“Sorry about that,” he apologized with a smile. “The rest of the tour is outside, so come on.” Taking my hand, he led me through yet another door. Once we were out, I pulled my hand out of his.
We continued along a stone walkway through what looked like a park. The climate was slightly warmer here. Bare-limbed trees lined our path. Frost replaced snow. I removed my gloves, stuffing them into my pocket. Other kids were taking a short stroll as well, holding books and chatting with their friends. The real bookworms sat on benches, reading and catching up on homework. You’d think it was a normal day at a normal park.
As we rounded a corner, we came upon a totally different scene.
Some sort of boot camp was in full swing as we passed. The children looked strange in their camouflage outfits and big Timberland boots. A bulky man yelled and yelled at them until he was red in the face. Spittle as well as orders spewed from his big fat mouth. I wondered how he could possibly be so hard on them. Some couldn’t have been older than six, just a year older than my youngest brother. My arms ached from just watching them do push-up after push-up without any sign of stopping. I could only imagine how grueling that must have felt. The thought that I would soon be there right alongside them made me shudder.
I looked up at Dustin, sudden anger blazing through my veins. “Your dad is a terrible man.”
“It’s not as bad as you think,” he mumbled as some kind of weak excuse.
Staring down at the ground, I quickened my steps, forcing him to lag behind. I purposely turned my whole body away from the camp. My dumb tour guide sped up to catch up with me. Suddenly I was looking down at his shiny white sneakers. Not a speck of dirt on them. Did a maid, like, clean them with a toothbrush every day? More likely he had a new pair for each day.
“Look, I know it seems bad, but these guys were given time to practice and get into shape before they were allowed to go to boot camp, and so will you. Then you’ll have a fitness test to be sure you’re ready. Don’t worry. I’ll be there to help you train every step of the way,” he assured me.
Was that supposed to make me feel better? Because it didn’t. Not at all.
He touched me lightly on my shoulder. “Try to make it work. I mean, it’s not like you have a choice. So why not make the best of it? Here you have access to all this great stuff. The food’s awesome and you can pretty much learn anything you want.”
I shrugged him off and glared at him, hands balled into fists. “You don’t get it, do you? I don’t care if this place has great stuff, and I don’t want to make the best of it. I was doing just fine before I met you. So no, I don’t need you or this funny farm. What I want is my life back. And since you’re obviously not going to help me get it back, I’ll have to find a way to do it on my own. This place means nothing to me. You hear me? NOTHING!”
By this time I was screaming, tears running down my cheeks. My vision was blurry, but I could see Dustin’s shocked expression. I could feel the people staring, but I didn’t care. Let them stare. I had bigger fish to fry.
Dustin began to say something, but I didn’t hear, because I had already taken flight. Not in any particular direction either. I simply had to get away from him.
After a while I grew tired of running and dropped to the ground right where I was. Luckily, my feet had carried me to a clearing. So I lay down on the hard blanket of frozen grass and stared up at the sky. The sky was a light shade of blue and large white puffballs of clouds drifted by.
One cloud looked almost exactly like an ice cream cone. It reminded me of the time I had gone to Mr. Freeze with Ella. Some little kid dropped his ice cream cone on her brand new eighty-dollar boots. We bought him a new one and cleaned off her boots as best as we could. Ella complained about how her mom would kill her when she found out. I laughed the whole time.
Instead of making me sad, the memory made me smile. It hadn’t happened that long ago. I could still taste the sweet mint chocolate chip. Mmm. My favorite. Mr. Freeze had the best ice cream ever. It was one of the biggest hangouts in all of Kindred Valley.
The quiet made me want to lie dozing forever. Then I wouldn’t have to think about anything. Just live in the memories. I heard movement. My whole body tensed. So much for dozing. The intruder stood above me.
“There you are,” he said, sounding relieved.
My eyes remained fixated on the clouds. “Why did you choose me?”
