CHAPTER FOUR
Step off, Mister
Mr. Kim was a pleasant-looking guy. I’d guess he was maybe fifty years old. His hair had been dark and was now speckled with flecks of silver. He was maybe five feet nine and looked like he was pretty fit. He strode across the room toward me and reached out to shake my hand.
“Rachel,” he said. “Welcome. We’re so glad to have you here.” He pumped my hand vigorously and gestured to a chair in front of his desk. As he walked around his desk and sat down facing me, I noticed his desk was completely bare. No papers, no paper clips or pens or anything.
“How was your flight?” he asked.
“Okay, I guess. But that Mrs. Marquardt, what a windbag,” I said. There. I’d launched my opening salvo. I wasn’t going to make it easy for this guy. Judge “No sense of humor” Kerrigan could lock me up in this dump, but they weren’t going to change me. I was going to stay the same Rachel Buchanan.
To my surprise, Mr. Kim laughed. Loudly. And quite enthusiastically.
“That’s very funny. Windbag. I will have to remember that. Yes, our Mrs. Marquardt does keep her own counsel. So, Rachel. Tell me why you’re here.”
“Because I got busted,” I said. “But you already know that. Judge Tightass sent me here, like I really had a choice.” I don’t think Mr. Kim heard the part about me not having a choice, because he was laughing again. This time he slapped the desk with his hand. This was going to be easy. I was killing him! I’d be out of here by the end of the week.
“It’s true, the judge is a little bit stern. She was that way when she was a student here. Always very serious. I used to tell her that she needed to lighten up a little, but it just isn’t her way. She’s very intense.”
Wait a minute. Did he say the judge was a student here? She never said anything about that! Shields up!
“Anyway, it was here or Juvie,” I said. Still on alert about the “Judge Kerrigan was a student here” bomb. Was that why she was so adamant about sending me to this place?
Mr. Kim looked like he was waiting for me to say something else. But I just started looking at my nails. Wondering if they had a manicurist here at Blackthorn Academy. Finally, he spoke.
“The terms of your arrangement are quite clear. You’re part of the Blackthorn family for the next year. You’ll be taking a regular class load, doing a work assignment, and studying Tae Kwon Do,” he said.
I must have been hallucinating, because I could swear I heard him say something about working and martial arts. No way. Not this chick. I don’t do exercise or work.
“I’m sorry, I thought you said Tae Kwon Do. That’s like gym. I don’t do gym.”
He chuckled again, but not as much as he did at my killer “windbag” comment.
“Everyone at Blackthorn does ‘gym,’ as you call it. It’s required in addition to your academic load. We keep busy here. But don’t worry. You’ll learn to love it. The martial arts are a great way to learn discipline, keep fit, and—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I interrupted him. “I’ve seen all the Jackie Chan movies. But that’s just not my thing. I prefer to spend my free time on other important pursuits. Like TV and junk food,” I said. There, that ought to show him.
“Tell me a little about yourself, Rachel,” he said. Now, that was a switch. He was changing the subject. I was all ready for a fight, but he was resisting my efforts to pick one. It must be some kind of martial arts “turn your opponent aside gently” thing. Well, two can play at that game. This guy was so easy.
“Not much to tell. Dad from a rich family in Beverly Hills. Made himself a whole bunch richer in real estate or condos or something. Mother bored, depressed, emotionally withdrawn society type, a little too fond of her ‘cough medicine,’ if you know what I mean,” I said.
“But that’s about your family,” he said. “Tell me about you.”
“I don’t really like to talk about myself,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Well, normally I find me fascinating, but right now I guess I don’t care to tell you anything about me.” I tried to put just the right amount of hostility in my tone.
“Would you like me to tell you what I know about you?” he asked.
“You don’t know anything about me. Look, I’m sure Blackthorn Academy is a four-star boarding school and winner of the National Association of Boarding Schools Gold Award for reprogramming messed-up teenagers or whatever. But I don’t want to be here, and nothing you say is going to change my mind. So why don’t we get this interview over with so I can get started on my year of exile.” I was sure I could just keep talking until I wore this guy down.
