by Harrison, S.
“Never mind. It’s . . . not important.”
She smiles and turns back to her slate.
Bettina Otto. Apart from being my roommate, she’s also my best friend at school. She has been ever since the first day I came to Bethlem Academy.
She’s a fifteen-year-old computer genius who skipped two years, and the only one I genuinely like in this whole surreal, most private of expensive private schools. She’s also the only one who knows who I really am.
When I started at Bethlem Academy, Jonah enrolled me as Finn Brogan, the daughter of a foreign billionaire weapons manufacturer. He said that the attention my real last name would generate might interfere with my studies and make it difficult to make genuine friends, rather than kids who just want to be seen with the daughter of the Richard Blackstone. I didn’t really understand what Jonah meant when I was thirteen, but now I’m so very glad that he did what he did. It turns out that Bit is the only one in this school that I actually want to be friends with. She’s a nerd, sure, but I guess we’re all tarred with that same brush in the advanced classes. I for one am kinda proud of the fact, and I know that Bit is, too.
She looks up from the screen of her slate and stares outside, her eyes as wide as full moons. “Wow. This is gonna be awesome.”
I shake off the last cobwebs of sleep, smooth down the front of my uniform blazer, straighten my tie, and peer out the window of the school bus.
My stomach churns.
I thought now that I’m seventeen, I would be old enough to handle this. Maybe I was wrong.
Everyone around us is in a flurry of excitement. They’re glued to the windows of the bus, pointing and giggling, oohing and aahing, wide-eyed, at the huge black dome in the distance. A building that has only ever been seen in rare pictures leaked onto the net, or in fleeting glances on TV. While all of my fellow schoolmates are figuratively frothing at the mouth to begin the tour, I am finding it very hard to calm my already considerable unease. You see, the reason that incredible collection of structures out there is making my guts into one massive, twisty knot of nerves becomes glaringly clear by the imposing name of this enormous compound. My name. My father’s name. That group of shiny domes and buildings out there is the beating heart of his global empire.
Blackstone Technologies.
Professor Francis, our thin, old, gray-haired, bow-tie-wearing, tweed-jacketed science teacher, is waving his arms in the air, trying his best to calm everyone down and get their attention, his silver wire-framed glasses barely managing to avoid flying off the bridge of his scarlet-tipped nose. Good luck with that. It takes a lot to impress the teenage-brat offspring of billionaires, especially when they get worked up like this. It’s like trying to round up a pack of overprivileged rabid dogs.
Speaking of uncontrollable animals, it’s a very weird mix on this field trip today. I thought this was supposed to be the Annual Excellence trip, a reward for the top academic percentile at Bethlem Academy, so it’s really no surprise that Bit and I are here. As I mentioned, we’re both nerds. Some of the others on the bus, though, are . . . well . . . most definitely a surprise.
Why a surprise? First of all—silly, silly me—I assumed that only the top achievers in the sciences were supposed to be on this field trip, not the most popular kids, or the ones with the best-looking hair, or the ones that faked and schemed their way in.
Obviously, I was wrong.
I have no doubt that once the word got out about Blackstone Technologies, very dubious strings were pulled to get some of these kids on this bus. Powerful parents plus spoiled child clearly equals an undeserved seat. It certainly explains why that stuck-up cow Margaux Pilfrey and her best friend Millie Grantham are here. Little Miss Evil and her faithful minion. Dubious strings are their bread and butter. Earlier this year, they started a school-based charity that raises money for poor inner-city kids to take acting classes. It sounded like a pretty cool idea at first, until Bit hacked the charity accounts and found out that their rich fathers funded the whole thing after Margaux discovered it would look great on her application when her father bought her way into a top university. I would’ve thought just being a silver-medal Olympic gymnast would open enough doors for her.
Margaux and Millie are sharing a joke with the eternally vacant, buxom young drama teacher, Miss Lorna Cole. She obviously won the teachers’ chaperone raffle. Miss Cole likes to dress like a pinup from the 1950s, complete with perfect, shiny, loose brunette curls and neckerchief. She glides around school with Margaux and her friends like she’s one of them. Her outfits are great, but her student-teacher relationships are very unprofessional.
