The Mysterious Case of the Allbright Academy (4 page)

At last my name was called. I marched up to the dais with all the dignity I could muster. I had decided there was only one way out of this predicament: I would have to be funny.

“I'm Franny Sharp,” I said, “from Baltimore. And I am here to make the rest of you feel brilliant. You probably don't
need
any help with that” (a tittering of laughter), “but I will give it all I've got. I have absolutely no talents, and will endeavor, at all times, to be ordinary. Every bell curve has its two extremes, and I promise to keep a death grip on the bottom end. I am glad to do it. Really, I am. Sydney Carton said it best, in
A Tale of Two Cities,
as he went to his death in another man's place: ‘It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done.' No need to thank me. You're perfectly welcome.”

I bowed, and the room went wild with cheering and clapping. And then—I swear I am telling you the truth—they gave me a standing ovation!

I returned to my seat feeling wildly elated. My best hope had been to survive the ordeal without making a fool of myself. But I had surpassed that by far. In a room full of geniuses, they'd given
me
the standing ovation! They liked me because I was funny and unpretentious and wasn't a threat to them.

Not the greatest foundation for friendship, you say? I disagree. At least they liked me for who I really am.

I
t was eleven thirty by the time the introductions were over. Ms. Lollyheart congratulated us all on the “hard work and dedication that our incredible accomplishments represented.” This kind of startled me for a minute. I had just assumed that success came easily to these kids. They were born smart, end of story. But of course, even brilliant kids have to study. And pretty much all of them had chosen something challenging to do with what little free time they had. They were busy starting literary magazines and founding tutoring programs for inner-city kids while I was home watching old movies on TV. Somehow, this blurred the line between them and me. I might not have their talent,
but that was no excuse to float through life.

You'd think this would have depressed me, but it didn't. It made me feel strangely hopeful.

“So that's it for this morning,” Ms. Lollyheart said. “Outside, in the hallway, we've set up a desk. If you'll line up there, please, you'll be given your orientation packets. You'll find your schedule for the rest of the week in there, plus a number of forms I'll need you to fill out and return by tomorrow. But most important, the packet contains your cottage assignments.

“I suggest you head directly over to your cottages and start unpacking—the boxes your parents dropped off at the gym this morning should have been delivered to your rooms by now. I want you back here tomorrow at nine, ready to shine. So get a good night's sleep and bring your thinking caps!”

Brooklyn and I made a dash for the door so we could grab a good place in line. About a minute later, Cal joined us. “I'm not cutting in,” she assured the girl behind us. “I just wanted to say hi to these two, real quick.”

“That's okay,” the girl said. “I don't care if you cut.” Then turning to the boy behind her, she asked, “Do you?” He said he was cool with it.

“
Really?
That's so nice of you! Thanks!” Cal slipped her arm through mine and gave me a beautiful smile.

“So here we are again, all three of us,” Cal said. “Isn't it great?”

We agreed that it was.

“You're going to love it here,” she went on. “I promise! Allbright is just the coolest place!”

She reached over and squeezed Brooklyn's hand. “Hey, guy, aren't you going to speak to me?” She flashed a playful smile.

“Can't get a word in edgewise,” he said.

“Oh, you!”

I simply couldn't get over the change in Cal. It was like she had switched places with her beautiful, confident, perky twin. I was glad she seemed so happy now, and who wouldn't want to turn glamorous all of a sudden—but I missed the old Cal, that vulnerable, thoughtful, hockey-playing, world-traveling girl I'd met last spring and liked so much. I wondered if her sadness had just been a temporary thing, like a bad mood, and she'd simply gotten over it. Didn't she miss her dad anymore, now that she'd realized what a cool place Allbright was?

“I already know I'm in Larkspur,” Cal was saying. “It's the cottage for linguists, so no surprise there. They gave us summer students our assignments ahead of time; they needed us to go ahead and clear our stuff out of Aster—that's where we've been staying—so the new kids could move in. I don't guess there's much chance that either of you
will end up at Larkspur, though.” She made a cute, disappointed face that reminded me of Allison.

“I'd be willing to bet the ranch on it,” I said. “At least as far as I'm concerned. I had this really minimal Spanish program in fourth grade, and every time I'd sit down to memorize vocabulary, I'd fall asleep.”

“You'll be in Cyclamen, of course,” Cal said to Brooklyn. Cyclamen was full of writers and journalists and playwrights and poets.

“That's what I figured,” he said.

“What about you, Franny?” Cal asked. “Got a hunch?”

