The Academy

by Ridley Pearson

  Copyright © 2010 Page One, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Disney • Hyperion Books, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney • Hyperion Books, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011-5690.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Edition

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file.

  ISBN 978-1-4231-1532-8

  Visit www.disneybooks.com

  www.ridleypearson.com

  Table of Contents

  1. TRESPASS

  2. DELIVERY BOYS

  3. BLAST FROM THE PAST

  4. THE FIFTEENTH SQUEAK

  5. SIR DAVID'S NEGATIVE SPACE

  6. THE BOATHOUSE

  7. GARGOYLES AND SHADOWS

  8. VIGILANCE

  9. AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR

  10. ROOM 1426

  11. GOING GA-GA

  12. NO PLACE LIKE HOME

  13. PENNY

  14. SHREDDED WHEAT

  15. A WORD HE DIDN'T KNOW

  16. THE TRYOUT

  17. AN EYE TOWARD THE ALTAR

  18. A PERFECT COVER

  19. CLICK

  20. UNDERGROUND

  21. INTO THE PIPES

  22. A VOICE FROM THE DARK

  23. NUMBER SEVENTEEN

  24. SWORDS

  25. BRANCHING OUT

  26. THE SPUD AND THE OCTAGON

  27. ALL FREAKS

  28. A DAY TO BE REMEMBERED

  29. WHITE SOCKS AND BLACK TUNNELS

  30. GRINNING IN THE DARK

  31. BREAK

  32. ALL WELCOME

  33. A SAFE PLACE

  34. PURSUIT

  35. ONE OF THE GOOD DAYS

  36. A BOOST UP

  37. THE BEST PLACE TO HIDE

  38. STANDOFF AT THE STANDISH

  39. A PAIR OF FREAKS

  40. MALFOY AND THE PUNCH BOWL

  41. IDENTICAL TWINS

  42. DOWNLOAD

  43. IMPOSSIBLE TO FORGET

  44. FOOD FOR THOUGHT

  For Storey and Paige

  Thanks to the faculty and alumni of Pomfret School, the model for Wynncliff. Peter Wormser and I traveled around in those tunnels…not that anyone ever knew (I hope). A portion of the proceeds from the book goes to Pomfret. Thanks also to Bobby K. for our adventures in Boston as young seventeen-year-olds. And to Marcelle, Wendy, Jessie, Jennifer, Laurel, David, Tanner, and Nancy for their help through the various drafts. (Any mistakes are all theirs!)

  ALSO BY RIDLEY PEARSON

  Kingdom Keepers—Disney After Dark

  Kingdom Keepers II—Disney at Dawn

  Kingdom Keepers III—Disney in Shadow

  Steel Trapp—The Challenge

  WITH DAVE BARRY

  Blood Tide

  Cave of the Dark Wind

  Escape from the Carnivale

  Peter and the Sword of Mercy

  Peter and the Secret of Rundoon

  Peter and the Shadow Thieves

  Peter and the Starcatchers

  Science Fair

  The brightly lit lower-level corridor stretched out ahead of him, impossibly long, like some kind of throat, offering no place for Steel to hide.

  Steven “Steel” Trapp had walked the same corridor only once, two months earlier, while being given a guided tour by an upperclassman, a Fifth Form student—a high school junior by the name of Walker Glasscock. But he could recall with perfect clarity each door, every name on the plastic plates to the left of the doors—WRESTLING, A/V, DANCE, TRACK COACH, FOOTBALL COACH, MECHANICALS, etc.—not only the layout but the exact number of chairs in any of the rooms he’d seen on the tour. For that matter, he could remember the items on a Whiskey River dinner menu he’d chosen from two years earlier, the prices and the phone number of the restaurant, and the name—Chloe—of the waitress who’d served him that night along with his mother and father. He suspected his uncanny memory skills were responsible for his winning admission to Wynncliff Academy.

