The Academie (4 page)

“
While I am on the subject
of attire,” she continued, “let me tell you about the regulations
regarding your appearance. Your uniform should
not
be altered in any way. It will
be worn with the pant legs reaching to your shoes—not rolled up—and
the shirt collar buttoned all the way up. Likewise, sleeves must be
worn just as they are—not folded or rolled. You have been given
short sleeves to begin the school year and the building is
air-conditioned, so you should not have any trouble. A jacket has
been provided for any of you who tend to chill easily.” She glared
at me when she said it, and several people turned to look. I
blushed and looked away.

“
As for your personal
hygiene, it is expected that you will shower at least every other
day. Long hair will be worn tied back away from your face. No
makeup will be provided, but soap, shampoo and a few other
essentials will be. Non-compliance with the dress code will not be
tolerated. When I call out your name, come forward to get your
uniform and a box of personal hygiene items.”

As she called each person, I watched
and listened, hoping to get an idea of who I was going to be living
with for the next several years. A few names I recognized, though
they were people I really didn’t know in high school. Then I saw my
bunk-mate go forward, but unfortunately, I missed her
name.

Next Sergeant Garret distributed
school supplies. We were each assigned a basic laptop computer and
given several notepads and a few pens and pencils. Then we were
shown where our rooms’ printer was located and where we could get
more paper and ink when it ran out.

Finally, Garret passed out the
schedule for the following day. Horror struck me as I read
it.

6:00 a.m. Wake up

7:00 a.m. Breakfast

7:30 a.m. Math Placement
Exam

10:00 a.m. English Placement
Exam

12:30 p.m. Lunch

1:00 p.m. Science Placement
Exam

3:30 p.m. History and Social Sciences
Placement Exam

6:00 p.m. Dinner

7:00 p.m. Fitness testing

I couldn’t believe I had to take so
many exams. Couldn’t they just look at my records and figure out a
good place for me to start? And what was “fitness testing”? As a
non-athlete, I could think of no better way to end what looks like
a miserable day.

Next Sergeant Garret directed our
attention to the rules of The Academie, which were posted in bold
letters on one of the walls of the dorm.

All students will:

1. Show respect to all Academie teachers,
   staff, and personnel
   

2. Attend all meals and
   classes
   

3. Obey the rules of hygiene and dress
   code
   

4. Not leave the facility unless given
   permission by an Academie staff member
   

5. Not occupy the dorm area during class
   hours (if you are sick you should be in the medical
   ward)
   

*All students will obey
these rules of conduct or be held accountable*

Dinner came next, and I
joined Ruby again for a gourmet delight of dried out lasagna and
iceberg lettuce drizzled in cheap Italian dressing. I knew now how
The Academie could promise to put students in better health than
they entered with: they were going to starve us. Since most young
people were overweight, students here would drop weight and the
tactic would make it appear that The Academie was doing great. I
had it all figured out. That is, until I looked around and saw
everyone else enjoying themselves.
What’s
with this place?

After dinner, we returned to our dorm
for the evening. “Ladies, the rest of the evening is yours to get
yourself settled in,” Garret said, “—but keep it the noise to a
minimum. If it gets too loud, we’ll spend the rest of the evening
in silence. Also, because you have a full day of testing tomorrow,
the lights will go out an hour early, at 10:00. This should give
you plenty of time to prepare yourself and get a good night’s sleep
before your exams. Any questions?”

No one moved.

“
Alright then. Goodnight
ladies.” Garrett turned her back and waved as she exited, but
perched herself right outside the door. I wondered if she intended
to spend the entire evening there.

I looked at the clock. Seven-thirty.
What was I going to do for two and a half hours? Around me people
began to shuffle softly, but it seemed they all may have been
thinking the same thing, for there was very little
conversation.

That’s when I realized
there was no television. In my college dorm there was a common area
with a T.V. and a couple of couches, where we could hang out when
we had nothing to do or just needed to relax. Here there appeared
to be no such thing. Three years with no T.V.? I wasn’t a huge T.V.
viewer, but the thought of living without it completely seemed a
bit extreme.
Just another way to cut us
off from the rest of the world…

I decided to use the time to set up my
desk and get the rest of my things situated. My bunk mate lay on
her bed again.

“
I was going to take this
desk, if you don’t mind,” I told her, gesturing to a desk on the
right side of our bunk.

“
Fine by me,” she
said.

I pulled the stack of school supplies
down from where I had placed them on my bed and began to find homes
for them inside the desk. Next I brought down the laptop and opened
it up to see what it could do. Just like the outside suggested, the
software was very basic: a word processor, calculator, spreadsheet
and database program and a couple others that appeared to be
specific to different types of classes I imagined I might take
during my time here.

I knew I wouldn’t find it, but I
searched for any program that might get me onto the
internet.

It was to no avail.

Somehow this made the fact that I
wasn’t going to talk to Bryan again all the more real.

5.
stupidness

How did my life come to
this?

I shut the computer, climbed up into
my bed, and stared at the bright industrial lights above
me.

A week after I graduated high school,
construction began to turn this place into an Academie facility. In
fact, the final days of my high school years were primarily a
looting party. Teachers didn’t even attempt to hold proper classes.
Things disappeared from everywhere as people took them home as
souvenirs. First it was little stuff: things off bulletin boards,
staplers, pencil sharpeners, lab goggles, a tambourine from the
band room. But then there were big things: microscopes, printers,
tuba—yes, I saw a guy walk off with a school tuba. One guy even
pried the front off his locker and took it with him.