And really quite creepy when I think about it.
Speaking of creepy, Brent Fairchild over there is Margaux’s on-and-off boyfriend and captain of the lacrosse team. Brent “led” the Bethlem Breakers to victory in the interschool lacrosse tournament and got himself a seat on the bus, but I don’t really think you can call it a tournament when only two schools participate and the other school’s team, the Deerfield Stags, is not so secretly sponsored by Brent’s dad, who also owns the land their school is built on. Deerfield has conveniently lost every match that Brent has played in since he joined the team. Coincidence? I don’t think so. See what I mean? Dubious strings. The only reason Brent even goes here and not to Deerfield is because Bethlem is four times more expensive.
Sitting next to him is his best friend and teammate, Brody Sharp. Brody is on the bus because he saved a year-nine student from a chemical fire in the science lab. Normally I would say, high grades or not, every hero deserves a reward. But what nobody realizes is that Bit found cam footage from a lab computer showing that Brody started the fire in the first place. Why don’t we tell? Because it’s not worth the trouble those two morons would cause us if they found out that we did. I’m not afraid of them, but Bit is terrified, and I’m sure the footage will be much more satisfying to release when Brody’s family blackmails him a path toward a high-powered political career, just like his mother’s.
The two boys don’t really look the same, but I always thought they looked like they were cut from the same cloth. Brody is a little bigger, stockier, and definitely dimmer, and even though Brody’s hair is shorn close to his head and Brent’s is carefully brushed into a floppy fringe, they’re both sandy blond with brown eyes, both arrogant, both immature, and both a waste of my time. Brent and Brody. Sounds like a bad comedy show. I’m definitely not laughing.
Most of the others deserve to be here. Karla Bassano is a biology whiz, Jennifer Cheng and Sherrie Polito are physics prodigies, and Dean McCarthy understands math almost as well as I do.
Anyway, despite the few rotten apples, I’m gonna try and make the most of this field trip. That could be tough considering that I honestly couldn’t be more nervous.
My father, as I’ve always been reminded, is a genius, but the revered admiration in the eyes and words of everyone who talks about his achievements are nothing but thorns in my side. I know what he’s done. Everyone does. I want to know who he really is. The net doesn’t offer up anything of any real use to me, and when it comes to asking Jonah or subtly interrogating our staff, I’ve always been told so little. Coming here and seeing this for the first time goes to show just how little I know about his life. So while the other kids might be out-of-their-minds deliriously happy to be here, I’m churning with mixed emotions. Nervous, angry, hopeful, a little frightened—there’s a whirlwind in my head and a typhoon in my stomach. I decide to focus on something else instead. Or maybe that should be someone else.
The new kid. Ryan Forrester.
He started at Bethlem Academy yesterday. Principal Ross chose Karla Bassano to show him around the school, and he’s on the trip today as a “Welcome to Bethlem” gesture. Actually, what really happened was when Principal Ross asked if anyone would be gracious enough to be Ryan’s school tour guide and field-trip buddy, the number of swooning
girls’ hands that shot up was a truly pathetic testament to our society’s obsession with good-looking people.
Karla is definitely not complaining about her duties. She got to sit next to him and stare at him for the entire forty-five minutes it took us to get here on the school jet. Probably all the way here on the bus from the airport, too, I imagine. She sat on the jet with her head slightly tilted, twirling her curly brown hair, giggling at any word that came out of his mouth, touching his arm, and flashing her big brown eyes. Generally being pathetic.
He is disturbingly hot, though.
“Like a young Stalin,” Bit says from beside me.
“What? Who . . . what are you talking about?” I burble distractedly.
“The new guy. Ryan. He looks a little like the picture we saw in history class of Joseph Stalin, y’know, when he was young. You’ve been gawking at him for a minute straight.”
