Regardless, seeing Turner and Perpetua together ticks me off. How can he consort with her when he knows she led me off to be killed by Cece? I turn and narrow my eyes. He meets my gaze and smiles, clearly striving to agitate me. He reaches into his vest and pulls out my rosary necklace. It dangles in front of his chest.
He mouths the words, “I win.” This instantly angers me. He must have rigged the defense hologram machine so he could watch the fights—our fight! Just remembering how close I came to winning it back—grrrr! I want to explode at the thought. There’s no end to the ways he’ll torture me.
Restless in my seat, I contemplate jumping over four rows of students to tackle him. That’s when Bishop places his hand on my knee and clears his throat.
Quickly I turn my attention forward, but I allow my mind to pore over all the ways I’m going to beat Turner’s hologram into a messy, electrified pulp. I want that necklace, and I want it now.
•
Three exhausting hours later, the lecture ends. New and senior students are dismissed for their first classes. Headmaster Evanston asks the remaining students to move forward to the seats nearest the stage.
Ms. Midgenet, the Team Tactics instructor, walks up the stairs. When she reaches the top, her short legs shuffle across the floor to a long braided rope hanging from the ceiling. She tugs the cord with all of her weight. Her body dips back, almost hitting the ground. The dark red velvet curtains part, revealing a line of Society soldiers standing at attention behind a long wood table stacked with leather briefcases.
The oath packages.
I squirm in my new seat, feeling uncomfortable. The decision to continue with my secret life as a Wanderer weighs heavily on my conscience. Even though I know I should just accept it, I make a list of the pros and cons in my mind. Bishop and finding my Mom: pros. Everything else: con. The two pros are more than enough to tip the scales, but I can’t fight the uncomfortable feeling I have about deciding my whole life right now. I’m not ready on so many levels.
Headmaster Evanston reads out students’ names, team by team. He calls Macey’s team first. As a group, they rise from their seats and walk ceremoniously to the stage. Each is congratulated for their choice to take the oaths, to become invaluable members of the Society of Wanderers in several weeks. Ms. Midgenet hands them each a briefcase.
Mr. Evanston then calls Perpetua, Stu, and Jessica. Perpetua dances up the stairs and practically pirouettes across the stage. She turns to face the crowd in the spotlight, waving triumphantly. In the blinding light, she still manages to find me in the crowd to taunt me with her victorious gaze. My eyes narrow. She of all people doesn’t deserve that case. I mentally stamp her name on my list of cons. The rest of her team accepts their oath packages and exits as the next group approaches.
The headmaster calls our team last. Sam squeezes past, finding the spot in front. Bishop swings his arm, gesturing for me to walk before him. He’s always so polite.
Ms. Midgenet hands each of us a briefcase. I grab the handle and the leather box swings to my side. It’s heavy, weighty, just like the decision I need to make. I grip the handle tightly. The blood in my fingers rushes away. Mr. Evanston firmly shakes my other hand, extending gratitude for the service I’m going to give to the Society. I nod and smile, then walk across the stage and down the stairs.
Bishop and Sam join the group of huddled juniors. There’s a general mood of excitement buzzing through the air. Every student seems happy for this moment, happy to be spending the rest of his or her life in service to the Society. The Society we know so little about even after all this time.
I mill around the outside of the group, concentrating on my pros. That’s when I notice Turner. He’s still sitting in the back of the auditorium, by himself. No team. No oath package. Not a speck of happiness on his face. He looks at me, and I know he’s reading my mind.
I turn away, instantly wanting to hide my feelings. That’s when Macey seizes me and throws her long arms around my shoulders. She bubbles over with excitement, gushing loudly about how proud her parents will be, both of them Wanderers.
If Ray knew about my new world, he might be happy, I consider. And my mom, I hope she would be proud, too. So I add these two new possibilities to my list of pros. My mom is proud of me because I’m just like her. The fabricated thought makes me smile with contentment.
Students rush to their rooms to open their packages. But I don’t want to know what’s inside. I toss the leather briefcase on my bed and then leave the apartment, heading for lunch, happy to leave it behind.
