Shadows (11 page)

Had he given up?

But if he had, and was just marking answers at random, why was he even using the test book anymore? Why wasn’t he simply going through the answer sheets, marking numbers?

A bell sounded in both Engersol’s office and the adjoining room.

Josh, his thoughts interrupted by the sudden noise, looked up at the clock and was surprised to see that the allotted three hours had passed.

His eyes shifted to the sheets on which he’d marked his answers, and he felt a vague queasiness in his stomach.

At least a quarter of the questions weren’t marked at all. And how many of the ones he’d answered were wrong?

But it wasn’t possible—he’d never failed to complete a test before, not even the ones they’d said no one was
supposed
to finish. He’d always done them all, finishing with plenty of time left over.

And now he’d failed.

He wasn’t going to get into the Academy at all!

A wave of frustration crashed in on him, and he picked up the pencils that were arranged neatly on the table in front of him and hurled them across the room. Then, snatching up the test booklet, he burst through the door to Dr. Engersol’s office.

“There wasn’t enough time!” he yelled, his face red, his eyes screwed into tiny slits. “Nobody could finish your stupid test!” Flinging the book at Dr. Engersol, he stormed out of the office, slamming the door behind him. Feeling her own face turning crimson with embarrassment, Brenda leapt to her feet and started after him.

“I’m sorry,” she said over her shoulder. “I don’t know what got into him. I’ll make him apologize.”

Before she could leave the room, George Engersol stopped her. “It’s all right, Mrs. MacCallum,” he said, grasping her arm and leading her back toward the chair.
“Believe me, no matter where he’s gone or what he’s doing, someone is keeping an eye on him.”

Brenda froze. What was he saying? Did they watch all the kids here, all the time? But why?

And then she thought she knew the answer. They would do whatever they had to do to prevent exactly the sort of thing Josh had done on Monday. The last thing this school would want was for their students to do themselves any harm.

“But he still can’t act that way!” she grumbled. “He hasn’t any right to be rude to you, no matter what he thinks!”

Engersol smiled thinly. “Well, at least I know where he gets his temper, anyway,” he observed. “I’m not sure he’s any angrier than you are right now.”

“But he—”

“He just experienced the hardest test he’s ever taken,” Engersol said. “He didn’t finish
it—couldn’t
finish it—and he’s feeling totally frustrated. But he’s right about one thing,” he went on, his smile broadening. “No one can finish that test in the allotted time. That’s part of the point of it—I need to know how the kids react to being stymied. And Josh reacted very, very well.”

Brenda gaped. “Well? You call that fit reacting well?”

Engersol chuckled. “In terms of Josh, yes. It tells me he’s not lazy, and that he likes to get things done. All he wanted to do was finish the test, Mrs. MacCallum, and I frustrated him, which was part of the test. And frankly, I’d rather see him get mad than just accept the limitations of even an intellect as good as his. So let’s let him cool off, and find out how he did, all right?” Going to the next room, he picked up the sheets that were covered with Josh’s answers to the hundreds of questions that had been posed, and frowned.

Until now, none of the students had ever filled in so much as half the answer sheets. It looked as though Josh had come close to completing nearly seventy-five percent of it.

Unless, at the end, he’d simply been taking blind guesses. Well, Engersol thought, he’d soon know. Taking
the sheets back to his office, he began scanning them into his computer.

In less than a minute he’d have Josh’s results.

   “Hildie?”

Hildie Kramer looked up from her desk to see Tina Craig standing in the doorway to her office. At thirteen, Tina was already blossoming rapidly into womanhood, and by next year, when she would begin taking all her courses at the university, she would undoubtedly look several years older than she actually was. Which meant that once more there would be boys between eighteen and twenty-one arriving at the house, trying to figure out why the girl they’d made a date with was living with “the kids.” First, of course, they’d assume she worked there—they always did. And then Hildie would have to explain Tina’s true age, and that she lived there because she was part of the Academy. The boys would flush with embarrassment, unless they were a lot more mature than they normally were, and then flee, leaving Hildie to explain to Tina that she’d been stood up. Hildie sighed. Tina was going to be a problem. “What is it, Tina?” she asked, beckoning the girl into her office. “Is something wrong?”

