by Scott Rhine
If someone drags a goat to the altar, I’m out of here.
“We at the Colony believe that intuition draws us closer to the divine. Therefore, similar to the Quakers, we practice listening to the universe. If we’re fortunate, someone may feel moved to share insight or encouragement with the rest of the school. After twenty minutes of uninterrupted silence, I’ll dismiss you to return to your lockers.” She took her place in a high-backed chair and bowed her head.
In short, if we kept our mouths shut, we went home early.
Sitting so close to the girl whom I’d wronged made me antsy. The longer the quiet stretched, the more my deeds ate at me. I reviewed our original conversation. She might have been trying to make friends with me, just not very skillfully. She didn’t have friends and obviously needed them.
My lower jaw started to shake as tears streamed down my cheeks. My wet sobs drew glares from the girls in the pew ahead of me.
The room was closing in. My face felt flush.
Then the peace touched me for a moment. I knew how to make the suffering and shame go away. A short burst of embarrassment would allow me to live with myself again. Without thinking too much, I knelt on the floor next to Lilith. “Please, forgive me.”
The words came out louder than I intended, but I followed the peace. “Though I’m the newest girl at Colony, I’ve already violated the first rule. We don’t harm each other. Forgive me, Lilith Cotton, for mocking your name. I didn’t know about your illness. I felt powerless on my first day, and you were the only one who showed weakness. No. You tried to be kind.”
Then, I hugged her, one of Mom’s best hugs.
Lilith bawled like a baby. “Thank you. It’s been so hard.”
I thought the others would make girlfriend jokes, but the senior in front turned to another girl. “I stole your herbs freshman year and labeled them as my own. My mom is an apothecary, and my digitalis wilted. I was so worried about failure that I forgot what was important.”
They fell like dominoes, confession after confession. Teachers had girls copping to all sorts of honor-code violations. Blaise ran from the room frowning. Headmistress Bradstreet looked like she wanted to follow the girl out, but she had a line of students waiting to come clean.
At final bell, people were still sobbing and holding each other. Lilith gripped my hand in gratitude and friendship.
I whispered, “Does this happen often?”
“Never.” She sniffed. “I think it’s you.”
Crud. What was in that water? “I couldn’t live with the guilt anymore. I wanted to make it right. Is there any way I can?”
“Just let me eat lunch with you, and teach me how to listen. You have a gift.”
I snorted. “What? If I’m facing a bad guy as a cop, I can make them cry?”
“I’ve read stories about famous Inquisitors who could walk into a room, and the guilty would cry out under the weight of conviction. Today, your example cleaned more corruption from this pit of vipers than I’ve ever seen. Your ancestors are proud of you, Isa.”
“One at a time,” proclaimed Ms. Bradstreet. “Decorum!”
We snuck out without being dismissed.
10. Spy 101
Thursday, Dad was nervous about teaching the new elective. I was worried people would point at me in the hallways. At worst, they might have swerved out of the way to avoid touching me. The only oddity before first period was Lilith running up to me and hugging me. She wore an Alice band in her hair, covered with daisies.
“Glad to see you smiling,” I said.
“My mom wants to know when your family can come over for dinner.”
“Is my dad invited, too?” I asked.
“Why wouldn’t he be?”
I lowered my voice. “Well, not all the Colony families appreciate a non-Sensitive in my family tree. Blaise’s mom called him ‘substandard breeding stock.’”
“Honey, when you’re descended from raped slaves, you don’t make those distinctions.”
I had done a little research on her history. “Your ancestors saved the Colony women from being burned. They’re revered.”
“Well, I don’t see anything wrong with Mr. Morris. He was fascinating in yearbook class, explaining how to capture a person’s essence. The examples he showed belong in an art museum. He says everyone has a story worth telling if you dig deep enough. When Ms. Creutzfeldt got busy at the elective fair, he helped fold roses for the underclass girls. I wish I had a dad who did things like that.”