Teachers looked the other way. Some
said nobody cared because they heard it was all going to be trashed
anyway. Another rumor claimed that the teachers were encouraging it
because they were losing their jobs.

I didn’t believe that at
the time.
Where would the government get
so many new teachers in so little time?
I
remember asking someone. But I couldn’t help but notice that Mr.
Waters brought a larger than usual bag to school on the last day.
And I swore I saw him shove a school laptop inside of it on his way
out…

The day The Academie opened was
practically a holiday. Most businesses either closed or gave their
employees a half day off so that parents and siblings could say
goodbye to family members. News stations ran a continuous broadcast
from local Academie facilities, shifting periodically to Washington
for updates from government officials. The President gave an
address reiterating what a difference The Academie would make for
the future of our nation. It was all stuff that we heard him say
countless times before, but for some reason people seemed glued to
the T.V. when he came out to say it again.

It was October, so I was away at
college. Since I wasn’t allowed to keep a car on campus, my dad was
kind enough to make the three hour trek to take me home to see my
sixteen-year-old brother, Matt, off to The Academie the next day.
That night we had one last family dinner, ate cake, and said
goodbye to life as we’d known it. The next morning, mom, dad, Matt,
Andy—five-years-old at the time, and I ventured off to my former
high school—now a fully functional Academie facility complete with
16 foot prison fences, and we left Matt within its
gates.

A year later, here I was. Within
months of the first enrollment of high schoolers, the message came
out: The Academie was a success. The program would be expanded. I
knew some of the modern theories of adolescence; we’d discussed
them in College Pysch. Many experts believed that young people
today weren’t fully developed until they were in their early
twenties or beyond. Some said we weren’t adults until thirty. The
Academie used these studies to support the expansion. That’s how
I—and every other person under the age of 23—got drafted into the
program: they changed the definition of adult.

The thing that frightened
me wasn’t even the place itself, as much as how eager people were
to accept it. The Academie system supplanted all previous
educational options. Yet rarely did I hear complaints. And if I
did, they were just that: complaints. No action.
Is that what it means to be an adult?

Bryan came into the picture about six
months ago, after my visit with Matt. I couldn’t think about that
now. I pushed Bryan’s image from my brain.

I focused instead on my nightmare
visit with Matt. It still made me sick to think about it. Matt and
I had always been so close, but now all he seemed to care about was
his education—his future.

“
The opportunities here
are immense,” I remember him saying. “The teachers are exceptional
and not only am I already working on my college degree way ahead of
schedule, when I leave here, the teachers will be able to offer me
great references to get me started. They are all army personnel,
you know, and that will look great on my resume.”

I’d worked so hard to get to visit; I
tried to ignore how he was acting. “But do you get outside? Does it
suck being stuck here?”

“
Allie, aren’t you
listening? It’s great here. I get outside plenty and the people
here are like my family. I have no reason to leave."

Like family? That
hurt…both then and all over again as I remembered it. I remember
looking away. That’s when I saw the video camera.
“Are they watching us?”

“
I don’t know, probably.
What difference does it make?

“
Well it’s weird, isn’t
it? I don’t like the idea of being watched. I’m glad you like it
here, but this place gives me the creeps. Do you know that they
have a guard shack and a gated entrance out front? They gave me a
hard time about coming here, and then they made me fill out a huge
stack of paperwork and show two forms of identification just to be
able to see you today.”

“
Well, you heard what they
said at orientation: they don’t want anything interfering with our
education. Frankly, I agree with them.”

“
What are you saying? You
don’t want me to visit?”

“
I’m just saying that I’ve
now been taken out of class twice because you’ve visited and mom
and dad visited a month ago, and I’m missing out on a lot I’ll have
to catch up on.”

I remember looking at him, aghast. I
hadn’t seen him in months and he was complaining about an hour’s
visit? “You told me to come now, remember?”

“
Yeah, well, that was
before.”

“
So it already sounds like
I’m not going to see you when you graduate either, so what is this?
I’m out? Is it too inconvenient to have a sister now?”

“
My future needs to come
first, Allie. You understand that, don’t you?”

No, I didn’t understand. But I was too
upset to discuss it further. I stood up and grabbed my purse. “Our
hour is probably about over anyway, and if not, I’m sure both you
and they will be happy if you’re back to class a bit
early.”

“
Thanks Al, I appreciate
that.”

I still wondered if he
could really be that stupid.
Could he not
see how angry I was or the tears I tried so desperately to hold
back?

He stood, and I saw he had grown since
I saw him last.

“
I’m glad you like it
here.”

“
Thanks. See ya.” He
turned and opened the door opposite the one through which I’d
entered. He didn’t look back as it closed behind him.

Tears fell down the sides of my face
and onto my pillow as I remembered it all again. I brushed them
away quickly so no one would see.

Stupid, stupid
Academie.

6.
lights out

The evening crawled by.
Few people around me said anything. Most kept to themselves,
setting up the small bit of personal space we would each have for
the next several years. When the clock showed that it was after
nine, I pulled out the box of personal care items I had been given
earlier and began to rummage through it. A bar of soap, bottle of
shampoo and conditioner, a shaver, a toothbrush, tube of
toothpaste, deodorant, hairbrush, comb, and a couple of hair
ties.
Beautiful
.