“Well, not really—since I'm totally without talent and all.” They both pooh-poohed this statement, to buck me up, but I kept going. “Not Sunflower; I'm pretty good at science, but I stink at math. And I'm not especially artistic, so it won't be Aster.” I was counting them off on my fingers. Including Larkspur, that was three cottages so far that wouldn't want me. It was turning into a rather depressing list of what I wasn't good at. “I'm not really leadership material, so that eliminates Primrose. And—what's left?”

“Geranium,” Cal said. “They're policy wonks and economists. Very
not you
. And Violet Cottage. Nobody really knows what Violet is all about, except that the kids there are real oddballs.”

“Oh great, that's probably where they'll put me!”

“No,” Brooklyn said. “You'll be in Cyclamen, with me.”

“I wish. Unfortunately, I'm not a published author.”

“You're a reader, though. You're a word person. You quote Dickens.”

“True enough.”

By then, we had reached the front of the line. No point in speculating any further. Packets safely in hand, we headed out into the sunshine to open them and discover our fates.

“Let's go over there,” Brooklyn said, pointing to a circle of benches in the shade of some big, old maple trees.

Cal and Brooklyn opened their packets right away and verified what she already knew and he strongly suspected: Larkspur and Cyclamen. Suddenly I was as nervous as I'd been before the admissions tests. I really didn't want to live in Violet with the oddballs.

“Come on, Franny, open it,” Cal said. “We're dying of suspense.”

I opened my envelope and pulled out a sheaf of papers in a rainbow of colors. Right on top was my cottage assignment. I held it up to my chest, so they couldn't see it, and smiled.

“What?” they both said together.

Then I turned to Brooklyn and offered my hand for a high five.

“Cyclamen?” he said.

“Cyclamen,” I answered.

He got this truly satisfied look on his face and gave my hand a very enthusiastic slap. This was a
lot
of emotion for Brooklyn. He was genuinely happy that we'd been assigned to the same cottage, and I felt strangely proud. This extremely cool person, whom I admired, liked me that much!

“That's awesome!” Cal said, with no apparent sign of feeling left out of this lovefest. She began flipping through her pile of papers. “Want to see if we can sign up for some of the same activities?”

“Sure,” I said, my heart still pounding with excitement.

“How about the field trips?” Brooklyn suggested. “Blue sheet.”

We all got out our blue sheets and looked them over. There was a trip to the National Gallery, a concert in Shriver Hall, a tour of Ford's Theatre (that's where President Lincoln was shot, in case you didn't know)—and that was just September.

“What's not to like?” Cal said. We signed up for all of them.

“What the heck is this?” Brooklyn asked. He was looking at his orientation schedule. “PD?”

“Oh, you'll love it,” Cal said. “That's Personal
Development. You have it once a week, just you and your PD counselor. They videotape you during your first session so you can see how you come across to other people. Then you discuss it and set goals for improvement. Maybe, like, you need to stop slumping. Or you have a tendency to mumble or talk too loud. If you have skin problems, they arrange a visit to a dermatologist. If your hair is really awful, like mine was, they send you to a stylist—”

Brooklyn was staring at her. He looked positively horrified.

“They're gonna give me
grooming
tips?”

“They might,” Cal said. “I know you think it's stupid, but you'll be surprised. I found it really helpful. Celebrities and business people pay media consultants big money to get that kind of advice. Don't look at me like that, Brooklyn. You'll love it.”

“So is that the deal with your hair?” he said, indicating Cal's new look.

“Yes. And you have to admit I look better.”

“I am not walking into
that
trap! No, ma'am! You are every bit as beautiful as you always were.”

“Snicker, snicker.”

A crowd of sixth graders came flowing out of Willard Theater, all clutching their packets. I searched for the twins and eventually spotted Zoë, surrounded (no surprise) by a cluster of giggling
girls. I waved and they headed our way.

“That's my sister.”

“Cute,” Brooklyn said.

“Yup,” I agreed. “Always has been.”

Zoë introduced her friends and I introduced mine, feeling rather proud of myself for having two of them already—and here it was only the first day of orientation. The previous year, at the previous school, I'd spent two and a half weeks sitting alone in the lunchroom before I'd finally met Beamer.

“Let me guess,” I said. “Primrose.” My sister might not know much about foreign affairs, but she had the leadership thing going in spades.

“Yes!” she said, glowing all over. “I guess I'll have to start reading the newspapers, huh? How about you?”

“Brooklyn and I are in Cyclamen,” I said, “and Cal is in Larkspur. She's a linguist. She can speak Bahasa and Hindi and is working on Mandarin.”

