by Chad Morris
“Looks like this is where we split up,” Derick said. “Have a good time. You’ll show them.”
“I’ll try,” Abby said, and turned left.
She checked her orientation device. Her unopened mail messages showed in the corner. A new one appeared from Jacqueline. The subject line read, “Sorry.” Abby let out a huge breath. What a relief. Jacqueline had been under a lot of stress. It was probably her first time living away from home as well. Abby could give her the benefit of the doubt.
She clicked the message open. The file had the face of a dark-skinned girl with large pretty eyes. Her name, the file labeled, was Kyra. The message held some sort of information sheet. The girl spoke three languages and had become a successful computer programmer. During sixth grade, she did freelance CGI work for a major firm.
The next sheet showed a boy who had already sung in the Metropolitan Opera House seven times before he turned twelve.
Next was a girl who won the national debate tournament.
Abby flipped through several more sheets. She read about kids who made inventions, played stringed instruments, and crossbred birds into a new subspecies. After the last of twelve information sheets, she read a single line.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry you’re here instead of these people who were turned down. Go home, Miss Ordinary.
7
Ms. Entrese
Oscar Cragbridge winced and opened his eyes. He coughed as he breathed in dusty air. Wherever he was, it smelled of drywall mud. He looked around the best he could with a stiff neck. He was lying in a simple twin-size bed, but it was somewhere much larger than a bedroom. Off to the side, he saw a wooden chair, painted black. He looked up to see a series of mounted lights. They were rather like simple stage lights. Where was he? The last thing he could remember ...
It all came flooding back. They had come for him.
Oscar heard footsteps.
“Good morning, sir,” a voice said. “You’ve slept in, which is quite understandable, under the circumstances.”
Oscar rubbed his eyes and slowly sat up. He looked at a man with thick eyebrows and a flat nose. He wore a black suit. “I’m sorry. You’re probably very uncomfortable,” the man said. “But we had to travel during the night, and we couldn’t have you making noise and drawing attention to us, so we tranquilized you again. You probably don’t recall that I explained this all to you hours ago.”
The man did look familiar. Not like Oscar had seen him often. They were definitely not friends.
“Feel free to walk around. My team and I will keep you safe. This is going to be your quarters until you tell us what we want to know. Of course, you may remember that you have fewer than three days to do so.”
“Where am I?” Oscar asked.
The man smiled. “I think once you let yourself fully wake up, you’ll recognize the place, despite the remodeling. I was told that it would be a fitting location for you, should you decide not to tell us anything.”
Oscar looked around and suddenly remembered.
• • •
Abby walked down the hall, trying not to think about Jacqueline—trying not to think about others who were more qualified than she was to be at Cragbridge Hall.
After several classrooms, the corridor opened into a large common area. Tables filled one end of the large room, and the other had large steps with a statue in the middle. A replica of Grandpa Cragbridge, chiseled out of stone, looked over her. He wore stone glasses and a suit—complete with his Cragbridge Hall blazer. He somehow managed to look both dignified and casual at the same time. Seeing his face calmed her nerves.
Abby remembered her grandpa’s words. He believed she could succeed. She took a deep breath and moved on down the hall, glancing at her guidance system. She turned left and then right, and walked into her next classroom. As with most classes, desks stood in rows. The floor gradually sloped downward, so that those in the back could see the front easily. Several digital posters lined the walls. Abby recognized a few pictures of great works of literature—a woman with a scarlet letter on her dress and a sweeping view of a massive whale coming out of the ocean.
Abby found an empty seat and sat down.
Immediately after the tardy tone hummed, the teacher stood from behind her desk and began speaking. “Hello. I’m Ms. Entrese,” she said. She wore a black dress with a blacker belt, black nylons, and black shoes. “I am here to be your guide through the great world of irony, symbolism, types, foreshadowing, metaphors, conflict, mystery, and resolution.” She annunciated every word carefully, and her voice fluctuated dramatically as she spoke. Ms. Entrese probably had some experience onstage.
