The Academy

by Ridley Pearson

  His nerves got the better of him. Steel barked a short, nervous laugh. It wasn’t much, but in the hollow quietude of the chapel it may as well have been a bomb going off.

  Through the balustrades, Steel saw the man look up, and identified him for the first time.

  It was Mr. Randolph, the physics teacher.

  “Hello?” Randolph called out in his thick British voice. “Is someone there?”

  Steel slumped to the floor and remained stone still.

  “I said, is there someone there? Show yourself, please.”

  A moment later, footsteps creaked up the old stairs as Randolph climbed to the balcony.

  He reached the top of the stairs and looked out into the empty rows of bare benches.

  From where he stood, the balcony appeared to be empty, the bench perfectly hiding the two students who were currently wrapped in a tight embrace. They lay beneath the farthest of the benches, their lips touching in a long, awkward kiss—the first such intimate kiss for either of them.

  Randolph leaned right and left, but saw nothing. He turned and headed back down, mumbling to himself. A moment later, the chapel door thumped shut.

  Kaileigh and Steel broke off their kiss—a kiss that seemed to have gone on far longer than necessary. Neither said anything. Steel wiped his mouth on his arm; Kaileigh pulled at her hair and straightened her clothes.

  They hurried down the stairs and into the choir room, where they waited.

  They checked with Penny—he was still there, on the other end of the radio—and waited for the “all clear.” An uncomfortable thirty seconds passed.

  They separated without another word, heading off to their respective sports.

  Steel caught one last look at Kaileigh in profile, when she was only yards away.

  She was blushing, and he thought he caught something of a slight turn to her lips.

  Kaileigh was smiling.

  Saturday dinner was the first time every week that boys could eat in the dining hall without wearing a necktie, and girls could leave the plaid or khaki skirt in the closet. It started a half hour earlier, at 6:30, because the Saturday movie started at 8:00, and in part because of the large appetites resulting from afternoon athletics and off-campus competitions with other New England boarding schools. The Saturday dinner was also cafeteria style, unlike the more formal weekday dinners, where students acted as waiters. Sadly, the weekend dinners were rarely edible: mystery meat in gray gravy, soggy vegetables, frozen pizzas reheated to the texture of modeling clay. Variety was not the spice of life.

  Steel found a seat at a table with other Third Form students rather than face the derision of upperclassmen. Most of the students, if not all the names, were familiar to him by now. He spotted his roommate, Verne, at a nearby table with other African Americans; a number of Asian students were also sitting together. It struck him as odd that when left on their own, students showed no desire to cross the lines that separated them; but he didn’t challenge it. He was as guilty as the next guy of not wanting to draw attention to himself. Such attention at this school meant harassment…days, sometimes weeks of it.

  He ate his meal quickly. There was zero conversation at his table. It seemed like some kind of law that during Saturday and Sunday dinners, only the upperclassmen spoke.

  As he neared completion of a dish of warm sliced peaches (they’d started out at room temperature, or maybe were cool to begin with, but were served in a thick white bowl that had just come out of the sterilizing dishwasher at approximately the temperature of the surface of the sun), he happened to look across the dining hall to see Pennington Cardwell III looking at him, staring in fact, his right eye twitching in a way that implied the boy was trying to wink.

  Steel looked behind him. Nothing but a large bay window looking out onto the back of the library. He felt heat in his face. Penny—a boy!—was winking at him. Steel made a face, attempting to communicate his confusion; he didn’t want to be winked at. Penny cocked his head toward the common room—the student lounge at the front of the building that acted as a holding area prior to the dining room doors opening, and where students drank coffee and played cards before and after meals. Steel nodded. He was done anyway, so he stood up, bussed his tray and plates, and headed out to await the nerdy Fourth Form computer hacker.

  On his way, he looked around for Kaileigh. He didn’t see her. He thought they’d agreed to sit together at the movie—the most recent Harry Potter, a film that had only been in theaters for two months. There was genuine excitement about the film; Steel had seen it twice before he came to school and was looking forward to a third viewing. Whether Kaileigh would actually sit with him was the real question. Such agreements tended to vaporize at the last moment. The fact that he’d missed her at dinner wasn’t a good indicator.

