The Academie (19 page)

“
You mean leave here
later, or you don’t want to go to The Academie?”

“
Both. Just think how
great it’d be if we were able to date like normal people. The
biggest challenge we’d face would be the fact that we live a couple
hours apart.”

“
And that could be easily
remedied,” he added. “We could go to the same college, or I could
go to another nearby.”

“
Oh man!” I rolled over
and buried my head into the pillow.

“
Okay, I could stay far
away if you want.”

“
No, of course not.” I
rolled over again, took his hand and wove my fingers between his.
“I’d love to have you close by. That’s the point.” I paused. “But
instead, soon I won’t have any contact with you at all.”

He sighed. “We’ll figure something
out,” he said after what felt like several minutes.

“
Have you ever thought
about running away?” It may be childish, but I had to
ask.

“
Oh, of course. A hundred
million times I’ve thought about it. But where do we go? We’d have
to get to Canada or Mexico to escape The Academie. And that’s
easier said than done.”

“
I just want to feel like
I’m doing
something
. Just giving in and going—it feels
wrong
.”

He surprised me by smiling.

“
What?” I
asked.

“
You sound like my
mom.”

I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to
take that as a compliment. “That’s a little creepy.”

“
No, it’s just, well,
she’s the same way. She’s all about action.”

“
I just hate it when
people sit around complaining about something, but they don’t
actually do anything to change things.”

He half-smiled again, and I could tell
he was still thinking that I sounded like Anna. I guess I should
take it as a compliment; I really did admire her. But it all seemed
a little weird in a strange Freudian kind of way.

He looked at me seriously. “We’ll do
something. It might just take a little while to figure out what.”
He paused and took a deep breath. “In the meantime, you’ll get to
see what The Academie’s like from the inside.”

I felt my stomach drop. How was I ever
going to survive The Academie when I felt sick just thinking about
it? I sighed and turned to stare at the ceiling.

He touched my chin lightly
and guided my head so that I turned to look into his eyes. “You’re
going to be okay. It really isn’t
that
bad.”

I don’t know how he did it, but
somehow, in that moment, I felt better.

“
Besides, at least they
won’t make you cut your hair,” he added teasingly, pulling at his
own.

“
Sorry,” I said, smiling
and scrunching my face up in a way that I hoped conveyed how bad I
felt that I hadn’t been more considerate of all he’d been through
already. I brushed my hand over the top of his head. “It’s cute
though.”

“
Thanks, but it’s really
not me.”

His eyes met mine again. His face was
only inches from my own. He was right there, so real, so flawless,
so beautiful. I ran my fingers over his forehead and cheeks again,
trying to memorize every detail.

He slid his hand behind my neck and
gently pulled me closer. Then our lips met again and I knew why it
was that people closed their eyes when they kiss, because I
couldn’t have kept mine open if I’d wanted to; the feeling of
ecstasy that rushed through me was so intense, I could feel it
course from my heart, to my head, out my arms, down through my
body, reaching out even to the tips of my toes.

He softly kissed each of my cheeks,
forehead, and lips again, and I laid there with my fingers tangled
up in his, wondering how it was that I would bring myself to say
goodbye to all of this in a few short hours.

He unwound his fingers from mine and
sitting up, grabbed a blanket from the base of the bed which he
threw over both of us as he laid back down. “Let me know if you get
too warm,” he said, “but you still feel cold to me.”

I still had the comforter over me,
which divided the lower half of my body from his. But he took one
arm and wrapped it around me, pulling me closer, while with his
other hand he pulled the blankets up to cover my cold
arms.

I positioned my head in the
comfortable spot between his chest and shoulder, and in this safe
and cozy place, I drifted back to sleep.

25.
morning breath

I awoke to Bryan’s gentle caress on my
cheek. I opened my eyes from a brief but restful sleep to see his
dark brown eyes and dimpled cheeks smiling down at me. I had slept
so deeply that it took me a minute to get my bearings. The happy
surprise of seeing him there caused a wide grin to spread across my
face.

“
Good morning, Angel,” he
said, seeing my smile. He smiled back and leaned over to kiss my
forehead. “Did you sleep well?”

“
Yeah, actually, I did.”
And that’s when I remembered how little time I had left with him.
“What time is it?” I asked, sitting up in a panic.
Please let it be early still.

“
Almost nine.”

“
Oh no. Really?” I threw
my legs over the side of the bed, preparing to get up. He had to be
back at ten. That meant we had less than an hour left.

“
Hey,” he said, putting a
hand on my shoulder, “it’s going to be okay. My mom’s making
pancakes. Why don’t we join her?”

“
Yeah, okay….Oh, I must
look a mess!” I said, realizing that I had slept in my clothes—not
to mention that my hair had matted up in my sleep
and—
oh god, I hope I don’t have morning
breath.

“
You look adorable,
actually. I like your hair all mussed up like that; it’s cute.”
Despite the fact that I thought he must be crazy, he appeared
sincere.

“
I hope you don’t mind if
I comb it out and tie it back then?” I said, smiling.

“
Whatever makes you
happy.” He grinned and I wondered if his face hurt from smiling as
bad as mine did.

I grabbed a brush from my bag that had
mysteriously found its way into his room and attempted to comb out
the tangled mess attached to my head. After making what I hoped was
some improvement, I pulled out an elastic band and tied it all back
in a ponytail. Bryan watched attentively.

“
Beautiful,” he said when
I’d finished.

“
Thanks.” I would miss
this later in the day.

