Of course.” Brad looked around. His face was blanched. “I wonder if anyone else did.”

“I don’t think so.”

“It’s a hint,” Brad said.

“Of what?”

“I don’t know. But we were given a glimpse of something. Something I’m not sure we were supposed to see.”

Ed’s heart was still thumping loud enough for him to hear the pulse in his ears, and his skin was a pelt of gooseflesh. “It’s not the most useful knowledge on the planet.”

“No,” Brad admitted. “But we have it and we can use it. If we can just figure out how.”

They started walking toward the classrooms. Neither spoke for a moment.

“That was that guy,” Ed said finally. “The one in the fire. The one who died.”

“I know.”

“I think he was trying to signal us.”

“I think so, too.”

“You think that’s what Van was trying to do when you saw him in the locker room?”

Brad shivered. “No,” he said. “Van . . . Van was something else.”

They talked about it some more at break and even more at lunch with Myla, but none of them could figure out exactly what was going on or what they were supposed to do about it.

The day seemed to drag on forever. How could he concentrate on classwork when he’d seen a kid burn to death and then seen his ghost playing with other ghosts in some alternate world they’d stumbled into? Ed was tempted to ditch seventh period—why
had
he signed up for library TA?—but his absence would definitely be noticed, and who knew what sort of punishment Mrs. Fratelli would mete out to him? The one thing he’d learned about the librarian from working with her was that she was really hard-core.

Although he’d known that going in.

It was one of the reasons he stayed in the library, one of the reasons he hadn’t transferred. Mrs. Fratelli was not an administrator, not a secretary, but not really a teacher either. She was ostensibly on the periphery of the school, but she had her own building and her own staff, was queen of her own private realm, and he had the sneaking suspicion that she was closer to the center of things than anyone suspected.

Ann was already at her post behind the counter by the time he arrived at the library. He had never cracked her secret, had never discovered why she and the other TAs seldom spoke and walked around like they were more zombie than human. He still suspected some brainwashing effort on the part of the librarian, but she had never tried anything on him, so he could never be sure.

“Where’s the old lady?” he asked Ann. He liked to act cool around the other TAs. It was the only place he could get away with it, since they were among the few kids at school even dorkier than he was.

The other girl ignored him.

Ed shrugged. “That’s okay. I’ll check out her office.”

That was bold. Mrs. Fratelli didn’t like anyone in her office when she was not there, and if it turned out that she was somewhere else in the library, he would be breaking cardinal rule number one. But still Ann didn’t respond, just continued to stare straight ahead in that spooky blank way she had, and he walked behind the counter and knocked on the librarian’s door.

No answer.

Feeling brave, he let himself in. Mrs. Fratelli wasn’t there, and he took the opportunity to scope the place out, though he still remained in the doorway. His gaze alighted on a book lying on the flat empty part of her desk. The leather-bound cover was black, and he couldn’t read the red-lettered title upside down, but the sepia-toned photo beneath the words was of the library. Sort of. He took a few steps forward. He recognized the blocky ugliness of the square structure even upside down, but there were no other buildings anywhere around it. There was, however, a line of dead trees in the front, and hanging from each tree was a bound black teenager who had obviously been lynched.

Ed stepped back into the doorway, feeling guilty. He looked behind him to make sure there was no sign of Mrs. Fratelli and saw only the back of Ann’s head as the other TA stared silently into the heart of the library.

Ed thought for a moment. Brad and Myla seemed to blame everything on the charter, and it was true that Tyler had seemed to be a pretty normal high school for his freshman-through-junior years, until the charter conversion this semester. But he had the feeling that whatever was going on here was deeper than that. Yes, the charter seemed to have brought everything to a head, but this library had been a dead zone ever since he’d started attending the school.
No one
wanted to go here. And Mrs. Fratelli had always been the way she was. She hadn’t changed this semester. This was her.

He glanced again at the book on the desk and thought about some of the other odd books he’d shelved, the ones with pictures of deformed men and naked women, butchered corpses and dead babies, the ones with titles simultaneously gruesome and pornographic. And those were the books that were on public display, the ones that anyone could check out.

