by Megan Curd
I swallowed hard. “We would prefer to live together, if possible.”
Mr. Riggs’s smile grew, and he bowed his head. He seemed shorter than at our last encounter and much less imposing, but he still towered over us. Then I realized he wasn’t wearing a top hat. “Very well, Miss Pike. I already had a roommate selected for you, but the rooms are capable of three inhabitants. Would you prefer that?”
“Very much so,” piped Alice, but then she bowed her head. “I apologize, Mr. Riggs. It’s not my place to speak.” Traditionals weren’t allowed to speak to Elites unless spoken to first, which made me want to gag.
“You will find the social protocol here is quite different than your old dome’s. You’re welcome to speak at any time, my dear.” His smile faded as he looked past us to where I assumed Jaxon stood. “You were late arriving.”
“I apologize, sir. I’ll get to work immediately.”
“But you can’t.” Mr. Riggs paused, continuing to stare past me. “You must show these ladies to the dormitories, then meet me back here.”
“Yes, Sir. I’ll see to our new tenants and return promptly.” His brazen demeanor had disappeared. He was all business.
Mr. Riggs nodded at him with cold, calculating eyes before returning to Alice and I. His mood change was like a light switch. His face relit with kindness and compassion, and his broad shoulders and long arms engulfed us in an embrace. He crushed us to his chest as he chuckled, and I felt the reverberations from within him echo into my body.
“You’ll find yourself here, Miss Pike. We’ll push your talent and maximize it. You’ll find freedom.” He turned to Alice. “My dear, I think you’ll enjoy this place as well. You’re the first true Traditional to step foot in the academy, and I’m anxious to see how you fit in.”
I felt her stiffen as though the words were physical blows.
“Not to say you aren’t gifted, my lady. I’ve been informed you’re quite skilled with sewing, and I’ll be sure you’re accommodated thusly. I’ll also put you in a few of Avery’s courses to see how you do, if you’d like.”
Her smile returned, albeit a cautious one. “I’d like that, yes.”
“Then it’s decided!” he said with more enthusiasm than the situation warranted. He relinquished his grip and patted our backs. “Very well then. If you two don’t mind, I’d like a word with Mr. Pierce before you three depart.”
Jaxon’s face was a mask of indifference. He was perusing a book, his left leg over one of the velvet-covered arms of the cherry wood chair he occupied. While his eyes were fixed on the pages, they were unmoving and his lips were taut. He swung his leg off the arm and snapped the book shut with one hand, tossing it onto the table beside the chair. It tumbled and clattered to the floor, where pages fell away from the battered spine. One of them fluttered towards me.
I picked it up, and as I handed it back to Jaxon I caught the bold heading at the top. IS THE WAR REALLY OVER?
A pained smile covered Jaxon’s otherwise inscrutable features. “Of course, Mr. Riggs.”
Alice and I walked out, and Mr. Riggs shut the doors behind us. They spoke in muffled voices.
“What do you suppose they’re talking about?” Alice wondered aloud as she picked dried dirt from her dress, building a small mound on the carpet. After a while, she twisted her hips to free the caked mire from her clothing.
The men’s voices rose. Riggs’s thundering baritone made me jump. “I don’t care what your excuse is; don’t let it happen again, or there will be severe consequences! Nothing is free in this life, and you of all people should know that.”
“I didn’t recall asking for anything from you or anyone else!” The sound of books thudding to the floor reverberated through the door.
“Mr. Pierce, you simply breathing has taxed me more than you’ll ever know. Now get out.”
Heavy footsteps approached the door.
“That wasn’t a good meeting,” Alice whimpered, no longer distracted by her disheveled dress.
Suddenly I had more than a healthy dose of fear for the man who only moments before had given me the closest thing to a fatherly hug I’d ever received.
JAXON EMERGED FROM the library, his expression stony. He extended his elbows to accommodate our arms and stalked forward mechanically.