“Huh?” was his only response.
“Why me? Your father could have picked anyone he wanted, but he had to have me. Why?”
Dustin lay down beside me without being invited. “I’m not sure. He usually picks kids through hacking into school records. He checks out the highest grades. The teachers’ comments. Stuff like that. Then, once he finds someone he likes, he sends me to check him out.” I could hear the smile in his voice. He really was clueless.
“I ran away just now. But no guards hunted me down or anything. Why not?”
“The property is extensive,” he said. “There’s a…barrier you wouldn’t have been able to cross. I would have stopped you before anything bad happened.”
We both didn’t say anything for a few minutes, lost in thought. I wondered if he would ever snap out of it and have any grasp of what was going on here. Didn’t he ever question why they would need a barrier in the first place? And just what would have happened if I had found the barrier?
“You called me cute,” Dustin said suddenly. Well, wasn’t that completely out of the blue?
I turned my head to look at him. “Excuse me?”
“When we were in your room. You called me a cute rich guy,” he explained, grinning like an idiot.
Was he nuts? “Why are you thinking about that now?”
He shrugged. “I dunno. It just popped into my head.”
I pulled my glasses down my nose and gave him the annoyed-librarian look. “Just because I called you cute doesn’t mean I like you. Anyway, I was talking about before I really knew you.”
He flashed me a smile that put the sun to shame. “Admit it, though. You still think I’m cute.”
I rolled my eyes. “As if you’re totally unaware of your good looks. You are the most arrogant, trickiest twit of a boy I’ve ever met.”
“That was cold,” he said after a stunned pause.
“So was tricking me into being captured and brought here against my will. Kidnapping someone and transporting her across state lines is a felony for a reason!”
“You’ve got a point there.”
There was yet another awkward silence between us. Winter birds chattered happily, not a care in the world. I wished that I could be like them. I wished I could just spread my wings and fly away. I never thought I’d see the day where I’d miss my rowdy brothers, but I did. I missed everyone.
Tears pooled up at the rims of my eyes and escaped down the sides of my cheeks. I was immediately angry with myself for crying. Bawling my eyes out wouldn’t help anything. Too much of it had been going on with me lately and it needed to stop. To make matters worse, Dustin saw the tears.
“Hey, are you OK?”
I sat up and turned my back to him, furiously wiping away at my cheeks. No use. The waterworks kept on coming and wouldn’t stop. Eventually I just let the tears fall. My whole body shook with the sobs that came from deep within my chest. A painful lump clogged my throat and I had to gasp the air in big gulps to breathe. I hugged myself in a useless attempt to stop the shaking.
Dustin moved closer. He awkwardly put an arm around my shoulders, trying to comfort me. I automatically leaned into him. At this moment I really did not care. He stiffened, like he wasn’t sure what to do. Then he slowly relaxed and let me wet up his shirt. We sat like that for what felt like an eternity.
When my tears finally subsided, the sun was going down. I removed my glasses, wiped them on my shirt, and put them back on. I felt a little better.
My now-drenched tour guide looked me over warily. “Are you feeling any better?”
He really did sound concerned. Maybe I had been wrong about him.
“Yeah, I’m OK. Sorry for soaking you.”
He smiled. “It’s fine. At least now I don’t have to take a shower.”
I scooted away from him. “Gross!”
We both laughed a little.
Dustin stood up and stretched. “So, do you want to finish the tour or head back?”
I considered. “Finish the tour.” I would need all the information I could get to plot my eventual escape—although I was still expecting the cavalry any day now.
He helped me up and we silently left the clearing. He had his arm draped around my shoulders again. There was no need, since I wasn’t crying anymore. Rolling my eyes, I shrugged his arm off. Not unkindly, though. He just blushed and kept on walking.
We came across a hospital, which seemed odd.
“This is for if someone gets injured after a mission or during training,” he explained.
