The Initiation

by Ridley Pearson

  “You switch allegiances.”

  “That’s not true, and you know it! No one will ever take the place of you, James. Not ever. No way! But, if I see you hanging around with the wrong boys, doing bad stuff, am I supposed to line up like a cheerleader? Not going to happen! My job as your sister is to help you see when you’re messing up, because others don’t know you well enough to know, much less have the guts to tell you. It takes guts to be your sister, for your information!”

  “He’s the reason,” James said, his eyes darker and more brooding.

  “He’s helping!”

  “He’s a flyspeck. He’s distorting your vision of things.”

  “Is not!”

  “The toilets in Bricks 2? That was his idea to flush those toilets! He set me up.”

  “Sherlock figured that out?” Now I was impressed.

  “I should have seen that coming!”

  “But it worked. Why did you do it?”

  He ignored me. “You know who needs to know about him? Mrs. Furman. Crudgeon, maybe. It’s time someone does something about him.”

  “James, no! He’s been helping you.”

  “I didn’t ask for his help. I don’t want his help!”

  “You see what I have to deal with? You see who you’re becoming? It’s not you, James. This isn’t you! Sherlock can . . .” I shouldn’t have mentioned his name. For James, it was like I’d invoked the name of the devil.

  “. . . go rot for all I care,” James said.

  I stepped closer to him, somewhat taken aback by the intense heat coming off of him. It was like he was glowing hot. Our blood connection was not entirely lost. My brother took a long minute to calm down. I ran my fingers through his hair, something I knew he enjoyed.

  I quoted the clue’s poem. “‘Where what is seen is not, I forgot. Remembered then again and again.’”

  “I’ll figure it out,” he said softly.

  “Things remembered that repeat. Music repeats. Television shows.” I didn’t want to jump to the answer too quickly for fear of revealing my agreement with Sherlock. “You see something, but not what it’s about, not what’s in it. If you forget, then something is there to remind you repeatedly. What else fits that description?”

  “Clocks. Time. You don’t actually see time, you see something counting time. Clocks go around and around, repeating.”

  “True. Very good!”

  “Dance steps.”

  “Interesting,” I said. “And we dance with friends, like it says.”

  “Is there a dance coming up?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Waking up. Going to sleep. Sunrise. Sunset.”

  I hadn’t thought of any of these. I wondered if Sherlock had. Suddenly steering James seemed far more difficult. I felt I had to play along. “Good ones! ‘Where what is seen is not.’ We see the sunlight before we see the actual sun.”

  “I don’t know . . . That’s pretty abstract.”

  “What else?”

  “Calendars . . .”

  “That’s time, again.”

  “Words. Wait . . . books,” James said, staring at a stack of them on his desk. “‘Where what is seen, is not.’ You see the book but not the story inside.”

  “Of course!” I tried to sound surprised, stunned by what a good job I did. I’d always known my brother to be smarter than most, if not all of his friends. Smarter than me, if I dare to admit it. “‘In the company of so many friends!’ You don’t read as much as I do, Jamie, but I’m telling you, books become like friends to me!”

  “The library,” James mumbled. “It’s the school library.”

  “A book? The Bible’s hidden in the library?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, standing. “But if there’s one place Mr. Cantell will allow me to go after curfew, it’s the library.”

  “You’re brilliant! My brilliant brother!”

  “Get out of here. And tell me the moment you hear from Father. I’m worried about him.”

  “Stop treating me like leftover cheese, would you, please?”

  “No promises.” He sniffed the air. “You do kind of stink.”

  I punched him. Hard. We’d been insulting each other this same way ever since I could remember. “Your feet should be licensed as chemical weapons.”

  He slugged me back.

  I’d never been happier.

  CHAPTER 18

  A SOLDIER, A GUARD, A SPY

  JAMES DIDN’T GO TO THE LIBRARY. HE MADE HIS way across the commons and the quiet state roadway that separated faculty housing from the school’s main campus.