“I compliment you on your excellent verbal skills, Rachel. Your attempt to change the subject and try to get me off track is quite impressive. However, I can assure you that I am not so easily dissuaded. I would like to hear more about you, but if you are not comfortable confiding in me at this point, that is completely understandable. Still, would you like to know what I know about you?” Okay, maybe outtalking this guy was going to be harder than I thought.
“You’re the guy in charge. Knock yourself out. I really couldn’t care less.” I wasn’t going to let these people get inside my head. They probably brainwashed kids here.
So I pretended not to be completely surprised when Mr. Kim gave me my whole life story. He knew all about my parents, my friends, my grades, what subjects I was good at in school, what my teachers thought of me, that I loved to surf the Internet and write my own computer programs, that my favorite subject, at least until I embarked on my life of crime, was math, that I’d had a dog named Fluffy when I was six, that he’d died when I was eleven. He knew my favorite movie (Say Anything), my favorite musical group (Blink 182); he knew all about my probation, the shoplifting, the potential Grand Theft Auto hanging over my head if I didn’t stay at this weird place for a year, that I was left-handed, and all about my stupid crush on Boozer. It was a stunning recitation of my entire life, and he repeated it to me with no notes and files. I don’t think he even came up for air in the twenty minutes it took him to reduce my life to an oral book report.
I sat there in his office in stunned disbelief. Was he some kind of warlock or something? As far as I knew he hadn’t talked to my parents or any of my friends. Charles just signed some papers that Marvin gave him and didn’t even say good-bye. I was sure that Charles and Cynthia wouldn’t know any of this stuff anyway, even if he did talk to them.
“How did you know all that?” I said.
“Let’s just say that I feel it is our duty to know as much about each student as we can. I want you to feel at home here. I realize this is not where you want to be. I expect you to be skeptical, perhaps even hostile. I’m sure I’d feel the same way. It’s not easy to be taken out of your home and put in a place where you have no friends and family, not to mention a jail sentence hanging over your head if you don’t cooperate.”
Empathy? He was going to try the Parenting Handbook, “listen to what your children are really saying and respond with kindness” trick? (I know Charles and Cynthia never tried this, but I saw a parenting show on The Learning Channel once.) Well, buster, I thought, you have met your match. No one gives me empathy without my permission.
“How nice for you,” I said. Okay, not one of my best comebacks, but I was still a little thrown.
“But I want you to understand,” Mr. Kim continued. “Judge Kerrigan is not a woman to be crossed. She obviously feels you have a great deal of potential. Many of your friends and teachers that I spoke to felt the same way. And I can tell just by talking to you that you are very smart, with an agile mind. Nonetheless, you will have to embrace our program here at Blackthorn, and it will not be easy. You have many challenges ahead. But from what I’ve seen so far, I think you will manage them without difficulty.”
Okay. First empathy, and then…was that last speech a compliment? I had “potential”? An agile mind? No one had ever said that I had an agile anything before. An
d after two minutes with me he’s telling me I’d breeze through the year no problem? Who was this guy?
“Let’s walk over to the residential wing and meet your roommate. You’ll want to get settled in. Then you’ll have a half hour to report to the do jang for your first Tae Kwon Do lesson. There is a do bak—that’s Korean for uniform—in your room already.”
He stood up and walked toward the door. By now my head was spinning. I was tired, homesick, perplexed, and a little pissed off all at the same time. And what was this news flash about a roommate? Nobody had said anything about roommates. I numbly stood up and followed him. No witty comeback. No wisecracks. Whoever this guy was, my first impression had been wrong. He wasn’t going to be easy. He was even making me do gym on my first day.