I shook my head in disbelief. A whole hospital! There must have been a whole lot of injuries, then. A sudden shiver went down my back. What injuries did they have? Obviously it wasn’t just cuts and bruises. Then there’d be no need for a hospital, and a big one at that. And what were these so-called missions? Would I be going on one?
Next we stopped at a very tall building. It had to have been at least five stories high.
“I don’t think I was supposed to bring you here,” Dustin murmured.
“Then why did you?”
As he shrugged at this question, we heard voices. He pulled me behind a bush. Two men and two women, all wearing starched white jackets, came into view. They appeared to be pushing something.
“Move over,” I hissed. “I can’t see a thing.”
I gave him a little shove. I focused very hard on what they were pushing. It looked like a stretcher. Wait a second—I thought the hospital was in the other direction. A little girl was lying there. From where I was sitting, she appeared to be unconscious, her long brown hair dangling off one end of the stretcher. Her arms were folded across her chest. She was perfectly still. The only way I knew she wasn’t dead was because of her rosy cheeks. The men opened the door to the tall building and the women wheeled her inside. The men looked back, as if making sure that nobody had seen. I ducked down. Then they closed the door behind them and all was silent.
“Dustin.” I turned to face him. “Explain.”
To my dismay, he seemed as confused as me. “I don’t know, all right? Dad doesn’t tell me everything. But I do have a theory.” He paused and shook his head. “Never mind. It’s probably nothing.”
“Come on. You have to tell me.”
He bit his bottom lip, unsure. I stared at him in that pleading way he always stared at me when he wanted something. He cracked. “OK.”
Dustin told me his father was a scientist. Before his mother died, his dad used to do these experiments on stuff like how much intelligence you can cram into someone’s brain before it all becomes too much. There was some kind of experimental steroid he had been working on to enhance your brain functions, but it was too dangerous to test on anyone but rats. However, Dustin had an idea that since his father had access to all of these kids, he’d taken the liberty of experimenting on them.
Dustin looked straight into my eyes when he said, “I’m not really sure what’s going on. I’ve seen some kids being led away by people in white coats like those people we just saw, pretending to be doctors, but I don’t think they were. Some kids never even came back. The ones that did refused to talk about it. In a way, it was like they couldn’t. It was really weird. Lily, I…I don’t know what to do.”
I stared at him, completely at a loss for words. Then we both turned our attention to the tall building that now seemed so sinister. A dark shadow loomed above it. I started to imagine the screams of innocent children. Quickly I gave myself a good shake, looking away. Dustin’s “theory” was already getting to me.
He tugged at my sleeve. “Let’s go. It’s getting late. My father will be wondering where we are.”
I willingly followed. A plan began to take shape in my head. Somehow I knew that I was going to get those kids out of there and shut that whole horrible place down. I just wasn’t sure how yet.
Nighttime Run
That night, instead of lying in bed, I sifted through my new clothes for anything black. I eventually found a black turtleneck and pants. After quickly changing, I tried the door. It swung wide open. They trusted me too much. With a sly grin, I quietly slipped out of the room.
Although I didn’t really have a plan, I did have an objective. Find a way out. There was always a loophole. I just had to find it. Then, once I was out, I could blow the whistle on this place, and the others like it. Dustin had told me about some kind of barrier. Was he just saying that to keep me from trying to escape? Well, it was time to find out.
The lobby was dark and silent. The receptionist was nowhere to be found. Good. I needed all the luck I could get. Since Dustin had led me outside through the shooting range, I would have to go that way. I hurried through the large gymnasium and into the shooting range.
I reached for the door.
“Lily?”
Dang it. I turned around.
Dustin stood before me, arms crossed and eyebrows raised. “What are you doing here?”
I squared my shoulders, refusing to be intimidated. “I could ask you the same thing.”
Looking slightly abashed, he nodded sheepishly at one of the gun slots. “I come here to practice sometimes. Helps me think.”
