The Academie (21 page)

I made my way to the left side of the
building and began to gasp a bit as I did. Despite the great shape
Fratelli was kicking my butt into in Basic Fitness, the snow was
high and the exertion of walking in it, coupled with the cold air
filling my lungs, always had the power to wear me out quickly.
Normally, I would have flipped my scarf over my mouth so that I
could resume breathing warm air, which usually helped. I could have
used a bit of the sleep pant tied around my leg, but not today.
This was the first fresh air I’d tasted in what seemed like
forever. I wasn’t ready to give it up yet.

I walked out to the fence guarded by
the hedge at the edge of the property. I had no intentions of
leaving—though the thought had certainly crossed my mind—but this
is where I felt I needed to be. I knew what I was looking for, even
if it seemed silly: I was searching for Bryan. Of course I knew I
wouldn’t find him there. This isn’t even the same school he’d left
from that day we tried to meet, let alone the same hedge and fence.
But I needed to be close to him, needed to feel connected to him
again. And this seemed the only way.

On this side of the building, there
were few windows, and I was thankful for it. I didn’t care much
anymore about what any of my classmates thought of me, but I didn’t
want to arouse suspicion or get them worried enough to tell a
Sergeant and get me in trouble. Technically we were allowed to be
outside, but you never know…

I found a small break in the hedge
where the bushes hadn’t quite grown together, and I climbed into
the small space and sat down, surrounding myself in the embrace of
the bushes. It was strange, sure, but I felt safe, secure, and
closer to Bryan than I had in the six months I’d been at The
Academie. It was in a place like this that he had escaped to come
be with me. He had risked who knows what so that we could be
together—even if it hadn’t worked out that day. Being surrounded by
the bushes, I could almost imagine him holding me again.

“
You probably know what
these bushes are called, don’t you?” I whispered to no one,
imagining he could hear. The cold wind blew and the branch to my
right reached over and touched its snow to my nose. “I’m
ridiculous,” I breathed to my green protectors. “God, I miss
him.”

I sat there for a long while before
deciding that the lunch period was probably about over. Then I got
myself up and retraced my steps to the front door. Giant flakes
were falling now, but I felt a little less alone as I wandered back
to my life inside The Academie.

30.
hide-and-seek

I started making the trek outside part
of my daily routine. The rest of my lunch mates thought I was crazy
and no one volunteered to join me, but I was happy to have the time
alone. I found these little adventures outdoors kept me feeling
more alive than I had in months. I wanted to get up in the morning
because I knew that once I had a break, I’d be out there again. I
usually went out at lunch, since it was the only wintertime meal in
the daylight hours. I had a system worked out now too, so that I
could ensure dry clothes to wear to bed and to class the next day.
And so far, I hadn’t seen any sign of Dorm Sergeant
Garret.

Of course, going at lunch also meant
that I missed my time to eat, so I began grabbing something small
on my way out the door, to take to eat in my hedge fort on the side
of the school. This is where I was huddled, eating lunch and having
imaginary conversations with Bryan one day, when I heard an unusual
rustle. I stopped, mid-apple-bite, and my cold breath caught in my
throat.

Crunch, squeak-crunch,
crunch, crunch.

Someone was coming. I was
far back in the hedge with my back against a bit of the fence. I
tucked my partially eaten apple into my sandwich bag and crawled
forward just enough to see outside my fort.
A man.

Fear flooded through
me.
Who could have come for me here? Why?
Was I violating school policy?
I had
successfully ventured outside for weeks.
Was my happy solitude about to be disrupted by a full
inquisition of The Academie staff?
My
heart began to thump loudly in my chest and I was reminded of games
of hide-and-seek as a child, where I had found what I was sure was
the best hiding place in the world, but I feared I’d be found
simply because I couldn’t quiet the noisy thumping of my heart. But
this person didn’t seem to need any hints to where I was. They were
following my footprints.

As they drew closer, I still couldn’t
make out who it was, but I could see enough to suggest that it
wasn’t a member of The Academie staff. For a brief moment, I
imagined it was Bryan, coming to take me away from all of
this.

“
Allie?” The voice came
from across the snow.

Cruunch, crrrrunch,
crrrunch.

It wasn’t Bryan. I didn’t answer. If I
don’t say anything, like in hide-in-seek, I thought there still
might be a chance they would go away.

He didn’t.

“
Allie?” the voice came
again, now walking up to my hiding place. “Allie?”

Cayden. The boy from the hallway. I
felt the flush of embarrassment rush over me. I began to wish that
I had dug a hole and dropped myself into it.

“
Are you okay?”

I thought about answering, but my
voice wouldn’t come. What would I say? What do you say to this? I’m
a grown woman hiding in a hedge. Yeah, this was real normal. I
simply looked at him in response.

“
I was worried about you.
I noticed you’ve been coming out here alone for weeks now… I know
you said you were okay before, but…I thought I should
double-check.”

He was so sweet. I wanted to be angry
at him for invading my sacred place, but a part of me felt
grateful.

He held out his hand to help me up. I
grabbed my sandwich bag in one sock-covered hand and his hand in
the other. I was suddenly aware of how ridiculous I looked. There
were sleep pants on my head. I started to pull them off, but he
stopped me. “Don’t. You look adorable. Besides, it’s smart. You’re
dressed for the weather. Your ears won’t turn red like mine.” I
looked, and sure enough, his were turning red. “Do you want to take
a walk?”

I was still too embarrassed to answer,
so I simply shrugged and followed his lead. He headed toward the
back of the school building, sticking toward the hedge to lengthen
the walk since besides the trek out to the fields, there really
wasn’t very far that we could go.