With a grin, I said, “He does great voices when he reads stories out loud.”
“Like in The Princess Bride?”
“Yeah.” We had something in common. “If you liked the movie, the book is even better.” I swapped cell-phone numbers with her, too.
After picking up my morning books from my locker, I handed in the punishment essay a second time at the office. Ms. Bradstreet nodded until she reached the reference section. “Oh, my. Wikipedia isn’t an acceptable source. Try again.”
The secretary’s eyes widened, but she lowered her head and kept typing. They still used manual typewriters. Holy buckets!
As I turned to go, she added, “Oh, I’d like to see you and your father in my office this afternoon after school.”
I forced myself not to react. “Maybe if you gave him some study halls or had him supervise people in the basement, he’d come to the school earlier.”
“How I arrange my staffing is none of your concern.”
“Well, we really should be supervised in the detention room. If someone did something wild in there, the school could be held liable. How can you call it remedial if you don’t teach us anything?”
She sighed. “I suppose, in light of your demonstrated listening skills, you could come upstairs during the morning sessions to practice basic gestures with the ninth graders.”
“Yes!” I lost my head and hugged her.
“Please. Decorum.” Her tone wasn’t as grumpy as normal.
Out of the basement! “Just out of curiosity, why teach everyone the sign language if only a few have Books?”
“We instruct the younger children in a family just in case something happens to the eldest. It’s also possible to do spells without a Book, but I would liken it to walking rather than driving your car. It can take twenty times longer, and you get rained on. You have to repeat the incantation over and over until something listens. Then it could be a trickster spirit that causes the intent to backfire. It’s inconsistent.”
“Like starting a fire by rubbing sticks together or math without a calculator,” I said. “Although, all the Girl Scouts need to learn it regardless.”
“Indeed. Move along. I shan’t give you a hall pass for lollygagging.”
“You sound like Dad.”
****
I was a natural at the hand gestures, so I was riding high come lunchtime. Blaise wouldn’t sit at the table with us. “She probably thinks I ditched her on purpose,” I told the others. “But I’m catching up on two days of gestures. I completed my first circle of protection, and the spell knocked loose papers off my desk!” I demonstrated a swoosh motion with my forefinger.
“First day?” said Luca. “That’s rare. Though, what you described wasn’t a spell, just energy-gathering. It’s like scuffing your feet on the carpet in winter to build up a charge. When you touched the circle, the spark and your will empowered it.”
I had already heard the sacred geometry lesson. Spirits existed in other dimensions, and a circle in our plane became a sphere in theirs. Unclean spirits couldn’t cross a sanctified barrier any more than a mosquito could go through a bug zapper unless someone unplugged it.
“Hey, everyone starts somewhere.” I formed a triangle with both hands. “This symbol is my favorite. What does it mean?”
Lilith passed out pineapple sodas she’d brought to share. “I think it’s just an isometric exercise to flex your hands and limber you up for other positions. Like practicing swirls in calligraphy.”
/>
“Thanks,” I said, opening my soda. It didn’t have caffeine, but I liked having bubbles with calzone, which was warm and stuffed with fancy Italian meats and pimento.
Luca snorted. “Bankers like you don’t use the gesture too often. It’s a precursor to the strength symbol.” She demonstrated a sequence in front of her chest, making it look like a martial-arts move.
“Cool,” I replied. “Literally. These drinks are the perfect temperature. How do you do that?”
“Since my older sister has the family Book, I keep ice packs in my locker safe.”
Lilith looked so down about her lack of a spell Book that Luca said, “It operates on the same general idea as the swirls, though. The goal is to do these patterns until muscle-memory kicks in and you don’t need to think about them. Eventually, you can do a whole conversation in a blur without slurring your words. Just be careful, in a few days, the practical jokes will start. Once they Freshmen gain confidence, they’ll figure out that the lesser spirits want to play jokes on people. For the next month, check all the toilet seats and salt shakers before you use them.”
