The Academy - First Days (25 page)

“He had his hands on your hips,” he said flatly.

I blushed. Had he? I couldn’t remember. My mind reeled while I
tried to think of it. He did initially touch me there when he first placed me
in his lap. How long had he been watching?

“Then he started rubbing your back,” Mr. McCoy said. He smirked at
me. “Did he touch your breasts?”

My eyes popped open and I started shaking my head. “No...” How
could he say that? Just hearing him asking this of me made my insides quake. I
felt ashamed of what I had done enough, and didn’t want to let him assume Kota
would do something like that. I was longing for Kota to be there at first but
now I was so glad he wasn’t. He would know how to handle this but I couldn’t imagine
what would happen if he heard it from Mr. McCoy directly.

The vice principal frowned at me. “You should address me as sir,
Miss Sang.”

“Sir,” I repeated.

He twisted around in his chair to snatch a large black binder off
the shelf next to him. He opened it and flipped through yellow carbon copy
pages until he found an empty set of unused detention slips. “I expect you to
behave better in the future.” He bent over and started filling out the form.

This was bad. I was getting detention on the third day of school.
My mother couldn’t come get me. My father wasn’t going to be able to pick me up
until well after the school would be closed. I would be stuck there for hours.

He tore the slip from his book and he held it out to me. “You
should thank me that it isn’t an in-school suspension. Although next time it
might be.”

I wasn’t sure what to say. With a shaking hand, I touched the slip
but as I tried to pull it away, he held on to it. I looked up at him, confused.

His watery eyes squinted at me. “Say thank you, sir,” he
commanded.

The bell rang for the start of our first class. I swallowed, my
brain buzzing with fear. “Thank you, sir,” I said quietly.

He made a sound from his throat that almost sounded like a grunt.
“Tell that boy out in the hallway to get to class.”

I fluttered where I stood, holding the detention slip in my hand.
Was he not going to talk to him, too? What Silas said before to me about Mr.
McCoy looking to give me detention the other day slipped into my mind. He had
been right. He was waiting for this.

I stood, heading toward the door. A security system keypad was
blinking to the left of the door and it caught my eye. Some of the numbers and
other buttons had the words worn off. Did the vice principal have a separate
security system for just his office?

I opened the door. Kota was standing in the hallway, leaning with
his back against the wall. I closed Mr. McCoy’s office door behind me.

“What happened?” Kota asked.

I held out my detention slip. “We’re supposed to go to class,” I
said.

He looked confused. “He doesn’t want to see me?”

“No,” I said. “He said you and I should go to class. That was it.”

His eyes flitted to the door. I bent over to pick up my book bag
and violin. Kota reached for my hand, holding it and tugged me along down the
hallway. Neither of us spoke as he walked with me through the front office
waiting room and back out into the school. We were both late so it didn’t
really matter if we hurried.

“What did he say to you?” Kota asked.

“He... he wanted to know where you touched me,” I said. “He asked
if you touched my hips and my breasts.”

Kota stopped dead in the hallway, turning to me. His eyes widened.
“He asked that? What did you say?”

“I denied that you did,” I said. “And then he gave me the
detention slip and asked me to tell you to go to class.”

Kota frowned. He tugged at my hand again and we walked across the
school to my homeroom class.

“Sang,” he said. “Did you get a good look at the inside of his
office?”

It was the last thing I was thinking about. “Yes,” I said. “Well
part of it.”

“Can you remember what it looked like?” he asked. “Could you draw
me a map?”

It was my turn to look confused at him. “What?”

His green eyes took on a strange glaze. “Do me a favor and write
down everything you saw in his office, okay? Write out every detail.” He
squeezed my hand and let go. “Get in there. I’ll catch up with you at English.”

I turned to ask him why but he was already in a sprint toward his
own homeroom. I sighed, not understanding and wondering if this was something
for the Academy or if this was his own desire. What would he want with a map of
the vice principal’s office?

I thought about how Mr. Blackbourne commanded him to wire the boys
who had caused the fighting yesterday. This was way more than figuring out
rumors and preventing future fights. The Academy was infiltrating the entire
school.

O
ne
o
f
U
s

N
orth and Luke held my seat for me in homeroom. When the teacher
asked where I was, I revealed my detention slip to him. He looked it over,
nodded to me and asked me to take a seat.

I fell into my chair, dropping my things at my feet. Luke turned
in his desk and I felt North leaning over the top of his behind me.

“Sang baby,” North started, “What--”

“I got detention,” I said.

Luke did a half smirk. “Kota, too?”

I shook my head. It took me a moment to explain it to them. As I
was talking, I pulled out a notebook and started scribbling notes to myself to
remember what Kota had asked, giving him a detailed description of Mr. McCoy’s
office. When I was done with my story, I drew my best variation of a map on the
side.

“What’s the vice principal got against you?” North asked. “I know
I’ve seen kids nearly fucking in the hallways. No one stops them.”

“I bumped into him a couple of times,” I said, ignoring his last
comment. Did he really see that? “He wasn’t happy that Dr. Green helped me at
the start of school and I’m pretty sure he and Mr. Hendricks thinks I’m part of
your group.”

I didn’t have to look up to know they were exchanging glances
above my head.

I was drawing out the keypad in the corner of my paper when the
bell rang for the next class. Luke grabbed my violin for me and I grabbed my
book bag. I was going to get my violin from him but he grabbed for my hand, too
and started tugging me toward the door.

