A Rumor of Real Irish Tea (Annals of Altair Book 2)

by Kate Stradling

  “You know,” said Emily, “the way you talk, I can’t figure out whether you love or despise Honey.”

  One corner of Crystal’s mouth lifted in a bitter smile. “Neither can I. She messes with your brain, like a drug. But then, if she had you tied up in duct tape, you already knew that.”

  Emily sat back on the couch and looked down at her hands. It really had been like a drug, that whole surreal experience where she had allowed a nine-year-old to lead her around and dictate everything she needed to do. She was lucky that the powers-that-be within Prometheus hadn’t placed her with a full-blown projector as her first assignment. She hoped they would never place her with one at all.

  “I’m worried about Oliver,” she said abruptly. “I’m worried that he’s going to get stuck here like me, because of me.”

  Crystal observed her for a full five seconds before she answered. “You can’t get attached to these kids. You just can’t. Put a wall up around your emotions and let the administrators do whatever they’re going to do. You and I have absolutely no say in what happens.”

  “But it wasn’t his fault—”

  “Absolutely no say,” Crystal repeated, her voice firm. “I’ll warn you right now, if Oliver’s been transferred here, he’s probably here for good. Prom-F is the black hole of the campuses: once you’re in, you never get out. But you aren’t going to be his handler forever. Your next rotation will be in another grade level, on a different schedule. You’ll barely even see him, so there’s no point in worrying about him.”

  A heavy sigh left Emily’s lungs and melancholy settled on her shoulders. Crystal was right. She shouldn’t get attached, because she really was powerless. Oliver didn’t need her worrying about him. Oliver didn’t need anything from her at all.

  She looked up to the picture window, to his proud, straight back as he listened attentively to the lecture in front of him. He was an absolute pill sometimes, and the sourest kid she’d ever come across, she told herself. He was a monster, an arrogant, selfish monster.

  It made perfect sense to her brain. Deep down in her heart was another story. Oliver was a complex creature, and pinning him down with a label didn’t sit right with Emily, no matter how she tried to justify it.

  Her face must have mirrored her emotions, because Crystal suddenly shook her head. “You’re hopeless,” she said.

  “I suppose I am,” Emily murmured, too quietly for anyone but herself to hear.

  III

  The New Routine

  As it turned out, Oliver and Lucy shared the same morning classes. Emily arrived at the second observation room to find Crystal already comfortable on the couch. It was a blessing. Crystal was a new arrival at Prom-F herself, and she was jaded enough not to care that the other handlers seemed intent upon ignoring Emily’s very existence. She gladly enlightened her on a number of topics—most of which were pure gossip—and did so with a dry wit that Emily found refreshing.

  While Oliver studied post-modern history, Emily learned that she and Crystal weren’t the only two handlers to transfer to Prom-F. Todd, formerly the handler of Happy West at Prom-B, had been sentenced as well.

  “He’s still as bitter and disagreeable as ever,” Crystal said in in a hushed voice. “He drew the short straw and had to pull desk work while I got in on the last rotation of transfers two weeks ago. He’s up for this rotation, though. They’ve paired him with a fifteen-year-old named Cody, effective in two days.”

  “Do handler transfers always happen on Wednesdays?” Emily asked.

  “Like clockwork.”

  “How far beforehand do they tell you where to go?” Given the utter lack of notice she and Oliver had received this morning, she worried that that sudden upheaval might be a trend.

  “The Friday before,” said Crystal. “They put an envelope in your mail slot.”

  “I have a mail slot?”

  This elicited a good-natured laugh. “They really didn’t tell you anything, did they? The mail slots are in a room right next to the cafeteria, so that we can check at mealtime without abandoning our charges. The kids are divided into four different groups for transfers, so there’s a limited pool of candidates. Every two weeks, one of the groups gets its handlers shuffled around. Over the course of the two years, you won’t even shadow half the kids in your group, though. It’s all very systematic, and once a handler’s assigned to a student, they’re assigned until the next rotation—that is, unless something drastic happens, like the student up and disappears.”

  That explained why Emily was still assigned to Oliver, at least. With everything that had happened already, she had wondered why the higher-ups hadn’t separated the two of them.

  Still, “It seems like it’s too rigid of a system,” she said. “What if the handler and the student really don’t get along?”

  “Tough cookies. There aren’t usually any extra handlers floating around, so there’d be no one to transfer a student to without displacing another student. I’ve never heard of a mid-cycle transfer before—even with Todd and me. I joke that he drew the short straw, but Honey and Happy were in separate groups, and Todd and I ended up transferring at the exact same time as we would have back at Prom-B.”

  She went on to talk about their required weekly reports (“Useless busywork,” she said) and a handful of feuds between administrators and staff.

  “Don’t get on Maggie Lloyd’s bad side. She’s just dumb enough to be vindictive. They say the only reason she has this job is because Principal Gates is married to her sister.”

  “What exactly is her job?” Emily asked. So far she had only seen Maggie act as a chauffeur and what seemed to be a random errand-runner.