I nodded. “Well, I was just going to check out that basketball court. I’ve always liked basketball. Care to join me?”
Dustin’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion. He and I both knew that I didn’t have an athletic bone in my body, but he complied. “OK. Let’s go.”
“Lead the way,” I insisted.
With another suspicious glance at me, he stepped in front of me. His back was turned! I had about ten seconds to make a run for it. But he would probably catch me before I could get too far. Thinking fast, I searched for some kind of object. A flashlight! Dustin had put down his flashlight when we were talking. As quietly and quickly as I could, I grabbed it. Before I could have another second to think, I swung.
Dustin became aware that something was wrong a little too late. Just as he turned around, the flashlight connected with his head. He crumpled to the ground. In sheer panic, I dropped to my knees to check if he was dead. Nope. Just knocked out. He was going to have a serious headache when he woke up. I could already see the lump forming where I had hit him.
“Sorry,” I whispered, knowing that he probably couldn’t hear me.
After dragging him into a corner, I made a beeline for the door. The cool air felt like a refreshing smack in the face. It woke me up. The adrenaline was pumping now. I still clutched the flashlight, my only weapon.
Taking a deep breath, I headed for the entrance of the school. I had seen people go that direction during the tour. A few people still walked about the grounds, but they were all students. I wasn’t surprised that others had decided to break the curfew. However, I couldn’t understand why they didn’t just leave.
I hurried along, making sure to remain invisible. As I got closer to the entrance, I noticed that I hadn’t seen another person for quite some time. That was not a good sign, but I pushed ahead anyway.
“Hey, wait!” someone called.
Without looking back to see who it was, I broke into a sprint. I hadn’t gone more than thirty yards when I was suddenly airborne. Then I hit the ground with a sickening thud. The wind knocked out of me, I gasped for air. My head was spinning. When I tried to sit up, my chest burst into a flaming pain that I had never experienced in my life. I clutched at the pain in my chest, continuing to cough and splutter.
I thought I heard some kind of alarm off in the distance somewhere, but there was no way to be sure. My vision was getting blurry. I could no longer form any coherent thoughts. Suddenly
all I wanted to do was go to sleep. My eyes drooped until I could see no more.
The first thing I heard was voices. All around me. They sounded so far away and muted, like I was under water. I got the strange feeling that someone was right there beside me. I tried to turn my head, but it was too heavy for me to move. I couldn’t even open my eyes. Trying to calm myself, I focused on the voices until they became clear.
“Doctor, you’re needed in the emergency room. There was another…incident.”
“Get a sedative.”
“Lily? Are you finally awake?”
Using all my strength, I turned my head to the voice calling my name. I lifted one heavy eyelid, and then the other. As my eyes cleared, a face came into view. I blinked.
“How are you feeling?” Dustin asked, sounding more amused than worried.
I glared at him. “I feel like crap.” Eyeing the big bandage on the side of his head, I fought a grin. “How are you feeling?”
His hand flew up to his head, eyes turning into slits. “Like I just got hit over the head with a flashlight. Thanks.”
My smile faded. “Yeah, I really am sorry for that, but I had to try.”
He nodded. “I know.”
“So, could you tell me what happened? Everything is kind of a blur.”
Dustin’s crooked grin grew wider. “Well, after you knocked me out, I suppose you ran for the entrance. Then you hit the barrier. There’s a large dome encircling the whole campus. To protect us. Basically, it’s a force field. A very strong force field. Everyone knows about it.”
I frowned. “Well, how come nobody told me?”
“I did tell you,” he patiently reminded me. “Obviously, you didn’t listen.”
Ignoring his scolding, I tried to prop myself up. I wanted to get a better look at my surroundings.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Dustin warned.
He said this a little too late. My chest did not agree with what I was trying to do. Although it wasn’t as bad, the pain was still there. Coughing, I fell back in the bed.
“You might have cracked a rib or two,” Dustin informed me.
Wacko Academy Page 5