  “Remember,” his father had said when dropping him off, “if you don’t like it, you can come home. But I want you to—”

  “—give it until Thanksgiving before deciding,” Steel had finished for him. “I know, Dad. You’ve told me that seven times.”

  “Seven?”

  “That was the seventh, yes.”

  His father didn’t challenge the accuracy of his son’s memory. Neither did his teachers. In fact, it had been a teacher who’d given him the nickname “Steel” because young Steven “had a mind like a steel trap.” He never forgot anything. He was something of a freak, but he’d come to live with it. He learned not to show off or misuse what his mother called “his gift.” Showing off cost friendships, and lost friendships made him lonely. He’d learned the hard way.

  Here at Wynncliff he would have to be careful. Other kids typically resented his ability. Teachers were intimidated by him. It wasn’t going to be easy.

  But presently he wasn’t thinking about any of that. Because presently some big kid was chasing him, and he desperately needed a place to hide.

  He didn’t have to think to recall things—they were just there, always available, in the front of his mind, correcting his decisions the way eyeglasses corrected a person’s vision. His recall was as fast as Google. That was why he took the fourth door on the right without reading CUSTODIAN on the plate. He quietly pulled the door shut and wedged himself behind some broom and mop handles. The closet was the size of a phone booth, a giant sink occupying nearly half of it.

  He wasn’t exactly sure what he’d seen, but now he didn’t want to find out. Certainly not on the first day of school. He would later discover that a sign had blown over due to the strong and endless winds that streamed across the hilltop school. Northeastern Connecticut was all rolling hills and forests, broken by a few orchards and even fewer farms. It was the strangest location for a school—so far from everything. He’d already heard a rumor that the school’s sports teams never played home games—only away games, as if its location were being kept secret.

  A man named William Bromfield Wynncliff had decided to build a compound of white-trimmed brick buildings in a cleared field on top of a Connecticut mountaintop, 117 years earlier. The location seemed more suitable for a wind farm than a school. And it had been the wind that had blown over a sign reading: GYM CLOSED. DO NOT ENTER. WILL REOPEN AT 12:00 P.M.

  So Steel hadn’t seen the sign. His objective had been to put his gym clothes into his assigned locker. It hadn’t occurred to him that by arriving to the gym so early he might end up interrupting something. It hadn’t occurred to him that by keying in a code on the building’s security pad to gain entrance, he might be violating a school rule. The kid who had toured him around the campus on his previous visit had used the code—and Steel remembered it, just as he remembered everything. Having a security lock on the gym—and some of the other buildings—had been a curiosity to Steel at the time, but he hadn’t said anything. Now, instead of going back to the administration building and asking questions, he simply let himself in, figuring this was how it was done. He’d entered the lobby and, upon hearing voices, had opened the gym doors.

  What he’d seen had momentarily paralyzed him: four boys, posed down on one knee, facing four mannequins across the gym. There was a coach standing slightly behind them. All four boys were holding long stainless-steel tubes to their mouths. On the coach’s cue, they fired darts at the mannequin targets.

  �
�No!” the coach said loudly. “It’s not enough to simply hit the target. These aren’t spitballs! The darts must be fired with enough force to result in the injection! Without that, the effort is useless! The idea is to render your opponent unconscious.”

  Blowguns? Steel wondered. How cool is that?

  He gasped, drawing attention to himself, but wasn’t embarrassed to be seen: he would sign up for Blowguns 101 in a nanosecond. He had no way of knowing that because of the lighting he was only seen in silhouette; he assumed they got a good look at him. But he hoped not, as the coach shouted, “Who’s there? Stay where you are!” For a moment Steel didn’t process what was going on, didn’t realize he was in a closed practice. Then the tension in the coach’s voice registered.

  When the coach spoke to the boys, saying, “Well? Go get him!” Steel stood frozen for a second as one of the boys—a big guy—stood and came toward him at a full sprint. At that moment he regretted using the security code to let himself in. He regretted allowing himself to be seen. More than anything, he wanted to do the right thing, given the situation.

