“That wasn’t what it looked like.”
“It’s none of my business. It’s not like…I don’t know.”
“You got it all wrong.”
“It was Nell Campbell. Wasn’t it?”
“Yeah,” he said sheepishly.
“As in Fifth Form hottie?”
“It was about Mandarin class. She’s the student aide to Mrs. Jian.”
“Mandarin class. So you’re telling me she pulled you into a dark corner under the post office stairs to talk about Mandarin class?” She crossed her arms tightly in front of her. “I don’t know why I’m even here. Talking to you. At this school. I think I made a big mistake.”
“Listen, it was nothing. She wanted to warn me that Zeke cheats and that I could get in serious trouble.”
“So she’s protecting you. She cares about you. Good for you.”
“Kai…she said something about how if I blow it I won’t get invited. Not by her, but other people. Wouldn’t tell me what she was talking about. Made it all this big secret. Said I couldn’t tell anyone, and I’m telling you.”
“Goody for me.”
“Earth to Kaileigh!” He was angry at her for not understanding. He could present the facts, could recite them as precisely as they’d happened, but if she chose to misinterpret them, then what could he do?
She must have sensed his frustration. “Okay. So are we good here?”
“No, no, no!” He started telling her about Penny, but jumped over that and moved straight to following DesConte and the three others into the chapel, about seeing Randolph, and how Randolph had almost caught him. “‘We’re going to cancel tonight.’ That’s what he said.”
“Are you sure?” she asked. But then, remembering to whom she was speaking, said, “Never mind. I didn’t mean that.” The spell over her seemed to have broken. “But…what’s the big deal?”
“If a teacher like Randolph wants to meet with four of his students, why all the secrecy? Any teacher could invite any number of students over to his place, or to the chapel, or whatever, any time he wanted.”
“How do you know they’re his students?”
“That’s not the point!” Realizing he’d raised his voice, he collected himself and returned to a whisper. “Something is going on, and Randolph doesn’t want to risk being discovered. He’s taking all kinds of precautions.”
“It’s none of our business,” she declared. “You were worried those boys were trying to pull off something dangerous. If a teacher’s involved, then that’s obviously not what’s happening.”
“But something’s happening,” he said.
She looked at him impatiently.
“And I’m going to find out what it is.”
She shook her head. It reminded him of the way his mother would too quickly dismiss one of his ideas.
“I have to find out. We have to find out.”
“Wrong. You found out everything we needed to know. There’s a teacher involved. End of story.”
“No story ever ends,” he said. “Someone just decides to stop telling it.”
“Well, I’m done,” she said. “With the tunnels. With DesConte. Mr. Randolph. With—” She stopped abruptly, then lowered her head.
“Me?” he said. He realized his fists were clenched nervously at his side, and he forced himself to relax.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You almost did.”
“No I didn’t. That’s your interpretation. You know what I think? I think we both should focus on our studies, and you on your ga-ga, and we should forget about all the other stuff going on.”
“Then you admit there’s stuff going on?” He’d caught her, and she knew it.
A smile twisted across her lips.
“I got you.”
“Did not,” she said. She was still smiling.
“I…got…you.” He shook his index finger at her, and her smile widened.
They half waved good-byes at each other and headed off through the rattle of fallen leaves. He’d wanted to win her over completely—to convince her to join him. He had to find out what DesConte was up to, if for no other reason than it was DesConte, and he didn’t like the guy.
But he wasn’t going to push it. Not tonight.
Quit while you’re ahead.
He was learning.
Living at the Corinthians was not without its rules, and there was one Mrs. D. was particularly firm about: the boys were expected to return directly from school each day. Mrs. D. would not tolerate their loitering on city street corners, something she believed was the “root of all evil” and a major factor in boys their age having brushes with the law. More to the point, even a single encounter with police could mean expulsion from the Corinthians. None of the boys wanted that.