We headed into the kitchen and found
his mom flipping pancakes on a griddle and his dad staring down at
his phone. “Good morning,” we chimed in unison.

“
Did you sleep alright?”
Anna asked, looking up from the stove.

I nodded, but Bryan shrugged. “A lot
on my mind…” he said.

“
I see you made cookies,”
Anna said, flipping a pancake and nodding to the stack of tins on
the counter. “Had a little trouble with the flour too, I
see.”

I looked at Bryan and grinned
sheepishly.

“
Damn, I thought we
cleaned all that up,” he said, reaching for a tin of
cookies.

“
You aren’t going to eat
those for breakfast, are you?” Anna reprimanded.

“
Well, I won’t get to eat
them later, will I?” he said, opening the tin. “Besides, homemade
cookies are good any time of day. Like one Allie?” he asked,
holding the tin out to me.

I hesitated, not knowing whether I
should or not, since he had just been reprimanded for it, but I
looked up and saw that they were both smiling. “It’s fine,” he
encouraged. I pulled out a medium-sized one filled with chips and
took a bite. He was right: cookies were good at any time of day. He
grabbed out a big one and we grinned at one another as we sat
eating our cookies for breakfast like a couple of mischievous
kids.

“
Well, I hope you will
save some room for pancakes,” Anna said, resuming her
work.

“
Don’t worry mom. I
wouldn’t miss a chance at your pancakes for anything.”

Anna beamed.

My gaze shifted to James, who I could
see was still pouring over news on his phone. Bryan noticed it
too.

“
What’s up,
dad?”

“
Well, it appears that an
Academie official has made the news this morning. Here, let me see
if I can pull up the video. He clicked the mini projector in the
side of his phone and flashed it onto a nearby wall. When the video
started, I could see a disgruntled-looking man in a suit trying to
evade a mob of reporters.

“
Mr. Delamot, can you tell
us anything about your resignation?” one reporter shouted above the
rest. A hundred microphones flew into his face.

“
I will not continue to
work with The Academie system because it is immoral. That is all I
will say.” He waved the reporters away as he proceeded through the
crowd.

“
Who’s that?” I asked as
the video ended and James clicked off the projector.

“
Samuel Delamot, former
big-wig in The Academie system,” James said. “Just offered his
resignation this morning.

“
Well, I’m glad to hear
that someone finally is recognizing that the system is messed up,”
I said, feeling bolder than usual—possibly due to my lack of
sleep

“
I agree, Allie,” Anna
said as she loaded the final pancake onto a plate to join us at the
table.

“
But it is strange,” James
noted, “because Delamot was one of the leading advocates of The
Academie system in the beginning.

“
Yeah, I remember that,” I
said, recognition dawning on me. “Yeah, he was the guy who was
always on TV for a while—saying how great the concept was and how
it was going to change the world. I wonder what made him change his
mind.”

“
Maybe he visited one of
the facilities,” Bryan said, getting up from the table. “What would
you like to drink Allie?” he asked, now standing beside the fridge.
“We have juice, water, chocolate soymilk, and it looks like someone
made coffee.” He appeared to be ready to drop the conversation and
think about other things. I didn’t blame him.

“
Coffee’d be great,
thanks.”

He poured a glass of orange juice for
himself and a coffee for me and sat back down at the table.
Meanwhile Anna joined us with blueberry and maple syrups and a
stack of plates and silverware.

“
You first Allie,” Anna
said, passing the plate of pancakes.

Breakfast, of course, went quicker
than I would have liked. We finished when we realized that Bryan
only had enough time left to scoop up his things and head to the
door. With a quick kiss, a hug, and another promise it will be
okay, he was gone.

I felt a giant hole rip through my
heart as I stood there with Anna in the doorway trying to make
sense of what had just happened.

Had any of it been
real?

I wished I had a rewind button on my
life so I could go back, do it again, and somehow make it last
longer. Maybe this time I wouldn’t fall asleep, or I’d skip
breakfast, or I wouldn’t be so sleepy so it wouldn’t all seem so
much like a dream…

26.
the hidden value of the arts

“
Allie,” Anna said as she
backed away from the door. “I want to show you
something.”

She led me to a back room on the
opposite side of the kitchen. Inside, a large painting hung in the
center of the back wall.

I gasped at the sight of it. Then my
eyes circled around, horrified. Jetting out from the upper right
hand corner of the painting, an enormous brick and steel structure
protruded into a peaceful scene, its dark reds and grays
contrasting sharply with the bright green, blue, and yellow of the
lush landscape it overtook. In its wake it left storms and
devastation—withered plants that seemed to cry out for
sunshine.

“
Do you know what it
is?”

I nodded. “The Academie.”

“
Did Bryan show you
this?”

I shook my head.

“
He painted it, almost a
year ago now.”

I shook my head again. “He never
mentioned that he painted…”

“
Our society doesn’t value
the arts, so The Academie doesn’t either. This is the last thing he
painted, before he put his brushes away. This is my office,” she
said, walking over to straighten papers on the desk. “I hung it
here to remind me. Bryan and millions of others throughout the
country are locked in there…”

I sighed.

“
Allie, we’re trying to
move to Canada.”

The pain in my chest grew deeper and a
dull ache began in the pit of my stomach.

“
We haven’t told him,
obviously, but we’ve already applied for visas.” She looked at me
to see how I was taking it, and I tried my best not to react. “Our
jobs are not the same, now that The Academie has practically
absorbed the colleges. Second career students are great, but it’s
just—Allie, I’m sorry, but we just can’t leave him there for four
more years.” Her eyes were full of tears.