Lunch has a familiar feeling. Macey, Quinn, Xavier, Bishop, Sam, Scarlett, Agnes, and now Atticus Li sit at our lunch table. And to make sure everything plays out properly, Perpetua finds her seat at the table facing me, perfectly positioned so her cold stares can torment me whenever the spirit moves her. Not much has changed since she last stepped foot in this school.
Stu, sitting next to Perpetua, leans around her and waves with his fingertips. Before I can glance away, he blows me a kiss. I don’t bother responding. He’s as bad as she is, always pushing my buttons.
I focus on the newer person at our table, Atticus Li. He belongs to Scarlett and Agnes as their Protector. Before moving to Chicago, he lived in Vancouver, British Columbia, with his three older sisters. I find it difficult not to stare at his hair. The mohawk, gelled with some kind of cement, makes five perfect points shoot from his scalp. The peaks look as dangerous as knives, and I decide after touching one for myself that they could easily kill someone in a dark alley. Even with his deadly hair, his almond eyes and smile are very warm and friendly. Right now, he and Bishop are discussing the fighting technique, capoeira.
We eat and Macey gabs about her family trip to Australia. Agnes and Atticus talk about a date they went on to a Frank Sinatra concert in 1958, in Monte Carlo. And Sam instructs me on proper table manners by pushing my elbows off the table and suggesting that I cross my legs at my ankles and not my knee.
I avoid all discussions related to the oath package. The words I do hear from others: cell phone, unlimited credit card, Society uniform—these items scare me.
•
After lunch, students crowd the second floor balconies, looking down into the main atrium. I lean against the thick marble railing, letting my gaze drift around the room, taking note of the new faces. I can imagine the confusion they must feel. They’ll be wondering how they took a nosedive into the Wandering Academy. The thought makes me feel sorry for them, but happy that I’m well past the point of struggling to make myself believe every unbelievable thing that’s shoved down my throat.
Society soldiers roam the room with authority. They carry no weapons, even though they were sent to protect us from possible attacks by the Underground. I can’t help wondering what the likelihood of that really is. What could they possibly want with anything here?
One guard points toward the ceiling. That’s when I look up and see Turner. He dangles from a wire at the very top of the atrium. He’s installing some kind of machine. It makes me uneasy seeing him there. It doesn’t look safe, but nothing that involves a person hanging sixty feet in midair seems safe to me.
“Turner, are we ready?” Professor Raunnebaum yells to him from the first floor. Even though the two are separated by five floors, the words echo around the entire atrium. Every student looks up, noticing him too.
“It’s ready!” Turner yells down to the professor, giving him a thumbs-up. That’s when Turner pushes off the wall with his feet, swaying on his wire. He pushes back and forth slowly, gaining height like a child’s swing. When he’s gained enough momentum, he unlatches his safety, releasing himself from the wire and flies through the air onto a nearby balcony. Every single student gasps in unison at his dangerous stunt. He safely appears from behind the wall and several students applaud.
Even though his idiocy alarms me, I’m a little envious of his fearlessness.
A cranking noise fills the atrium. Everyone jolts, looking for t
he source. Black metal sleeves slide over every window. They slam shut and a hundred locks click simultaneously with an ominous sound. Silence races through the room. I never knew that the school could go into complete lockdown and, I suspect, neither did anyone else.
I can’t see anything in the stygian blackness. Bishop grabs my hand and pulls me closer. From the shuffling that transpires, other Protectors are probably doing the same.
“What’s going on?” Sam whispers.
::15::
A Preview
“I’m sure it’s just Gabe’s theatrics, but stay close, just in case,” Bishop says.
Just as a chaotic rumble of nervousness breaks through the crowd, something strange starts to happen. Beautiful little twinkling notes from a pipe organ fill the entire room. The sound is eerie, magical, and beautiful, all at the same time. The music resonates through my body, causing the hair on my arms to rise away from my skin.