  He found the headmaster at home reading from a pile of business letters and reports of every kind. Crudgeon, who made a point to the student body that his “door is always open,” welcomed James and sat him down in the sitting room across from the man. He offered him something to drink and James declined, though he accepted a home-baked oatmeal cookie when offered.

  The sitting room had walls painted gray-green and white crown moldings; ornate lamps perched on side tables on both ends of an aqua-blue love seat and alongside where the thickset Crudgeon sat in a chair facing an unlit fireplace. The room felt homey and lived in and James would have moved in if it had been offered.

  “Headmaster, sir, you assigned me to clean up that mess.”

  “Master Cantell did, but yes, James.” He closed the book he’d been reading and gave the boy his full attention. “What of it? Do you feel it undeserved?”

  “The first I heard of such a plan, it was from my roommate, Sherlock Holmes. I didn’t tell you that, and I should have.”

  “Is that so?”

  “He’d figured out the volume capacity of the sewer ventilation pipes. That if that capacity proved insufficient, water would be sucked into the system, rush to the lowest level, and flood the lowest bathroom.”

  “He told you this?”

  “He did. Just before it happened.”

  “I see. And how do you feel about reporting your roommate, James?”

  “I . . . ah . . .” James had not anticipated being challenged on his decision. “I thought you’d appreciate the truth.”

  “Indeed. But you could have written me a note, an anonymous note, for instance. And you didn’t, which means you wanted to take credit for turning him in.” He paused, waiting for James to say something. “Did you want to take credit, James?”

  “I guess.”

  “Instead of settling it between the two of you.”

  “You mean like a fight?”

  “Not at all. That’s never the solution. Conflict resolution. Verbally. You’ll recall Mr. Holmes wasn’t the one spotted in Upper Two. It was you, James.”

  “Well . . . right.”

  “Where do you stand on loyalty, James?”

  “To a cause or to a person?”

  “Very good! You see the difference. You tell me.”

  “In video games, sometimes if you go against your sergeant’s orders, you end up shot by the enemy no matter how well you’re doing.”

  “In life as well.”

  “But the sergeant’s orders might not seem right for the mission.”

  “In your example, is it the infantryman’s ‘job’ to decide what’s good for the mission?”

  “If my sergeant tells me to shoot a bunch of women and children, do I do it?” James countered.

  “Very good! So what’s the determining factor?”

  “Ethics, I guess. Values.”

  “You guess, or you know?”

  “I know there are certain things I won’t do for anybody.”

  “And that’s fine, until you’re the sergeant.” Headmaster let the comment hang in the room like smoke.

  James’s head was spinning. “If my men won’t follow orders, I’ll disarm them and leave them behind.”

  “You’d kill them? For you’re certainly leaving them to their deaths.”

  “You keep changing the rules!”

  “Do I? Aren’t the rul
es laid out to the sergeant and his men back in basic training?”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “I’m not saying anything. I’m asking you about your loyalty.”

  “To Sherlock.”

  “To the school, you said. I appreciate your loyalty to the school, James. It’s imperative, a fine quality. I’m wondering about Sherlock. He’ll never trust you again.”

  “What do I care?”

  “The sergeant cares. He can’t have his men not trusting him.”

  “I’m not a sergeant.”

  “Not yet, you’re not.”

  Now in the air hung something unmentioned. The pointed way Crudgeon looked at him confirmed this to James, who wondered what it could be. Something to do with the requirement of his attending the school. It connected Father to this place, and his father before him. And now James himself. The Great Unspoken was no accident—Crudgeon wanted James thinking about this: Not yet, you’re not.

  “Meaning?”

  “You’re new here. How do either of us know what role you might play in the coming months and years?” Crudgeon dodged the answer; he wasn’t going to explain the Great Unspoken, but make James come to it himself.

  “I should have left you a note. An unsigned note. Anonymous.”

