Academic Assassins (29 page)

Buttercup cupped her hands over her mouth and started shouting—“
Boooo!
”

“She had brought a rep from the Board of Education in here to see her collars in action,” Scrap shouted. “To prove what good little dogs we can be!”

“
Boooo!
” The bellow gained traction among the ants, until everyone had joined in—“
Boooooooo! Booooooooooo! BOOOOOOOOO!
”

“If we let her go” Scrap continued, “the shocks are never going to stop. She'll somehow find a way to keep shocking more kids. Today, it's us. Tomorrow, it's
a school. Then two schools. Ten. Then the whole state. The country. How long before every kid across the globe is choking on these collars?”

“BOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

“But one person stood up to her.” Table Scrap turned to me. “You. We're free because of you, Spencer. You are our leader—and we're your Academic
Assassins.”

I stepped back. “This isn't what I wanted….”

“Too bad,” Scrap said. “'Cause this is what you've got. Today, we put an end to bullies like Merridew. Today is the day we stand up for ourselves and
fight!”

Everyone started pounding their feet in place. A wild roar erupted from the Screaming Mimis. The She-Wolves howled their howls. The Orphans let out their own holler—and suddenly, it struck
me how each tribe had finally come together.

It didn't matter which tribe we belonged to. We were all one now.

We'd become exactly what Peashooter had wanted all along.

An army.

“How long do you give this pitiful revolution before it is broken up by the police?” Merridew asked. “Do you honestly believe you will get away with this?”

“We're not
getting away
with anything,” Buttercup said. “We're not going anywhere. We're fighting for our survival against tyrants like you.”

Buttercup turned to me—and handed me the remote.

“You deserve the honors,” she said.

I took the remote from her.

Just below the surface of Merridew's powdered foundation, I could see the blood drain from her face. A pale pallor suddenly overwhelmed her features. She looked like the mummified remains
of a long-dead real estate agent, her leather-hardened flesh now nothing but a husk wrapped around her brittle bones.

“There are people outside who will be banging down these doors any minute now,” she seethed. “When they do, heaven help you. You will never,
ever
see the light of day
again.”

I turned to Babyface. I could see the eagerness in his eyes. He wanted me to shock her. Buttercup too. Table Scrap. Every last ant wanted me to push the button.

Push the button, Spencer…

Looking deep into Merridew's eyes, I swear she wanted me to push the button too. It was as if she wanted me to shock her.

Push it…

Merridew hissed at me, “I will see that you live the rest of your remaining days on this earth locked up in the deepest, darkest cell where no one will ever find you. Not your mother. Not
your father—not that he would come looking in the first place. I will bury you, Spencer Pendleton. So help me, I will bury you
six feet under
!”

Would Peter Pan push the button?

Would Sully?

Would I?

“See this?” I held Merridew's remote control up to her. Her eyes narrowed on to the remote. “What was it that you said to me all those months ago?
You are in control
of your actions, Mr. Pendleton. Not me
.”

She slowly shook her head, back and forth, back and forth, a flicker of panic stirring at the deeper recesses of her cold eyes.

“Please,” she implored.

I rested my thumb on top of the remote's red button.

The candy cane–like, bright and shiny red button.

“If it's any consolation, Miss Merridew,” I said, “I think I finally nailed each of my
three selves
.” I held up my free hand while keeping the remote aimed
at her.

“Self-awareness.”

Up popped my pointer.

“Self-discipline.”

Up popped my middle.

“And self-respect.”

Up popped my ring finger.

“The only question I've got left is…” All of my fingers sank back into a fist—save for my middle. “Which one of my three selves is gonna push this
button?”

Merridew squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for the electrical flood, and yelled. It echoed through the hallowed hallways of Kesey.

Her screeching eventually petered out.

Silence.

Panting with exasperation, Merridew slowly opened one eye—then the next. She glanced up at me, still holding the remote control up to her face.

Nothing.

No jolt.

If I pushed the button—Merridew would win. She would've been right about me all along. I would deserve to be here. Kesey would truly have become my home.

Home.

“What do you think I am?” I asked before dropping her remote to the floor. I brought my foot up and drove my heel straight down.

Merridew flinched at the crack of plastic.

“Keep it.” I spun around and walked out of the pod, leaving Merridew inside. “Shocking's not my style.”

The mass of ants parted as I walked passed. I spotted Babyface standing in the crowd. He watched me go without a word. Nobody spoke to me.

I planted my hands on the swinging doors to the Ant Farm, just a breath away from pushing them open and waltzing out of the heckhole…

…Only for a SWAT team to bust through first.

Here comes the cavalry….

Over thirty men suited up in black riot gear funneled into the farm.

“Everybody down on the ground!” The officer up front barked out from the see-through plastic barrier of his gas mask. “Down on the ground now!”

Gas masks? Why are they wearing—

Before I could finish the thought, one of the Men in Black tossed a metal canister across the floor. A fat plume of orange smoke billowed out from its spigot and instantly filled the room. Ants
began to cough, making a break for the door.

Buttercup pressed her palm against her mouth, coughing into her hand. I saw Table Scrap get grabbed by three officers and forced to his knees. His hands were brought behind his back and fastened
together with a zip tie before one of the officers kicked him over, landing face-first on the fresh Yellow Brick Road.