As we walked down another long corridor, my mind was full of so many thoughts that I couldn’t grab one to focus on. I noticed now that the school actually looked pretty nice on the inside. Everything was spotlessly clean and the walls were brightly painted. There were lots of pastels and cool colors, like you’d find in a Gap store. If Mr. Kim was in charge of the decorating, I had to give him points for his good color sense.
Mr. Kim’s office had been off the atrium, and it seemed now that the interior of the school was laid out like the spokes of a wheel, cut into a quarter section. Hallways led off from the atrium in all directions and the atrium rose up to the full five stories of the school, like something you’d see in a really fancy hotel. That’s it. I’d just start thinking of it as a hotel. I wondered if they had room service here.
The hallways looked like they went back quite a ways, and now that I was inside the building I could see that the school was built so that it flowed up the side of the mountain. In the atrium a series of ramps that cut back and forth led to the other floors, and in the hallways every so often there was a doorway marked “Stairs.” And as big as the school had looked from the outside, it seemed even bigger once you were inside.
Mr. Kim hummed quietly to himself as we strolled. Now and then we would pass people in the hall, most of them my age, some younger. Apparently I wasn’t the only one here after all. Mr. Kim would call each one by name and ask them how they were doing on this glorious day. And the strangest thing was, all of the students seemed to light up when they saw Mr. Kim, like he was a rock star or a celebrity or something. And he made every greeting sound so sincere and genuine.
After we’d walked for a couple of minutes, we rounded a corner and Mr. Kim stopped to say hello to a boy about my age. He was maybe six feet tall with short brown hair and dark eyes. He looked a little like Colin Farrell, actually. Okay, cool colors and cute boys—another point in Blackthorn’s favor.
“Brent Christian,” said Mr. Kim, “I’d like you to meet our newest student, Rachel Buchanan.”
Brent didn’t say hi or anything, he just kind of waved at me. I decided not to be rude and waved back.
“Brent is one of our finest students,” Mr. Kim said. “I’m sure you will have a lot in common.” Brent turned red and looked away. Mr. Kim told him we were on our way to my room. Brent nodded, then just turned and walked away in the direction he’d been going. He hadn’t said a word the whole time. I guessed he was probably going off to have a lengthy conversation with Mrs. Marquardt.
Mr. Kim was trying hard to make me feel welcome. And I was doing everything I could to make that as difficult as possible for him. All I could think of was that I wanted to get far away from him and this school as fast as I could. I couldn’t picture myself ever being happy to see him in the hallway like the other students. No sir. Not me. I wasn’t going to let this guy get to me. I would hold out until I was out of here, and then he could take all of his empathy and praise and little pseudo-parenting tips and use them on the next loser that came through this place.
And the funny thing is, those feelings didn’t change all that much for the first couple of weeks that I spent at Blackthorn Academy. Right up until the time Mr. Kim disappeared.
CHAPTER FIVE
Ain’t No Party Like a Detroit Party
After what seemed like an hour walk, we finally got to a corridor that led to the girls’ wing of the academy. Most of the doors in the corridor were closed, but as we walked past I could hear voices and music. So this place wasn’t totally dead. About halfway down the hall, Mr. Kim knocked on a door and swung it open when a voice said to come in.
“Hello, Pilar,” said Mr. Kim. “I’d like you to meet your new roommate, Rachel Buchanan.” Pilar was tall and slender. She had dark brown curly hair, shoulder length, and beautiful dark brown eyes. She had been sitting at her desk, staring at the door, like she was waiting for us to show up. Okay, not too creepy. She waved to me from where she sat.
“Hi,” she said. “Welcome to Blackthorn.”
I really didn’t know what else to do, so I mumbled a hello and stood there shifting my weight from my left side to my right and back. I looked around the room. It was a two-room suite: a bedroom with two beds and closets in one room, and a study/sitting room with desks and a couple of chairs in the other. Over Pilar’s desk was a Blink 182 poster. Okay, that was a good sign. Each of the two rooms had a window, and you could look out of the window and see the athletic fields and the woods beyond. But overall it was small. Very small, compared to home.