Taddler stuck to the rules as much as possible, as much as any boy could stick to any set of rules, which meant at least some of the time, but nothing close to all of the time. The straight-back-from-school rule was a little fuzzy when an operation was underway. As co-leaders of Project Armstrad, he and Johnny were allowed some leeway.
That was why Taddler was currently riding a city bus down Commonwealth Avenue. For these fifteen minutes he was just another kid in the city, not someone cast out of a state institution. Not a kid all alone. Not hungry and feeling sorry for himself. He was just a regular kid. He enjoyed the ride and the resulting ten-minute walk from the bus stop toward the hotel. The streets were alive with traffic—big beautiful cars spit-polished shiny and clean. He promised himself that someday he would own three, maybe four, such cars; that he’d have a garage big enough to fit all of them, and a house that made the garage look tiny. Everyone in the house would have their own room, and each room its own bathroom, and there would be a kitchen with a refrigerator stuffed full of food—glorious food like mac and cheese and hamburgers and vanilla milk shakes—and a drawer in the kitchen packed with bags of potato chips, another brimming with candy. This was the dream of nearly every boy at the Corinthians, and one they took turns elaborating on. What else might such a house contain? A giant plasma TV? A computer with video games? A foosball table?
His plan was simple. He would walk fully around the Armstrad, as he’d already done more than ten times, each lap on a different day of the week, always with a pad and pencil close by so that he could duck into a coffee shop and write down anything special he’d seen. (He also happened to like the shortcake cookies at the Coffee House.) With Project Armstrad so important to Mrs. D., and the promise of leaving Corinthians in the offing, Taddler intended to do this right. Johnny was supposed to be doing much the same as Taddler, but he tended to procrastinate. His assignment was to watch the front door for how the bellmen handled the arrival of children, to identify the house detectives, to find out which kitchen workers took cigarette breaks and when, and if possible, to identify the kind of radios used by the staff. This last bit was the most important. Mrs. D. could then buy them two of the same make and model, allowing them to listen in on everything said between the staff. This would give them a leg up when it came time to execute Project Armstrad, and might even keep them from being caught.
He reached his stop and got off the bus. Just then Taddler spotted Johnny on the opposite sidewalk, also walking in the direction of the hotel. He was pleased to see him because it meant that Johnny was actually holding up his side of the assignment. He considered calling across the street, but the point of any operation was to remain independent, to not be seen with other members of the team, to limit the carnage if one or more boys should ever be caught.
Taddler watched from across the street as Johnny slowed and headed up the steps toward a tiny storefront. A giant playing card hung in the window of the store, bearing the image of an airbrushed half-naked Medieval woman with a tangle of blond curls. She wore a leather blindfold and held two swords, one in either hand. Swords it read at the bottom. This turned out to be the name of the store as well. Tarot Readings it read in blue neon in the same window.
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Johnny went inside without hesitation, suggesting to Taddler that he’d been there before.
Taddler’s assignment was surveillance, so he stopped and stood with his shoulder against a building’s warm brick and studied the storefront while pedestrians walked past.
Johnny’s visiting a fortune-teller wasn’t part of the assignment. Contact outside the boathouse was forbidden, everybody knew that. One slip of the tongue might lead authorities to the discovery of the Corinthians, sending its inhabitants back onto the streets as runaways, or into juvenile detention facilities—jail. Johnny was violating Mrs. D.’s no-contact rule, putting everyone at risk.
Taddler waited for a break in traffic and darted across the street. He didn’t climb the stairs immediately, but instead hung around in front of the entrance to The Rocking Horse, a store with a purple door that, judging by the window display, sold children’s books and plush stuffed animals. He climbed the steps to The Rocking Horse’s front door and tried to get a look inside Swords. The angle was wrong. All he could see was the small shop’s far wall. But the wall held a dozen or more mirrors with frames of every kind—gilded, carved, painted, decorated—and in several of these mirrors Taddler could make out Johnny in profile, sitting at a table and talking to a beautiful woman who, he realized after a moment, was the same woman on the card in the window—the only difference being that she was fully clothed.