Halfway down the lengthy corridor, Alice apparently couldn’t handle the silence. “Ugly can be wrapped deceitfully in the throes of beauty,” she said, as though she couldn’t get it out fast enough. She inhaled and whispered the rest. “And it’s hard to tell the difference when one isn’t used to seeing it.” That was my Alice. Wise beyond her years.
“I don’t want to talk about it, and if you try to make me feel better again, I will leave you in the atrium to fend for yourself.”
She fell silent. Her eyes dropped to the floor, then turned to find me in the corner of her vision. I shook my head. There was no way I could make heads or tails of this place, and Alice wasn’t much of a navigational mastermind herself. We didn’t need to make Jaxon mad and wind up sleeping beside the fountain until morning.
We crossed the main floor to the other side. The magnificence hadn’t diminished, but after hearing Jaxon and Mr. Riggs, the shimmer and shine of the atrium wasn’t as enticing. Instead, the beauty felt like a façade.
Jaxon led us to the bronze entryway of the center hallway. Over the to, granite stone was engraved with silver script and numerous flourishes.
“Exegi monumentum aere perennius,” I said aloud, probably butchering the entire thing.
“I have erected a monument more lasting than bronze,” Jaxon said tonelessly. “A quote in Latin from Horace.”
I nodded, taking in the implications. “Mr. Riggs must think very highly of this place and his students.”
“He thinks very highly of himself, that’s for sure,” he muttered, then gestured above him to the right. Another camera. He stared it down as he spoke. “Multi famam, conscientiam, pauci verentur.”
“What’d you say?” Alice asked. She was braver than I, who would have let him ramble on until we got to our room. She had to learn and know everything.
“Just something for Riggs.”
“What’s it mean?”
He snorted derisively as we walked into the hallway. “That I can be just as much like Confucius as you can with your so-called nuggets of wisdom.”
“At least I have the nuggets to say them in plain English so everyone can understand them!”
“A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.” He was as quick as she was with a comeback.
Her face widened with shock. “You know Oscar Wilde? How do you know Oscar Wilde?”
“Had lunch with him yesterday before I came to pick you two up. We’re old pals,” he nudged her in the side with his elbow. “He loves the French toast the kitchen whips up.”
She opened and closed her mouth, seemingly shocked that someone else had read her beloved poet’s works. “Apparently he knows how to read, Alice.”
“Of course I know how to read,” he said with a scoff. He stopped in front of an oval wooden door. The numbers 317 were nailed to the front. The handle to the door was a wheel like those I’d seen on vaults. He shoved a plastic card into each of our hands. “This is your room. Good night.”
“Wait a second,” I called, turning the card over in my hands. “What’s this?”
“Your key, of course,” he said, exasperated. “I swear you two are like cavemen.”
He stalked back over and snatched the key from my hand, then swiped it below the contraption mounted beside the door. It beeped twice, and the light flashed from red to green like the ones we’d seen on the way to the academy. He pushed the card back into my palm with a gentle touch. He turned the wheel in the center of the door, and I heard a click from the other side. The decorative cog on top of the door spun wildly and hummed, turning the much smaller gear below it. The door swung open a hair, and he stepped back.
“Th
ere. Seven A.M. is breakfast. No excuses. Your classes start tomorrow. Your closet is full, and Sari will show you to the common area in the morning.”
“Who’s Sari?” I asked.
“Your other roommate. Don’t try to wake her up at this hour. She’ll maul you like a rabid bear.”
He turned on his heel and left us standing at our door. Alice focused her attention on the door and her key, but I watched him walk away. Not thirty feet down the hall, he stopped with his back still towards us.
“And for the record, I said ‘Many fear their reputation, but few their conscience’ back there.” In the low light of the candelabras, I saw him brandish his own key card and jab it through the reader by the door. Before he disappeared into his room, he cast one long glance back to us. The shadows danced across his face, creating the illusion of a massive bruise on the left side. Does he feel that way inside, too?
Alice tugged at my hand, urging me quietly. “Avery, come on. I want to see our room.”