The snow was light now, and it danced
around us as the wind blew lightly causing small swirls of snow
that I knew would create light patterns on the new fallen surface
as it continued.

“
It’s not actually that
bad out here, huh?” He looked at me, and when I didn’t respond, he
continued. “No one comes outside. I guess it looks worse than it
is. Once you are out here for a bit, it’s really not that
bad.”

We were approaching the back of the
school now, and I found myself suddenly interested in my
surroundings again. I’d been meaning to come back here for weeks,
simply out of curiosity because I realized that I’d never seen it
before. The sports fields were off the other direction, so really
students never had a reason to come back here.

As we came around the side, I saw the
parking lot I expected to see, along with the cars that I assumed
were from faculty and staff as well. Like most schools, there
weren’t tons of windows in The Academie, but I thought I had looked
down on this parking lot once before, early on in my stay here. But
what I didn’t understand was the giant wing of the building that
protruded from the backside. It was evident that it was an
addition, since it didn’t match the rest of the structure. In fact,
it wasn’t anything like the standard kind of an addition you’d see
on a building, where they had tried to match up the brick but it
didn’t quite work. This was as if they made no attempt to make the
two meet. From the old brick school building now protruded this
massive windowless, warehouse-like steel structure. It was
hideous.

“
What is that?” I asked,
breaking my silence.

“
I don’t know,” he said,
looking equally perplexed. “Maybe it’s the dorms?”

“
I don’t think so. No, it
can’t be. Ours has a window. It’s small, but it’s something. And
it’s on the third floor. No, ours is right above the classrooms.”
We continued walking toward it, until recognition dawned on me,
causing me to stop suddenly. “They told us they were the dorms.
When they were adding on to the buildings. I remember. They said it
was the dorms.”

“
Yeah, I remember that. I
remember thinking about how I was going to have to live in that
windowless place for the next two years.”

“
Yeah,” I answered, but
his response had caught me by surprise.
Two years
. I hadn’t realized that he
must be older than me.

I stared off at the mysterious
addition, but couldn’t make any sense of it. What on earth could
they be storing in there? Why were there no windows? Not even a
windowed door. Absolutely no way to get any glimpse of what might
be going on inside.

It was a strange sight: a plain,
cream-colored steel building adjoining the old brick, laid out
behind a parking lot with a couple dozen snow-covered cars in a lot
that didn’t look like it had been plowed in weeks. “The cars. The
lot,” I sputtered. “How did they get inside? Where are the
footprints? Why doesn’t it look like they’ve left?”

“
Huh?” He appeared lost in
his own thoughts.

“
Look around. The
teachers, the staff— they come and go each day, don’t
they?”

“
Yeah, sure.”

“
Then why doesn’t it look
like it? It doesn’t look like these cars have moved in
ages.”

I watched as he scanned the lot and
recognition dawned on him. “Well, they can’t stay here, right?” he
asked, now confused.

“
I don’t know, but it
appears that way.”

“
Where would they
go?”

“
Maybe they live there?” I
said, now pointing to the mysterious steel structure ahead of
us.

“
That’s just too
weird.”

“
This
place
is weird,” I said, happy to
hear that someone seemed to finally be seeing things my
way.

We didn’t continue our walk the rest
of the way around the building. Feeling now like we had trespassed
and discovered forbidden knowledge, we turned and headed back the
way we came.

31.
spring

I felt strange as I went back to
class. My solitary life had been disrupted, reminding me of where I
was and causing my brain to switch back into gear. On top of that,
I had strange butterfly feelings inside me now—confusing feelings.
Cayden was lean, built, attractive, and obviously interested in me.
But I had—

Did I have
anything?

I wasn’t sure anymore. I thought I’d
given up all hope of any future with Bryan. But even with Cayden
right there in front of me, I couldn’t picture myself with anyone
but Bryan.

I didn’t want to.

But in my brief interaction with
Cayden I realized something else: I needed him. I needed friends. I
needed people who cared about me. It was what I had been missing.
And I kicked myself now thinking of how I had pushed Ruby and the
others away. Maybe they needed me too, and I had let them down.
Would they forgive me?

“
Hi,” I said meekly,
setting down my tray at dinner that evening.

“
Hi,” Ruby answered,
looking surprised.

“
She lives!” Robert
declared.

I looked around the table.

“
Girl, you haven’t said
two words in weeks,” Tina said.

“
Look, I’m really
sorry.”

Ruby looked at me sweetly. “For
what?”

“
For being a
jerk.”

Stevie wasn’t smiling. “We were
worried.”

I had completely taken them for
granted. Now I really felt like a jerk. Here’s Ruby, a woman who’s
been away from her child for six months now, and rather than
collapsing under the grief, she’d found a way to pull herself
together. Each of the others had their own struggles and yet they
seemed to be managing fine. Meanwhile, I’d been the pale-faced
zombie chick, wallowing in my own misery. Pathetic.

“
I’m glad to see you’re
looking better,” Ruby said.

“
Thanks.” I smiled, and it
felt good.

I saw Cayden depart from the food
line. He caught my glance and smiled. “You’re looking better,” he
said, arriving beside me.

“
I feel better too,
thanks.” I felt awkward then and realized I needed to introduce my
table mates. “This is Ruby,” I said, gesturing across the table.
“And Stevie, Tina, and Robert. This is Cayden,” I said, looking at
the group around the table. “He’s in my...” I looked at him, not
quite sure, “
History
class?”