[Phoebe Pope 01.0] The Year of Four

by Nya Jade

“How about tonight, co-study hour?” he said quickly with an intensity she didn’t expect.

  Phoebe felt her hearts hammering. Co-study was the only two-hour stretch of time where members of the opposite sex were allowed in each other’s dorm rooms. “Sure,” she said, trying not to sound too excited. “If you don’t mind my roommate, we can meet—”

  “—in my room,” Colten said. “No roommate. No problem.”

  Now Phoebe’s hearts were practically spluttering, her mind glossing over the concept of having no roommate and fixating on the idea of her being alone with Colten in his bedroom.

  “Okay,” she said softly. Phoebe had begun to grin foolishly, and to avoid Colten’s eyes while she tried to rein it in, she let her gaze wander about the dining room. What she saw next promptly yanked the grin from her face. To their right, Karli was cutting a path through the crowd toward the table, holding a stack of green fliers to her chest.

  Irked at the thought of being made to feel invisible again in front of Colten, Phoebe reached for her tray and said, “I should go. I have some photos to drop off at the Gazette before class.”

  “But I haven’t told you my room number yet,” Colten said with a tilt of his head.

  At that precise moment, Karli, who had arrived in time to catch what Colten had said, looked at Phoebe, bewildered and more than a little annoyed.

  Momentarily forgetting Karli, Phoebe asked, “Oh, right. What is it?”

  “Room 205. Clay House,” Karli said, breathlessly, looking flustered as she dropped her stack of fliers on the table with a dull thud.

  Colten clenched his jaw and kept his eyes on Phoebe. “That’s right.”

  “So Colten,” Karli said brightly. “I—”

  “One second.” Colten’s annoyed tone cut Karli off. He took out a ballpoint pen from the pocket of his leather jacket, wrote down a number on a napkin and handed it to Phoebe. “Call me if anything comes up,” he said, smiling.

  “Sure,” Phoebe said, trying to appear casual. “See you later—Oh,” she said, a flush rising in her cheeks. “Thanks for the present.”

  Colten leaned back in his chair and grinned. “Hope it’s getting great use.”

  “It is.” Phoebe’s flush deepened. She gathered up her belongings and gave Karli a polite nod of acknowledgment, a hint of triumph in her expression. Karli didn’t smile back. Phoebe couldn’t help noticing that her mood was further improved by the disbelieving look on Karli’s perfectly made up face.

  On her way out of the dining hall, Phoebe picked up one of the green fliers that had been dropped. Printed on it was a picture of the planet Earth as a disco ball. Beneath this, scripted words said:

  Come be Green at the Fall Enviroball.

  Sponsored by Colten’s Cuties.

  Proceeds to benefit Today’s Climate Tomorrow

  A favorite charity of our very own environmentally friendly star!

  Phoebe wondered which annoyed her more: Karli’s abuse of Colten’s Cuties as a tool to get to Colten, or the fact that Fall Enviroball was actually a clever idea. The thought that had been haunting her returned; she had been deliberately skipped in the delivery of fliers. Phoebe crumpled the glossy sheet of paper and focused on her upcoming study date with Colten. But even in her renewed anticipation, questions about Colten began to coalesce in a small part of Phoebe’s mind. Why had he been so agitated when he’d first arrived? If he’d landed the part and business in L.A. was fine, then why the moody demeanor? And his immediate concern about her. . . . It was almost as if Colten had some eerie sixth sense that something had happened. Phoebe ran a hand through her hair. Maybe she was underestimating how frazzled she looked from last night’s chaos. She shook it all off. After all, she was consciously choosing not to read Colten’s emotions. But emotional reading wasn’t the same as mind reading. Perhaps that’s my problem, Phoebe thought. I’m always reading too much into things.

  SIXTEEN

  “Ineed you to help me with something,” Phoebe said to Hayley as they plopped into seats in the back of Tactical Bird Song. She’d spent her morning classes barely hearing her lectures, brainstorming possible ways to access the faculty meeting that was happening in the next hour, but to no avail. Perhaps with Hayley’s help, an idea would come to mind.

  “What I want to know is why you even want to be there?” Hayley said.