We stepped in and found ourselves at the top of a staircase–a much smaller scale than the entrance to the Academy but designed the same. Swirling patterns were inlaid in the granite. A massive, full-length window sat at the other end of a spacious sitting room, and the moon cast a cool glow over the whole area. The flecks in the granite twinkled against the moonlight, and I felt as though I really were looking into a night sky. It gave me a sense of vertigo.
Alice took the steps two at a time and turned left into the open-area kitchen. Her hands ran along the grey marble island, where a bowl of fresh fruit sat. She grabbed an apple and waved it at me, her face alight with excitement. “They have food here, Avery!”
“We had food at home.” I gestured to my body. “We’re not skin and bones, by any means.”
Nothing could curb her excitement when she got going, so I left her in the kitchen to search for a bathroom. I walked through the living room containing three large overstuffed couches and a butterfly-shaped coffee table littered with books. I ran my fingers across the edges of the table and examined the massive bolts that pinned the two panes of glass together with mahogany wood outside. Inside the wings were gears and ratchets that turned systematically with a tick, tick, tick. The body was solid wood and monogrammed with C.A., which I assumed stood for Chromelius Academy. No detail was spared.
A curved, carbon-fiber archway housed a grand fireplace nearby, where coals clung to their final glowing embers. Red holographic letters flickered and scrolled across the mantle.
Don’t forget to snuff out the coals. Welcome to Chromelius Academy, Avery Pike. They obviously hadn’t planned for Alice.
My eyes roamed to the window that covered the expanse of the far wall. I walked over and pressed my palm against the cool glass—the Twin Cities were colder than my dome. The lights of the academy twinkled and glinted off the broken windows of buildings nearby, and the silence of the night was like a soft blanket over the area. The false moon hung high overhead in the sky and illuminated the lightly swaying grass. Was that a hologram or truly grass? Probably the former; there was no place on earth had survived the damage of our own greed and vindictiveness.
My mind reeled from the day’s events. I saw no bustle of the seedy nightlife, no cries of hunger, no wandering homeless seeking looking for a dry spot to avoid the damp humidity, no people at all. In the absence of other noise, my thoughts screamed even louder.
I noticed two bookcases as big as the ones in the library lined the wall. A doorway in the middle led to a hallway. I peeked through and saw additional doors on each side. I assumed those were our bedrooms.
A bathroom was situated between the bedrooms, complete with a claw-footed bathtub and a huge shower with two showerheads. A mirror ran the length of the left side of the room with multiple sinks. In the far back corner, three wide stairs led to a whirlpool with a fireplace situated into the wall beside it. Huge brass vases filled with metal flowers sat on both sides of the fireplace, and ivy wound around the sides of the whirlpool. A wrought-iron shelf holding fluffy white towels hung beside the ostentatious display. Seriously, who in the world needed this? The governor probably doesn’t even have this kind of a setup.
I left the bathroom to find the room on the left now had light streaming out of the closet. Alice was already in there poking around, murmuring to herself about good fortune. I kept thinking of our old home and how it was better, even though it technically wasn’t.
She jumped when I walked behind her in our massive walk-in closet. Brass pipes lined the ceiling and hummed with electricity.
“Ah! Avery, I didn’t hear you come in.” A center island ran the length of the closet and held more varieties of shoes than I’d ever seen. She waved at the garments that lined the walls. “Can you believe all these clothes are yours? And look, it seems like Mr. Riggs took care to give you some things you’d actually like. See?” She pulled the arm of a green military jacket similar to mine away from the throngs of clothes, then turned to the shoes. “There must be five different colors of everything. I can’t wait to see what he gives me.”
She pulled out a pair of black pinstriped heels, complete with gold designs along the heel and toe, and gave me a guilty smile. “I know you won’t wear these. Would you mind if I took them?”
Lack of sleep coupled with the overload of the day’s events was finally catching up. I gave an exaggerated yawn and stretch. “Take whatever you want, Alice. You know what I’ll wear, and that’s next to nothing in here. Go wild. I’m going to go find a bed and sleep.”
