“Hart,” I say. “Ian Ontario.”
Something just tells me to do it last name, first name like that. The clerk gives me a bored smile, and I sign this really long document right on the dotted line.
“Yersinia Pestis.” I hear a girl behind me announce herself. It’s almost like she’s challenging the clerk to disagree with her.
“Pestis, Pestis—don’t see that last name here,” says the clerk.
“That’s because it’s the scientific name for bubonic plague,” says someone else. I look and see it’s a teacher with a shaved head and leather jacket, a lopsided smile on his face. “What’s your real name, young lady?”
“Alva,” she says begrudgingly.
“Last name?” he presses.
The girl puffs up with pride. She covers her mouth and whispers, so no one but the teacher can hear—but by the way he reacts, it’s pretty clear the girl has a reason for giving a fake name. Probably because her real one is the sort of thing that would make life much harder in bully school.
“Well, you can’t be Yersinia,” the teacher says after a minute. He turns to the clerk. “Write down Alva Anonymous, Matty.”
The girl considers this, and gives an approving nod.
Past the table I start toward the innocent-looking building that is to be my new home for the next six weeks. But I’ve hardly taken ten steps when I a big hand lifts my bag off my shoulder—
“Students over there, kid,” says that teacher with the shaved head. On a scale from one to Evil Mastermind, he’s somewhere around Henchman from the look of him. The sort of guy who does the villain’s dirty work. And he’s staring at me like I’m a human pile of underwear.
“The bus,” says the henchman, heaving my bag onto a heap of luggage. “You know what a bus is?”
I’m just standing and staring like a moron. My whole “one thing at a time” strategy is crumbling around me.
A smile creeps across my face and I nod. “The bus?” I say, pointing at it like a baby does.
Crap. What am I doing right now? This is all a horrible mistake. I need to turn around.
“Okay, Ian!” says Dad. “We’ve gotta say bye now.”
I make a sound that fails to turn into words. It’s the groan of a dinosaur being crushed into oil over millions and millions of years.
“You gonna be all right, buddy?” says Mom.
I manage to smile so she doesn’t worry. “Sure. I’m good.”
“Okay, Ian.” Mom tells me everything she said in the car all over again, and as much as I try to hold on to her words, they go right through me. Everything except the last thing: “… and don’t let Devon boss you around, all right?”
I nod at her, but I know that’s a promise I’m gonna break.
They’re both looking at me with such big, nervous smiles that I’m tearing up before I know it.
This is not the way to survive bully school, Hart! says that voice in the back of my head.
And I turn to the bus, which looks new and shiny—the biggest lie in the universe. There might be a coat of paint on that machine, but underneath it’s rotted through. The rusted engine that pulls it is full of screaming, tortured gears. And I have no idea where it’s heading, or what I’m supposed to do once I’m there.
So I just climb on and press Restart, and the next level of this crazy game comes to life all around me.
When I step on the bus, a lightbulb appears in my head. A soft glow leaks from my ears, and it’s probably a lot like how it feels to have a crazy idea for an invention that will change the world—but in this case, the world is not changing for the better. This lightbulb in my head is a warning: Something is very wrong with this scene.
What’s wrong, you ask? Good question, imaginary Thomas Edison! I like when you don’t completely ignore me.
The answer is: It’s too calm. Way too calm—and if you hadn’t dropped out of school you’d know exactly how dangerous it is when all the other kids get quiet. There are things you learn in class that aren’t math and US history, you know. Wisdom passed down from those who came before us … those ancients who grow hair in weird places and get super moody for no apparent reason.
One of the most important new-kid rules? If there are bullies around—and there are almost always bullies around—the first thing to do is identify their Target. Because if you can’t figure out who the Target is, you can be pretty sure they’re looking for one.
And I promise, Tom: You do not want it to be you.
That’s why I really have to find a seat on this bus right now. But I’d like to keep talking to you, inside my head, if that’s okay? I hope it’s okay. It sorta helps me not get so nervous, having someone to distract me while I’m going down the aisle here.
As I put one foot in front of the other, I see a girl scoop up a little puff of orange fuzz and stuff it into the pocket of her sweatshirt—it’s a tiny guinea pig, and I smile in the girl’s direction. But she doesn’t look back. Just when I’m about to ask to sit by her anyway, this other, cooler girl plops down into the seat. Crap.
I continue down the aisle under the watchful gaze of a bunch of scary-looking kids. Any second they could fix on me as their Target, but I make it past and find a couple empty rows in the middle of the bus.
I’m right across the aisle from a boy in bifocals now. Score. With his old-man glasses, this kid’s sure to become the Target. But after I get a closer look at him, I realize I’m completely wrong.
This is no victim. This is a boy who has hardened under the taunting. Who has learned that the best defense is to strike first. His eyes are dead now. Fiery, cruel mirrors. Cross him at your own risk. I don’t want to sit anywhere near this kid—but it’s too late to change course: He’s already watching me.
So I slide into the window seat across from Deadeyes.
And outside I see my parents’ car. Mom and Dad are standing next to it, like they’re gonna wait here until this bus leaves their sight.
Last chance to make a run for it, Hart, the Freak tells me.
