“Holy shit,” Aiden said. “Nico’s secretly famous. Why wouldn’t he tell us all of this stuff?”
Peter cleared his throat. “I think that’s a different Nico Cruz.”
He pointed to the photo with Mariah Carey; the short Mexican man didn’t look anything like Nico. “Oh. Okay.”
“Where’s he from again?” Peter asked.
“Nova Scotia.” Peter typed that in, after Nico’s name, and the machine whirled again. Sixty seconds later, there was one main line of text at the top of the screen—
WORLD’S TALLEST TEENAGER AND HIS LIFE IN NOVA SCOTIA
Peter fell back into his chair.
Aiden swallowed, continuing to stare at it. “Why would they want that?”
He pulled the keyboard toward himself and pushed in E-V-A-N A-N-D-R-E-W-S—and the computer answered again.
VERMONT BOY BECOMES SECOND PERSON TO BEAT COMPUTER IN CHESS
“I thought that was Bobby Fischer.”
Peter shook his head. “Evan’s the second one, but that makes sense. Of course you would want a kid with a brain like that.”
“So much that you’d pay for him to live and go to school? For any of these people—are they really worth it, just for simple recruiting?”
Peter spun the keyboard back toward himself. E-M-M-A D-O-N-A-H-U-E—
THE SUN AND THE SKY: AN EIGHTH-GRADE POETRY BOOK SELLS ONE THOUSAND COPIES
Aiden ripped a piece of paper from a textbook on a table next to them. “So that’s . . . an actor, a poet, a chess player, a giant, and a guy who speaks twelve languages.”
Peter nodded. “Yeah, man. That doesn’t really look like normal recruiting.”
“It doesn’t look like anything.”
Peter stared at the list for another long moment. Slowly, using just his index fingers, he punched in: E-D-D-Y V-E-L-A-S-Q-U-E-Z.
The machine whirred, producing another full page of results in only sixty seconds. They scanned for a few moments, past a click about a Realtor in Cleveland, and a click about a minor league baseball player, but none of the results had anything to do with their Eddy.
“Wait, go back to the typing part,” Aiden said, leaning over him. In the search bar, he deleted the “-dy” of Eddy, and typed “W-A-R-D.” “Okay.” He nodded. “Go.”
Peter pressed go, and as soon as the first result showed up, Aiden felt his mouth go dry.
BOY THEOLOGIAN: TWELVE-YEAR-OLD EDWARD VELASQUEZ IS A BIBLICAL SCHOLAR
Neither of them said anything as Peter clicked through to the article. Evidently, at age twelve, the Edward Velasquez of the World Wide Web had memorized the Bible and could recall every individual verse on command. Aiden could hear Peter muttering incoherently to himself in his right ear as they read, offering a few “what the fucks?” as they tried to reconcile the article with the Eddy who exploded in church. Finally, when the page ran out, they both sat back and settled on the same question.
Peter asked it out loud. “What the fuck happened to him?”
Aiden shook his head, instead studying the article again. It didn’t look anything like a newspaper; rather, all of the articles had looked somewhat similar. “It’s amazing that all of this is on the World Wide Web already,” he said. “All these newspapers use it? Even the one in Nova Scotia? That’s crazy.”
“Yeah, I guess—oh, no. Wait.” Peter pointed to the corner of the screen. “This isn’t a newspaper site. They’re all coming from the same website. They’re all posted . . .” He made a click at the top, and the main box went white. “It’s loading, this page must be a bear.”
Slowly, the web page started to fill in from the top, line by line. The colors of the page came in dark—black, with red running down the side. Aiden started to get a sinking feeling as he watched it, like even though he was the one watching the website, really the website was watching him. The design came first; the logo, the Redemption crest in the corner. They started to make out the tops of the letters labeling the page; they were less than a third of the way complete when Peter was able to decipher the word at the top of the page: RECRUITS. As soon as the title was fully loaded, a new word popped up, just below the logo where REDEMPTION PREPARATORY ACADEMY was supposed to be, in bold letters—GRIOU.
“Excuse me.”
They spun. Secretary Phillips was wearing a full robe, standing at the end of the last aisle of books, staring down at the computer.
“Students only have World Wide Web privileges in class, and it’s almost curfew. Please turn off that computer immediately.”
“Are you serious—” Peter tried to protest.
“Now.” Secretary Phillips took another step toward them, a small pointer brandished like a weapon below the sleeve of her robe. “Don’t make me call maintenance.”
Peter did as she asked, and they gathered their stuff in a rush, their heads down. Secretary Phillips followed them all the way out of the library, watching as they went.
Part VI.
Light of the World.
Neesha.
“THIS IS AN important part of the healing process,” Neesha told him. “Punishment empowers the victim to forgive. An eye for an eye. You understand?”
Evan squirmed in front of her. “I know. Consequence.”
“Right,” she said. “If I could, I would punish you socially by just ignoring you forever, but we don’t have that kind of time—”
“I understand.”
Without hesitation, Neesha drew her right arm back and swung it open-handed across Evan’s face. The skin connected with a sharp and satisfying clap, and Evan fell back onto Emma’s bed.
“Wow.” Zaza watched from the corner. “That felt good.”
Evan sat up quickly, ignoring his cheek, where the pale skin had flushed bright red. “Do you forgive me?”
She nodded. “You were right. Emma didn’t go home. She’s still here.”