  With a twinge of guilt, Phoebe said in a low voice, “Just want to see if there’s anything the mentors haven’t been telling us Hyphas.” It bothered Phoebe that she couldn’t be entirely truthful with Hayley about what she intended to do once inside, but there was no way she could say, You know how someone’s trying to kill me? Well I’m hoping to use my ability to read emotions to figure out who here is helping them.

  Hayley thought for a moment. “Can’t you just hang in the hallway and stretch your eavesdropping range?”

  Phoebe shook her head. “Privaques, remember?”

  “Right. Forgot. Well, we need a plan then,” Hayley said, and before she could say more, a tired-looking Professor Koon came rushing into the room, her hair matted to one side as though she’d just woken up. Phoebe didn’t need to read her emotions to know that the woman was still shaken from the previous night.

  Professor Koon spoke, her tone uncharacteristically flat, “I’ve been listening to the homework recordings you turned in,”—she waved a small digital recorder in her hand—“and so far the problem I’m hearing from some of you is an issue with the note order in your whistle patterns.”

  “For example,” she said, reaching the front of the class. “When question number five asked you to whistle a pattern for: ‘Help, I’m injured in the north east side of the forest.”’ She paused and looked around with a raised eyebrow. “Someone, who shall remain nameless, whistled this pattern on his recording.”

  Professor Koon pressed play on the digital recorder and a short melodious whistle filled the air. At once, a few people in the class burst into laughter.

  “Anyone care to translate?”

  “Help, I’m injured and I need a girlfriend, stat!” a boy said from the back.

  “Suffice it to say,” Professor Koon said, “that will not get you rescued.” More laughter. “It’s all funny now, folks,” Professor Koon continued. “But some of the best laid plans can be easily ruined if a key communication is just one note off.”

  A light went on in Phoebe’s head as Professor Koon asked the class to pair off to practice translating the instructions she would shortly be giving them.

  Tugging at Hayley’s sleeve, Phoebe bowed her head and whispered, “I think we should hustle out of here after class and try and beat the teachers to the lounge. You can be the hallway look out while I find a place to hide. We can use bird calls to communicate any problems,” she said, finishing just as Professor Koon converted to a hawk, perched herself on top of the table, and whistled her first pattern to the class.

  Hayley sat still for a moment, considering. “I like it. But what if there’s someone in the lounge when we get there?”

  Phoebe hadn’t thought of that. She shrugged. “I guess we’ll have to wing it.”

  Hayley giggled. “You said ‘wing it,”’ she said, giggling again.

  Phoebe bit her lip to keep from busting out laughing. She and Hayley put their heads together and began translating Professor Koon’s note patterns as well as discussing ones that they could use later. Thirty minutes into the lesson an urgent thought came to Phoebe and she poked Hayley in the arm.

  “Ouch,” Hayley hissed.

  “Sorry,” Phoebe said. “Didn’t mean to poke so hard but we’ve got a problem.”

  “What?”

  “We can’t use bird calls. The profs will understand what we’re saying.”

  “Crap. You’re right.” Hayley’s eyes narrowed in thought. “Eighties tunes,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “We’ll assign meaning to some random tunes. It will serve the same purpose.”

  “Let’s go with Madonn
a,” Phoebe suggested. Hayley grinned her agreement and began writing a list.

  The low whistled notes of Madonna’s “Material Girl” told Phoebe to stay put because the coast was not clear. She was leaning against the wall next to a portrait of a distinguished SIS graduate from 1977, nervously looking up and down the hallway. Hayley came strolling out of the faculty lounge shaking her head. “There’s only one professor in there and he’s parked in front of a big food platter stuffing his face,” she said. “I tried to distract him so you could slip in, but he kicked me out.”

  Phoebe let out an anxious breath. She and Hayley had pushed their way through teeming hallways to arrive at the faculty lounge in good time, hoping against all hope that they would find it empty.

  “Well, he won’t be alone for long,” Phoebe said. She cast a wary eye around. A few male students emerged from a nearby study room, laughing loudly among themselves as they walked past Phoebe and Hayley. A couple of them gave the girls a second glance.

