The Vault of Dreamers (12 page)

“Easy, man,” Henrik said.

I’d only known Burnham a day, but cynicism from him just seemed wrong.

Mr. DeCoster’s face was impassive. “It’s my job to push you however I see fit. And
yes, a percentage of your banner ad monies come to me. I doubt it’s ever been put
that baldly, but it’s no secret. Does that make my teaching methods any less valid?”

Burnham spread his hand on the table. “No. It’s just nice to know where we stand.”
And he looked at me.

I stared back at him while my mind flew. He was competing with me. Or he was saying
I competed. Either way, he didn’t mean it nicely. I felt a flare of resentment.

“Where we stand,” Mr. DeCoster echoed slowly. “Let me explain something for you. Twenty-three
years ago, the Forge School was nothing but an obscure prep school with an outdated
campus at the edge of civilization. But it had a film teacher, an inspired film teacher,
and she kept turning out one famous director after another.”

“Yes, sir,” Burnham said, as if he’d just recalled his manners. “We know this story.”

“You don’t know the story,” Mr. DeCoster said. “You haven’t really listened to it,
or you wouldn’t have asked about my payoff.”

“Go on,” I said, crossing my arms. “I want to hear.”

“Thank you, Rosie,” Mr. DeCoster said. “One of the famous director alums decided to
do a documentary on the teacher who had inspired her, and that teacher, Miss Lavinia,
refused. She said to spotlight her students instead. So the director made a film about
the students at Forge.” Mr. DeCoster took another sip of his coffee. “Then what, Burnham?”

“I guess it expanded from there,” Burnham said.

“You would be right,” Mr. DeCoster said. “First, Miss Lavinia noticed something unexpected.
The students who were being filmed began to work much harder. They took bigger risks.
They began to excel. The camera eye, itself, was influencing their performance.”

“Oh, right,” Janice said. “I remember this. Wasn’t she the one who asked to have cameras
installed in her classroom?”

“She did, and she sold the feed to the local cable network, with even more striking
results,” Mr. DeCoster said. “Half of the other teachers wanted to kill Miss Lavinia,
but the other half wanted in, and then the school ran a pilot program following a
batch of the students everywhere, twenty-four seven.”

“That’s how
The Forge Show
was born?” Henrik said. “I never knew that.”

“What too many people fail to remember is that this place exists for you. For the
students,” Mr. DeCoster said. “At its purest level, the show serves the school, not
the other way around. We’ve been under pressure countless times to spice up the show
with hot tubs and guest stars and cheap what have you, but we’ve held to Miss Lavinia’s
principles, always putting you first. You and your art. Why do you think people watch
this show?”

It was wildly popular, but I’d never tried to put my finger on why people watched.
Burnham stubbornly refused to reply.

“They’re bored,” Paige said.

“They’re bored,” Mr. DeCoster repeated. He closed his eyes as if in pain. When he
opened them, he tweaked his earphone. “Sandy? Are you there? Can you come on the speaker,
please?”

I scanned the ceiling, and then a speaker near the doorway came to life.

“What can I do for you, Robert?” said Dean Berg.

“Could we have a sampling of some fan clips, please? On the overhead?”

“Sure. One minute. Let me patch in Xing Lao. Xing Lao?”

A second voice came from the speaker. “I heard,” he said. “I’ll pick a few that came
in last night after the cuts. Will that do?”

“That should be fine,” Mr. DeCoster said.

He reached for a remote. Blinds in the windows swiveled to dim the room, and the screen
at the front of the classroom flickered on. Up came a menu of icons, presumably controlled
by Xing Lao, who flew through layers of options to pull up a video of a young black
woman, maybe twenty years old, with wet eyes and a gleaming smile. She was hugging
a gray kitten and looking straight into the camera.

“Hi,” she said in a scratchy voice. “I just watched the fifty cuts, and I just have
to say, I’m so happy Paige made it. She’s exactly like my sister. Exactly. Only my
sister died last year from leukemia, and I miss her so much. When I watch Paige dance,
it’s like I get Megan back for a minute. I mean, of course, I know she’s not really
Megan, but she’s just like Megan would be if she was here to keep dancing.” She kissed
her fingers and touched them to her heart.