Abby glanced around the room. Jacqueline sat on the other side, four rows to her left. Abby’s stomach rolled as Jacqueline glared back. Abby quickly looked away, back to the teacher.
“Today, I would like to introduce you to one of the great inventions we have here at Cragbridge.” She pointed to one of the boys in the front row. He seemed startled. “Your brain,” Ms. Entrese said. She pointed to several other students’ heads. “I say ‘introduce you’ to this invention, because in this class, you will be asked to use your brains in a manner different than you ever have before.”
Ms. Entrese pointed to a simple chair with a tall back. It was made of cedar wood and lined in places with a dark metal. “This chair,” she said, “is another of Oscar Cragbridge’s inventions. The Chair will unlock what really goes on inside your mind.” She pointed to a blonde girl. “For example, Carol, please step forward.”
Carol responded quickly. “Um ... how did you know my name? Not that a teacher shouldn’t know my name, but I was just a little surprised. It is our first class with you.” She spoke rapidly, without stopping to breathe between sentences.
“I simply studied your picture in the registry,” Ms. Entrese said. “I’ve studied all of your pictures and all of your names.” She rattled off several names of students in class. “I used my mind.” Ms. Entrese patted the Chair. “Now, have a seat.”
Carol walked to the front of the class. “What do I do? Is the Chair going to tell me my future or electrocute me or something? I guess it wouldn’t kill me, because then you’d be in huge trouble, because—”
“Just sit,” Ms. Entrese interrupted. “And think.”
“About what?” Carol asked. “Because if I’m thinking about trying to think, I don’t think it will work very well. Wow, I said the word think a lot there. Sorry for the repetition.” Carol’s hands moved in quick gestures as she spoke. She sat down before continuing. “Or should I think about something completely random, like a buffalo in a tutu?” Suddenly on the screen behind Carol, an image appeared of a buffalo curtseying in a pink tutu. The class gasped and clamored with excitement.
Carol whirled around to see her imagination in action. “What? You can see my thoughts? That’s awesome!” She paused for a moment, and the buffalo grew a clown nose and huge shoes. Then it sprouted a purple afro and began an amazingly agile disco dance. The class laughed and cheered.
“That’s enough, that’s enough,” Ms. Entrese said, blowing a stray hair out of her eyes.
Carol began prattling on again. “So if I think about the trip I took with my parents to Cancun, or the time when Ben Tristen kissed me in the third grade, which, I might add, wasn’t as bad as I anticipated—I thought it would be all slobbery and stuff ...” The corresponding images appeared on the screen. “Or my first night here.” Carol appeared, unpacking her things. Then another image of her talking with a roommate. Abby just hoped Carol hadn’t been one of the girls who witnessed Jacqueline kicking her out of her room last night. She didn’t want that on the screen for the whole class to see.
“Yes,” Ms. Entrese said. “Exactly. The Chair could be used for many purposes—”
“You could interview criminals with this thing,” Carol interrupted. A new image appeared: a man with a blond beard and scraggly hair seated in front of a police officer. “Or even better, you could interview
cute boys.” Now the screen showed several boys, including one who sat in the back corner of the room. The class erupted.
“Calm down, calm down,” Ms. Entrese said. “The situations you described may or may not be useful. The person in the Chair still controls their mind, and if they are bright enough, there would be no way of knowing whether they are showing the truth or something imagined.” She sighed for a moment, looking tired of explaining. “The Chair is useful here at the academy to show literature.” She handed Carol a book. “Read the marked passages.”
Carol looked down, cleared her throat, and began to read:
“‘Second to the right, and straight on till morning.’”
Abby recognized the words almost instantly, and apparently, so did Carol. A boy, wearing a mix of animal skins and leaves, with curly auburn hair, stood on the screen. Abby smiled as she realized that the boy had the same face as the boy in the back of corner of the room that Carol thought was cute.
“Wait for a moment,” Ms. Entrese said. “Notice how this image isn’t nearly as clear as those we saw when Carol pictured a memory. See how part of it is completely out of focus? As Carol practices more, she will learn to fill in the image with more detail.” She nodded at Carol to continue reading.