“When do we use glowing crystals to draw glyphs in the air?” I asked.
“Sophomore year,” said Lilith. “They usually combine the class with driver’s ed so the state credentialing people don’t get suspicious.”
I growled. “My birthday isn’t until May. I won’t be able to touch this stuff until I’m a senior?”
“They have summer classes for people who get caught like that,” Luca replied.
We all enjoyed the calzones so much that I bought seconds for everyone. My aunt had given me my first training credit card, and I had a thousand-dollar limit. I sent Lilith into giggling fits telling her about the weird requests Mom had received over the years. “This one guy wanted a letter to make his snake into an emotional support animal so he could keep it in his apartment. She turned him down, but he got one off the Internet. It worked until the snake spooked someone’s service horse.”
“Stop. You’re making it up.”
“Seriously. Miniature horses make more stable supports than dogs, are about the same size, and live three times longer. If you put that much time into training an animal, you want a bigger return on your investment. The only problem is getting them on airplanes…and escalators at the mall.”
Every time she took another bite, I’d make her laugh again.
“Horses can be potty trained like dogs. They tried it with a donkey first, but he’d kick holes in walls and bite those people handing out food samples at the market. The apartment manager hated him. Police sirens or thunder would set him off, and he’d bray loud enough to wake the baby upstairs.”
“Prove it,” said Luca with a grin.
“Okay, the snake didn’t live in the same apartment building, but the exemption for miniature horses is a federal law, part of the ADA. The company in Holy Oak was called Pilot Dogs. I was only four at the time and thought they were training them how to fly planes. Zak strung me along for a week before my kindergarten teacher sent a note home.”
Holding her stomach from laughing so hard, Lilith said, “In World War II, they had dog fights over Great Britain. French poodles and English sheepdogs battling German shepherds.”
Blaise glared at me from across the room. If she were a cat, I’d be worried about her pooping in my shoes.
****
Just before the bell signaled final period, Miss Williams excused me early from gym to help Dad set up his room. He set out a variety of cameras around the room, some of them belt-buckle mounted or disguised as pens. I jabbered, telling him about our meeting with the headmistress and my gestures lesson. “I’m worried about Blaise, too. She wasn’t in the basement for the afternoon class.”
He frowned. “I think I saw her in the nurse’s office on my way in. Are you okay in the basement? They never told me about that.”
I faked a smile. “Relax, Dad. It’s just a transition period. I can gut it out for a little while.”
“Okay, but let me know if I need to step in.”
If you say anything, they’ll just make it worse on me. “Let’s concentrate on what you want me to do during the first class.”
“First, put your gloves on.” The thin, white gloves I’d seen Luca use came with the school uniform, like in a military academy. When I’d slipped them on, he handed me a sheaf of slick magazine-quality papers. “One to each girl. Don’t hand them a bunch or let them pass the papers around.”
The quiz had twenty Facebook-style questions disguised as fun activities, like how to determine your spy name.
“Phishing!” I deduced. The questions seemed innocent, but the data could be used to hack someone’s passwords.
“And fingerprints,” he whispered, nodding to my gloves.
“Sweet!”
“I’ll pass out powders and Scotch tape later so they can practice lifting a latent print. The first lesson will be about protecting themselves from identity theft. The tests also give me an idea what the girls are interested in and how honest they are.”
I suppressed an evil grin. Dad could be a lot of fun, like when he tutored Zak in chemistry by testing homemade explosives in the backyard.
He wrote his name on the whiteboard, SPY 101, and the words information, influence, and secrecy.
Some of the girls filled in the test while waiting for the class to begin. The few with gloves on removed them to use a pencil. We’d caught them all. Dad didn’t tell them to pay attention; he just sat on the desk and started lecturing.
