The Other Side of Envy: The Ghost Bird Series: #8 (The Academy) (18 page)

Suddenly, I flipped through my messages and paused at North’s. Victor could buy things. Mr. Blackbourne was in charge. Kota made decisions about the family.

North worked on the cars, though. He was also reasonable. He’d tell me if it’d be too much to ask. He’d know who to talk to about it. I didn’t know why. My heart raced. This felt like something I could do.

So I sent North a text. I shouldn’t have. He needed to sleep. But I couldn’t help it.

Sang: Can we get Gabriel a car for his birthday?

I waited after I sent the text, hoping he’d answer quickly. I hoped, too, that North had slept some and I wasn’t making a mistake making him grumpy.

While I waited, I suddenly had doubts. Was it silly? Buying a car wasn’t like getting someone a birthday card. It wasn’t like a new pair of earrings or a water gun.

It seemed like an answer, though. He’d be able to go when he wanted. He wouldn’t have to rely on Victor or the others. I didn’t know why, but it felt like a very Gabriel thing: to have his own car so he could blaze his own trail. Could we afford a car? Maybe if we pooled our money. I had a jar of cash at home. I wasn’t sure how much was in it.

Suddenly, the phone lit up. North was calling.

I answered.

“I offered to get him a car months ago,” North said. His voice was deep, clear. He’d been awake. “He told me he didn’t want one.”

“I just thought he’d like one.”

North chuckled. “Maybe he does. Gabriel’s picky about his shit. He’s probably got one in his head somewhere. Something bright orange.”

“...The car you offered...was it black?”

“Maybe.”

I smiled into the phone. “Well, that’s it. Maybe it wasn’t the car. Maybe it was the color. He’s just picky about the color?”

“I don’t think he liked the model.”

This was going to be trickier than I thought. “We’ll have to find out what kind of car he wants.”

“He’s been saving his money,” North said. “I think he’s got one in mind. He’ll usually spend his money on video games and new clothes. I haven’t seen him with anything new in a while.”

That made me consider what Gabriel had said before. Did he not want the others to buy his car for him? “You think he wants to do it on his own?”

“Probably. He does that rite of passage shit. You have to do it the right way. Buy your own first car. Get drunk on your twenty-first birthday. He wants to buy cigarettes when he’s eighteen. I told him it was stupid.”

“Can we help him somehow?”

“I can offer him more shifts at the diner, but it won’t be enough to get him what he wants by his birthday.”

I thought of the jar I had at home full of money I never spent that I had earned at the diner. “What if we added to it?”

“I don’t know if it’d be the same. I don’t even know how much would be enough, because he’s never told me what he’d want. Probably something old that doesn’t have seatbelts.”

Gabriel liked old cars? Or was it he thought that’s what he could afford. I sighed. “I guess I’ll have to ask him.”

“Sort of ruins the surprise.”

“Then I’ll have to be careful.”

North chuckled again. “You’re acting more Academy these days.”

I had to smile at that.

There was a soft knock on Victor’s bedroom door. Dr. Green poked his head in, caught that I was on the phone, and entered quietly.

“I have to go,” I told North. “Dr. Green is here.”

“What? Why?”

He hadn’t caught up yet with what was going on. “It’s... Kota...” I was stumbling to tell him.

“What’s wrong with Kota?” he roared into the phone. “What do you mean, Kota? Where is he?”

I’d said the completely wrong thing in the wrong way. “He’s fine. Sorry. I didn’t mean to...”

“Pumpkin,” Dr. Green said quietly as he approached me. He curled his fingers, looking at the phone. “Let me.”

“Who is that?” North asked.

It was the last I heard as Dr. Green took the phone. He quietly told North what was going on, the plan, and what we were doing. North barked a few questions at first but then calmed down.

I blew out a long breath, grateful Dr. Green found it easier to explain to him.

Dr. Green paced across the carpet as he talked, wearing khaki pants, a pale yellow button up shirt, and a blue tie. His wavy hair was combed back, still damp. The cologne he wore had been freshly applied, the citrus and ginger scent replacing Victor’s in my nose.

I stood by quietly and waited. I didn’t have my bag, it was still at Gabriel’s house. Kota would probably make sure my books were brought along, but I’d have to carry them in my hands. Still, I didn’t feel like I was ready for school or anything else. I had so much else to do. Finally, I was feeling the frustration the other boys probably felt every day. With so much to be done, I didn’t have time for homework and tests. Learning was important, but it was hard to learn anything being so busy.