What about the ones that were hidden?

Special Collections.

Maybe there was something in there that could shed some light on Tyler’s secrets.

Ed hesitated. He knew where Mrs. Fratelli kept the key to the room. It would be easy for him to take it right now and go there, putting it back when he was through. It would be wrong . . . but it would be easy.

Which was the bigger wrong, though? A boy had burned up in that fire. Other students were missing and, if Van was any indication, probably dead. Some teachers might even be missing if the rumors he’d heard were true. Wasn’t it his responsibility to find out all he could, even if it meant breaking a few rules?

The librarian could return at any second, so without further hesitation, he strode into the room, picked the key ring from its hook under one of the shelves and quickly stepped back outside, closing the door behind him. Still no sign of Mrs. Fratelli. He pocketed the key ring and walked over to Ann. He tapped her on the shoulder. It was the first time he’d ever touched her, and he expected her to turn slowly and dully like she always did, but to his surprise, she jumped, startled, and let out a short yelp.

He jumped, too, but was encouraged by the fact that she could still have a normal human reaction. “Where’s Mrs. Fratelli?” he asked.

“She went to the office to see Mrs. Hawkes. She told me to hold the fort until Miss Green came.”

Ed had still never seen the elusive Miss Green, and he was beginning to doubt that the library assistant even existed. He didn’t want to be too obvious, but he had to know, and he asked Ann, “Did she say when she’d be back?”

The TA shook her head.

He thought quickly. This might work, but he’d have to move fast. “I’m going upstairs. Let Mrs. Fratelli know if she returns.”

Ann was once again her normal, nonresponsive self, and he hurried down the center aisle, then up the stairs that led to the second floor. He hadn’t told the TA why he was going upstairs because he had a plan. Sprinting down one of the aisles, he reached the far wall and hung a right. Going past the row of empty study carrels, he reached the alcove containing the permanently locked door marked SPECIAL COLLECTIONS. Hesitating for only a second, he unlocked it, opened it a crack, ignored the foul odor that seemed to come from within, then hurried back downstairs to replace the key.

Mrs. Fratelli had still not returned, thank goodness, and luckily, no classes or individuals had yet come to the library to check out books or work on the computers. He was sweating and breathing hard, but he tried to control both as he sauntered up to and around Ann and the front desk. “Mrs. Fratelli?” he called, pretending he was looking for her. As he’d hoped, Ann didn’t turn around, and with a furtive look back at her, he opened the door to the librarian’s office, put the key away and closed the door behind him.

“That place is a mess up there,” he told the TA, gesturing toward the ceiling and by extension the second floor. “I just wanted to tell Mrs. Fratelli about it. I’ll probably be up there the entire period. Do you think you can let her know where I am when she comes back?”

Ann said nothing, staring straight ahead, so he got out a scrap of paper from beneath the counter and grabbed a pen. “Never mind. I’ll write her a note.”

“I’ll tell her,” Ann said.

“Are you sure?”

Ann nodded.

He paused. “That’s okay. I’ll write her a note anyway. Just make sure you give it to her.”

“I’ll tell her you were in her office.”

Ed froze, his heart leaping in his chest.

Ann’s head pivoted on her neck, making her look for all the world like a robot. “If you don’t let me give her your message myself, I will tell her that you went into her office. Twice.”

He had no idea what was going on here, no clue what Ann was thinking or what her motives might be. He was not even sure he understood the substance of her proposal.

“You want to tell her yourself?” he asked carefully.

She nodded in that familiar dull way.

“And you will
just
tell her that the second floor is a mess and I’m up there cleaning it?”

She nodded.

What kind of game was she playing? He didn’t know, but if he didn’t play along, the shit would hit the fan. It might anyway, but he had no choice, and it was a chance he had to take. “Okay,” he said, adding a conciliatory, “Thanks, Ann.”

She didn’t respond, and he was off again, walking briskly down the aisle and up the stairs, running like crazy once he reached the second floor. He hurried past the study carrels to the alcove.