  Steel sat on a couch to wait. Penny’s face carried a weird expression as he approached, then sat way too close. The couch was huge, yet Penny was practically in Steel’s lap. Steel inched away.

  “What?” Steel said, anxious to have this over with before it had begun.

  “The chap-cam,” Penny said. It took Steel a beat to understand he meant the chapel camera. Tech-heads like Penny loved abbreviations and acronyms; it drove Steel nuts. “We got a hit.”

  “What?”

  “Four guys. Came right out of the wall by the choir room. I gotta show you.”

  There she was! Steel spotted Kaileigh over Penny’s shoulder. She pointed toward the front doors, and Steel interpreted this as a renewal of their agreement to sit together. For a moment, Penny wasn’t there at all.

  “…it right now.”

  “What?” Steel said to Penny.

  “We ought to go see it right now.”

  “You going to the movie?”

  “Before the movie. They come right out of the wall. You coming or not?”

  “Ah…yeah, okay. But I gotta make the movie.”

  “Are you telling me you’re the one remaining human on the civilized planet who has not seen that movie?”

  “No. I’ve seen it. But only twice.”

  “Oh! Well, point taken. You do have to see it. I promise it’ll be quick. You’ll get to the movie in plenty of time.”

  “The whole school’s going to be there.”

  “No kidding.”

  “So I’ve got to be there early.”

  “So why are we sitting here talking?” Penny stood.

  Steel glanced back, hoping to catch Kaileigh, but she was gone. She’d taken off with a bunch of girls, and Steel could already see the choice he was going to have to make: if he wanted to sit with her, he’d have to also sit with her friends.

  Penny led him back to the science building. They didn’t have to worry about being seen: nobody, but nobody, was going to study tonight.

  Penny produced a crowded key chain from deep within his left pocket.

  “You didn’t see this,” he said. He then proceeded to look in both directions down the hall before admitting them. How could a student come into possession of a master key? Steel wondered. What kind of connections did Penny have?

  “Jeez,” Steel said, as Penny used the same key to lock the door from the inside.

  “There’s nowhere I can’t go, no room I can’t get into, though I never said that.” Penny tried way too hard to be the secret agent of Wynncliff. Steel wished he would give it a rest.

  “Yeah. Well, how ’bout the video?”

  “Over here.”

  A few minutes later, Penny had the screen displaying the image of the darkened chapel. The chapel tilted to the right, and part of the lower pews were missing; Steel hadn’t realized he’d set up the camera so crooked.

  “This is last night, just after second curfew.” He pointed to the date and time stamp that ran in the corner of the screen. 11:19 p.m. That was about the same time, weeks before, that Steel had heard the fifteen squeaks, had discovered an empty washroom.

  The image quality wasn’t much. Without enough light, black pixels f
luttered across the darkest parts of the picture. Sir David’s white marble was pretty clear, as was the marble floor and the distant altar. There was a geometry to the pews, but they looked more like black pens in a drawer than wooden benches; the organ was nothing but a black blob in the upper left of the screen, while the choir pews looked like the tines of a dirty comb.

  “It’s not like you can see anything,” Steel said.

  “Wait!” Penny said, his chewed-up fingernail pointing to the time stamp. “Four…three…two…”

  Sure enough, out of the gray on the right side of the screen appeared a pinprick of light. Then the pinprick disappeared and four boys came out of the wall in single file. The last stopped and turned around—maybe closing whatever door they’d come through. A moment later, all four crossed the chancel, past the pipe organ, and vanished into the choir room—just as four boys had done the night Steel and Kaileigh had hidden beneath the organ keyboard.

  Steel watched it three times in a row.

  “What’s with that white dot?” he said.

  “Not sure,” Penny said. “At first I thought it might be a bad pixel on the screen, but it’s not. It stays lit exactly five seconds.”