Dr. Green soon finished his conversation with North and put the phone down. He smiled at me. “
Ohiyo
,” he said, his accent turning from slight southern to full Japanese. He bowed his head a little.

I nodded to him. “
Ohiyo
,” I said, saying good morning in Japanese and then added, “
Sensei
.”

“Bah, don’t call me that.” He opened up his arms, his face brightening. “How’s my Pookie?”

I padded over to him. He wrapped me in his arms before I had a chance to stretch my own out. My wrists got stuck tucked in between us, pressed into his chest.

He didn’t seem to care. He hugged me tightly. “You’re the worst future Mrs. Green ever. We only get together when you’re in trouble.”

“I...” My heart was in my throat, thumping loud, as I floated from his words. The future Mrs. Green. He teased, but I wondered. I squeezed into him, giggling. “I’ll try not to...”

“No, silly,” he said and then released me and winked. “You should get into trouble more. Then we can be together all the time. Maybe you’ll get grounded again and you can spend the night.”

“...Okay,” I figured it wouldn’t be too much of a problem. I seemed to be in trouble a lot.

“Seems like Mr. McCoy wasn’t here for Victor,” he said, his smile catching and tilting down, but he caught it and brightened again. “That means we get to go on a little drive.”

“Where to?” I asked.

“All over,” Dr. Green said. “Let’s see if we can’t empty out his gas tank before school starts.”

“Empty his gas tank?” I started moving to the door.

Dr. Green followed, nodding. “If we somehow lose him, or he has to go get gas, we can get away. Then we’ll see if he finds you again. Kota did some estimations: he might be down to half a tank right now. I’ve got a near full one and my car gets better gas mileage.”

I breathed in slowly, letting it out in a puff. They were already working out plans to figure out what McCoy was up to. “Time to work.”

He laughed. “Always.”

Outside, Dr. Green had his car parked in the drive. I wondered if security recognized each of their cars and knew when to let them in. Even without Victor being here, they didn’t seem to have a problem with him.

Once I was in the passenger seat and Dr. Green pulled the car out, I settled in. I gazed out into the night, wanting it to be morning. I had a lot of people to talk to. I had so much to do, but I was stuck in a car. I liked spending time with Dr. Green and I wanted to spend
more
time with him, but I felt too restless to spend hours driving around town. I wanted to get all the work done so we could start working on the family.

I adjusted myself in the seat; putting my feet up, putting them down, crossing my arms, sitting back, sitting forward to check the side mirror for signs of Mr. McCoy following us. Wherever he went, others were following him, so I wasn’t worried. Instinct still told me to keep an eye out for him.

“Did you have coffee already?” he asked. “Feeling jittery?”

I needed to tell someone else what was on my mind. Later, I’d have to face Mr. Blackbourne about Lily and what I knew. I wasn’t ready. I hadn’t had a chance to process.

I wasn’t going to survive the day without talking. I glanced at Dr. Green. He wore a pleasant smile. He was a close friend to Mr. Blackbourne’s. Did he know? “Do you know about the Academy team with only one girl?”

“I know of that team. I’ve never met them.” He turned his head slightly to look at me and then refocused on the road. “How do you know about her? Did she reach out to you?”

“I found her. Luke and Gabriel and I went to talk to her.”

His eyebrows shifted up. “Oh,” he said. “How did you find her? Or find out about her?”

“Through Luke,” I said. “He overheard North on the phone.”

He smiled slightly. “That Luke. He’s getting more mischievous by the day. I thought it was a teenage phase he’d grow out of. Maybe I encourage it too much.”

He was getting distracted or did not want to talk about it. I tried again. “So you knew?”

He sighed. “Mr. Blackbourne shares everything with me. He told me about his visit.” He glanced over at me. He weaved the car through still dark downtown Charleston neighborhoods. It was early, and since it was late November, sunrises were late. It made it hard to keep an eye on Mr. McCoy behind us, but our only job was to keep moving until McCoy went away, so I supposed it didn’t matter. “So what happened?”

I spilled all of it to him, including everything I’d told Lily while sitting in her library. It was like my own way of reviewing the information. I hadn’t told Gabriel and Victor all of it. But once I started talking, I couldn’t shut up.