Paige’s mouth went agape in surprise. Before I had time to react, another face came
up on the screen. Two faces, really. A couple of old guys in plaid flannel shirts.
They hadn’t shaved lately, and a mangy caribou head was mounted on the wall behind
them.

“Howdy. This here’s Jim and Joey Johansen from Nome,” said the man on the left. “We
wish to offer our congratulations to all the kids who passed the fifty cuts. We’ve
been following your progress most days—”

“Every day but Sunday,” said the second man.

The first one nodded. “Every day but Sunday, that is. Our friend Rhonda—”

“She works over at the diner here in town,” said the second man.

“Our friend Rhonda told us to try your show. She said we’d like it for the art, and
she was right. We’d like to say we appreciate the energy of you young people. I don’t
think it’s too much to say you give us hope. For the future.”

“For humankind,” said the second man.

“That’s right. For humankind. So best of luck to you now.”

The two men nodded solemnly.

I glanced over at Janice, who was watching the screen, spellbound. Nobody snickered,
and I was glad.

The next clip showed a boy of twelve or thirteen, sitting in a hospital bed with an
oxygen tube running under his nose and back around his ears.

“I got it, Mom,” he said, and then smiled straight at the camera, which jiggled once.
“Hi! This is Billy!” He breathed in thickly. “I’m so excited! I’ve been watching your
show three years now, and this year is the best year ever, with the best people ever.
My favorite students are Burnham Fister and Henrik Plashcka and Rosie Sinclair.” He
took another deep, thick breath. “If you ever see this and just give me one quick
wave or thumbs up or whatever, that’d be great.”

The frame froze on him giving a thumbs up, and I stared at him, unblinking. On instinct,
I gave him a wave, and looking around the table, I saw others doing it, too.

The voice of Xing Lao came over the speaker again. “Want a few more?”

“Thanks. I think that will do,” Mr. DeCoster said.

“My pleasure. Anytime,” Xing Lao said.

“All good, Robert?” Dean Berg asked.

“Yes, thank you,” Mr. DeCoster said, touching his earphone again.

A soft crackle came from the speaker, and then it went quiet. The window shades hummed
as they tilted to let the light back in.

I stared around at the other students, who sat humbled and silent in their seats.
Not one of us spoke.

Mr. DeCoster set down his remote and opened a hand upon the table. “Questions?”

Henrik cleared his throat. “How many of those clips do you get?”

“Hundreds,” Mr. DeCoster said.

“Why don’t you pass them on to us?” Janice asked.

“Because of the pressure it would put on you, and the distractions it would create
when you felt you had to reply,” Mr. DeCoster said.

“That last little guy was cute,” Henrik said.

“It’s terrifying,” Paige said. “Who can live up to that?”

Some of the others were muttering to one another. Burnham was quietly turning over
his stone in his fingers.

Mr. DeCoster took his box of shells and put a lid on it. His gaze shifted toward Burnham,
and then to me, and then he pushed back his chair. “I have one other thing. I’m moving
our class to the basement of the library. There’s a den down there with a couple of
old couches and a Ping-Pong table. I find it more conducive to thinking, plus it’s
closer to the shop. Meet me there tomorrow. A little help with the chairs, please.”

We rolled our chairs back toward the computer desks, and Mr. DeCoster took his coffee
cup. A couple of students lingered to ask him a few questions. Janice said she was
heading over to the drama building. As if he planned to stay a while, Burnham turned
on a computer at the back of the room. I slid my stone into my skirt pocket, and then
I walked over and took the swivel chair next to his.

“Hey,” I said. “What was that about?”

“Nothing.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. I get it.”

“Get what?” I asked.

Burnham skimmed a finger over his touch screen, and a black world with purple, winged
guys shifted onto his larger computer screen.

“Right. Ignore me. That’s real subtle,” I said.

“I’m trying to work on my game here, if you don’t mind.”

“Okay, wait a second,” I said slowly. “I could be wrong, but yesterday I thought we
were friends.”

“I thought so, too.”

“So why aren’t you talking to me?”

“I am.”

He was too smart for stupid games.

“Is this because I kissed Linus?” I asked.

He let out a brief laugh. “That is a totally girl thing to say.”