  Thinking, Hayley watched the group disappear down the hall. “If we could only get him to—I have a plan!” she exclaimed. And to Phoebe’s astonishment, she took off at a run. “Wait here,” Hayley called over her shoulder.

  Hayley came back two minutes later, out of breath, but looking pleased with herself.

  “So what’s the plan?” Phoebe asked eagerly.

  Hayley, who kept glancing anxiously in the direction from which she’d just come, said, “You’ll see.” Suddenly, she nudged Phoebe. “Here they are.”

  “Here who are?”

  “Your way in,” Hayley said, smiling conspiratorially at Phoebe who looked around uncertainly. Sprinting up the hallway were two boys, both with wide grins plastered across their faces. Phoebe recognized the one carrying a soccer ball under his arm; he was the red team captain from the Full Moon on the Field game—the scrawny boy Hayley had called sexy. His much shorter, extremely freckled companion seemed to smile especially widely at Phoebe.

  “You know what to do, right Paul?” Hayley said to the team captain once they’d reached them.

  Paul’s lips curled. “We’re on it. And you’ll make good on your part?” He looked from Hayley to Phoebe. Phoebe smiled and tried to look as though she knew what was going on.

  “Yeah, yeah we’re all good,” Hayley said, quickly. “Let’s get this show going.”

  Phoebe was thoroughly confused, but allowed herself to be swept away by Hayley. “We can watch from here,” Hayley said, motioning Phoebe into an empty room across the hall from the faculty lounge. There, they stood still, watching the boys through a crack between the door’s edge and the paneled frame.

  Suddenly, a burst of light and energy filled the hall. The two boys had converted into leopards, one a shade of silver with gold spots and the other white. They began whipping the ball back and forth between them when the faculty lounge door swung open and a rotund man with a bald spot in the middle of an otherwise thick head of black hair, stormed out.

  “No conversion allowed in the hallways!” he said, waggling a hand in which he held a half-eaten sandwich. The boys immediately returned to their human forms and gazed at their feet, both grinning guiltily. Glancing from his watch to the boys, the professor looked conflicted. “You second-year cadets should know better,” he said taking a bite from his sandwich. “Come with me. If I let this go unpunished, you’ll never take this rule seriously.” They marched off behind the professor, and when they passed the room where Phoebe and Hayley stood hidden, the shorter boy looked over his shoulder and winked.

  Phoebe stared at Hayley, completely nonplussed. “You got them in trouble?” Phoebe knew that converting in the halls, if caught, was worth a weekend or two of detention.

  Hayley looked guiltily at Phoebe and shrugged her shoulders. “They were glad to do it.”

  A thought struck Phoebe. “What did you promise them?”

  “I said that we would be their dates to that Enviroball everyone’s talking about.”

  It took Phoebe a moment to process what Hayley had done. “What?”

  “Hey,” Hayley said, opening the classroom door to confirm that the hallway was still empty. “When I said I had a plan, I didn’t guarantee that you’d like it. Now get in there.”

  Phoebe knew she didn’t have time to dwell on Hayley’s methods and hurried into the lounge while Hayley stood watch outside the door. Inside, Phoebe saw that the room contained sofas, chairs, and many unusually large cushions scattered about the floor. Several silver perches hung down from exposed rafters, and Phoebe found herself distracted by the arrangement of the lounge.

  When Hayley’s whistled “Holiday” echoed in the hallway telling Phoebe that professors were approaching, she frantically began looking for someplace to hide. She opened a coat closet, finding it too stuffed to fit another coat, let alone a person. Hayley’s whistle came again with the message that teachers were halfway to the door. Panic stirred in Phoebe chest, and that’s when she saw it.

  At the back of the lounge, an unusual wood-slat storage bench stood flush against the wall. Long and tall, its slats were spaced far enough apart to conceal someone while giving them a view of the room. Phoebe hurried over to the bench, lifted the lid, and crouched into a space that was bigger than she’d imagined it to be. She had barely pulled the top down when the door opened.