In the next passages Peter, Michael, John, and Wendy whooshed across Carol’s version of London. They flew between chimneys and circled church spires. They were all dressed in their night robes. Abby was surprised when, at a certain point, John shifted his momentum, and his long nightshirt blew up and exposed his underwear. She hadn’t considered how hard it might be to fly in a nightshirt.
Carol read how the group of children in their pajamas continued to fly and fly. It took days to get to Neverland. They had to snatch food from birds, and they tried not to fall asleep—sleeping could kill them. As soon as they were unconscious, they dropped like stones. Abby had no idea it had been so dangerous to go to Neverland. She had seen a few movies, but they always left that part out. Perhaps she needed to read the book.
“Not bad, Carol,” Ms. Entrese said. “The book was obviouslyPeter Pan. Who wrote it?”
Several in the class answered, “James Barrie.”
“Yes,” Ms. Entrese said. “I gave you a rather easy one to start. James Barrie, a Scottish novelist and playwright, wrote Peter Pan. Actually, it originally was a play that was adapted into a novel in 1911. It was first titledPeter and Wendy.”
Ms. Entrese stood behind a podium near her desk. “The power of literature is its ability to create pictures with words, but those pictures only form in the mind of the reader. The Chair helps us practice our ability to understand literature and grasp the author’s meaning, or at least to solidify our own interpretations.”
“Abby, your turn,” Ms. Entrese said, pointing to the Chair.
Why her? Somehow, Abby had known it was coming. She slowly got up and walked to the front of the room. Her heart pounded, and her nerves tingled all over. Was she going to be able to do this? She didn’t have the same type of genius mind as the others. Ms. Entrese handed Abby a book, opened to a page with marked quotations.
Ms. Entrese spoke to the class. “Robert Louis Stevenson wrote the rough draft forThe Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde while sick in bed; he finished it in fewer than three days. He revised the manuscript for several weeks, and it was published in the late 1800s.”
“Now before you begin to read this one, Abby, I should prepare you. It’s a little more complex than a few kids flying through the sky. We will launch right into the text, so you’ll need a few points of reference. The character we’ll read about is a good and respectable scientist. You may want to begin by imagining someone you think is good and respectable, someone you admire and look up to.”
Almost instantly, Grandpa Cragbridge appeared on the screen behind Abby.
“Oh,” Ms. Entrese said. Abby saw her teacher’s face flash with surprise and then ... was it contempt? “He is definitely a scientist, just like our good doctor in the story. There are some who would disagree about his ethics and reputation, but this classroom would hardly be the place for that.”
Abby didn’t know what to think. Everyone she had ever met loved her grandfather and had nothing but compliments and praise for him. Ms. Entrese didn’t seem to be in that camp.
“Now,” the teacher continued, “you will not want to make him look like Oscar Cragbridge, so maybe change your doctor’s appearance.”
As Ms. Entrese spoke, Abby reformed her image. A younger doctor began to take shape. He looked taller and stronger than Grandpa.
“Very good,” Ms. Entrese said. “Now you may begin.”
As Abby read aloud, her doctor mixed a vial of liquid. It boiled and smoked for a moment before he grabbed it and swished it around. He waited until the smoke dissipated, exhaled, then downed the liquid in one long gulp. As she read on, the scientist hunched over, a grimace on his face. He clenched his teeth and tried not to scream.
“Very good,” Ms. Entrese said. “Now you’ll be reading about how the formula changed the doctor’s looks. So class, be patient with her.”
Abby read how the doctor felt evil, ten times more than before. She discovered as she read that he had actually become evil—that was what the experiment did. A good, respectable man transformed into the evil that had been hidden somewhere inside him. As he changed, he shrank and became demented. He also looked younger, his evil side being much less developed than his good. Abby imagined the man hunched over, his teeth yellow, and his hair long and wiry. Dirty stubble sprouted from his chin. Abby didn’t enjoy imagining the evil side of someone.