  “Administrative assistant—every Prometheus principal has one, but they usually have some impressive qualifications for the job. Principal Lee’s assistant Michelle has a PhD in organizational behavior. I heard that he’s grooming her to take over his position at Prom-B when he retires. No chance of Maggie rising to those heights.”

  Emily had a hard time viewing the pudding-headed Maggie as much of a threat. “She seems pretty harmless.”

  “Because she doesn’t have any reason to hate you,” Crystal said. “She’s harmless toward me, too, but there are a couple of handlers whose lives she’s made completely miserable. She’s in a position to do it. The admin-assistant has access to every file in the Prometheus database, including transfers, room assignments, and weekly reports. And you can’t file a complaint against her because every correspondence to the principal has to go through her to get to him. Not that he’d do anything about it anyway. It’s crazy that we still have such ridiculous nepotism in this day and age.”

  “I’m starting to think I should’ve applied to the children’s hospitals again for my internship,” said Emily dully.

  Crystal slapped her on the back with a grin. “That’s the spirit!”

  Low morale was contagious among the Prom-F handlers. The few that even acknowledged Emily’s existence did so in such a lifeless manner that she had no inclination to speak further with them. Crystal’s liveliness, in contrast, seemed fueled by her utter cynicism toward the job. All of the literature about working as a “child-life counselor” for the Prometheus Institute had spoken of exciting opportunities and the invigorating academic atmosphere.

  Someone somewhere had done a very creative job of lying.

  By the time lunch finally rolled around, Emily was half-starved and more than depressed. The reluctant bites of packaged pastry and boxed juice had long since worn off. She looked forward to sinking her teeth into something warm, even though it was going to be cafeteria food. She was sure that Oliver, who had skipped breakfast entirely, would be absolutely famished.

  “We have to go back to the dorms to get my homework,” he announced as she joined him after third period, though. “After writing the whole lot of it long-hand in an eight-by-ten cell, there’s no way I’m getting marked down for turning it in late.”

  Emily wanted to protest—and
her stomach even more so—but she thought better of it. Lunch was an hour long. They had plenty of time to fetch his homework, deliver it to the interested parties, and get to the cafeteria in time to eat.

  “Lead the way,” she said grimly.

  Her permission wasn’t required. Oliver headed off toward the dormitory without any acknowledgement that she had spoken, and with the sure confidence that she would follow.

  The dorms were fairly popular during lunch, from the looks of it. Students entered and exited, their handlers trailing sullenly behind them. Emily and Oliver received several curious stares, but no one attempted to speak to them. They climbed the stairs to Oliver’s floor, but when they rounded the corner to the correct hall, Oliver stopped short.

  “What’s wrong?” Emily asked.

  “There’re three handlers standing outside my dorm room,” he said. Her gaze followed his. Sure enough, two men and a woman leaned against the wall, all of them fiddling with their cell phones. They looked like an overgrown group of delinquents loitering around with nothing better to do.

  “So tell them to leave,” she said logically.

  Oliver favored her with a withering glare. “First of all, I’m not allowed to talk to them. Second, if they’re out here that means there must be students inside. So why are three Prom-F students congregating in my dorm room?”

  “Maybe your roommate’s having a party,” said Emily with a shrug. Or maybe some malicious-minded students were playing pranks on the new kid, but she knew well enough not to say this out loud. “There’s only one way to find out.”

  A growl rumbled in Oliver’s chest. He started forward, brows furrowed. The three handlers paid him no heed as he passed them to open the door. Emily decided that it was best that she wait outside for him.

  “Hey!” cried an unknown voice from within the room, a boy. “This is a closed meeting! You can’t just barge in here!”

  “Can it, Arthur,” said another. “I told you guys I had a new roommate. Don’t you recognize Prom-A’s famous Oliver Dunn?”

  “I’m just here to grab my notebook,” said Oliver, and from the long-suffering in his voice Emily could tell in an instant that he thought his audience was comprised of morons. “I’ll only be here a minute.”

  “Good,” a third voice chimed in. “We don’t need a null-projecting Prom-A lapdog in here gumming up our plans.”

  “What’s going on in there?” Emily asked the three handlers.

  The two men continued to fiddle with their phones. The woman had the decency to look up. “Our boys are plotting their escape route,” she said, tipping her head toward the open door. “They do it every lunch period.”

  Emily bristled. “And you let them?”

  “A month ago they were spending their lunches plotting how to blow up the plumbing system in the handlers’ wing of the dorms,” said one of the men, his attention still fixed on the little backlit screen in front of him. “I’d say this is by far preferable.”

  “It’s not like they’ll succeed,” said the other, just as absorbed in whatever he was looking at. “Security here is tight as a drum since the West brothers broke out.”

  “If it keeps the boys busy, I have no complaints,” said the woman, and she returned to the task of thumbing a message on her cell.

  “Aren’t those phones supposed to be used for official business only?” Emily asked.

  “It’s not like anyone keeps track of what we do,” said the first man.

  She experienced some satisfaction in breaking his delusion. “Actually, they do. The microphone is wired for continuous transmission.”

  The three handlers looked up, startled. They exchanged a nervous glance. “Where’d you hear that?” asked the woman with a faint attempt at skepticism.

  “Hummer West. Oh, Oliver. Got your homework?”