  Hearts pounding, Phoebe watched as teachers slowly filed in. A few immediately converted into their bird form and flew up to the overhead perches. Phoebe saw Montclaire enter with Professor Elmore who took leave of their conversation and melted into a navy jaguar and curled himself on a floor cushion. Others stood against walls or settled themselves on the various chairs. It suddenly occurred to Phoebe that her bench was a seat when a wire-thin male professor began backing his bony bottom toward it, coming dangerously close to sitting. Thankfully, after noting the distance from the bench to the rest of the teachers, the man changed his mind.

  As Phoebe breathed a sigh of relief, Professor Yori strode through the door with Afua, Deborah-Anna, and Yelena just behind him.

  “Afternoon,” Professor Yori said grimly. He stared up and around at the assembled crowd and a hush fell over the faculty. “By now, you have all read the daily email informing you of student absences. And you have probably noticed that no reason was listed for Mariko Higashi and Lewis Baker.” Phoebe found herself drawing a breath along with the headmaster. “It saddens me to inform you that they were kidnapped during last night’s Vigo drill.”

  At first a protracted silence hovered as the headmaster’s words sank in. Then, those who had converted returned to their human forms, voices tumbling over one another as everyone tried to speak at once. Phoebe opened her mental gate then, and began skimming through emotions, searching for anything suspicious. Not surprising, the teachers were fearful, horrified, sad, and on edge. And then Phoebe began sensing the faintest trace of something darker as well, but the feeling was too low for her to pinpoint its exact location.

  “Please, please,” Professor Yori said, raising both hands in a calming gesture. “Let’s try and settle down. We will try to get to all of your questions—”

  “We?” Professor Elmore said, interrupting.

  Professor Yori glanced over at Afua, Yelena, and Deborah-Anna. “These women,” he said, “that you’ve come to know as our visiting scholars . . . are Blackcoats. At this point, I defer to them for the rest of this meeting.”

  Gasps of astonishment erupted. Phoebe was struck by a growing emotion that she couldn’t ignore. It was hard, angry, and vengeful. Phoebe tried to hone in on the person behind the hatred as Deborah-Anna distributed Privaque clips among the faculty and explained its purpose.

  “I want to first assure you,” Afua started, “that the school will not shut down in the face of this Vigo threat. All teaching and activities must carry on.”

  “Is this connected to the soccer game attack?” one teacher asked, starting a frenzy of questions.

  The Blackcoats talked of the prophecy,
Alexori, and the ongoing investigation to an increasingly agitated crowd. Soon Phoebe’s head began to hurt from the strain of reading that many emotions at once. The experience of it was overwhelming, but she had expected that. The most she’d ever tried before was two at a time, and even then it had been tiring. Determined to make the best of it, Phoebe tried to keep herself open and filter through this field of volatile emotions. Her father had told her that in time she’d grow to be able to shoulder more, and there was no time like the present to test her ability. When talk turned to whether or not to inform the student body about the kidnappings, Afua immediately snapped at the group, “It should go without saying that discretion is paramount.”

  A wiry man with graying sideburns argued back, “Wouldn’t informing them allow for vigilance as they move about both campuses?”

  “That vigilance needs to come from you all. We don’t want to induce panic and confusion—that would be even more dangerous,” Afua said.

  “Besides, Loren,” Professor Yori said, stepping in. “Fear from the soccer attack has only just faded from their minds and to tell them about the kidnapping would bring it all up again.”

  When Afua ended the meeting by saying, “We’re following a strong lead in these kidnappings and will keep you apprised,” Phoebe was struck, suddenly, by a powerful spike of hatred. She immediately latched onto it and followed its strong vibration like a route on a map. Her father had taught her that in interpersonal relationships, emotions formed a web of connector lines between people. What you felt about someone created an emotional link between you, which grew stronger or weakened as your feelings changed. Phoebe’s hearts quickened as she traced the hatred directed at the Blackcoats back to the faculty member who had released it. . . .

  Phoebe almost couldn’t breathe as Professor Yori dismissed the group and the faculty slowly began to leave the room. She felt sick. She saw now, with a certainty, that the Blackcoats had been right; a traitor moved among them at the Campus Below. And she knew who it was. The question now was how could she make anyone believe her when she couldn’t tell them how she knew? On Hayley’s “Lucky Star” whistle that the hallway was clear, Phoebe quickly slipped out of the bench, and walked out the lounge door, bracing herself for what she had to do.