Taddler spied on his friend in rapt fascination, for it appeared the two were deep in conversation. What if Johnny was asking the fortune-teller to predict how the Armstrad operation would go? That would threaten everything! Presently, Johnny reached into his back pocket and produced a piece of paper that the woman unfolded and studied carefully. From time to time she looked up from the letter to Johnny, and then back to the letter. She nodded, refolded the page, and slipped it away so quickly and cleverly that Taddler couldn’t see what she’d done with it. The ease with which she made the paper disappear sent a shiver up Taddler’s spine—she was a clever one, this beauty, and perhaps she had Johnny under some kind of spell. Maybe Johnny wasn’t to blame at all.
Two things happened then: the purple door to The Rocking Horse swung open, bumping Taddler and pinning him between the open door and a wrought-iron railing as a mother and daughter left the store without so much as seeing him; and, unseen in Taddler’s confusion, Johnny stood up from the tarot table. By the time Taddler next looked into the wall of mirrors, Johnny was gone. A moment later the door to Swords opened and out came Johnny.
Taddler spun around, caught the door to the bookstore as it was closing, and slipped around it, using it as a screen. He ducked inside the store.
“May I help you?” The proprietor was a woman older than time, with a face like a crumpled paper bag. Taddler nearly yelped with surprise.
“Just looking,” he said, edging to the store window in time to catch sight of Johnny. The boy turned to the right, away from the Armstrad Hotel. He seemed to carry a lightness to his step. It was almost as if he were…happy.
Something was definitely up.
None of the boys living at the Corinthians were ever anything close to happy.
Steel thought of it as a two-pronged mission.
“So first we’ll get the camera back from the chapel,” he said. It was just past dinner, the forty minutes of downtime before study hall. He, Kaileigh, and Penny shared a concrete bench in the rarely occupied patio outside the school library.
“If we don’t, I’m toast,” Penny said. He’d explained his situation about five times. Steel didn’t want to hear it again. Penny’s obsession with hacking the school’s computer system and constantly monitoring faculty and administration e-mails, student report cards, and departmental reports had led him to discover that maintenance planned to replace backup batteries in every security camera and smoke detector in the school. There was no question they would discover that one of the cameras was missing: the one that the three had moved into the chapel. Unless it was returned this very evening, an investigation would be launched, and just the thought of that terrified Penny.
“It will be easier to get it back than it was to put it there,” Kaileigh said. “Don’t worry, Penny.”
Her genuine concern for Pennington Cardwell III annoyed Steel, in part because she was treating the two boys so differently: she seemed barely aware of Steel’s existence while doting on Penny.
“Once you have your precious camera back,” Steel said, “we’ll need a leg up. Specifically, I will need a leg up,” he clarified. “The plan is that Kaileigh will already be up in the tree. So don’t go anywhere.”
“You’re doing this with him?” Penny asked Kaileigh in a whining voice.
“He needs a scout,” she said. “I have one of the best pigeon calls you’ve ever heard, if I do say so. I took care of an injured pigeon for most of the summer a few years ago, and we learned to communicate.”
“You talk to birds?” Penny sounded suspicious.
“Only pigeons,” she corrected. “And I didn’t say I can talk to them, I just said I can sound like one.” Kaileigh was proud when it came to her pigeon speak.
You learn something new every day, Steel thought.
“But I thought you two…” Penny said.
“We were what?” she asked.
“You know,” Penny said.
“I know what?”
“That the two of you weren’t exactly…speaking.”
“Us? No. That is so yesterday.”
“Remember: immediately after study hall,” Steel told Penny. “Kai and I will leave our books in cubbies and head straight over to the chapel while we’re still allowed to walk around campus. We’ve got to get the camera out and be up in the ash before curfew.”
“I’ll wait for you at the sundial,” Penny said.