“Not with me,” Tina replied. “It’s Amy Carlson. I’ve been trying to talk her into coming to the picnic, but she won’t leave her room. She’s even more homesick than I was when I first came, and I didn’t think anyone could get it worse than I did. All Amy says is that she wants to go home, and she’s not leaving her room until her parents come and get her.”

“All right.” Hildie sighed, putting aside the report she was working on and lifting herself out of her chair. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Sometimes, she reflected as she started the long climb to the third floor, trying to act both as administrator of the Academy and chief housemother as well seemed like too much. And yet every thing was going so well, and George had accomplished so much in the few years since the Academy had been established, that it made the long days all worthwhile. Amy was just the kind of child the Academy
had been created for. To lose her now, before they’d even had a chance to get started with her, would be a shame.

She tapped softly at the little girl’s door. When there was no answer, she twisted the knob and let herself into the room.

Amy was lying on her bed, her eyes red from crying. Next to her, rubbing against her legs and mewing to be petted, was Tabby, obviously aware that something was wrong with his new friend, and worried about it.

“Didn’t you hear me knocking?” Hildie asked, sitting down on the chair in front of Amy’s desk.

Amy, her face stormy, made no reply, and when Tabby tried to work his head under her hand, she jerked the cat petulantly away.

“That’s not very nice,” Hildie commented. “All he wants is tobe petted.”

Amy’s little chin jutted out. “I’m not feeling very nice,” she said. “I wish Tabby would go away and leave me alone. And I wish you would, too.”

“Well, I’m not going to,” Hildie replied. “At least not until you tell me why you won’t go to the picnic. It’s a beautiful day, and I know you like to go swimming.”

“I don’t want to go swimming,” Amy shot back. “I just want to call my mother arid have her come and get me.”

“I thought we had an agreement,” Hildie said reasonably, choosing to ignore Amy’s angry tone. “You talked to your mother twice on Thursday, and again yesterday. And we agreed that you’d talk to her again tomorrow, but not today.”

Amy’s chin began to tremble, and her eyes glistened with tears. “I don’t care! I miss my room, and Kitty-Cat, and everything else. I hate it here, and I want to go home!”

“But we all agreed that you’d try it for a week. That’s only a few more days, and—”

“I want to go home
now!”
Amy demanded. “Nobody here likes me, and I don’t have any friends.”

“Well, that’s just not true,” Hildie argued patiently. “Tabby likes you, and I like you, and Tina likes you—”

“She does not! She’s just being nice to me because you told her to!”
“Actually, she’s worried about you. She didn’t think anyone could be more homesick than she was, but she thinks you are.”

For a split second Hildie thought she saw a flicker of uncertainty in the little girl’s eyes, but then her face settled once more into a stubborn mask.

“If I have to stay here, I’ll die,” she said.

“Now, that’s just silly, Amy. Nobody dies of homesickness. I know how much it hurts, but you’ll get over it—”

“I will not!” Amy shouted. “Why don’t you just leave me alone? I didn’t ask you to come up here. All I want is to be left alone!”

Ever since Wednesday, Amy had spent as much time as she could alone in her room, and yesterday hadn’t even gone to her classes. If it went on much longer, Hildie would have no choice but to call the Carlsons and tell them that it wasn’t working out But she wasn’t ready to give up. Not yet.

“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” she said. “I’m just going to stay right here with you, and not leave you alone for a minute. I can have a bed brought up here, and then I can even sleep with you. After all, homesickness is mostly loneliness, and if we’re together all the time, how can you be lonely? We can even have our meals brought up here. I’ll just take a few days off—”

Amy was staring at her now, her eyes wide. “No,” she wailed. “I don’t want you staying with me. I want you to go away!”

“Well, that may be what you think you want, but it’s not what you’re going to get,” Hildie said placidly. “After all, I’m a lot older than you, and I think I know a lot more about it than you do.” She would have gone on talking, but Amy leaped off the bed, sending Tabby sprawling to the floor, and stormed out of the room. By the time Hildie had gotten to the hall, Amy was pounding down the stairs. Smiling, the housemother followed. When she reached the loggia, she found Tina standing there, looking even more worried than before.

