The Academy (47 page)

“Yes,” she said carefully. “That is true.”

His head felt heavy, and he wanted to put it down on the desk, but instead he leaned backward in his chair. “We don’t like the charter,” he said. “Me and my friends. A lot of the students. Teachers as well.”

“I don’t either,” the counselor said softly. She looked at the closed door. “It’s why I’m leaving,” she confided. “Tomorrow’s my last day. I got a job with the Orange Unified School District. That’s the only reason I’m telling you this.”

That was a surprise. As a student, he had no choice but to attend school; it was mandatory. He and all the other students were a captive audience, prisoners in a sense, and because of everything going on at Tyler, he had assumed that the faculty and staff were trapped here as well. At least those who weren’t
part
of the problem. It had never occurred to him that they could just up and leave the way they could with a regular job, and the fact that she was able to do so made it all seem more surreal somehow.

Ed shook his head again. It didn’t exactly clear the cobwebs as the descriptions said in books, but it definitely lessened the intensity of the pain.

The counselor seemed to know what he was doing. “I get headaches in this building, too,” Ms. Tremayne admitted. “Bad ones, sometimes. Although today I feel okay.”

“What if students staged a protest,” Ed asked flat out, “and purposely flunked the test? Do you think that would do anything?”

There was a long pause. “It might,” Ms. Tremayne finally admitted. “And it’s worth a try. Those sorts of standards tests reflect on the school as a whole, not the individual students.” The door was closed, but she still leaned forward conspiratorially and pitched her voice low. “There’s been a lot of talk around the office about making sure our test scores go up. It’s a major concern around here.”

Ed felt better. Not physically—his head was still thumping—but in regard to their plan. “Thank you,” he said.

“You know, your parents can petition the district to have you transferred to another school. You don’t have to stay here.”

“But what about everyone else? What about my friends?” He shook his head. “No.”

“But keep it in mind. It’s an option.”

He nodded. “Good luck in Orange,” he said.

She smiled wanly. “Thank you.”

Ed sped through the office, focused only on the exit as he strode past the cubicles and desks, and it was with a great sense of relief that he burst into the open air. He wanted to breathe it in, to savor it, but those two scouts were still standing to either side of the door, and he hurried past them into the quad.

It was the middle of seventh period, and he had no place to go. He couldn’t just hang around and wait for Brad and Myla to get out. The scouts were charged with punishing loiterers. He glanced at the library. And there was no way he was going back there. He was done with that place.

He’d get off campus if he could, but he was pretty sure the gates in the wall were locked.

He opted for walking. As long as he kept moving, it looked like he was going somewhere, and he took a piece of homework paper out of his backpack, pretended it was a note from a teacher and went up and down the corridors studying it. He avoided the scouts, keeping a sharp eye out for Todd Zivney, and he was left alone. The period passed slowly, and several times he thought his cover might be blown, but finally the bell rang, classes were released and he was allowed to blend into the crowd.

He waited by Brad’s locker until his friend showed up.

“I ran our idea past Ms. Tremayne,” he said.

Brad frowned. “Your counselor?”

“She’s cool. And she’s out of here. She got a job at another school. She knows what this place is.”

“So what’d she say?”

“She said it might work.”

“What if we’re wrong?” Myla fretted. “What if this
doesn’t
work and we
can
be punished, and all we’re doing is screwing up our GPAs so we can’t get into decent colleges?”

Ed laughed. “It’s tearing you up, isn’t it? This goes against everything you are.”

“Yes,” she admitted.

“Not me. I feel free.”

“Let’s put it on the blog,” Brad said. “We’ve got a day and two nights. Let’s see what happens.”

Twenty-four

Diane felt numb. Emotionally, spiritually, physically. All the time. She was not on any medication, but it felt like she was, and her short-term memory was shot to hell. She did what she had to do to get through the day, focusing on practical tasks at hand, making decisions that needed to be made, but everything that had happened since Greg’s death was a blur. She remembered some of yesterday but not the day before, and she knew that by tomorrow that would be gone, too. It was as though her mind was protecting her by erasing everything connected to that horrible event as soon as she didn’t need it anymore.

Linda and Frank were there for her—
all
her friends were there for her—but as well-meaning and understanding as they were, this was not happening to them. The anguish was hers and hers alone, and when everyone else left and went home and the house was empty, she had to face it by herself.

Greg had not wanted a funeral but had wanted to be cremated with only her in attendance, and that was an easy wish to honor. She didn’t have to make arrangements or invite coworkers or deal with relatives. She didn’t have to converse with lapsed friends or barely known acquaintances. The truth was that his plan seemed designed more for her benefit than his—he had never believed in any sort of afterlife—and when she figured out that that was probably the case, that he had done this for her, she broke down.

For about the millionth time.

She had his ashes placed in a box rather than an urn, and since he had expressed no preference as to what should be done with them, she decided to keep them in the house. Temporarily, until she could find a better, more permanent location, she placed the box on his side of the long oak dresser. It was where he liked to put his wallet, keys and change when he emptied out his pockets after coming home at night, and in a way, having the box of his ashes at that spot in the room was almost like having him there. She could see it as soon as she walked in; she could see it when she dressed and undressed; she could see it while she was lying on the bed.