I feel a hollow thing in my chest as I think about all the stuff I’m gonna miss out on this summer: My dog. My room. The way things were a week ago, when I was so excited to be finished with elementary school. When my friends and I were dizzy with summer dreams, and the possibilities went on forever—
Before the peanut butter and jelly jam.
How could I have been so gullible, Tom? Did I know on some level the real reason Devon wanted to trade lunches with me? Was I so much of a pushover that I would look the other way and let something terrible happen to Max?
Did I want so badly to belong?
Well, now I do belong. Right here with the rest of these jerks.
Listen, Tom: Forget about that stuff I was saying before, all right? You should just go away while you can.
If I want to survive this, I need to stop having imaginary ghost friends and conversations with myself all the time. I need to keep my head down and be normal. Fade into the background, like a chameleon.
And in the likely event that I don’t survive? If that happens, we can totally be ghost friends and haunt cool stuff together. I promise I’ll tell you the whole story of how I died in reform school. And it’ll be funny. We can haunt my killer!
“Ian Hart!” A familiar voice startles me from my thoughts and I look up at Devon’s smiling face bobbing toward me. “Long time no see.”
He gives me a high five and thuds down into the seat next to me. “Whatcha been up to?”
My mind races for something to tell him.
“Stuff. Video games.” I don’t tell him anything specific about the levels I can’t seem to beat—and luckily, Mark and Ash are right behind him to distract us from these questions. Everyone plops down around me.
“Hey, Ian!” says Ash as he cranes over the seat in front of me, looking really excited. Excited to see me, I realize, with a little burst of happiness. “Have you been saving the good riddles?”
“Ohh … I completely for
got to bring them.”
“Seriously?” he moans. He makes this exaggerated show of throwing up his hands. “Well at least I brought you something to read.”
He opens his hoodie and pulls out a slim book.
“Oooh,” I say. “What is it?”
“This,” says Ash, “is a book called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. You need to know about it. It tells you how to survive if the planet blows up, and it’s also funny.”
“Where’d you get this? In that spooky used bookstore we found?”
“Nope! It’s my dad’s!” says Ash. “He says it’s way too advanced for me, but I think he may have been trying to reverse-psychology me.”
“And it worked, didn’t it?” I say with a raised eyebrow.
“Who cares? It’s probably the best thing ever!” says Ash. “Wait until you read it.”
With an enormous grin, I try to take it from him, but Ash pulls it back and gives me a warning. “It’s my dad’s favorite book, but he told me I could keep it with me this summer as long as I took special care of it. Guard it with your life.”
“Promise,” I say.
“No bending the spine like you always do.”
I glare at him. “You have any other rules?”
“Only one. You gotta finish it fast. I need to talk about it with someone.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ve already been waiting all week, ’cause you weren’t around. Where’d you disappear to?”
One of the best things about Ash Franklin is that Ash Franklin talks to me like the voices in my head don’t. He’s clear and straightforward and he never loses focus, and I would not be shocked at all to learn that Ash is some sort of superhero in disguise, and that I’m his sidekick, and the whole audience feels bad for me because of how sad it is that I hang around with a superhero all the time and I never even know it.
Just then the back of the bus erupts in oohs. That girl who gave a fake name at the registration table glares daggers at this human beanstalk with a straggly mustache under his nose. I can tell she’s about to punch him—but then she thinks again.
She mutters something that makes him blink in confusion.
I watch like I’m hypnotized as the girl covers her head with her hoodie and stomps up the aisle toward the front of the bus. And the boy looks after her, like he kinda wants her to come back—but when she doesn’t turn around, he just sinks into his seat again in silence.
“What’re you staring at, kid?” the girl barks at me.
“I’m not staring …”
I want to turn away but it’s like those eyes of hers are magnets. Or lasers, burning a hole straight through me. There’s definitely something weird going on. Maybe this girl was recruited to be an international spy in the third grade, and had secret lasers implanted in her retinas or something?
Then I realize what’s off: This girl is a lot older than me.
I turn to Ash. “Is that girl—?”
“Like fourteen?” says Ash.
“Yeah.”
“It’s not just her, either,” he whispers. “Everyone on this bus is older than we are …”
He gestures around in a secretive way. And I follow with my eyes, trying to be sneaky about it. He’s right: We’re the youngest kids on the bus.
“Actually,” says Mark quietly, “we’re the youngest kids in the whole school.”
We both turn to Mark slowly.
“You guys didn’t know?” he adds. “There aren’t any elementary school kids allowed in this place.”
“You mean except for us?” I say.
“We’re not in elementary school anymore, Ian,” says Ash.
“Nope,” says Mark. “We’re middle schoolers now.”
“Welcome to orientation, swimming salmon!” A booming voice comes over the bus’s overhead speakers.
I blink. “Did he just call us—?”
“Yes! Swimming salmon is what we call our students here,” the voice says. “You’ll see why soon enough. For now, let me say how glad I am to see you were all able to join us this morning.”
Ash turns to face me. “Probably because if we didn’t show up he’d’ve sent the FBI to hunt us down.”