  Oliver favored her with a sour glare as he shut the door firmly behind him. “Would I have come back without it?” he asked sarcastically.

  “Good point,” said Emily. She tipped her head to the three stricken handlers. “Have a good afternoon.” Then, she followed Oliver down the hallway. “So, what was your roommate like?” she asked him conversationally.

  “Would you cut that out?” he said.

  “Cut what out?”

  “Quit acting like everything is fine. We’re at Prom-F, for Pete’s sake.”

  She thought about this as they exited the dorms. “I guess I could mope around and glower at anyone who comes near me,” she said at last.

  “Ha ha.”

  “I understand why you’re upset. It’s my fault we’re here, so you have every reason to hate my guts, and no one’s going to begrudge you that, because you’re ten. I’m an adult, and I have absolutely no control over this situation—as Crystal so aptly told me this morning—so I have to make the best of it. I’m sorry. For everything, really.”

  Oliver stared at her in horror, as though an alien head had sprouted from her neck.

  “What?” she asked defensively.

  “You’re an adult. Why are you apologizing to a ten-year-old? You sure the Wests didn’t kick you in the head before they abandoned you in that office?” He flung himself away, up the path toward the main building.

  Emily belatedly realized that she had embarrassed him. “What a strange kid,” she murmured, and she hurried to close the gap between them. Oliver didn’t seem to know what to do with a genuine apology, other than to rail at it and insult the speaker. Maybe that meant he didn’t hate her entirely.

  He paused outside his first-hour teacher’s office to tear some pages from the lined notebook. “Hold this,” he commanded as he flipped through to find another assignment.

  Emily obediently took the pages, and her eyes nearly fell out of her head. “This is your handwriting? It’s barely legible!” Most of the letters were malformed, in varying sizes and shapes as though he were a five-year-old with limited motor control.

  Oliver flashed a smirk at her. “They start teaching us to type in the first grade,” he said as he tore another assignment from the book.

  “So this is the best you can write?”

  “This is how I write when I don’t care about writing nicely. Don’t look at me like that. They can’t dock points for penmanship—it might hurt my precious self-esteem.” He contrived a sad face, but she could tell that he was pleased with himself.

  “Passive-aggressive much?” she asked.

  Oliver ignored the question. Instead, he snatched the papers from her hands, knocked peremptorily on the door, and opened it inward. “Here’s my homework for the last three weeks, Mr. Simpson,” he said with a fake smile. “I hope I did everything I was supposed to. I did my very best.”

  His teacher, Mr. Simpson, was in the process of biting into a large sandwich and could only nod, stunned as he was by the sudden interruption. Oliver dropped the assignments on his desk and shut the door again.

  “Two more to go,” he said. “Come on, before I starve to death.”

  “Thank you!” cried Emily. “I thought I was the only one who was dying here!”

  By the time they reached the cafeteria, the line for food had cleared out. The room itself was only half-full, which made Emily wonder if there were other children off plotting their escapes in secrecy, or if the lunch periods were staggered. Several of the children present whispered and pointed at Oliver as he passed, but he ignored them like the Prom-A snob he was.

  Emily watched with eager anticipation as the lunch lady poured her a bowl of watery soup and slapped a thick sandwich onto her tray. “Look,” she said gleefully to Oliver. “It didn’t come out of a vending machine.”

  “Don’t talk to me when we’re in here,” he replied without glancing at her. “People might see.”

  That shut her up. She might have been hurt by his blunt tone, but the smell of food disabled any instinct but hunger. So, instead of sulking, she picked up her tray and followed him to an empty corner.

  They weren’t sitting alone for long. No
sooner had Emily taken her first bite than a pair of hands slammed down on the table and a domineering voice said, “Okay, spill it, Oliver.”

  Emily looked up at the girl who had intruded upon their meal. Black hair framed a familiar, fiercely scowling face. Emily instantly recognized the null-projector and former Prom-A student. “Quincy!” she cried, but since her mouth was full of sandwich, it sounded more like, “Kwnfhee!”

  Quincy briefly glanced her direction, incredulous that anyone could be so uncouth. Then she returned her gaze to the ten-year-old in front of her. Oliver peacefully sipped his soup.

  “Spill what?” he asked when he was good and ready.

  “Is it true that Hawk and Hummer firebombed a GCA office and escaped across the border into Mexico?” Quincy asked.

  Emily nearly choked. Oliver remained perfectly calm.

  “Not that I know of,” he said. “It is true that their little sister charmed an idiot handler and they left her duct-taped in an abandoned office building, though.”

  “I’ll never live that one down,” Emily said to no one in particular.

  “Duct tape,” mused Quincy. “I’ll have to try that some time. So you didn’t catch them, and now you’re stuck here a year ahead of schedule.”

  “What?” Oliver said sharply.

  Quincy waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, nothing. Don’t mind me. I just wanted to confirm that you failed. I mean, the last time I saw you, you were all ready for the chase and certain you’d have them back within the week.”

  Oliver scowled, his shoulders stiff. “I didn’t fail. The GCA is populated with cretins. We’d have caught them in Vegas if they had only listened to me and held back.”