“Pretend that you’re all members of a persecuted minority, like the Jews after World War II.” Some of the girls giggled at his indirect mention of witchcraft. “Or part of an underworld crime family like Al Capone. What sorts of things would you want to control about your environment to protect yourselves?”
He sucked them in. They participated, and he listed their best ideas on the board. “Good. Why did he pay off the police?”
Luca raised her hand. “So they’d know when raids were coming.”
Dad underlined “information.”
“What about politicians?” he asked.
Harvard caught on and shouted out. “Influence, obviously.”
“Why did he own the trash collectors?” The girls didn’t catch on immediately. “What happens if your gang goes to war with another gang?”
“There’d be dead bodies,” Luca replied. “Oh. If you could hide them in your own landfill, nobody could pin the crime on you.”
Underlining “secrecy,” Dad lectured a little on how hard it had been for the government to prove Capone had been guilty of any crime. “In fact, of his countless misdeeds, only cheating on his taxes ever nailed him.”
He went through the same reasoning with a few other examples, coming back to the same three words. “When we’re at war, what sort of information interests us?”
The ladies came up with enemy movements, strength, and weapons’ research.
“Why?” he asked.
“So we can counter them,” Luca replied.
“What happens if you get too good at predicting and use information from a single asset too often?”
Harvard hazarded a guess. “You get caught cheating on your taxes?”
“Right. Your source gets shot for being a spy, and they close the loophole you used to collect that information. How do you prevent that side-effect?”
When they fumbled around for a while, Dad said, “Hint: what did I do for a living?”
One of Harvard’s posse raised her hand, excited. “Oh, oh! You have to confirm tips through an independent third party before publishing to hide your leaks.”
“Right. Never burn your sources, even if it means losing a few scoops to your competition. When England cracked the Ultra machine, they could have stopped every U-boat, but we couldn’t risk it.”
Harvard herself raised a hand. “How does this relate to us?”
“If you could magically predict every downturn in the e
conomy, for instance, what would your competitors do?”
It was fun to watch little light bulbs of realization go on across the room. Not everyone understood, but I had hope for the ones who did. Luca spelled it out for everyone a few minutes later when she answered. “You’re saying if we cheat with the Art too often, there’ll be consequences?”
“The hypothetical Art. Yes. When you’re around recording equipment, always assume it’s turned on.” He gestured to the camera and Halloween candy bowl on his desk. This revelation spurred a buzz of conversation in the class. “Now for a little fun. I’d like you to finish this short quiz. I’ll be passing out candy to the first dozen who fill out every blank. Raise your hand when you complete it, and Isa will hand you your prize.”
They were so concerned about the candy that no one noticed how personal some of the questions were. Salma Harvard was the first to raise her hand.
“Excellent,” Dad said. “You can help distribute these kits. One to a person, yourself included.” He had Miss Stuck-up pass out the fingerprint kits, and nobody had a clue yet.
Fish in a barrel. When I gloated to myself, Harvard looked concerned, so I hummed My Little Pony to block her until all the quizzes had been handed back. This was going to be a fun semester. Dad would become so popular that Miss Bradstreet would have to hire him full-time.
11. The Office
Since Dad had driven himself in today, Vincenzo didn’t need to wait for us to finish the meeting. Sitting by Bradstreet’s solid-oak desk, I peeked at some of her mail. Her first name was Melisende. I’d have to look it up later. The headmistress paced for a few moments while she stewed. Dad and I sat next to each other in uncomfortable wooden chairs. They were too narrow for him and too tall for me, making my feet dangle a centimeter off the floor. I felt like I was in first grade again, when I’d been called into the principal’s office for fighting. The boy had been force-feeding Dina bacon for lunch. Well, I’d fed him a Nut Buster Parfait for dessert.
When Bradstreet finally spoke, she surprised me with the frustration in her voice. “Isa, you are a bundle of contradictions. My kitchen staff thinks you’re the second coming, but my teachers are afraid of what you’ll do next. Did you know drafting was forbidden?”