The class watched as Abby continued to read, imagining the hideous, evil form lurching over to a cabinet, drinking one more vial, and buckling to the floor. His legs flailed in every direction, his arms gripping his stomach. At last, his jerky movements slowed, and once more, he was the doctor she had pictured at the beginning—though much paler, and sweat streamed down his brow.
“Decent,” Ms. Entrese said. “This book is an allegory for the evil that lurks in even the very best of us. We all must fight to keep it contained. If we let our guard down ...” Ms. Entrese spoke slower. “If we ever let our guard down, it may catch us unawares.” She began looking above her students, avoiding their eyes. “And as you will see later in the book, it becomes harder and harder to leave that darker side alone. The evil will grow stronger.” As she finished her statement, her eyes glossed over for a moment. She blinked several times, then simply said, “It is a fine book.”
She turned to Abby. “As you continue reading, though, there is more to Mr. Hyde—that’s the name given to his evil side. He is a secret. The doctor wants to hide him, to control him. You may want to think of something in your life you would like to keep secret.”
Almost instantly a picture of a letter appeared. Abby panicked. Before anyone could read that it was a rejection letter from Cragbridge, she tried to think of something else—anything else. The locket her Grandpa had given her flashed on the screen. Not that. She shouldn’t show that, either. Abby cleared her mind, but out of the corner of her eye saw Ms. Entrese watching the screen intently.
“Sorry, Abby,” the teacher said. “I didn’t mean for you to picture them. That is a small hazard of the Chair. If it helps, I don’t think anyone in the room could tell what those things were. Use whatever it was you thought about to help you as you conjure up Mr. Hyde again.”
Abby returned to the book, but she couldn’t help but think of Ms. Entrese watching the screen and noticing the locket. It appeared on the screen.
“Are you distracted?” Ms. Entrese said. “I told you, none of us could recognize what you thought of.”
Abby tried to clear her mind, but she was afraid something had gone wrong. She remembered Grandpa telling her not to show the locket to any of the teach ...
Abby stood up to cut off the Chair.
8
Squirrel Monkeys
Derick walked down the hall in the sc
ience building, his backpack over one shoulder. Brick walls gave way to large windowpanes, showing a room the size of a basketball court. As Derick looked through the glass, he saw something that could have been out of an African safari. The ground was sand and dirt. Several trees stood tall, with leaves that formed a tremendous umbrella for shade. A glass roof allowed the sunlight to shine on the entire room. His heart beat faster as he searched the room for movement.
There it was! A rhino shook its head to shoo a fly away. It lay like a large boulder near the pond. Another rhino rested against the trunk of a tree. Another one lazily moved toward an alcove in the corner of their large living space. A zoo inside of the school! And if the zoo was real, then ...
Derick quickened his pace down the hall. The next room looked like a jungle. Tree after tree filled the area, and trails and brush covered the ground. At least eight gorillas moved around the room, resting along the floor or climbing the trees. One sat with his large black back against the glass. They looked powerful, yet agile. Derick thought they would have to be some of the most intimidating creatures in existence. He rapped his knuckles against the glass. The creatures completely ignored him.
The next room held lions sleeping next to a pond. A giraffe habitat was in the following room, where they ate leaves from tall trees. Finally, Derick found a room with a series of three trees swarming with small monkeys. Their bellies were gray, but a bright, tannish yellow color covered their backs, arms, and legs. They scurried quickly from place to place and swung with agility from branch to branch. The tops of their heads and their snouts were a darker brown, but pink lined their eyes and ears. It was almost as if they were wearing light, furry goggles. Derick paused to look at a monkey eating some sort of small green fruit.
The moment Derick saw the next room, he stopped, his mouth gaping. The room looked like a large warehouse, with rows and rows of storage space, but instead of boxes, there were animals. Each lay lifeless in their sections, like merchandise ready to be sold. Rows of monkeys identical to those in the trees here stood on shelves. Lions stood motionless on all fours. They looked like stuffed beasts in a museum. Giraffes lined one column, and several massive rhinos stood along the back wall. Varying types of birds, squirrels, and other animals lined the next rows. Even a variety of fish lay on shelves.