  “Still leaves Sherlock in trouble.”

  “It was his idea!”

  “While there are still places in the world where it’s illegal to have ideas, this country is not one of them. Executing ideas, now that’s a different story. You see the difference, I’m sure.”

  “You’re testing me,” James said. “Why? What for? I don’t get it.”

  “Here at Baskerville you will begin to solidify your beliefs, James. This is the age young women and men start that process. Once you know what you stand for, who you stand with, you will never go wrong by giving that cause or those people your all, your everything. Even your life, as the infantrymen must sometimes do. Whether or not others understand is far less important than that you do. Commitment to ideals is that to which the great men and women have fashioned and dedicated their lives. Do you want to be a Great Man, James?”

  Did he? James hadn’t given it any thought whatsoever. He wanted another cookie; he was always hungry. He wanted to be living on Beacon Hill with Father and spending time with what few friends he had. He wanted his driver’s license and money and freedom. He wisely shared none of this.

  “Yes,” he said, having no idea of the origins of his answer. It rose out of him like a belch.

  Upon hearing this, the headmaster relaxed his shoulders, unclenched his fists. It was like watching all the air go out of a Christmas Santa. His tone changed as well to a more friendly and collegial spirit.

  James left the meeting after four more cookies and a glass of milk to wash them down.

  Leaving the headmaster’s house, James briefly felt accomplished, upstanding, and valued, about as good as he’d felt since arriving at school. He stood on the headmaster’s elevated front porch looking out across the road at the school’s lighted brick buildings, feeling a part of something.

  Why his impression changed, he had no idea. A noise? A scent carried on the light breeze? The distance between him and the Bricks suddenly appeared cavernous, an inky, foreboding emptiness; a river of black with no bridge across. He actually considered returning inside and asking for a ride across the street, just the thought of which made him feel like such a coward. It was a few hundred yards of darkness, he told himself. What was the big deal?

  Perhaps it was the lack of streetlights on the state roadway that gave him a chill. The lack of any cars. Or maybe it was the sound of the breeze like a low, indistinguishable note. He placed his foot on the first stair tread like a person testing the lake water for temperature. He descended, crossed the roadway, and climbed over the stone wall rather than walk up the road and enter the school’s horseshoe driveway. He unexpectedly preferred the idea of remaining in the dark with an eye toward the lighted areas rather than making himself seen and an easy target.

  The trees between him and the varsity soccer field rose like soldiers at their posts. He found their company intimidating. From an open window in Bricks 4 came the din of pop music. He had no taste for it. He kept his interest in opera a secret, to avoid being teased to death, but he found Puccini arias to be as close to perfection as any sound he’d ever heard. He had his father to blame for that; the man had been dragging us to the theater, symphony, and opera for all our childhood. It was a curse, no matter what James had been told to the contrary.

  Each tree came alive for him, a soldier, a guard, a spy. But he also saw them as columns behind which to hide. He moved one to the next, picturing himself a Navy SEAL on a mission to infiltrate the brick fortress ahead. He slapped his back against the bark and waited, heart pounding.

  A hand grabbed his arm, yanked him around the tree, and gripped his throat to keep him from calling out for help. James’s knees went weak. He couldn’t swallow.

  “You listen to me, boy, and you listen good.” The man’s voice sounded like a wood rasp. He wore a black baseball cap with no logo, its bill shadowing his face to obscurity. Dark clothes, including a black T-shirt despite the chill night air. “You want to be like all of them, fine. You want to be with us, solve the clues. Quickly! That is your path, your rightful future that some would try to keep from you.” He loosened his grip. “Easy, now!”

  “The . . . clues . . . are . . . for . . . the . . . Bible . . .” James choked out. “Right?”

  “Solve them, and you will find your future.”