From the ceiling, a hazy, undulating, electrified dust solidifies into one hundred ornate parasols. Holographic woman in festive Victorian corsets, short ruffled skirts, and fishnet stockings hang below each of them like a troupe of glowing Mary Poppins. All of them float, descending slowly through the room at various heights, as the organ music continues.
The crowd coos.
When the ladies land, they run to gather in a group. Huddling together with their parasols above them, they form a beautiful solid mass. And that’s when the music quickens. The women spin their parasols as the music crescendos into a climax. Snapping their umbrellas shut, they dramatically fall away to the ground, revealing Gabe standing at the center.
“Come one, come all, to Gabe’s extraordinary vaudeville circus!” he announces theatrically. The crowd roars. Now in his element, Gabe smiles brightly. Somehow the smell of popcorn and warm salty peanuts wafts through the space, making my mouth water.
“And no circus would be complete without a ringleader!” he yells and bows, taking off his sparkling miniature top hat. With a flick of his wrist, he tosses it, sending it spiraling into the crowd. Students roar louder.
To a dance song remixed with organ circus music, Gabe sashays in a circle. He slides his white-gloved hands over his fanciful corset with long tails extending down the back of his legs and onto the floor. His palms slide onto his tuxedo pants and up to a lacy white collar. It stands on end like a fan behind his neck, looking like an Elizabethan ruff.
“We’ve got a sneaky-peeky of the fall gala dance that will blow your little pumpkin-headed minds!” Confetti shoots from his hands. Sparkles flutter through the air.
A holographic elephant walks into the arcade, seemingly out of a solid wall. The elephant, decorated in cascades of red velvet and fancy gold trim, bows to one knee, extending its trunk. Gabe steps up and perches himself on the elephant’s head. The massive animal turns slowly, allowing Gabe to blow kisses to the crowd.
“What would a circus be without these?” Gabe points across the room. A spotlight pops on. Acrobats rush out of the brilliant light, down the steps, and flip themselves over the backside of the elephant. They twirl through the air, twisting their bodies like tornados.
“And what about these?” Gabe yells with excitement and points dramatically in a new direction. A spotlight pops on revealing jugglers. The men, dressed like mimes, toss flaming clubs toward the ceiling. Fireballs float through the air for an impossible length of time before they race back down to their owners. Even though I know they’re holograms, I lean away from the railing every time one streams past, because I’m certain I feel the heat of the flames on my face.
Monster-sized holographic lions roar and saunter down the main stairs, weaving in and around students toward our group. Their paws are so large, they barely fit in the width of a single step. Sam edges behind me, ducking.
A holographic vaudeville circus has broken out before our eyes. Except for a hazing electrical zap here and there, every holographic performer, animal, and fanciful costume appears as real as the people standing next to me. Professor Raunnebaum is an inventive genius and Gabe is a theatrical one.
When the sideshow acts multiply into an absolute frenzy, the holograms snap off. After a dramatic moment, a single spotlight pops on. Gabe stands alone, center stage, in a new outfit. Red and orange sequined flames wrap around the legs of his white jumpsuit. A scarlet cape blows behind him, making him look like a glamorous Elvis impersonator.
Gabe stands, statue still, chin lifted dramatically, hands clenched at hips and legs slightly spread, solid with authority. He rises from the floor as though he’s standing on a platform. But as he drifts higher into the air, he seems to be standing on top of a holographic smoke stack. When the stack’s height reaches the fourth floor, Gabe hops up in the air, snapping his legs and arms close to his body. He falls straight down the smokestack pipe, disappearing. The pipe crashes, falling to one side, revealing its true purpose. With a blast of smoke and a loud kaboom that makes everyone cover their ears, Gabe shoots out of the cannon, arcing through the air and over our heads. A cloud of iridescent smoke follows him.
“Prepare to be amazed!” he yells, right before he dissipates into a ring of shimmering wander dust. Confetti pours from the ceiling, raining down. The lights snap off again, leaving us in complete darkness.
