The Mysterious Benedict Society (22 page)

“Hey, you’re right!” Kate said, brightening.

“And now that I think of it, on our first day here we overheard the kids in S.Q.’s class going on and on about the market this, the market that —”

“The Free Market Drill,” said Sticky.

“Exactly! And ‘market’ was the very first word we heard come through Mr. Benedict’s Receiver, remember?”

Sticky nodded — of course he remembered — but Kate only shrugged.

“I’ll have to take your word for it,” she said. “Anyway, the classes are obviously linked to the hidden messages. So the question is how it all fits together.”

“The sooner we become Messengers, the sooner we find out!” said Reynie excitedly.

“We aren’t Messengers yet, so hold your horses,” said Sticky, who was still trying to recover from his wounded feelings and felt a bit testy. “We’ve only been here a few days.”

“It’s true,” Reynie sighed. “All right, let’s report this to Mr. Benedict.”

They prepared to send a report to the mainland, only to be thwarted by the presence of Mr. Curtain on the plaza. And then, just as Mr. Curtain was finally going inside, a couple of Executives came out for a leisurely stroll over the Institute grounds. They seemed intent on strolling every walkway and path in sight. The night was growing late, and the children, exhausted, decided to adjourn. They couldn’t very well succeed in their classes if they couldn’t stay awake in them.

“The report will keep,” Kate said with a yawn, “and in the meantime we’ll sleep. You boys have a good night.”

She scurried up her rope, drew it into the ceiling after her, and disappeared. With a mixture of amusement and admiration, Reynie and Sticky watched her go. Kate’s method of coming and going still took some getting used to.

“What must it be like, getting around the way she does?” Sticky wondered.

Reynie shrugged. “Dusty, I imagine.”

Long after Kate had gone her dusty way and the boys had gone to bed, Reynie lay awake, calming his nerves by composing a mental letter to Miss Perumal. He could never actually
write
the letter, of course — he could never send it — but it soothed Reynie to think of Miss Perumal, in a setting far from this responsibility and danger, sipping her tea and correcting his Tamil grammar. He reflected upon the pleasant afternoons they’d spent walking in Oldwood Park, discussing this thing or that — her mother, or the aged trees in the park, or baseball, or dogs. And the times, too, when he’d told her about some savage teasing he’d got from other children, upon which Miss Perumal never offered advice — which would have been useless — but only nodded and clucked her tongue, smiling sadly at Reynie as if his memory were her memory, too, as if they shared it. Well, he supposed they
did
share it, now that he’d told her of it. And somehow this had always lightened its effect on him — even, on occasion, cheered him right up.

Reynie had just ended the letter when he heard Sticky rise and move about the room, and then, after a pause, whisper, “Reynie, are you awake?”

It would have been a nice way to go to sleep; Reynie was feeling calm for the first time all day. But he couldn’t very well thank Miss Perumal in his letter for always being there to listen, then turn around and not be there for Sticky. “Yes, I’m awake,” he replied.

“The coast is clear now.”

Reynie looked down from his bunk.

Sticky had put on his spectacles and was peering out the window. “If Kate hadn’t taken her flashlight, we could send the report. We should remember that next time. We might as well get
something
out of a bad night’s sleep.”

“We could flip the light switch,” Reynie suggested.

“I suppose so,” Sticky said doubtfully, with a twinge of worry in his voice, “but what if there’s someone outside? I can’t keep an eye out from over by the light switch.”

“There are two of us, remember. I’ll watch out the window.”

Sticky was casting about for his polishing cloth. “Makes me nervous,” he said, finding the cloth on his desk and giving his glasses a brisk rub. “I keep thinking about that Messenger’s face when Jackson told him about the Waiting Room. The last thing we want is to be suspected of something.” He put his glasses on and sighed. “Now I wish I hadn’t mentioned it. But I suppose we ought to?”

“We’ll do it quickly and get it over with,” Reynie said.

The light switch, unfortunately, made a sharp clicking sound when it was thrown. Sticky cringed with every click, as if he were being shocked, and by the end of the message his trembling, sweaty fingers were slipping off the switch. At last the message was sent, however, and no one had discovered them.

Peering toward the mainland shore, Reynie chuckled. “They want to know what we’re still doing up.”