  He took off running.

  The idea of an upperclassman pursuing him, on the first day of school no less, sent Steel leaping onto and sliding down the staircase’s metal hand railing. He rode the next handrail to the facility’s lower level. The kid hadn’t tried the rail; he stayed to the stairs, buying Steel a few precious seconds.

  From there he’d faced an instant decision and had gone left, because his photographic memory had delivered perfect recall of the layout from his prior tour.

  A janitor closet.

  He kept perfectly still inside the sour-smelling closet, his chest burning, his ears ringing, his body rigid in a giant knot.

  The sound of footfalls—had he actually seen them firing blow darts? he wondered—sped past the door, then returned in his direction. He heard a nearby door open and close. Another. A third. Moving steadily closer. He pushed his back into the corner, the dozen broom and mop handles covering him like a lean-to shelter. He held his breath.

  The door swung open.

  A hand slapped the wall for a light switch, but raked the broom handles into a noisy complaint, missing the switch. Steel did not breathe. The door shut, and the footfalls continued one door to the next.

  At last, there were several long minutes of silence.

  The pursuit had stopped.

  He dared a peek out. An exit sign beckoned at the end of the long hall.

  He ran for it and sneaked outside, taking a deep sigh, his lungs filling with the clean, crisp, hilltop air.

  He was glad to be free, but more pressing was his recollection of the four boys firing darts at dummies, for he could—and did—replay it in his mind exactly as he’d seen it.

  Why would a school—any school—teach kids how to fire blowguns? And why did they care if he saw it, unless it was something they weren’t supposed to be doing? And if they weren’t supposed to be doing it, then why had a man been coaching them? None of it made any sense.

  And for once, for perhaps the first time in his life, he did not trust his own memory.

  Brian Taddler spit the glob of gum out into his hand and smacked the side of the potted tree outside Boston’s Patriot Hotel, sticking the gum on the side of the urn. He marched through the automatic doors as if he were a member of a royal family.

  At fifteen, Taddler could pass for a few years older or a few years younger, depending on how he dressed. His close-cropped, nearly shaved head and dark, brooding eyes suggested intensity if not outright menace. But Brian Taddler’s smile and a missing front tooth transformed his face into youthful exuberance. This evening he wanted to look younger, and he did so in a pair of khakis and a pale blue golf shirt.

  Cocktails were about to begin. There would be a crush to get through the doors to the Paul Revere Ballroom A. He picked out the first fat woman he saw—for this was the only description Mrs. D. had given him.

  Taddler drew close to this woman. In a fraction of a second, his hands could have slipped in and out of her jacket pockets. He was perfectly capable of lifting money or even removing jewelry without her being the least bit aware. But he did not. The name was wrong.

  Emerson was the name of his mark. This woman’s tag read Richards.

  Taddler smiled at her, and moved on.

  A moment later, near the bar, he finally spotted her. Gwen Emerson was a big woman whose wool purse didn’t latch, and offered an easy target. Taddler approached her, faked a stumble as if tripping over his shoelaces, and face-planted himself into her massive chest—assuring that her purse would be the last thing on her mind. He pulled his face away and stammered an apology. At the same time he slipped a small, rectangular paper envelope from her purse into his own back pocket. A room key envelope certain to contain both the key and the room number.

  “No problem,” she said, embarrassed by the contact. She stepped back and smoothed her clothing, unable to look at Taddler. She showed no sign of suspecting mischief.

  The first woman he’d approached spotted Taddler’s collision with Gwen Emerson, and Taddler watched as she reached into her jacket pocket and checked for her key.

  She either sensed what he was about, or had spotted the grab. Either way, he realized he was in trouble when her expression turned to suspicion.

  Taddler had entered the hotel’s meeting room area with three possible exits in mind. He took the nearest, stepping onto the elevator just seconds before the doors were about to close.

