The Academy: Book 2 (5 page)

             
“Oh my! Joney! If this trapped up Jul Conway, I think that we are in very, very big trouble!” She began to pace, the goggles still in her hands. “Do you think it was him? What do we do?”

             
“Calm down, Edna!”

             
“Calm down? How am I supposed to calm down when we could’ve just trapped Jul Conway? Our cover is blown! He’s already suspicious, ya know?”

             
Joney tried to reassure Edna, though he looked worried himself. “It’ll be okay! We don’t know that these were his.”

             
“
Don’t know they were his?
Why, they’ve gots ‘is name right there! How’s that Joney?”

             
Joney thought for a second. “Well, we ain’t doin’ good just standing ‘ere.”

             
“What should we do, Joney? What should we do?”

             
Joney spat black sludge onto the ground. “We’ll go ‘round to the other ropes, and take ‘em down. Nothin’ else to do.”

             
“Are we gonna tell Michael?” Edna asked, her voice rising.

             
“No way are we gonna tell Michael.”

             
“And Joney?” Edna started. “Wh-what if we run into Conway?”

             
“We’ll kill ‘im.”

             
All was silent for a moment. Asa was still holding his breath, praying that the two of them wouldn’t look up.

             
“C’mon. Let’s go.” Joney said. They walked out of the clearing.

             
Asa and Jen stayed where they were for minutes after the Multipliers left. “What are those things?” she whispered.

             
“Multipliers,” Asa said. “You’ll be familiar with them before long. We need to get out of here. Give me your hands.”

             
They locked wrists, and with Asa’s wings outstretched, they drifted to the ground. “Let’s move,” Asa said.

             
With so much to think about, Asa wasn’t in a mood for chatting, but as they walked, Jen wanted to talk; she didn’t grasp the gravity of the situation. “How long have you had your wings?” she asked.

             
“Five months.”

             
“Will I get them, too?”

             
“Yes.”

             
“Do they hurt?” She was looking at Asa’s shoulder blades to see if there were protrusions in his suit.

             
“Yes.”

             
“Wow! You’re fun to talk to!” Jen said to him, and rolled her eyes.

             
Asa felt his teeth grind together.
I don’t care what she thinks about me. Soon, she’ll hear all the rumors and be terrified of me. They’ll tell her how I killed Shelby last year in the cafeteria, and I bet they’ll probably leave out the part where she attacked me first.

             
“So are Multipliers just more advanced graduates?” Jen asked.

             
Asa almost said, ‘No,’ and explained what he knew. He opened his mouth, stopped himself from speaking, and then thought:
The only reason that I know how Multipliers actually come to be is because Conway gave me information he wasn’t supposed to. He trusts that I won’t let anything slip.
Finally, Asa answered: “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask someone else. What were you doing back here anyways?”

             
Jen shrugged and smirked. “Exploring. They wanted us to go to our dorms, but I figured I’d have plenty of time to see those. I was itching to see the terrain.”

             
Unbelievable! Does she realize what danger she has put herself in? All to explore?
“Well don’t do it again!” Asa said.

             
Jen laughed: “You can’t tell me what to do, you know? I’ve been on my own the past few years after my parents got sick. Wolf Flu.” She hung her head for a moment before adding: “And I’m not going to let people start pushing me around just because I’m here. I’m not scared of you, you know?”

             
“I didn’t say you were,” Asa said.

             
“Just don’t tell me what to do, okay? I’m a big girl.” Jen patted her pocket, as though making sure that she hadn’t lost something.

             
“I don’t think that you realize how dangerous this place is, that’s all. I wasn’t trying to be mean.”

             
“Don’t worry, Palmer, I think that I can handle myself.”

             
They passed Harold Kensing’s grave in the woods and Asa thought:
Why don’t you listen to me? You have no idea what kind of danger you just put yourself in. This is the reason it would be unfair to have Fishies and fourth semesters fighting in the same arena. If the rumor is true, and the Task is going to be some sort of school-wide fight to the death, I think that Jen’s cockiness is going to end her.

             
Jen turned to the left, headed into the arctic jungle that separated Fishie Mountain and the second semester mountain. “Where are you going?” Asa asked.

             
“I’ve got to go back to my dorm. See ya, Palmer.”

             
Asa thought about warning her of the dangerous animals that inhabited the wild, but then stopped himself.
She doesn’t want to hear it.