Sticky felt too anxious to smile. “Anything else?”

“We’re doing excellent work, we must continue to be careful, and now we should really get some sleep.”

“They said all that?”

Reynie climbed down from the television. “Well, they said, ‘Excellent. Careful. Sleep.’”

“They don’t have to tell me twice,” Sticky said, slipping into bed. “Especially not the careful part. My stomach’s all in knots, Reynie. It feels that way all the time.”

“I know,” Reynie said, climbing up to his bunk. “Same with me. But at least we know Mr. Benedict and his crew are out there watching. We’re not alone, right?”

“I suppose that should be encouraging,” Sticky said uncertainly.

“I take it you don’t find it very encouraging.”

“No,” Sticky replied, pulling his sheet up tightly under his chin. “No, ever since I first saw him, I keep imagining Mr. Curtain chasing me down, getting closer and closer. He seems a lot closer than Mr. Benedict and the others do, way off on that shore.”

This time Reynie said nothing. He understood too well how Sticky felt. If only he knew of something comforting to say, something to ease Sticky’s anxiety — and, yes, something to ease his own. He thought and thought. He lay awake a long while, thinking. Surely there was
something
.

But if there was, he could not think of it.

Sticky’s anxiety took its toll on him; he slept quite poorly, and all the next morning he had trouble staying awake. By the time Jackson’s class started, his eyelids felt heavy as anvils. It required a heroic effort — including a lot of painful pinches on the leg — to keep his eyes open and pay attention to Jackson’s long, droning lecture. At last Jackson finished, however, and despite his drowsiness, Sticky had managed to lock all the information securely in his head. The end-of-lecture review would not require his attention, which meant it would require willpower instead — it would be all he could do to stay awake. He needed to occupy his mind with something.

And so Sticky focused on Corliss Danton, who was back in class this morning, looking no worse for wear. On the contrary, he seemed the exemplary student: He sat ramrod straight in his desk, listening with attention, and his Messenger uniform was impeccable. In fact his entire person fairly shone. From finger to foot, his fair skin was rosy from scrubbing; even his fingernails seemed meticulously groomed. He looked as though he would smell like a bar of soap. Corliss obviously meant to make a good impression, Sticky thought. He wanted to appear cleansed of any past wrongdoings.

Only after Corliss had glanced past him toward the door a few times did Sticky realize he was not entirely recovered from his visit to the Waiting Room. His face was weary, even dazed, as if he hadn’t slept a wink, and an unmistakeable remnant of misery showed in his eyes. Not for the first time, Sticky found himself wondering what sort of ordeal Corliss had gone through. Then he found that he didn’t want to think about it, as it made his stomach hurt. And then he found that he was asleep.

Sticky wouldn’t have
known
he was asleep, though, had Martina Crowe not hissed, “You! Skinny bald-headed four-eyes! What are you doing sleeping? Aren’t you supposed to be the
super
student?”

Sticky’s eyes snapped open. On all sides of him students were tittering, and the Messengers (including Corliss) were sneering disdainfully. In a flush of embarrassment, Sticky reached for his spectacles.

“Watch him go to polishing his glasses now!” said Martina. “What a weirdo!”

“Silence!” shouted Jackson from the front of the room. His icy sharp gaze fell on Sticky. “You can say whatever you like when you have permission,” Jackson said, adding: “Right now no one has permission.”

Paralyzed, Sticky couldn’t even manage to nod.

Kate, however, was too outraged to hold her tongue. “But it wasn’t Sticky who spoke!”

Martina, who happened to be sitting right in front of Kate, whirled about with a look of shock. Kate met her gaze defiantly, which surprised Martina even more. Before they could exchange words, though, Jackson had come charging down the aisle to stand over Kate. “Did you raise your hand to ask permission to speak?”

Kate shook her head, and then, with a bright look, raised her hand.

“No,” Jackson said. “You don’t have permission to raise your hand. And let me just warn you and your friend,” he said with a glance at Sticky, “it won’t benefit you to challenge a Messenger.”

Martina ran a hand through her raven-colored hair and nodded with remarkable smugness. Kate’s face burned bright red — she fairly radiated fury — but she held her tongue. Jackson returned to the front of the room, and the students returned to their busy note-taking.