  He chastised himself for giving himself away. He should have known better. Should have made less of a scene. He’d overplayed it. Mrs. D. rewarded results, not effort. She provided Brian and a handful of others his same age with a roof over their heads. They went to school five days a week, and ate a decent dinner each night. He wasn’t about to forfeit his bed at the Corinthians because of a failure to deliver.

  “What floor?” a young woman asked as he stepped into the elevator.

  Taddler checked the paper packet. It opened, revealing a credit card–sized electronic room key.

  “Seven,” he said, offering the woman an engaging smile.

  Seven-forty-six, to be exact, he thought. Handwritten in a box at the top of the card.

  The young woman got off at Six. The elevator doors opened again, and he felt a sense of urgency as he followed signs to room 746. If Gwen Emerson discovered her key missing, she’d alert security. If security caught Taddler, he was toast. Mrs. D. would never come to his rescue. She’d merely replace him with another fifteen-year-old boy thrown out of a city shelter.

  She would abandon him just as his parents had. He’d be sentenced to time in a juvenile detention facility—a reformatory school—the last place he wanted to be: bars on the windows, locks on the doors, mold on the food, restricted TV time, no video games, no movie over a G-rating. Taddler knew a couple of boys who had been sentenced to juvie, and he wanted to avoid it at all costs. He moved quickly down the hall, careful not to attract attention, and arrived at 746. He knocked. No one answered. He put his ear to the door: no sound, no TV, no radio. He slipped the card into the reader. A light changed to green, and the door handle chirped.

  He gently tried the handle, and the door opened. He was inside.

  The routine was familiar enough. He counted backward from one hundred and eighty, which would give him approximately three minutes in which to operate. He probably had more like five or ten minutes, but why push it? Hotel house detectives were not the speediest bunch, but if they received a complaint, they would follow up on it.

  He reached into the left pocket of his khakis and pulled out his iPod nano and skipped to the desk.

  He opened a briefcase on the desk and came out with a Dell laptop. He turned it on; as it booted, he connected a cable to his iPod and waited to connect the other end to the computer’s USB port.

  When it finally loaded, he searched for a particular directory and then connected the iPod. This had taken nearly the entire three minutes,
and he hadn’t started the download yet. He worked through some menus, allowing the computer to recognize the iPod, and then downloaded the contents of the directory.

  Returning the computer to its case a moment later, he dug through the briefcase’s contents, flipping through the papers he found there, looking for any account numbers, passwords, or other information that might interest Mrs. D.

  Time to go.

  Taddler was sweating enough to stain the armpits of the golf shirt. He considered stealing a bedside chocolate, but thought better of it.

  On his way out he stopped in the bathroom to mop his face, and looked at himself in the mirror. He was a sturdy boy with wide shoulders, but at that moment he looked anything but strong. He double-checked that he had the connecting wire and the iPod. He didn’t want to leave any clues to his having been there.

  As he reached the door he raised to his tiptoes to peer out of the fish-eye lens.

  Then he remembered to place the key card and packet back on the desk so the woman would think she’d left it behind by mistake. Mrs. D. knew all the little tricks.

  As he crossed the room, he suddenly heard voices from the other side of the door. Voices interrupted by a dull electronic chirping: someone was coming into the room.

  He stole another peek out of the peephole.

  Two guys. Security?

  He glanced around. Where to hide? The closet was a sure bust. Same with the tub.

  Taddler ducked behind the room’s blackout curtain next to the desk chair, hoping the chair might hide his shoes. He heard the click of the door opening.

  He held his breath.

  “If you’re hiding in here, kid,” a deep voice said, “give yourself up. We plan on torturing you and beating you senseless.”

  Another man laughed.

  For a moment Taddler considered showing himself—had they seen him?—but stayed put.

  “Bathroom?” the first voice asked.

  “Nada,” said the second man.

  “Closet?”

  The sound of the closet doors sliding. “Zilch.”

  “Oh, man, check it out!” said the now-familiar voice. “What a freaking moron! The key’s right here on the desk.”