The Vigilante Poets of Selwyn Academy (12 page)

I talked her through it. I told her that “dross” meant “rubbish,” like the girl spinning dross into gold in “Rumpelstiltskin.” I told her about the tricolon and the rhythm. I didn’t tell her much about the last line since I didn’t get it myself.

Mostly, I kept looking at her and then looking away, because
I’d be thinking:
What thou lovest well remains
. Nothing else matters.
What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee
.

“Done,” she said, closing the binder with a thwack. “Could it be? I have nothing to do. Eight free minutes.”

“Amazing,” I said.

“Seriously. Thanks to you.”

“How’s the show?” I asked. Yes, I was pumping her for information. I’d already imagined telling Luke about this conversation, new material for the
Contracantos
. I wanted it all: the approbation of Maura
and
Luke.
What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage
.

“The usual stinking pile of shit,” she said brightly. “I’m perfecting my slut act. Should be useful if I ever get to dance the part of Manon Lescaut.”

“But you
aren’t
a slut!”

“No?” She raised an eyebrow at me.

“You said! You said—”

“Calm down. You’re right. I’m not. I have my limits.” She shrugged. “Theoretically.”

“Okay, okay—”

“Though I wonder. I say what I’m supposed to say, do what they tell me to do—”

I didn’t want to go down this route. “Aren’t you kind of mad at them?”

“Andrezejczak, didn’t we have this conversation last week?”

“Sort of.”

“Not sort of. All of. You literally repeated yourself.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. I like that someone is concerned for the
welfare of my reputation.” She raised a leg and, as casually as we normal people cross our arms, put it behind her head. “Nobody asks me that but you.”

“No way.”

“It’s true.” Her other leg went up. She addressed me, pretzel-style. “And I don’t say these things to anyone else. My parents don’t watch. They think it’s
dross
, which it is. My dance friends aren’t speaking to me.”

“What? Why not?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t care. Jealousy, probably.”

“But they were your friends! Friends aren’t jealous. Friends wouldn’t abandon you.”

“I abandoned
them
when I went on
FAS
,” she pointed out. “And I didn’t think twice about it. Dance is about yourself, Andrezejczak. You’re always watching yourself in the mirror. Even when you’re dancing with the corps, you’re trying to stand out as superior so that you don’t
have
to dance with the corps.”

“Oh.”

“Until you’re the prima, you can’t afford to actually like people.”

“Sheesh.”

“Awful, right?” Like a spider, she unfurled each leg in turn and placed them straight on the floor. “My children won’t be dancers.”

“Or reality TV stars?”

“God, I hope not.” She pointed her feet and tapped them against the floor, beating out the meter of her words. “It’s
the same thing there. Fake friends, Miki and Josh and all those guys. Everyone’s jealous of everyone else. We’re like marionettes.”

That comment stuck with me all day, growing gritty and solid just like the spit residue on the mouthpiece of my trumpet. Speaking of neglecting my instrument, I spent Morning Practice in art. Now that I was Chief Illustrator for a school-wide publication, I figured it was my duty.

Plus, I wanted to talk to Herbert.

I had a long conversation with him about Maura. In my head, of course. At first he was a little teed off because I made him squat as if he were taking a dump. (I was planning a series of drawings called “The Art of Excretion.” It’d be very avant-garde.) But he eventually stopped being so anal—heh heh—and told me that the marionette line was important.

I tried to tell Luke and Jackson in English, but no, BradLee and binary were clearly more fascinating than I could ever hope to be. So I gave up and suffered through Latin. Jackson and I stumbled from the classroom, hamstrung. You wouldn’t think translating a poem called
The Art of Love
could bring you so close to death.

But at last the day was over. When the kTV crew headed downtown at four, we’d be able to print the next
Contracantos
.

We met in BradLee’s room. “She definitely said ‘marionettes,’ ” I said. “That means they’re puppets on strings. That means somebody’s pulling the strings. But it’s reality!”

“Maybe she doesn’t know what ‘marionette’ means,” said Elizabeth.