  “A flashlight? Or one of those laser pointers?”

  “Could be a penlight, I suppose. Not an actual flashlight, or it would have given off more light, and we’d have seen it.”

  “It’s weird.”

  “It is,” Penny said.

  “It worked,” Steel said, of their hiding the camera.

  “Yes, it did.”

  “I’ve got to get in there,” Steel said, “and find that door.”

  “Yeah, I kinda thought you might feel that way.” Penny sat down at the equipment. “No better time than tonight during the movie.”

  That, Steel now understood, was why Penny had been so eager to talk to him immediately after dinner.

  “Tonight is not great,” Steel said. He could picture Kaileigh holding a seat for him. An empty seat.

  “Tonight is perfect,” Penny said, indicating the gear. “I can keep watch. Nobody’s going to be anywhere near the chapel. You can get in, find it, and get out. Miss maybe fifteen minutes of the movie. It’s a perfect cover.”

  There he went again: Secret Agent Man.

  Steel tried to find an argument against Penny’s reasoning. He wanted to say something about Kaileigh not being here, not doing this with him. But he knew that would sound lame.

  “You go in right at eight o’clock. Right as credits roll. It’ll take you a couple of minutes, max. Then we’ll know. We’ll actually know how they’re doing this.”

  Temptation was something Steel had not yet learned to overcome.

  * * *

  He stood at the back of the auditorium, surveying the crowd, wondering if it had ever been this packed. It wasn’t just students, either. There were a dozen or more faculty members, their heads towering over most of the audience, with their spouses and kids. The room was loud with chatter. He scanned rows, looking for Kaileigh, and as he did, he captured the conversation as well. Such crowds were chaotic and difficult for him. He avoided them whenever possible, his unrelenting memory pushed to the limit. If he stayed here too long he would suffer an unforgiving headache: too much to process.

  Finally, he spotted Kaileigh. He hurried down the aisle on the right and reached her row. They made eye contact just as the lights went dark, and Kaileigh patted the seat next to her. In the strobe light effect of the projector, Steel tapped his watch, trying to mime that he’d be a few minutes late. Then, as students behind him jeered for him to “sit or split,” he took off up the aisle.

  He entered the chapel through the main doors, walked a few paces, and kneeled, as he had seen Mr. Randolph do. It was pretty dark inside, and he debated turning on the lights (in part because Penny would see him better), but knew it would light all the stained-glass windows, and he didn’t want to announce himself.

  He folded his hands as if in prayer and then peered out with shifting eyes, trying to see if he was alone. He took a minute down on one knee and, seeing no one, rose. He approached a pew and repeated the inspection process, this time sneaking a look up into the balcony as well.

  No one. As far as he could tell, he was all alone.

  He walked quietly up to Sir David and went behind him, as if interested in the Bible. He flipped pages, still checking around him. He wore an earpiece that connected to a radio that Penny had provided him.

  “I’m telling you, there’s been no action in there since you left,” Penny said into his ear.

  Steel waved at the camera.

  “Go for it before we lose so much light I can’t see you.”

  Steel’s heart was racing. He wasn’t sure he wanted to find the door, wasn’t sure he wanted to know what these upperclassmen were up to. It had been one thing doing this with Kaileigh, but with her out of the equation, it felt more sinister, more wrong. More risky. As much as he’d scoffed at the excuse of the kiss to get them off the hook, without it, things felt much more dangerous.

  “Are you going to do this or not?” Penny asked.

  Steel took the earpiece out of his ear. He did this dramatically so that Penny could see him do it on-screen. Then he reconsidered, realizing Penny was his only link to the outside. He put the earpiece back in.

  “Okay,” Penny said. “I get it. You’re there. I’m here. Big difference. Take your time, but not too much. Okay? You gotta do this right now.” Penny paused, static crackling in Steel’s ear. “As in, someone’s coming. Front door. Headed right for it. You gotta hide!”

  Steel turned and hurried deeper into the chapel.