  James lowered his head, relaxing. Then he chopped up with both hands, tearing loose the man’s grip and blasting the man’s arms high overhead. The T-shirt rode up just for an instant. James saw a small tree-and-key tattoo. His attacker wrapped up and subdued James, spinning him around. He whispered warmly from behind. “Fools follow the other hunters. Winners follow the fox.” He shoved James forward and down onto his knees in the damp grass.

  When James recovered and looked back, the man was gone.

  CHAPTER 19

  THE PHILOSOPHY OF TRUTH

  SHERLOCK BELIEVED BEING CALLED TO THE headmaster’s office was a reprimand of the worst kind; being called to the man’s home had to be worse, especially late at night. At the time, he had no idea James had been there only twenty-four hours earlier.

  It was not an invitation Sherlock could refuse or reschedule. Mrs. Furman made it exceptionally clear Sherlock was not to be tardy. “Headmaster does not tolerate tardy,” she said.

  Sherlock arrived to the Victorian’s front door precisely at 9:45 p.m., as instructed.

  “Come in,” said Dr. Crudgeon. He wore a cardigan sweater over a shirt and school tie, pressed trousers, and tasseled loafers. He received Sherlock in the sitting room, as he had James.

  Sherlock wore a black bow tie, a black shirt, blue jeans, and a navy blue school blazer. He accepted the offer of tea. The most interesting accessory in the room was a leather globe that had to be several hundred years old. It was cradled in a brass floor stand that was dressed in a charcoal-flecked patina of old age. Sherlock couldn’t take his eyes off the thing, mainly because what he could see of Europe, the Mediterranean, and Africa had it all wrong.

  “Funny,” Crudgeon said, catching Sherlock staring at the globe, “how we think we know something so well, only to find out later we barely knew it at all. I try to keep that in mind when I’m thinking about the education of my students. As critically important as is the truth, it is always in a state of constant flux. For decades Pluto is a planet; then it’s not; then maybe it is. Eggs are bad for you; eggs are good for you. It’s the exploration of, the pursuit of the truth that matters. It’s learning how to learn more than it’s learning any particular fact.”

  “We could debate much of that,” Sherlock said, unintentionally stridently. “It’s highly debatable if truths altered as a result of improved technology were ever truths at all. You are mixing fact with truth, a d
angerous though not uncommon practice. The very notion of the existence of absolute truth is debatable. Stated fact, on the other hand, is often disproved by subsequent studies or examination.”

  “Thought a lot about this, have you?” asked Crudgeon flippantly.

  “Not really. But it is an interesting topic and I think one worth exploring more deeply. Have I, Headmaster, been summoned to enter a discourse on the philosophy of truth?” Sherlock sounded relieved and delighted.

  “As to the first thing,” Crudgeon said, “I recommend the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, an online resource I think you might enjoy.”

  “And here I was thinking you would suggest Unifying the Philosophy of Truth by Achourioti, Galinon, Fernández, and Fujimoto,” Sherlock said, searching the headmaster’s eyes to see if the man had ever heard of the volume, much less read it. The surprise displayed on the man’s face forced Sherlock to assume the negative on both counts.

  “As to the second thing, no. You are here for quite a different purpose altogether. One that I doubt you will find pleasant in any way, shape, or manner.”

  “Oh,” said Sherlock. “More’s the pity.”

  “The subject is James Moriarty.”

  “I could feign surprise, but what would be the point? I know for a fact,” he winced a grin, “that James was called to your office. Later, you visited our dorm room in person to speak to him in private. You asked me to step outside, which I did. As James’s roommate, I am a quality source of inside information. Am I to spy for you? I’d like that, I think.”

  “Quite the contrary,” Crudgeon replied. “I believe you are either guiding the boy or providing direct encouragement for him to step outside the lines of our rules and regulations. Following my interview of him, I doubted very much he was clever enough to have come up with that bathroom prank. I won’t ask, because I don’t want to know. I don’t want to expel you, son. You have a place here at Baskerville. I urge you to leave him be, Sherlock. Allow him to make his own decisions, mistakes, and accomplishments.”