“Maura Heldsman has a better vocabulary than you do,” I retorted.

Luke and Jackson erupted into twin coughing fits.

“I hate you guys.”

“Where’s BradLee?” said Jackson.

“At a meeting,” said Elizabeth. “He’ll be gone until three-thirty.”

Jackson moved behind BradLee’s desk and started clicking around on his computer.

Luke’s eyes flicked over to him, but he didn’t ask. “We know they frankenbite after the filming,” he said. “Maybe they direct them beforehand too. Didn’t you say that Trisha told Maura and Brandon what to do with that padlock conversation?”

“She just wanted a good visual,” I explained. “They’d already had the conversation somewhere else.” Then I realized that was a big fat assumption. What if—but Luke was off and running.

“Coluber has an incentive to keep the show on the air. Selwyn’s got a lot hanging on it.”

“The Serpent Vice doesn’t care about Selwyn,” said Elizabeth. “He’s out for number one.”

I got out Latin homework. I wasn’t really in the mood to dissect the marionette thing. I’d just wanted to talk about Maura. I hadn’t even told them how she’d said I was adorable. Or my last name was. Same thing.

“Maybe it’s a personal incentive,” said Luke. “Maybe kTV’s paying him.”

“That’s
so
underhanded.”

“But we don’t have any evidence.”

They kept arguing. I was half listening. Another quarter of my brain was reliving my conversation with Maura, and the last quarter was attempting to translate while keeping one finger on the lines, one in the glossary, and one in the appendix. Basic ratios should tell you that my translation was about a fourth as good as usual. This did not bode well.

“I’ve found some stuff on Coluber,” said Jackson.

“Hold up,” said Luke. “How are you going to explain when BradLee sees that somebody Googled Coluber on his computer?”

“I’ll say it’s for homework,” said Jackson dismissively. “Listen to me.”

“You’re stalking the vice principal for homework? Airtight, dude.”

“I’ll expunge my traces. Listen. You know how Coluber used to be a TV producer?”

“How did he ever get into secondary education?” muttered Elizabeth. I think she was joking, but Jackson looked at her seriously.

“We should investigate that. But look.” We crowded around. Pictures of Coluber with bronzed, blond people. He was holding a drink. His top two buttons were undone.

“He’s with kTV producers.”

“So?” I said. “He must know them. That’s how they got interested in Selwyn.”

“We’ve been told it was Willis Wolfe’s connections,” said Luke. “Interesting, Son o’ Jack.”

I was lagging behind. When had we been told this? Probably while I was daydreaming. I looked at my friends. Luke was as focused as when BradLee talked about Ezra Pound. I felt shut out.

“Now,” said Jackson, “the true revelation.” He typed in something URL-esque, except he wasn’t online. He was accessing the mysterious innards of the computer. Don’t expect any more details than that.

A PDF appeared on the screen. It looked like a receipt.

“The budget,” whispered Luke.

“Yep,” said Jackson. “Selwyn Academy, Comprehensive Budget.” He scrolled. “Let me move past the debits.”

I could see teachers’ names whizzing past next to five-digit numbers. “Salaries!” I yelped. “Slow down.”

“Irrelevant,” said Jackson. “Behold. Credits.”

Tuition, separated into the four classes, was the big one. But next was a line item called “Kelvin Television.” This was kTV. The number next to it: $180,000.

“That’s ten thousand per episode,” said Jackson.

“This is crazy,” I said. “This is just sitting on the Internet for anyone to find?”

“Well, I—” Jackson tilted his head to the side and played air-piano. The universal gesture for “illegally infiltrated a few secure networks.”

“Shit, Jackson,” said Elizabeth.

“It was nothing. I was on the school network already. It’s a lot easier to get into protected files that way. Anyway, this is what I’d like to do now.”

Jackson doesn’t get animated. A translation of “I’d like
to” from Appelese to Standard American English would be something like, “I have to or else my curiosity will never be sated.”

“Uh-oh,” said Elizabeth.

“Coluber has put a two-factor authentication block on his personal network files. He’s also blocked the use of VPN protocol to infiltrate his account. It’s quite sophisticated, really.”