“No, I wasn’t. Please. I was looking out the other window,” I say, stealing one last look at him.
Bit turns her computer slate toward me and shows me a picture. “See. Young Stalin.”
“Yeah, now that you mention it. Same thick, shiny hair, Ryan’s is lighter, though; smaller nose, too; same lips; Ryan has nicer eyes—” I immediately bite my tongue, embarrassed to catch myself mid-fawn. I silently tell myself off for being just as pathetic as Karla and then, to my shame, just go right back to staring at him. I know that I’m being ridiculous, but I just can’t help it. There’s something about him.
“I meant they both look like idiots,” Bit says under her breath as she swipes the picture away.
I take my eyes off Ryan for a second and suddenly remember exactly where we all are. I slump back in my seat and look tentatively out the window.
“I think this is going to be . . . interesting,” I whisper, my words dripping with trepidation.
A cheesy grin widens across Bit’s face. “You can say that again.”
“People, please. You boys, sit down. Everyone! We are not getting off this bus until you’re all quiet and back in your seats! I’m talking to you, McCarthy!”
Poor Professor Francis. They’re not listening at all.
This whole crazy ruckus is obviously contagious. I seem to be the only one who is immune. Even the usually reserved Bit is getting overly excited. I can tell by the bug-eyed way she’s staring so intently at her computer slate.
“This place is . . . amazing. Finn, you’ve gotta see this!” she blurts, eagerly thrusting the screen in front of my nose. A glowing green computer wire hologram of Blackstone Technologies’ grounds and buildings is jutting out from its surface. “There aren’t any satellite photos of this place, which isn’t surprising considering that your dad’s company designed and built most of them.”
“Shhh. Keep it down, will ya?” I hiss at her.
“Oops. Sorry.” Bit continues in a whisper, “I had to hack into the National Security Bureau’s mainframe for anything decent. The best they have is this artist’s conceptual rendering, but even that’s out of date and probably mostly guesswork. Wow. It could be wrong, but this says that they’ve even got their own military training center and research hospital.”
My stomach twists and turns even more than before.
“Finn, what’s your dad like in real life? I mean, really like?”
What I want to say is that my father is just a shadow in the night to me, and that she probably knows more about him from TV interviews and e-mag articles than I do. I’m not sure why, maybe it’s self-preservation, but I choose to lie instead.
“Well, one time on my birthday we went horse riding and had a picnic by the lake. We took a boat out and he taught me how to fish.” I’m such a terrible liar, but Bit doesn’t seem to notice at all.
“Wow. It’s so hard to imagine him doing father and daughter stuff like that, y’know, normal dad-type stuff,” Bit says, gazing thoughtfully out the window.
“I know. Hard to believe, right?” I say the words with the same thinly veiled sarcastic tone as before. That seems to go right over her head as well.
Professor Francis is at his wits’ end. People are chattering, texting madly, and snapping pictures out the windows. Miss Cole is just sitting there, smiling like an idiot, so she’s no help at all. Brody Sharp begins chanting, “Move that bus, move that bus!” which, since we’re already parked, makes no sense at all, but it isn’t very long before others join in. It’s ridiculous.
Out of the corner of my eye I see Ryan Forrester, who until now was quietly reading, lean over the aisle toward Margaux. She leans toward him, flicking her silky blonde hair and beaming her perfect white teeth, her huge, pale-blue eyes flashing beneath her fluttering eyelids. Millie strokes her auburn hair behind her ear, raises one eyebrow, and gives a knowing look to Miss Cole, who smiles back before promptly shifting her gaze hungrily to Ryan’s lips.
I think I’m gonna puke.
Brent Fairchild spots the exchange and sits up in his seat like a meerkat. That is his kinda-girlfriend Ryan’s talking to, after all. Ryan says something to Margaux that I can’t hear above the chatter, and she nods. Suddenly she stands and shouts, “Everybody shut up!” The bus immediately goes silent.
I hate her so much.