All except Sticky, who was too upset to concentrate. Instead he stared miserably at Jackson, and then at his other tormentor, Martina, who seemed exceedingly pleased with herself. His gaze was distracted by a movement below Martina’s desk. Kate was slipping her feet back into her shoes. But why had she taken her shoes off? It was too cool for bare feet. Just then Martina shot a glance toward Sticky. Sticky averted his eyes and didn’t look that direction again. He could feel the malice even without looking.

And so it was that when Jackson dismissed class and Martina leaped from her seat, Sticky heard, but did not see, Martina crashing face-first onto the floor. He glanced over in surprise. Notebooks, papers, and pencils had spilled everywhere, and Martina was raising herself slowly to her hands and knees, spluttering and shaking her head as she tried to get her bearings. Messenger or no, her fumblings prompted a burst of laughter from the other students — except for Kate, who pretended not to notice as she grabbed Sticky’s arm, dragging him toward the door.

“I tied her shoelaces to the desk,” she whispered. “With my toes.”

“Great,” Constance said at lunch. “Not only do we have a dangerous secret mission, but now we have enemies, too. Nice work, Kate.”

Kate laughed. “She was already the
boys’
enemy. I just added myself to the list. What did you expect me to do, let her get away with it? She called him bald-headed, for Pete’s sake.”

“I
am
bald,” Sticky said, running a hand over his scalp. “It’s my own fault. I used hair remover when I ran away, to disguise myself.”

“
That
explains it,” said Reynie. “I’d wondered but was afraid to ask.”

“Isn’t hair remover supposed to sting like the dickens?” Kate asked.

“I’d heard that, so I invented my own mixture, adding other ingredients to keep it from stinging.”

“Did that work?” Constance asked, plainly hoping it didn’t.

“No,” Sticky admitted. “It felt like my head was on fire, and now it’s taking forever for my hair to grow back! It hasn’t even
started
!”

The others smiled. Then grinned. Then giggled. And finally — unable to help themselves — they burst out laughing. Sticky groaned and ducked his head, but at last even
he
had to smile. For a while their laughter wiped away the troubles at hand, and they were reluctant to give it up.

But eventually — too soon — their laughter fell away. And unlike Sticky’s hair, the troubles at hand did not hesitate to come back.

T
hat afternoon in class, Jillson lectured on the national economy. She also spoke about education, crime, the environment, war, taxes, insurance, health and medicine, the justice system… and
fruit
.

“You see,” Jillson said near the end of the lesson, “all these terrible problems are the result of one thing: bad government! Don’t get me wrong, government is a good thing. Without government you can solve none of the world’s horrible problems — unless you have a
bad
government, in which case the problems only get more horrible. Sadly, all the world’s governments are bad ones. Like a poison apple” — here Reynie’s ears perked up — “our governments look beautiful, shiny, and wholesome from a distance, but once you’ve partaken of them, they prove quite deadly. What’s more, they shelter more than one wicked official — like poison worms in that poison apple.”

Poison apples, poison worms
, Reynie thought. That was another hidden-message phrase they’d heard through Mr. Benedict’s Receiver. He wasn’t surprised — he knew the classes were connected to the hidden messages — but he did wonder exactly how it all fit together. He felt sure he could figure it out if only —

Without warning, Reynie’s mood shifted. His optimism drained away, and he was suddenly angry with Jillson — stupid, lecturesome Jillson! — and not just Jillson, either, but… really, he was angry with just about everybody he could think of. It was an unusual feeling for Reynie, and very distressing. He felt as though the walls were pressing in on him, as though he wanted to get up and run from the room. He felt like yelling and kicking things — preferably Jillson.

What was going on? Was the pressure finally getting to him? Completely frazzled, Reynie laid down his pencil and glanced over at Sticky — who was glaring at his quiz as if he wanted to tear it up and toss it into a fire.
Oh, no,
Reynie thought,
he’s bungled it somehow.
For a moment he felt mad at Sticky, too. But then Sticky, catching his eye, nodded as usual and gave a feeble thumbs-up. It wasn’t the quiz, then. And now Sticky was staring at Reynie with a concerned expression — which was how Reynie realized he was scowling himself. He looked over at Kate and Constance. Both had their heads in their hands and looked ready to scream. And yet none of the other students seemed affected in the least. So why would only the four of them… ?