“I
am
a girl, in case you haven’t noticed,” I said. “You’re acting incredibly weird. Yesterday
you weren’t like this.”

“Why would I care if you kissed anybody?” he asked.

“That’s what I want to know.” I pulled his touch screen out from under his hand.

“Seriously? I am not going to fight you for my touch screen,” he said.

“Just tell me, Burnham,” I said, leaning over him and holding the touch screen tight.
“Yesterday, you were nice to me. Was that some kind of stunt? Is this the real you
now?”

“
I
was not doing a stunt.
You
were the strategy queen,” Burnham said. He turned to face me and folded his arms.
Behind his glasses, his eyes were hard. “Make friends with someone who has a high
blip rank. Use your special talent, like make a film of losers to get everyone’s sympathy.
Have a personal drama. Sound familiar?”

Guilty alarm rose in me. “You know what Linus told me to do to stay on the show?”
I said.

“That’s right,” Burnham said, nodding. “My brother watched your scene with him from
yesterday morning and told me about it. He thought I’d be interested.”

I quietly set down the touch screen. “I did everything Linus said,” I said, half-amazed.
“But I wasn’t following his advice. It wasn’t like that.”

“Ellen’s tragedy must have been pure luck,” Burnham said. “Then again, you had to
be laughing your head off when I got everybody at lunch to do our spike experiment.”

“You actually think I masterminded yesterday,” I said. “You think I was using you
and everybody else.” I felt a horrible twinge of conscience. The spike at lunch
had
been mainly my idea, but I hadn’t set out to use the others at our table, and they
had benefited, too.

“You’re good, Rosie,” Burnham said. “A far better actor than Janice, in my opinion.
And now you’ve made the cuts. I fully expect you to claw your way right to number
one.”

“That’s awful,” I said furiously. “I wasn’t thinking about what Linus said. I was
just being myself.”

“And yet you managed to kiss him at five o’clock,
in the rain
,” Burnham said.

“Now the weather is my fault, too?” I demanded.

“Cut the righteousness,” Burnham said. “Just admit you played me and be done with
it. Just admit it, and say you’re sorry, and I’ll admit I was stupid to believe you
were just a nice, awkward kind of girl, and we’ll be even.”

“Awkward!” I said, and my voice strangled into incoherence. I narrowed my eyes to
slits. “You know what?” I said. “I know what I did yesterday, and why I did it. I
don’t need to justify myself to you or anyone else.”

“That is not an apology,” he said.

“You’re right. It’s not. Because I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You cheated and manipulated to pass the fifty cuts,” he said. “You set me up and
used me.”

I glared at him, seething. “I did not. You’re just saying that because I’m not the
meek little awkward thing you thought I was.”

“So it’s my fault, then?” he said. “Fine. Believe that. And now I’m sick of being
nice.” He pushed his watch farther up his wrist and started swiping on his touch screen.

“I hate to tell you this. You’re not nice,” I said, and left.

11

THE CLOCK TOWER

BURNHAM’S DISAPPROVAL STUNG.
I couldn’t believe he’d thought I was just a nice, awkward sort of girl, but it was
even worse that he thought I was a manipulator. I kept reviewing what had happened
at lunch the day before, and I knew I’d asked, in so many words, for him and the other
students at our table to try to get me a spike in ratings. But he was the one who
had proposed the theory of influencing spikes, and the others had seen their blip
ranks improve, too.

I hadn’t filmed the losers to be cunning and vicious. I’d had no idea that Ellen would
be in meltdown. I certainly hadn’t planned on kissing Linus for a premeditated finale.

“What’s wrong with you?” Janice asked me later, when I went up to the dorm to change
for a run. “You’re all moody and quiet.”

“No, I’m not.” I turned my back to the room and changed into shorts and a shirt as
quickly as possible. The techies were notoriously discreet about not broadcasting
nudity, but me in my bra and undies was fair game. I could have gone to a bathroom
stall to change, but I wasn’t shy and awkward like some people might think I was.

What had given him that idea?

“Do I seem awkward to you?” I asked Janice.

She set her shell on her bedside table beside a collection of swizzle sticks. “You
seemed a little aloof before I got to know you,” she said. “Maybe a little introverted,
but driven, too. Why?”

“I’m just wondering.”