“Translate.”

“I can’t get in.”

“Oh.”

“But I think under the right—it’s possible if—” He paused. “He knows kTV people. He knows them well. And the school’s getting paid 10K per episode. That’s diddly-squat. I mean, connect the dots.”

I wasn’t sure where the dots were. But Luke stood and raked his hair back. “That’s
awesome
. I see where you’re going.” He began to pace.

“It’d be child’s play for him,” said Jackson.

“It’d be simple. Simple and tempting,” said Luke.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “Explain for those of us without dirty, suspicious minds.”

“Jackson thinks that Coluber’s getting paid for each episode,” said Elizabeth.

“That’s one hypothesis. I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Or he’s skimming off the top of what the school’s getting.” That was Luke.

“Let’s hope so,” said Jackson. “If kTV is paying him directly, it’d be going right into some clandestine, offshore bank account. It’d be far beyond our powers of investigation.”

Our
, he said. Very diplomatic.

“Speaking of investigation …,” said Luke.

“Yeah,” said Jackson, deflating. “I need his personal files. I’d definitely need to get into his office.”

“So we’ll get into his office.”

The idea hung, suspended, while we printed the
Contracantos
. But it had been spoken. For me? Printing the
Contracantos
was illegal activity enough.

We knew our distribution had to be surreptitious this time. Coluber was out for us. Jackson bought a couple reams of this blue-gray newsprint from an online wholesaler, just so this issue was a different color than the last, and after the ink dried we folded them into brochures.

“Let’s make six hundred,” said Luke.

“The student body only numbers five hundred,” said Jackson.

“Then there’ll be lots of extras floating around. For the
teachers, and the administrators, and everyone associated with kTV.”

“You really like the idea of them reading your stuff, don’t you?” said Elizabeth.

He liked it in an innocent way. In a sort of wonder that something once in his head was now in their hands. In a sort of wonder that they cared.

I knew all that because I felt the same way. Do you know what life was like before the
Contracantos
? Take the annual Selwyn Art Show. “Can you believe a high schooler did that?” my dad would say.

“Is that a photograph?” my mom would reply. “Oh my goodness, honey, it’s a painting.”

“Whoa. Ethan drew that.” That’d be a triplet.

“Uh, no, that wasn’t me. I drew the stuff over there. In that corner. No, lower down.”

But now? Everyone was inspecting my little inked cartoons. Everyone was trying to guess who’d done them. Everyone was looking at my work. It was an addictive feeling.

And then, everything fell apart.

We didn’t finish until almost seven, and we didn’t want to pop up all at once from the subbasement. According to the spreadsheet, the kTV people and most of the administrators were downtown at the challenge, but we had to be careful. Four kids emerging all at once, hauling stuffed backpacks: even the thickest of security guards might suspect something. Jackson had checked, and they were legally permitted to seize and search our bags. Not good.

So we sent Luke ahead as a scout. He’d text us when the coast was clear.

We waited. We sat on the floor by the presses for over half an hour, getting twitchier and twitchier. I got out my Latin just to calm down. Elizabeth was pacing the catwalk around the machinery, giving Jackson and her watch alternating looks of impatience.

“Let’s go,” she said.

“We can’t,” I said.

“It’s been forever.”

“He’d have texted us.”

“So he forgot.”

“He wouldn’t have forgotten.”

Jackson spoke. “We’ll go up to the last doorway, the one behind the stage.
Giselle
rehearsal lets out about now. When the orchestra leaves, we’ll go with them. We’ll blend in.”

“Fine,” said Elizabeth.

I didn’t move. I wanted to wait for that text. It felt treacherous not to wait.

Elizabeth flicked the lights off and then on again. “Eee. Thin. Stand. Up.”

One moment in the complete blackness was enough. I stood and followed them.

Jackson’s plan worked. With no instrument cases, we felt like glaring misfits among the orchestra kids. But to the guard we passed on our way to the atrium, we were just a pack of students. The orch dorks scattered to go find their rides. We headed for the front door.