Mr. Kim was talking to Pilar about something, so I just kept looking around the room. I saw my suitcase and duffel bag in the bedroom, stacked by one of the closets. At least they hadn’t lost my luggage.
“Well, I’ll leave you two to get to know each other,” Mr. Kim finally said. “We will meet in the do jang in thirty minutes. Rachel, your do bak is in your closet. Pilar can help you with the belt. See you there.”
With that he turned and left. I didn’t know what to do. I felt like crying. Pilar looked at me and smiled.
“Don’t worry,” she said, “I remember how I felt my first day here. It’s a little overwhelming. You’ll get used to it. The time goes by fast.”
“What are you in for?” I asked.
“In for?” she asked.
“Yeah, you know—drugs, stealing, stuff like that?” I said.
She looked puzzled. “I don’t understand,” she said.
“Didn’t the judge in your case send you here?”
A look of understanding came over her face.
“Oh, no—no drugs, no judge. I’m an orphan. My aunt was raising me, but she got sick and couldn’t take care of me anymore. A neighbor of ours was a friend of Mr. Kim and knew about Blackthorn, so she arranged for me to get a scholarship. I’ve been here three years. My aunt passed away last year, so Blackthorn is now my home.” She turned around and sat back down at her desk. She had a really sad look on her face, and it made me feel about two inches tall.
So to top off the great day I was having, I had just managed to act like a total jerk to my new roommate. Someone kill me now.
“Sorry. I thought…never mind. Just…I’m sorry,” I stammered.
Pilar nodded slightly and returned to reading her book. I took that opportunity to exit stage left and went into the bedroom to unpack my stuff. Despite growing up in BH, I am mostly a jeans and T-shirt kind of girl. I did all my shopping at the Gap and avoided spending too much time on Rodeo Drive. It used to drive Cynthia crazy. “Do you have to dress like a slob?” she’d screech. Funny that she never figured out that the screeching just made me want to dress slobbier.
It took all of ten minutes to stuff all my clothes into the closet and the built-in drawers in the wall. The last thing I pulled out was my laptop, an IBM ThinkPad that Charles had given me for my birthday three months before. Actually, he hadn’t really given it to me. He’d given me the money and told me to buy it for myself. He was too busy to shop for my birthday. I loved that laptop—it was probably my most prized possession. But so far I hadn’t seen a phone in the room, which probably meant no Internet access. That would cause me to wither and die quicker than anything. I would have to find a way around that
somehow.
Pilar came in and opened her closet door. “We don’t have phones in our rooms,” she said. “You can make calls to your parents from the conference room next to Mr. Kim’s office, but you have to reserve a time with Mrs. Marquardt.”
“What?” I said.
She pointed to the laptop I held in my hand.
“You were probably wondering where the phone was, and I was just saying we don’t have them in our rooms.” She stood there watching me with this bizarrely intense expression.
“Is there a problem?” I snapped.
She kind of jumped, like I’d caught her going through my underwear drawer. “No. Uh, sorry. It’s just…it’s nothing really.”
“What?” I said. I was still a little cranky from dealing with Mr. Kim, and I needed to get things straight with this chick right away. We had to be roommates, but I didn’t have to like it, so she could just step off and give me my space.
“I just feel like I’ve seen you before. Have you ever been to Detroit, by any chance?”
“No. Ever been to Beverly Hills?” I said it with a rather snotty tone.
“Gosh, no. Is that where you’re from?” Gosh? Who the heck says gosh?
“Yeah.”
“Cool. Beverly Hills must be awesome. Still, it’s weird,” she said. “I just have this feeling like I’ve seen you somewhere.”
She began putting on a white martial arts uniform, which fit her like a glove. She pulled a blue belt from a hook inside the closet and fastened it around her waist.
“We better get going. It’s a ten-minute walk to the do jang, and tardiness means fifty push-ups on your knuckles,” she said.
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