“My name is Judge Cressett”—the voice goes on—“and I am the head of this academy. But you may call me ‘Your Honor’ if you prefer.”
Ash and I swap grins at this.
“If you have any concerns, you can rest assured that I, your teachers, and KinderCorp all take them very seriously. It’s sink or swim here at JANUS, and we all want you to swim. It’s in a fish’s nature to swim, after all … for a salmon to follow its instincts, and swim upstream—”
“And get eaten by a bear?” I whisper to Ash.
“—returning home with a new appreciation for—”
“The digestive tract of the common brown bear,” Ash whispers back.
The disembodied voice makes a throat-clearing sound. “Boys, is there a problem?”
Ash and I stop and look around for the Judge, but we can’t see him anywhere.
“Can he see us?” I ask Mark.
“And hear you!” the Judge’s voice declares. “Now. I’m trying to give you some important information about our academy. You don’t want to start off on the wrong foot in this discipline—do you?”
“No, Your Honor,” says Mark.
“Good,” says the Judge. “Then shut up and listen. This is all very important. The Juvenile Academy for Noncompliant and Underachieving Students, which we call JANUS, is named for a god from Roman antiquity with one face on the front of his head and another face on the back of it.”
And I immediately blackout from boredom, but even in my unconscious state, the voice somehow drills into my skull:
“Janus was known as the master of beginnings and endings; he looked to the future and kept an eye on the past—and here at JANUS these things are rather important to us as well.”
It’s like he’s speaking another language, Tom. Or … have I forgotten how to speak English? Do the teachers at bully school have special powers to make us forget stuff? Control our minds?
The torture goes on:
“—your goals in perspective, you will be successful at this academy, but if you do not succeed in this discipline,” he says, “you will not go back home at the end of the summer. Your next stop will be the KinderCorp’s Children’s Village.”
I hear Ash make a weird noise.
“What’s wrong?” I mumble, looking over the seat in front of me.
“The Village,” he says. “It gives me the creeps.”
“Yeah,” I say. Then, after a second, “Wait, why?”
“The Children’s Village?” he whispers. “Are you messing around?”
“No messing around,” I say. “What is it?”
Ash frowns and pulls on his sleeves like he does when he’s really uncomfortable. “You don’t know about the Village?”
“You really don’t know?” Mark says, craning back around to me. “Did you read the letter you just signed at registration?”
“The letter?”
“Your confession, Ian,” says Mark.
“My what?”
“Boys!” says the Judge over the loudspeaker. “I am still talking. Do I need to tell you again what will happen if you fail in this discipline?”
“No, sir,” says Mark. “If we fail, then you will take the confession that we just signed, and you’ll use it to send us away to juvenile detention.” Mark looks right at me and Ash when he says this. “The Children’s Village,” he whispers, at the same time I figure it out myself.
And I feel the moment stretch out, more and more. And the space between my next two heartbeats lasts seventy-five years. I get older and older, and my hair and my fingernails get longer and longer, and eventually I’m on my deathbed surrounded by friends and family and robots. Mostly robots. And then I’m reborn and I repeat all the exact same mistakes, only this time everybody makes their own food out of sunlight like pla
nts do. It’s kinda cool, actually, except for the whole thing where I end up right back where I started again: in reform school, on this bus, facing the fact that I’ve confessed to a bully crime and didn’t even know it.
“Look, it’s one of those things that sounds way worse than it is,” says Ash as the bus jolts to the left.
“Totally,” Mark agrees. “As long as we don’t fail here it’ll all get wiped away …”
“It will?” I ask.
“Yep, that’s the deal,” says Mark.
“But if we do fail,” says Devon with a terrible smile, “we get sent to you-know-where.”
KinderCorp. A state-of-the-art behavioral modification facility and artisanal punishment institute. With a built-in coal mine, and eleven levels of parking.
As I come to understand just how big my problems are, I suddenly feel like the bus is crumpling around me like a tin can. I need to get off this thing and go somewhere I can be alone for five minutes. Somewhere I don’t have to smile and pretend I’m not scared. I need a bathroom break, Tom.
And so it’s an enormous relief when the bus groans to a halt. I push off in front of everyone else—but when I get outside, I freeze in place …
We’re in the middle of the woods.
“What’re we doing in the middle of the woods?” I ask.
As if in response, the door slams shut and the bus roars as it starts to move back down the road.
“We’re being stranded,” says the boy with the horrible dead eyes.
“Why are we being stranded in the middle of the woods?” I ask him.
“They’re testing us, I think,” says Mark. “See what we do when we crack.”
“Some of us are already pre-cracked,” says Deadeyes, looking right at me.
Devon rolls his eyes and grabs the collar of my shirt. “Sink or swim, Ian.”
Mark and Devon and Ash and I stick together as we follow the rest of the bullies into the wilderness. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a baby monkey following that beanstalk kid from the bus. It might have been my imagination, but it doesn’t really matter, because as soon as I start thinking about hearing a distant sproinngg! of a dodgeball, I burst out laughing. That’s the Freak coming through, Tom. It plays tricks when things get intense. Makes me laugh, even when nothing about the situation is funny. Keep it together, I tell myself. I could really use a couple minutes alone in a bathroom.
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