             
“See you,” Asa said, a little disturbed at the odds of her getting ripped apart before the end of her first day in the Academy. “Hey, wait! Where did you get those goggles?”

             
“Found ‘em,” she called back, not wasting her energy to turn around.

             
Asa shook his head and watched her move in between the brush. “Are you sure you don’t want me to fly you home?”

             
“Get a life, Palmer,” she called back.

             
Seeing no other option, Asa climbed the mountainside up to his dwelling. The rock was icy, and he held his wings out beside him so that his fall would be less severe if he slipped. “So stupid,” he muttered to himself. The sun was still high in the sky, which surprised Asa, considering all that had already happened that day.

             
His mind was drawn to the mystery of the Multipliers in the woods.
Why are they here? And who made them, if the Academy isn’t aware of them? And…

             
Asa thoughts were cut short as he saw the door to Charlotte’s dwelling open. Asa held his breath, and felt a deep pang in his chest. Despite all the time he had been thinking about Charlotte lately, he still didn’t know how he would explain the letter he left her if confronted face to face…

             
Shashowt appeared out the wooden door closed it behind him. He came onto the entryway, and his eyes found Asa’s. Asa glared back the other student; they had developed a strong dislike for one another towards the end of last semester.

             
Shashowt spat on the ground and began to clamber down to his own dwelling. Asa cursed Shashowt in a quiet breath and climbed up to his dwelling.

             
The circle entryway was icy, and the wooden door handle had frost standing out on it. Asa reached out his hand, turned, and pushed the door open.

3

The News Program

              Asa stepped inside his dwelling, and tapped his foot against the doorjamb, knocking loose the chunks of ice lodged in the sole of his shoe. Because of Teddy, the dwelling was much more inhabitable than Asa thought it might be last semester, when he started carving it out of stone. Like computers and architecture, Teddy had a knack for aesthetics, and the small room was a prime example of this.

             
The walls were periodically carpeted with wide, thick animal furs of assorted colors (brown, black, yellow, white), cut into various geometric shapes. Asa’s favorite flanked the vented kitchen stove—a sheep’s skin cut into a fluffy, white heart.
Pure of heart
was the phrase that always came to Asa’s mind when he saw it. In the past two weeks, Teddy had traded and rearranged furniture in between Asa’s dwelling, his own, and the secret compartment above Asa’s dwelling. Now, a wooden wicker chair, a stone coffee table, and a wooden stool with a small back were arranged in the middle of the room: Because Teddy had not been sleeping lately, he had more time to experiment with things like wood carving. As Asa walked in, there was a roaring fire in a cutout in the wall on his right side. The flames gave off so much warmth that Asa found himself turning down the heat on his suit as he grew accustomed to the temperature. Next to this cutout was a bathtub (above which was the secret compartment that Asa and Teddy carved out last semester, in case Asa ever needed a place to hide), and a small bathroom with a stone toilet installed.

             
Asa found that living in the dwelling wasn’t as hard as he had thought. The Academy had gone against its word and supplied the dwellings with stoves, plumbing, and a common room a short fly away to another portion of the mountainside; in this common room, the second semester students could watch television (on Academy approved channels—this included soundless recordings of sports games without commercials, and old movies), play-ping pong, exercise, and get food from a 24 hour cafeteria.

             
The common room was a source of anxiety for Asa. Shortly after the last end of semester ceremony, one of the televisions was broken by a student that had slammed into it after she tripped while playing a rigorous ping-pong game. The raccoons came and replaced the television promptly, and set the old one aside to be thrown away later. Teddy stole this broken TV, and Asa was constantly worried that he was going to be killed for the crime.

             
Though Teddy had been working hard at decorating Asa’s main dwelling, he seldom spent time there. He would briefly stop by to drop off or pick up furniture, or pass through so that he could crawl within the watery tunnel over the bathtub that led to Asa’s secret compartment, where Teddy now slept. He hadn’t stayed more than a few minutes in the main dwelling since the day that he and Asa buried Harold Kensing’s body.

             
Now, for the first time in weeks, he was there. He stood next to the stove; meat was sizzling over a large, iron skillet. His back was turned to the door, and he hadn’t heard Asa enter. Teddy was chopping up vegetables on a cutting board with an enormous knife.

             
For a fleeting moment, Asa thought of how Teddy had made the joke about drilling his and Charlotte’s heads off.

             
But it was only a joke! No reason to be frightened.

             
An awfully morbid joke, though, don’t you think?