When we were outside and in the hallway, North put an arm around
me, his fingers grasping my shoulder. We walked together like that, with Luke’s
hand in mine and North on the other side of me. A silence fell over us. I was
almost grateful for it. This first week was the worst and needed to end.
Feeling them around me, knowing they were there felt so much better. I don’t
know how I survived all my other schools alone. What would I have done without
them at this one? It made me fearful of the future, of next year when I may not
have them around as they would go back to their Academy.

North didn’t let go of me until we were standing outside of the
trailer for our first class. He walked off without looking back. Luke let go of
my hand to hold open the door. I fell into my seat and Luke sat behind me. Kota
filed in shortly after. Kota and Luke shared a silent look over my shoulder,
checking in to make sure the other knew what was going on.

I had my notebook out and I was finishing up the keypad. Kota
studied what I was doing. He read what I’d written upside down, checking my
work on the keypad.

“Why didn’t you put numbers here?” he asked, pointing to the keys
that were blank.

“There weren’t any,” I said. “It was smudged off. It looked like
an old system.” I sighed, looking over my paper one more time and ripped it
from my notebook and handed it to him. “What’s this for?”

He reviewed my work again, analyzing. “Do you remember the name of
the security system?”

I thought about it. I held my hand out for the sheet of paper and
wrote down the name: E&O Inc.

He nodded and took the paper from me again. “Thanks,” he said.

I was about to ask him again what this was for when Gabriel burst
in. He fell into his seat, breathing heavily as if he had been running to get
here. “Okay,” he said. “What happened?”

“I got detention,” I said.

“What?” Gabriel asked. “You? Why?”

“Inappropriate touching,” Kota said.

Gabriel blinked at him as the bell rang for the start of class.
“Did you get detention?”

“Nope,” Kota said.

“That’s bullshit.”

Kota shot him a look.

“Well, it is,” Gabriel said. His crystal blue eyes danced around
the room as if he was trying to come up with something.

Ms. Johnson stood in front of the room. She barely finished roll
call when Gabriel shot his hand in the air.

“Yes Mr. Coleman?” Ms. Johnson asked.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” he said. “What would it take to get a
detention?” he asked.

Ms. Johnson pushed a finger to her eyebrow. “Pardon?”

“Gabriel,” Kota commanded in a whisper.

Gabriel ignored him.
“What
would someone have to do to get a detention in this class?”

Ms. Johnson still looked confused. “I suppose if someone started
cussing in class, but...”

“Goddamn-shit-motherfucker,” Gabriel spat out. He pressed his
index finger to his chin and looked apologetic. “Oh wait, is it one detention
for each one or can it just count as a group?”

The class roared with laughter. I pressed my hands to my face,
smothering a giggle of my own. What was he doing?

Ms. Johnson’s lips twisted into an almost smirk. “If you wanted a
detention that badly, you could have just asked me after class.”

“Oh,” Gabriel said. “Then sorry. I’ll ask you after class.”

My shoulders shook as I giggled, and I folded my arms, pressing my
forehead to the desk. I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t look at any of them.

“Anyone else want detention?” Ms. Johnson asked.

I think she meant the question to be theoretical as the classroom was
laughing. I popped my head up. Kota raised his hand expectantly. I looked back
to see Luke nearly standing out of his chair and raising his hand.

“Just see me after class,” she said. “No need to cuss.” She looked
bewildered, shaking her head as if her students had just gone insane.

“What are you doing?” I whispered to Kota. He ignored me though. I
glanced over at Gabriel, who wore the biggest satisfied smirk. He winked at me.

I settled back into my seat, sighing.

I waited for the boys to get their detention slips at the end of
class. Kota had to take off immediately after. I wanted to ask him more
questions but he quietly shook his head at me. He couldn’t answer me now.

Luke ran off to his next class and Gabriel waited with me for
North after class.

Gabriel waved his detention slip in the air like a victory flag at
North as he approached. “Oy,” he said.

North grunted. “Not you, too.”

“Not just me,” Gabriel said. “Kota and Luke.”

“Goddammit,” North said. He sighed and gazed at me. “How could you
let them do that?”

My eyes popped open and I held my hands up in the air in defeat.
“I didn’t let them. They wouldn’t stop. I don’t know what they’re doing.”

“We’re not letting you go to detention alone, Trouble,” Gabriel
said. I shot him a look for the name he called me. I felt like trouble for them
enough. He chopped me on the head and winked at me before running off to class.

North grumbled and hooked his arm around my shoulders, his fingers
threaded through my hair to rub at my scalp.

“I don’t get it, North,” I said as we walked together to the main
building. “Why are they getting detentions for me?”

“You’re part of us now,” he said. “Haven’t you noticed?”

I pushed a palm to my forehead. “I don’t know what that means.
Please don’t tell me that you’re going to try to get detention, too. I don’t
know if I can take this. You should tell Kota and the others to stop. I think
the teacher would understand if they gave the detention slips back. They don’t
need to get into trouble with me.”

He laughed softly, his deep voice seemed to reverberate in my
bones. He pulled me closer and pushed his nose to my hair as he said, “Sang
baby, you’re beautiful.”

His compliment had me floating all the way to our next class.

Nathan was slumped over in his chair in geometry class when we
walked in. I fell into the chair in front of him and North sat in front of me.

Nathan popped his head up. “Okay, what’s going on?” He tugged a
lock of my hair.