Dr. Green listened quietly until I told him about when we had left, and how oddly the boys had been in the car on the way home. He shook his head. “I wish they would come to us before they run off and talk to other Academy teams. They wouldn’t have known if it was okay.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He smiled and looked at me. “It's not like that team is dangerous. They are Academy after all. I mean, what if the team would have wanted you on
their
team? You didn’t know a thing about them before you went over. They could have been eager to try to talk you into joining their team, or inform the Academy about what we are up to.”

I hadn’t thought of that. “It’s my choice, isn’t it? I want on your team.
Our
team.”

He smiled more and nodded. “Where you should be. That doesn’t mean other teams won’t try to appeal to you. Not every member of the Academy automatically joins the first team they meet. And sometimes views change, and you could start talking to another team and feel more connected to them. It happens.”

Could that happen with us? Luke had mentioned it before. He feared it. Luke hadn’t said much about it after. Was he more worried about it now than before?

Dr. Green reached out, taking my hand as he drove. He kept it on his leg, the back of my hand resting on his thigh as his palm covered mine. He slowed during traffic so he had a better chance of hitting red lights. “I don’t think it’ll happen to us. We are pre-destined lost babies. That’s like fate. You don’t mess with fate.”

I smiled, remembering his thoughts on how he’d been abandoned at the hospital when he was young and considered us to be so similar because of it. “Did you ever belong to another team?”

“Sure,” he said. “Lots of them.”

“What happened?” I asked.

He laughed, rolling his eyes and shaking his head. “To make the longest of long stories short, I wasn’t very compliant with the Academy at first. Too much practice at being disobedient. I always ran off to do things my own way. I was too independent. Too much trouble. Not trusting anyone to work with me.”

Maybe I should have been more surprised to hear about him being disobedient, but Mr. Blackbourne once told me about how Dr. Green once wore ripped jeans and had cigarette behind his ear at an early age: the picture of a troublemaker. “Were they going to kick you out?”

“They could have, but they were willing to try me out. Given that I’d graduated from school at a very young age and was already in an accelerated education program, they thought me too valuable to let go without putting in an effort.” He sighed and nodded. “And then one day they introduced me to Mr. Blackbourne. Owen. He was this kid with every hair in place, shoes polished. I mean, just looking at him, I wanted to untuck his shirt and throw him in the mud. Not to hurt him, but he looked like he needed it.”

I smashed my lips together, trying not to laugh at the idea of Dr. Green pushing Mr. Blackbourne into mud. It was such a wrong thought. “But you’re still together.”

“Right,” Dr. Green said. “It was an odd thing. Owen was a loner, or tried to be. He didn’t fit in well with other groups, either. So the Academy teamed us up. If we could manage to get through an assignment in one piece and stick it out together, they promised they’d give us a chance to pick whatever team we really wanted in the future. Even if it meant we had to recruit from the outside. We just couldn’t be alone. It’s not part of the Academy way to act independently.” He turned his head and grinned at me. “They did that on purpose. Tempted us with something we wanted: to be in charge of our own team. Joke’s on them. We took their bait, but then we kept them to their promises.”

“How?”

Dr. Green’s grin grew, and he turned the car onto another street, checking out the rearview mirror. “We picked one of the hardest assignments we could get our hands on. Owen’s a stickler, I could tell that from before. All we had to do was talk to each other, and we knew we’d take their toughest challenge, get the most out of it. It was tough, especially with Owen being all ‘we’ve got to follow the rules’ about it, but we won. And in the end, we not only graduated from the Academy, but we were permitted to bring in anyone we wanted to create a team of our own design. And then one day Owen found Kota and the others...the rest is history.”

“So you stuck together?”

“We were perfect,” he said. “He was annoyed with me for the longest time, but he never gave up on me. I think that was the issue before. He’s damn loyal, but no one understood that when he was harsh with his criticism. He was just showing he cared. He’s got the biggest heart ever, though. Maybe I understood, because I had a tiger mom and grew up with it. I could handle it. We had a few issues to work out in the beginning. He made me quit smoking. I made him eat a candy bar. We traded off, but it worked out. The point is, you absolutely can choose your team, and sometimes it just clicks when you’re together. You feel it. You can always choose.”