Babyface. I turned just in time to see him suddenly swallowed by the cloud of orange smoke. A look of fright burned within his eyes, vanishing inside the fog.

I never saw him again.

I
f a picture is worth a thousand words, guess what a video uploaded onto the Internet is? A couple thousand hits? A hundred thousand?

Try five hundred fifty-seven thousand in less than a week…

…And still counting.

Kesey's Top Ten Greatest Shocks quickly went viral. I don't know how Sully did it—but as soon as those clips mysteriously popped up online, within hours the number of views
reached into the hundreds. Thousands.

People kept on clicking. Sharing. Spreading the video link like wildfire.

News outlets picked the story up and reported on the horrors at Kesey. A five-second clip from the #1 shock was broadcast into households across the country. My pixilated face, fluctuating in
and out of focus, was seen by millions.

Smile for the camera….

Parents with children trapped at Kesey quickly came forward. They contacted their lawyers, who contacted Kesey's lawyers, who contacted Merridew.

Lawsuits started cropping up like zits on a kid's chin and suddenly, they all
popped.
Residents who had been abused by the Men in White were released into their parents'
custody or transferred to less dystopic detention centers.

Table Scrap was shipped off to juvie. He never had a family. Never met his mom. All the other delinquents lost within the system were the closest thing to kin, so when the juvenile courts placed
him in this new youth detention center, he felt right at home. Wasn't long before he had established another tribe. The Orphans were alive and kicking and branching out already.

Buttercup runs her own tribe out of a residential center called Pinewood. It's a twenty-five-bed facility that serves as a residence and school for girls between the ages of eight and
eighteen. Buttercup looks after all the young cubs coming in and makes sure they're taken care of. The adults may run the facility, but she's in charge.

I had heard a rumor that Babyface was sent home. His parents were the litigious type. They dropped a half dozen lawsuits on Kesey for scrambling their kid's brain. I don't know if
I'll ever see him again—and if I did, I don't know which version of him to expect: The blank slate of Merridew's brainwashing or the wiseass photocopy of myself that I had
first met onboard the bus.

The board of directors at Kesey thought it best if Merridew leave as quietly as possible, before any more lawsuits came their way. Merridew was suspended as program director. When asked to
respond to the allegations, she said—“I have no comment. But let us be honest with ourselves, shall we? The public can cry foul over some
silly video
—but these are the very
same parents who put their children into my care in the first place. Society wanted nothing to do with these delinquents, so society sent them to me. I never turned my back on them, no matter how
wretched—while you people,
all of you
, did nothing but look the other way.”

Merridew must've realized her anger was getting the best of her, so she stopped herself from mouthing off any further. She collected herself, lifted her chin.

“I have nothing further to say.”

The institute itself was placed on a three-year probation by the state. The Department of Social Services saw to it that no more ants would be shocked again. Not like I was. I could have powered
all the appliances in our house for an entire month with the amount of electricity that had been pumped through my body.

Spencer Pendleton, Poster Boy for the Horrors of Kesey.

Now I'm free.

Free at last.

WELCOME HOME SPENCER!

The banner hung over the stairs leading up to my bedroom. It was the first thing I saw when I walked through the front door.

Mom stepped up behind me. “I left your room exactly the way you had it.”

Before being sent to live with Dad, I thought.

Before Camp New Leaf. Before my cave-dwelling days. Before Kesey.

So many lifetimes ago.

“If you ever want to talk about…” Mom stopped herself and swallowed. “You know I'm here. I won't force you to talk about it, if you don't want to. But
I'm here.”

“Okay.”

“I'll let you settle back in. Just let me know if you need anything, okay?”

“Okay.”

“You hungry? I can make you a meatloaf sandwich….”

“I'm okay,” I said, hoping to put her mind at rest. “I promise.”

“Okay.”

I started up the stairs, only to stop and turn back to her. “Mom?”

She looked up at me, a look of hope in her eyes. “Yes?”

“It's good to be back.”

She smiled. “Welcome home.”

Home.

The walls of my room were still plastered with the Tribe's missing flyers. Peashooter. Yardstick. Compass. Sporkboy. Their photocopied faces smiled at me.

Even Sully.

Nobody had seen her since she broke free from Kesey. I knew she was still alive because of the video clips getting uploaded online—but that was weeks ago.

I hadn't heard from her since. Not even a postcard.

Sully was a ghost again.

A condition of my release from Kesey was to perform 300 hours of community service.

Who'd take me? What skills had I acquired after all those months in prison?

Luckily, I landed a cushy gig shelving books at our local library.

Yep—the same library whose shelves I destroyed during my impromptu game of Library Dominoes against the local police department.

Forgive and forget, I guess….

I missed the old dusty library at Kesey, even with its lack of literature. But really, I just missed my friends.

My Tribe.

One of my responsibilities was to flip through books and find the vandalism. Wite-Out all the dirty doodles. Erase the explicit scribbles.

As I was flipping through
On the Road
, my eyeballs stumbled on page thirty-three—

What's up, Spencer?

I turned to see if somebody was watching. Nothing. No eyes looking my way. Was somebody playing a prank on me? I quickly erased the missive and moved on.

The next day, while perusing through
I Am Legend
, I faltered on page eighty-six—

You can run, but you can't hide…from me.

I bolted up from my seat and scanned the entire library.