“Amy just went tearing outside,” the girl told her. “She
was crying like crazy, and when I tried to stop her, she just jerked away from me and kept going.”

“Which way did she go?” Hildie asked.

“Out there,” Tina said, pointing to a clump of redwoods planted in a circle near the middle of the front lawn, their massive roots completely hidden by thick shrubbery.

Hildie nodded in satisfaction. “She’ll be fine,” she told Tina. Amy hadn’t taken off for the front gate after all, but only for the hiding place the children had named the Gazebo. Yes, little Amy would be just fine.

Tina cocked her head and regarded the housemother, remembering the day five years before when she herself had wanted more than anything to go home. When the house had finally closed around her, and she hadn’t thought she could stand it anymore, she had run.

All the way out to the front lawn, where she’d burrowed through the shrubbery beneath the trees that formed the Gazebo. Within the circle of immense trees, hidden from view, she’d slowly begun to feel better. She’d sat down on the thick mat of fallen needles that blanketed the ground within the circle, and decided that it was her own secret place, a place she could retreat to when she just wanted to think, or be by herself. In the five years since, it had never occurred to her that she wasn’t the only person at the Academy who used the Gazebo for exactly that purpose. She studied Hildie. “Did you know that’s where I went, when I first came here?” Tina asked.

“Of course,” Hildie said blithely. “I know everything that goes on here. Now go along down to the beach. I’ll be along later, when Amy’s ready to come. And don’t let them eat all the potato salad before I get there!”

As Tina headed off to the beach a mile away, Hildie returned to her office, determined to finish the report she was working on. Yet even as she worked, she kept half an eye on the Gazebo. It wouldn’t do to lose Amy Carlson now.

The little girl had far too good a mind to allow it to go to waste somewhere else.

Amy crawled through the dense shrubbery, ignoring the twigs that scratched at her face and caught at her T-shirt. A few seconds later she emerged from the bushes and paused to catch her breath. Sprawling out on her back, she peered at the branches that mingled a hundred feet above her head, casting their deep shade into the clearing within the circle. It was cooler here, and the air smelled of the fallen needles that carpeted the ground and squished softly under her whenever she moved.

Then, from off to the right, she heard a sound.

Startled, she turned her head and saw a boy about her own age, staring at her. For a moment she didn’t recognize him, but then realized she’d seen him from her window, arriving with his mother that morning. But what was he doing here? If he was coming to the school, why wasn’t he down at the beach?

She thought she heard him sniffle, and saw him wiping his nose on the sleeve of his shirt.

“That’s gross,” she said. “Don’t you have a handkerchief?”

The boy shook his head. “I don’t need one. I’m okay.”

Amy rolled over and propped her chin on her hands. “You don’t look okay.”

“You don’t, either,” the boy replied. “Why don’t you blow your nose? It’s dripping snot all over your chin.”

Reaching into the pocket of her jeans, Amy pulled a wadded-up hankie out and wiped at her face. “Why don’t you go away?” she challenged.

“I was here first. Why don’t you go away?”

“Maybe I don’t want to,” Amy shot back.

“Well, maybe I don’t, either,” Josh replied, his voice turning truculent.

The two children stared at each other for a while, until Amy looked away. “Is your mom making you come here?” she asked, sure she knew why the boy was hiding in the circle of trees.

“She’s not
making
me,” Josh replied with a show of bravado he didn’t feel. “Besides, it doesn’t make any difference what she wants. I flunked the test.”

Amy cocked her head. “Don’t be stupid. Nobody flunks the test. It’s not that kind.”

“But I couldn’t even finish it,” Josh said, his voice catching in spite of himself. “I mean, I didn’t even come close!”

Amy, her own problems suddenly forgotten for a moment, moved closer to Josh. “How much did you get done?”

Josh shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe three-fourths of it.”

“Three-fourths!” Amy squealed. “I didn’t even get half of it done! How’d you do so much?”

Josh stared at her. Was she lying to him, just trying to make him feel better? “What are you doing here?” he asked, instead of answering her question. “How come you’re not at the beach with everybody else?”