Everyone cheers and whistles, delighted by the extravaganza, one that ended with a literal bang. I wonder how Gabe will top the experience at the actual gala. But it’s stupid for me to think that he won’t.
The holograms and their realism shock everyone. Even I’m excited by the thought of what they can do, how they interact seamlessly with the real world. Like those I use in my defense training, these are called touchable holograms. Scientifically, they are light years beyond what the Normals now know as holograms. This is the machine that Turner was installing on the ceiling—the projectors that make the solid 3-D images come to life.
When the metal shades retract from the windows, revealing the outside sunlight, students migrate downstairs into Olde Town, toward their next class. My next class is the Physics of Wandering with Professor Raunnebaum.
Sam, Bishop, and I walk across the bridge, through the Lion’s Gate. We step into the far tunnel, weaving underneath the West Academy and past the Relic Archives entrance. Several hundred paces in, the lanterns for the Archive Library entrance flicker to life. We push through the tall doors and into the room. Several students follow.
The library, wrapped in mahogany bookshelves lined with antiquated books, rises several stories high. Every time I enter this room, a musty vanilla aroma tickles my nose. A catwalk winds around the second and third floors. A brass chandelier hangs, centered, from the ceiling. The room’s architecture is familiar, duplicated over and over again in connecting chambers. How many times, I can’t be sure.
Professor Raunnebaum stands at the front of the main room, tinkering with a contraption sitting on his desk. He peers up from over his glasses when we walk in.
“Come in! Come in! Take a seat, and I’ll be with you in one moment.” He gestures toward the long desks before him.
Bishop, Sam, and I sit in the second row. I slide into the aisle seat and lean back in my chair.
I’m busy absorbing the room when a finger slowly slides across the width of my desktop. My eyes follow the arm attached. Perpetua flashes a fake smile and tosses her body into the seat right in front of mine. She crosses her bare legs at the knee. Her skirt, rolled at the waist, makes the length ten inches shorter than mine. I guess the more leg she shows, the more attention she commands from the boys. She swings her arm over the back of the chair and turns.
“Did you find my crystal yet, witch?” she asks.
“Really? Still crying about your mysterious rock?” I laugh a little, knowing it will annoy her.
“Perpetua, I told you, she doesn’t know anything about it,” Bishop offers. But when I look at him, it seems as though he knows more about this than me.
“Maybe she doesn’t have it—yet,” she says to
Bishop, then turns to give me a cold stare. “But when you do take it,” she leans onto my desk, moving right up to my face, “know that there will be hell to pay.”
“Okay, class!” Professor Raunnebaum claps his hands twice. “Let’s get started, shall we?”
Perpetua turns around and smiles at the teacher, folding her hands on her desk. Her ponytail bobs gently behind her. In my mind, I imagine leaning over and ripping it off her head.
I take out a pen and paper, not for taking notes, but for passing notes. On the small pad, I scribble, “What do you know about her crystal?” I tilt the note toward Bishop.
He only shrugs, whispering, “Nothing.”
I study his face. I want to believe him, but I can’t, only because he seems so unconcerned about it. Sure, he rescued me from her beat-down in the hall the other day, but why isn’t he concerned beyond that? Especially when she’s still pushing the idea that I somehow have this stupid rock of hers—something I haven’t taken yet. Resolving the issue quickly is something he would have done in the past.
I analyze the situation until Professor Raunnebaum starts the lecture.
“This is going to be a very exciting class, indeed,” the professor says as he paces, staring intently at the floor. “We’ll be discussing general relativity, the speed of light, wormholes, paradoxes, entanglement, and many other scientific theories. All things you may have heard about, but we’ll be analyzing them from a new point of view. One that you may not be familiar with, a Wanderer’s point of view!” His arms jerk, swinging in choppy movements.
He turns to face the class and quickly glances around before he races through his words again. “Galileo Galilei, Sir Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein—geniuses, yes! But they lacked knowledge of one thing—one thing that would change their entire perspective of time travel. And what is that?” He stops, snapping his legs closed, staring at no one in particular.
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