Not only for the fact that she thinks she’s the queen bee of this school, but also, and especially, because everyone else seems to think so, too. Apparently even Ryan Forrester. I tell myself that it shouldn’t bother me, but it really does. I’m halfway through a thought about how stupid he must be when he catches me looking at him. He smiles a crooked smile and holds our connection for that millisecond longer than necessary, that minuscule amount of time that, in an instant, makes you both realize that it’s more than just a look. My eyes widen, my stomach tightens, and I quickly turn away. Totally busted. I quickly flump back against the seat.
Now that everyone’s quiet, a look of relief washes over Professor Francis. With a trembling hand, he mops his brow with his handkerchief. “Thank you, Miss Pilfrey. Now that I have your attention, I’d like to lay down a few ground rules for the tour today.”
There’s a low groan.
“As you obviously all know, today’s reward field trip will take place at the main research and development facility of Blackstone Technologies, the largest advanced-technology company in the world.”
“Hells yeah!” Dean McCarthy shouts from the back.
Professor Francis throws a frown in his direction. “From your computers, to your phones, to food production, to military hardware and weather stabilization, Blackstone Technologies, and of course its founder, Dr. Richard Blackstone, is responsible for the innovations that make the lives we live today possible. Please remember that you are extremely lucky to be here. You are the first school students to ever be permitted beyond the hallowed doors of Blackstone Technologies.”
A murmur of excitement rolls through the bus and the Professor waves a hand to quiet us. “Please listen and be polite, do not stray away from the tour guide, raise your hands if you have any questions for them, and most important of all, do not touch anything. Even some of your parents wouldn’t be able to afford that lawsuit.”
Even though it’s obvious that the Professor is joking, some kids look back at Bit from the corners of their eyes. Only at this school would the poor kid in class be a girl whose mom is only worth two-and-a-half billion dollars.
“OK then. We’ve been told that the tour will begin at ten sharp, and then we’ll stop for a spot of lunch in the staff cafeteria at one o’clock, and continue the tour after that. We’ll be back on the bus by four and on the jet by five. Behave yourselves and have an amazing day.” Professor Francis turns and trots enthusiastically down the steps of the bus.
There are a couple of whoops and “yeahs” as everyone finally begins scrambling off the bus and into the tree-lined courtyard outside. Beyond the circular courtyard, a wide concrete path s
tretches out the length of a football field to a huge, charcoal-gray, rectangular stone arch in the distance. Even from here, I can see the word “Blackstone” emblazoned across the arch in big black, gold-edged letters. In the center above it is the company logo, a silver circle with a large black diamond shape inside it. My hand automatically goes to my mother’s pendant, pinching it between my fingers beneath my blouse.
Just beyond the arch, almost filling the sky, is the huge, smooth, black glass dome we saw when we were driving in. It has to be at least sixty stories high. It makes for a very imposing sight, most likely designed to intimidate. It definitely serves its purpose.
“Everyone follow me, please, we’re meeting our guide at the door,” says Professor Francis. There’s excited chatter as he leads the group down the path toward the stone arch and massive dome.
“Do you think your fath . . . I mean, do you think Dr. Blackstone is here today, Finn?” whispers Bit.
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “People say he hardly ever leaves, so . . . maybe?”
I am really hoping to see my father today, of course, but my hopes aren’t high. He’s spent almost my entire life avoiding me, and a part of me can’t help but feel, whether he’s here or not, this day won’t be any different.
Margaux pushes past, bumping me sideways with her shoulder. “Whoops,” she says, flicking her hair in my face. “Didn’t see you there.” She struts ahead of us, giggling with Millie as Miss Cole follows close behind them.
We all walk under the stone arch to the side of the dome. It seems so much bigger than it appeared from the bus. Its curved side reaches up and far away into the sky, but it’s so huge that the wall beside us looks perfectly straight and vertical. It’s as smooth and black as volcanic glass, and seems to be made of one single piece. We stand in front of it in the place where you would expect a door should be, but there simply isn’t one. There aren’t any joins or hinges or handles anywhere to be seen.