“And why should I do this?” Verne asked, his face buried in a volume of Chaucer.
“Because I’ll help you with that book.”
“You’ve read it already?”
“Yesterday.”
“You finished it yesterday?” Verne said, astonished. “But it was only assigned yesterday.” He was on page ten. “Besides, this jerk doesn’t even write in English!”
“I had some free time. It’s Middle English. That’s part of the point of the assignment.”
“You’ll write my paper for me?”
“No, but I can help you understand what’s going on in the book.”
“Crocodile Done Deal!” Verne said.
“We could both get in trouble,” Steel cautioned.
“I’ll get in a lot more trouble if I fail English,” Verne said. “Besides, White Socks doesn’t do anything but swing open the door on that first check and look at the bunks. It’ll be fine.”
Their dorm master had gotten his nickname years before. Steel didn’t know if it had to do with the baseball team or the fact that the man only seemed to own one color of socks. “He does a roll call.”
“I’ll tell him you’re out cold, that ga-ga practice got to you and you’re zonked. You think he’s going to come in and pull back the covers? You walk on water as far as the faculty goes.”
“Not true.”
“Is too, and you know it. The first Third Former ever to play for the Spartans? Are you kidding me? You know how many teachers are impressed by that?” He laid the book down on his chest. “You know how many kids hate you for that?”
Steel hadn’t considered this, and hoped Verne was wrong. Kids hating him? That had been what he’d come to Wynncliff to get away from. Was it something he would never shake, something he was bound to endure forever? He’d been working hard to hide his memory skills from his fellow students. Speaking up less in class, keeping his quiz scores hidden from prying eyes. He’d been given the chance at a fresh start—his parents must have known how badly he’d wanted that—and now Verne was telling him he’d already failed.
“You okay?” Verne said.
“Yeah.” He considered his options. He needed Ve
rne’s help. “If you wouldn’t mind, maybe you could set up my bed for me right after study hall. You can use both our laundry bags for your body, and Mr. Henry for my head.”
Mr. Henry was a modeling bust that Steel had smuggled out of the art room. The head was incredibly lifelike and wore a wig roughly the same color as Steel’s hair.
“Yeah, okay,” Steel said.
“You just better not get caught coming back into the dorm,” Verne said. “Can’t help you there.”
“I’ve got that covered,” Steel said. In fact he hadn’t explored on this end of campus, but the tunnels were his and Kaileigh’s only chance to go unseen on their way back.
“Second check is at eleven sharp. Don’t screw that up.”
The eleven o’clock bed check often involved White Socks confirming a boy’s presence in his bunk. In truth, the ten o’clock curfew wasn’t that big a deal; it was the final curfew that the dorm masters paid strict attention to.
“I’ll be back by ten thirty.”
“You’d better be.” Verne picked up the book and returned to reading. “Stupid thing might as well be in Latin. I’m counting on your help.”
Steel, Kaileigh, and Penny met at the sundial shortly after study hall, the campus teeming with Third and Fourth Form students eager for a few minutes outside before being confined to their dormitories for the night. They headed into the chapel and, after a few minutes of ensuring that they were alone, hurried upstairs and retrieved the security camera. Why Penny couldn’t have done this on his own, Steel didn’t know, except that Penny was a bookish, pale boy who didn’t seem to have an ounce of nerve or adventure in him.
With the camera in hand, they left the chapel and approached the giant ash tree at the back, which formed a sixty-foot-wide umbrella of foliage that bridged an area between the chapel and Mr. Randolph’s three-story Victorian. The tree was over six feet in diameter and nearly two hundred years old, its silver bark having peeled off in places, giving it a sick, patchwork appearance. The lowest branch was well out of reach. With Penny serving as lookout, Steel gave Kaileigh a boost, lacing his fingers together and providing a step for her. Even this was not enough. He had to lift her foot high in order for her to hook her arms around the wide branch. On the third try she managed to hook a knee over the branch and pull herself up.
The Academy Page 13