“Wow!” from Zoë and all of her friends. Cal punched my arm in a friendly way.

“Have you seen J. D.?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Zoë said, her face clouding a little.

“And?”

“He got Violet Cottage. He says he's okay with it, but I'm kind of worried. I heard this rumor—”

“That it's where they put the oddballs?”

“Something like that. But you know J. D. He said
it'd be more interesting living there. He said he thought the Allbright kids seemed a little too perfect anyway, you know? Remember Allison? And anyway, being weird has always been J. D.'s claim to fame.”

“Hmm,” I said. “There's some truth to that.”

Zoë reached down and squeezed my hand. “We need to go unpack. See you later. It was great meeting you.” And they headed toward the cottages. Both Cal and Brooklyn followed her with their eyes. She had that effect on people. Zoë was like a sunset over the ocean; you just couldn't help staring.

“Hey, guys,” I said, finally. “Want to look over the PE options? It's the yellow sheet.”

“Sure,” Cal said, flipping through her papers till she found it. “Anybody into swimming?”

“Yuck!” Brooklyn rolled his eyes. “Swimming laps reminds me of the fifth circle of hell.”

“Okay,” I said, “are you going to explain that, or do you just plan to sit there and let us feel dumb?”

“Dante's
Inferno.
The wrathful and slothful sinners, sloshing around in the River Styx.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Such a lovely image. I take it we can eliminate swimming. Tennis, anyone? Racquetball? Hiking?”

“Hiking!” Cal and Brooklyn said together.

“Hiking it is, then.” We all checked the little box.

“I think that's it,” Cal said. “The rest is just info.”

“Time to go unpack those boxes, then,” Brooklyn said.

We gathered our papers together, slipped them back into the envelopes, and strolled off in the direction of the cottages. Eventually we reached the turnoff point; Brooklyn and I headed up the hill to Cyclamen, while Cal stayed on the path to Larkspur.

“
Hasta mañana
,” I said brightly. “That means ‘see you tomorrow' in Spanish.”

“No kidding,” Cal said.

“Oh, Cal,” Brooklyn called. “Don't forget to bring your thinking cap!”

“A
ll right,” said Ms. Lollyheart. “Will everyone please give me your attention? We need to get started.”

The room grew quiet.

“Thank you. I hope you're all settled in nicely at your cottages and ready to give your full attention to our traditional Allbright orientation exercise. I think that by the time it's over, you will have learned a great deal—about yourselves, about this school, about cooperation and leadership, and about the way things work in the real world. It may seem silly at first, but please bear with me.

“Now, to begin, we need to divide you into two teams. Adriana Gomez and Prescott Bottomy, will
you please come up to the front?”

My heart sank, because I knew what was coming next. Adriana and Prescott would be asked to choose teams.

Every kid who has ever played baseball knows this routine. It's a chance to shine if you happen to be popular or a really good athlete, but for the poor kid who can't catch a ball to save his life, it's slow death by humiliation. I am not terrible at sports, just not particularly good. As in so many things, I am kind of medium. I can always count on being chosen a little past halfway through. But even once you're safely on a team, it's still gut wrenching to watch those last few kids squirming with shame and embarrassment, wondering which of them will be chosen last.

“Ms. Lollyheart,” Prescott said, “can you give us some idea of what our teams will be doing? So we'll know how to choose?”

She gave Prescott a wry smile. “Actually, hon, you won't be needing any kind of strategy today.
I
will be selecting the teams.”

I let out a deep breath. Once again, Allbright hadn't let me down.

Ms. Lollyheart proceeded to read out names, and one by one we got up and went over to stand by our team leader. There were twenty of us in total, ten to a team. Brooklyn and I were in Prescott's group, Cal in Adriana's.

Ms. Lollyheart unlocked a closet door and pulled out two large wooden boxes set on little wheels, each with a rope to pull it by.

“Now,” she said, “this exercise was designed to use many different talents and thinking styles, all of them abundantly represented here in this room. But what makes it so challenging is that within your teams, you will each work entirely alone on your assigned task—without help from any of your teammates. If each of you does your job properly, then the whole thing should come together like clockwork. Independence and interdependence, just like in the real world.”

She raised her eyebrows in an expressive way, and paused for a moment to let what she'd said sink in.

“You will have two days to complete the exercise. At four
P.M
. on Wednesday, you need to be finished and ready to roll. By then, each team must take the contents of one of these boxes”—she opened a lid and showed us what looked like the sale bin at a hardware store—“and use them to create a robot. It's important to use every item in the box. You will lose points for every piece you leave behind.