  With Penny panicking in his ear, Steel headed toward the altar, hoping he could make it to the choir room door alongside the organ. But as the hinges of the main doors cried out, echoing off the hallowed walls, Steel leaped to his right and crawled up into the choir pews. He was on the wrong side, the opposite side of the chancel from the organ—and the door to freedom. If he tried to cross the chancel there was no question he’d be spotted. He backed up on hands and knees, deciding to hide. But with his attention ahead of him, not behind, he miscalculated and bumped into the paneled wall. And as he did, he heard a click.

  He glanced over his shoulder to see that one of the dark wood panels had popped open on a spring lock.

  As the chapel’s heavy door clapped shut, warning him that he was about to be discovered, he pulled the mysterious panel toward him and saw inside to lines of shining metal flashing from within. It all made sense: the organ pipes occupied a large chamber facing the organ, and this door led inside to the pipes. This door had been how the upperclassmen mysteriously appeared or disappeared. This door not only accessed the pipes for maintenance and cleaning—it led somewhere. The discovery made him want to cheer, but instead he hurried inside and quietly pulled the door closed behind him.

  There were rows and rows of silver colored pipes staggered in an ascending array and growing longer and wider with each level. Halfway up they changed to a darker color: wood, or a different metal, some as thick as his arms, and, behind them, more rows of pipes as wide as his legs. Beginning at eye height, and facing the organ, the wood panels had been replaced by screening that allowed the sound to escape. He’d never noticed the screening from inside the chapel, but the result was that he could see into the chapel; he was certain that standing in the dark pipe chamber, he would not be seen. This explained how the upperclassmen could arrive, scope out the situation, and wait for the right moment to cross the chancel and escape through the church.

  Immediately in front of him, a wooden ladder leaned into the darkness. There was a narrow passageway between the wall and the first row of pipes. The pipe room stretched twenty to thirty feet overhead, and was ten to fifteen feet deep.

  He heard footsteps coming toward the chancel, past Sir David and into the choir. He peered out through the screen: it was a grown-up. A man. He sat down at the organ.

  Steel glanced behind hi
m as clicks and pops filled his ear, followed by a whooshing sound: the organ mechanics had been switched on.

  The man lit a small light above sheet music that blocked Steel’s view of him. Steel made the connection, then, between the man at the organ and the huge pipes behind him.

  At once, it was like a bomb going off as all the pipes came alive with sound. A deafening blast of Bach exploded all around him.

  He covered his ears and made his way along the narrow passageway. It turned at the end and descended through a series of steps alongside the rows of wind boxes that powered the pipes. It led to a small dark room that clattered and hissed behind the equipment that drove the pipes.

  He pulled the radio from his pocket and touched a button, causing a small green screen to light up dimly. It provided just enough light for him to see that he’d guessed right: he was in a small room cluttered with dusty equipment. He stuffed the radio back into his pocket, not wanting to risk revealing himself, though he’d descended at least eight feet. No light would escape into the chapel from here.

  The pipe organ was booming, leaving Steel deaf. He covered his ears again, hoping that whoever it was would stop playing. The movie would run for two hours. What if he wound up trapped here…this man used the school movie time for his practice?

  He searched his memory for a possible exit. The passageway had widened briefly. In a hurry, he hadn’t paid it any attention, but he returned there now.

  He discovered a wooden panel. He pushed against it. In the cacophony of the organ music he did not hear it click, but he felt it vibrate through his fingers, and the panel popped open. He aimed the radio’s green light inside.

  He faced an extremely narrow stone stairway leading straight down. The steps had been hand chiseled out of the stone, and were very old. He recognized this for what it was the moment he saw it: the route the boys had taken. And he knew where it led: somehow this connected to the lavatory in Lower Three. This explained how the four boys reached the chapel unseen each night.

  With the organ music screaming in his ears, Steel stepped into the stairwell and pulled the trick door shut behind him. It locked into place. He tested it once: it popped back open. Again, he pulled it shut. He could return this way if necessary—that was good to know.