On the day after she brought his ashes home, Diane received a letter of condolence from Jody Hawkes and the charter committee. It was not a Hallmark card they all had signed but rather an ink-jet-printed missive that none of them had signed but that featured a letterhead bearing all their names. It was as cold and heartless as she would have expected, made even more so by the fact that after a too-brief statement recognizing her loss, it mentioned that although district policy provided bereavement leave, under the charter, Tyler High School did not, and any days of work she missed would have to come out of her pool of personal days.

She tore up the letter in a fit of anger. She would have burned the damn thing if there’d been a fireplace in the bedroom and it had been turned on, but as it was, she threw the pieces on the floor, shouting as she did so, then gathered them up after the fact, threw them in the toilet and flushed them away.

The burning idea was a good one, though; it remained in her mind, and she opened the door to Greg’s office to get her copy of the Tyler High School Charter. She’d put it in there not for safekeeping but because she was afraid of it, and there it had lain, on the top of Greg’s desk, for the past several days. In her mind, it was reading the charter that had killed him, and though she hadn’t known what to do with the document before, she did now.

She took the booklet out to the living room, dropped it in the fireplace, then turned on the gas, lit a match and started the fire. The flames, yellow and blue and unnaturally uniform, flared up and around the stack of bound paper. It took a moment for the pages to catch on fire, but finally they did, the white sheets blackening and curling back. It felt good to watch it burn, cathartic, and she stood there, staring into the flames, until there was nothing left of the document but a pile of disintegrating ashes.

She smiled as she turned off the gas, feeling as though she’d accomplished something.

Soon after, Linda called with the latest news from school. Diane was planning to return to work tomorrow, and she asked her friend if they could carpool.

“Of course!” Linda said.

“I just don’t want to face it all alone. I’m not even sure I want to face it at all. The thought of going back, seeing everyone, having to answer their endless questions or endure their sympathy . . . I don’t know.”

“Maybe you’re not ready,” Linda suggested gently.

“No, I’m ready. I’m going stir-crazy here. And I know that once I get back to work and back to my normal routine, everything’ll be fine. I
need
some semblance of normalcy.”

“You don’t want to wait until Monday? It might be easier returning at the beginning of a week rather than in the middle. And this is test week.”

“No,” Diane said firmly. “I need to do this.”

“Then I’ll pick you up early,” Linda promised. “Seven. That way, you can get through the campus and to your classroom before the hordes descend, kind of ease your way into things.”

“You’re a good friend,” Diane said, and started to cry.

“Are you
sure
you’ll be all right?”

“I’ll be fine.”

Linda was indeed at her house by seven—a few minutes early, in fact—and by the time her friend rang the doorbell, Diane was ready to go. She’d been ready since five, actually, having endured yet another sleepless night, and while her lack of sleep might catch up with her later in the afternoon, at the moment she felt fine.

There were a few cars in the lot when they arrived but not many, and Linda parked as close to the exit as possible. “So we can make a quick getaway,” she joked.

Only one of the gates in the wall was open, and after getting their book bags and briefcases out of the backseat, the two of them walked through the archway and onto campus.

Bobbi came after her the second they stepped through the gate, rushing over from a spot in front of the office where she’d obviously been waiting. “What did you do to her?” she demanded. “What the hell did you do?”

Diane was in something of a fog and couldn’t quite understand what was happening, but Linda stepped out in front of her and held up a fist. “Back off! Now!”

Bobbi stopped short.

“Diane just lost her husband. I don’t know what you’re going on about, you insensitive bitch, but if you say one more thing to her, I swear I will punch you so hard I’ll knock you out!”

“Jody—” she began.

“What’d I say?” Linda advanced on her.

Bobbi ran away. Well, she didn’t actually run, but she turned back the way she’d come and strode as quickly as her heeled shoes would allow her. They watched, unmoving, as the administrative coordinator nearly tripped over a low step on the walkway before continuing into the office.

“What the hell was that about?” Linda asked, turning to her.

Diane shook her head. “I haven’t a clue.” She chuckled. “You were going to knock her out?”

Linda smiled. “Anything for a friend.”

From across the quad, Enrique waved at them. He was holding a broom in his hand, and it batted the branches of the tree next to him, causing a smattering of brown leaves to rain down. He called out, “Sorry to hear about your husband, Mrs. Brooke!” But he didn’t sound sorry at all, and there was a huge grin plastered on his face.

Diane looked down at the ground. “Let’s go,” she muttered. “Before anyone else arrives.”

By break time, she was feeling better. Being in front of a class again, teaching, was exactly the medicine she needed. She was craving caffeine, though, and since no one had bothered to get a new filter for the coffeemaker in the department office, she and Linda made a quick trip to the lounge. A group of teachers were gathered around the counter near the microwave. “Did you see her face?” Lisa asked.

“She looked scary,” Jackie Linden said, and for a moment Diane thought they were talking about her. But they must have realized that she could misinterpret the conversation, and Jackie clarified, “We’re talking about Jody. Something happened to her yesterday. She looks really bad.”

Somewhere in the fog of her brain an alarm bell sounded. There was a ray of clarity amid the haze, and she thought of Bobbi coming at her this morning.