“Now, I know some of you hotshots could build a perfectly good robot out of these materials completely on your own, without needing any directions. But chances are that, left to your own devices, you won't figure out how to use all of the pieces and use them correctly. So we have put the instructions
on the Internet. Naturally, we didn't want to make this too easy, so don't waste your time looking it up on Google.”

“Aw, shucks!” said Claire. She was a National Science Fair runner-up, and you could tell she was cool with any computer challenge you might throw at her. Ms. Lollyheart smiled patiently.

“Now, one of the items in the box is a tape recorder. It's there because your robot is going to tell us the story of its life. One member of your team will be in charge of writing that story. He or she will then pass it on to another member, who will translate it into a special robot language. This language needs to be more or less intelligible to the audience. Be clever—you can do it. And no Pig Latin, please. You're better than that.

“Another team member will read this material into the recorder. So that's five tasks I've mentioned so far: the computer research, building the robot, writing the story, translating it, and recording it.

“Of course, your robot will not just stand still as it talks but will move in expressive and interesting ways. A sixth team member will program it to do these things.” She held up an intimidating remote control device with multiple switches and an antenna.

“This is going to be a performance, so the seventh team member will compose the sound track—
original
music, folks, not your favorite rock tune.
And team member number eight will create a backdrop. Number nine is in charge of lighting and any special effects you may devise (You will, of course, be under the supervision of someone on the theater staff. They aren't allowed to help you, but they will make sure you don't destroy the equipment or electrocute yourself).”

There was a ripple of nervous laughter.

“And the team leaders?” asked Prescott. “What are we supposed to do?”

“Your job is to run the show. You're sort of like the conductor. You cue the lights and music, and run the robot.”

“But, Ms. Lollyheart!” Prescott whined. “What if somebody on the team screws up—like they can't find the instructions on the Internet, or they build the robot wrong? Then that messes it up for the rest of us.”

“Exactly,” Ms. Lollyheart said, giving him a tight smile.

She paused for a really long time to let this sink in. Then she continued. “Now, the actual presentation will take place over in the arts building, at the Willard Theater. The eighth-grade robot show is at four; we need to be out of there by five so the next group can come in. Okay? Is everybody clear on the assignment?”

“The music and the backdrop,” Trey asked,
“what are we supposed to use to make them? I mean, will we have access to musical instruments and art materials and stuff like that?”

“Of course. All that information is in your assignment envelopes—where you are to go and when, what materials are available for your use, everything.” She pulled out a fat bunch of envelopes held together with a rubber band. “Now, team members number one need to get on your computers ASAP and try to find those instructions. On Prescott's team, that will be Jenny Kirkland—here, Jenny.” She held out an envelope, which Jenny came forward to accept, a stricken expression on her face. She was the political activist who had set up the after-school tutoring program. If she had any special computer skills, she certainly hadn't mentioned them.

“And the computer search for Adriana's team will be done by Daniel Ellis.” (In case you forgot, he's the history guy with the Cathars.)

At least he and Jenny would be evenly matched. That's what I was thinking when she called my name—to build the robot!

“But…!” Prescott sputtered, beside himself with exasperation (and by now everyone was rolling their eyes and exchanging glances every time he opened his mouth). “Don't I
at least
get to assign my own team members to their various jobs? I mean, no offense, Franny, but I'm sure we could put you
to better use doing something—”

“No, Prescott, I'm afraid not,” Ms. Lollyheart said. “That's what makes this exercise so interesting: I choose the teams, I make the assignments. Now, for Adriana's team, the robot builder will be Edward Rodriguez.”

And so it went. Ms. Lollyheart had rigged this contest so everyone would fail. She had chosen the artists and writers to do the technical jobs and the techies to do the creative stuff. Cal, who could have made up a wonderful robot language, was assigned to lighting. Henry Chow, who had a heavy Chinese accent, was to read the translated story into the tape recorder. And nothing could be more hopeless than asking
me
to build a robot!

It was perfectly clear what they expected us to learn from this exercise—we each have our strengths and our weaknesses, in any society we all depend on one another, yadda, yadda, yadda. I was shocked that they were wasting two whole days spelling out the obvious. And this was an Allbright tradition? Cheez Louise!

“One last thing before you go. You probably
think
you know what this exercise is about, but please, trust me, you are only partially right. It is about many things. It may be years before you really understand it. We have had former students, out working in the business world or in government, who have written
us to say that memories of the robot exercise came back to them at the strangest times—and rather often, too. It gave them a window through which they could view the workings of the world.

“All right, you've heard enough from me. You have your assignments. Go forth, my children, and create.”