“I think there’s only one bed in here for now.” She fingered the lace lining the high-heeled shoes she’d become attached to. “Would you mind if we slept in the same bed tonight? It’ll be like home.”
The constant hum of hovercrafts patrolling the streets unnerved her back home. We had spent many evenings curled up in the same bed, reading and hoping to not be found before I snuck back to Wutherford. How odd it would be to not have to worry about that tonight.
“Sure, sure, that’d be great,” I said, genuinely. “I need some company to get used to this place.”
“It’s something else, isn’t it?” she said in wonder as she took in the closet bigger than her old living room.
I wasn’t sure if I liked the else this was, but I would try for her sake. “It’s something, that’s for sure.”
***
“Come on then, get up!” urged a voice in my ear.
I swatted at it like a fly. The voice squealed in annoyance. “Really, is that necessary? We gotta go. Breakfast is in twenty minutes!”
I reluctantly opened my eyes. The bed was softer than anything I could ever remember sleeping on. The cream coverlet was filled with down and had been more than warm enough for both Alice and me. It was a welcome change from the frayed, moth-eaten blankets she struggled to keep out of complete disrepair. I reached beside me to push her and realized she was gone.
My eyes flew open. Before me stood a girl I’d never seen before. Her eyes were hazel and squinted as she blocked the sun. Her strawberry blonde hair was cropped above the shoulders in chunky layers, save for a shocking long pink braid tucked behind her right ear. A pair of light pink leather goggles held back wisps of stray hair.
“Welcome to the land of the living,” she said amiably. “I’m Sari. And no, not like the garment Hindu women wore when we still had multiple religions in the world.”
I pulled the covers up around my neck. “I don’t remember a time there were multiple religions in the world, let alone what people wore according to their customs.”
She shook her head, but the smile never left her heart-shaped face. I gave her a once-over and felt my mouth drop.
“What?” she asked, looking amused. “Did I grow a second head?”
“No, it’s just you’re dressed—”
“Like you!” squealed Alice from behind her, startling both of us.
It was the truth; Sari wore a white t-shirt that showed her skinny midriff and bellybutton pierci
ng. Suspenders held up her bulky black pants that were full of pockets. Her hands were covered with fingerless leather gloves. Beginning underneath the gloves, a swirling tattoo wound up her arm to her bicep. I instantly liked her.
She extended a hand and helped pull me out of bed. “Let’s get you showered and dressed, and we’ll head out. Sound good?”
My feet prepared nervously for the cold tiles that lined the shower floor, but instead I was greeted with warmth. Heated tile floors. How much more extravagant could Mr. Riggs possibly be?
I enjoyed the dual heads against my will. Heat filled the room, fogging the floor-to-ceiling glass as I hummed tunelessly. A dozen bottles of soaps and shampoos sat at the ready in little cubbies along the shower wall. I picked a bottle based on the label’s propaganda. It smelled of powder and lilac.
I had grown up with two primary scents—clean and stinky. There had been no time to spend on such vain conveniences like perfumes. Everything here was overwhelming.
Alice banged on the door before I could towel off completely. “Did you leave me any water?”
I strode past her with one towel wrapped around my body and another wrapped around my head. “Yep. And it’s hot.”
Her voice went up three octaves, and she bounced on the balls of her feet. “Oh, my God, seriously? This place is heaven on earth.”
That’s all it took for her to disappear into the fog-laden bathroom. I wondered if we’d have to send a search party in there for her later. It was possible she’d prune herself beyond return before she’d exit something so novel as a hot shower, and that was before she found the perfumed soap. The thought pleased me as I headed back to our room.
Sari managed to find me clothes that looked like what I’d wear…almost. They felt too new, too tight, and too clean to really be mine. By the time I was dressed, Alice was out of the shower and giving me a pep talk on why these clothes were wonderful. Sari seemed nice, so I went with it. I wiggled around to loosen them up as we walked down the dormitory hallway toward the atrium.