Evan opened his bag and handed her a small, folded piece of glossy magazine paper. “I found this in her locker.”
It was a doodle, one of hundreds she’d seen Emma draw into the corners of her textbooks, homework, and journals. This one was a Bible verse: Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to sit firm against the devil. —Matthew 7:20.
“Emma does this everywhere, I don’t get it.”
When she looked up, Evan was locked onto her with an off-balance stare. “It’s wrong,” he said. “It’s not in Matthew.”
“Do you seriously have the Bible memorized?”
“No. But it’s not a story about Jesus,” he said. His voice was quiet and excited.
“Why would that matter?”
“Read it out loud.”
“Matthew. Matthew, seven twenty. Seven twenty . . .” She readjusted on her chair, her eyebrows taking the slow dive from confused to concerned. “P.m. Seven twenty p.m. Matthew. Seven twenty p.m. Ma . . . Monday.”
Evan nodded and her heart leapt.
“Seven twenty p.m. Monday. But where would she . . .” She squinted at the image. There was a tiny drawing, the lines of a basketball sketched into the o’s. “A basketball? The basketball court?”
Evan pointed to the end of the sentence. “I looked up the verse. She got one of the words wrong. God doesn’t sit firm against the devil. He stands.”
The words hit Neesha in the gut.
“The stands, at the outdoor court,” Zaza said. “It’s a meeting place.”
Neesha held up the clip. “She did this everywhere. I’ve seen these—she was leaving clues. She must have assumed that someone was going to find this, and . . .” She stopped herself. “And we missed it. I missed the meeting place. This was three days ago.”
But Evan was already shaking his head. “Except you said it yourself. Emma draws those everywhere.” He took another Holy Life from his bag. “I was thinking last night about the phone calls. It didn’t make sense with her pattern. Why would she call sex people? And why would she go out of her way to use that phone booth? It didn’t make sense. Unles
s there was another reason.”
Neesha thought for a moment. “Like leaving behind a message.”
He opened to a page near the back, where Emma had scribbled: On the rock, I will build my home; and the Gates of Hades will not overcome it. —Thessalonians 9:30.
Neesha looked at him. “I’m assuming that’s not from Thessalonians?”
Zaza looked over her shoulder. “Thursday at nine thirty? The night she went missing?”
Evan shifted in his seat. “That’s the last part I couldn’t understand. When I called the sex people, Yanis kept asking me how many times I did it, even though I only called once. Which means someone else was still calling the number.”
“Someone like Emma,” Neesha said. “She wrote a message on my door, too. Which means—” She held up the magazine. “This is for tonight, right after mass.” She felt a lump form in her throat. “We’re gonna meet Emma tonight.”
“Maybe,” Evan said.
“Maybe?”
Evan was quiet.
“Or we’re going to meet whoever Emma was supposed to be meeting,” Zaza said, still staring at the magazine clipping.
Neesha returned to studying the message: On the rock, I will build my home. There were small, upside-down arches over the word home, with a line jutting directly from their center. “What are those things, like, a wave . . . on a stick? The pool?”
Evan shook his head, smiling for the first time. “It’s not a wave. It’s a cross. And Peter doesn’t build a house. He builds a church.”
Aiden.
“I DON’T GET IT.”
Katie, the girl with the wire-rimmed glasses, sighed. It was dark in the back of the B-School Library, and Aiden had to squint to see her. With evening mass starting in twenty minutes, they had to cower out of the light to avoid drawing any attention. “The fact that these professors control the means of production, and students don’t own the products of their own labor, makes us an exploited class.”
“But we chose to come to school here.”
“Forced autonomy is not autonomy. The idea is, a system is corrupted when—”
“We don’t have time for Marx, Katie,” Peter said. “Let’s just say, what the school is doing to us is bad.”
Katie shrugged. “Sure. ‘Bad.’ Breakdown of social order. Same thing.”
“I’ve got something.” One of the debaters, Lauren, piped up from behind them. She held a flimsy square of newspaper. “Black Rock Gazette, 1960. ‘The Black Rock fire department was dispatched after signs of smoke were reported at the Griou Research Center in Wah Wah Springs . . . before the department could locate the facility, the fire was dealt with . . .’” She read ahead. “Shit. It’s nothing.”
“No, that’s good,” Peter said. “That’s a record that it actually existed. Save it for background.” Peter crouched over a plastic bin. There were twenty-four of them, laid out end to end and zip-tied together, lined with spindle folders and packed full of thousands, maybe millions, of fragile old documents.
“What is this?” Aiden asked, circling it.
“The Clips,” Peter explained. “Twenty years ago, one of the debaters here realized Redemption wasn’t recording any modern history—no newspapers, magazines, nothing. It was basically cut off from the world. So he started saving everything he could get his hands on, and filing it by hand in these tubs. And the debate team’s been updating it ever since.”
Seven members of the team sat on their knees around the Clips, frantically pulling items from the folders and speed-reading as they went. In the time it had taken Aiden to learn their names, the debaters had already sifted through years of documents, compiling every piece of public information possible to create a timeline of Redemption’s history.
“If you guys need any help—” Aiden started.
“We’re good.” Perfectly in unison, like a choir.
“Princeton Journal, 1955,” Mika read. “‘Four professors have departed for the Griou Research Center . . .’ There’s a picture of them all. Dr. Yangborne was kind of sexy . . . forty years ago.”
The computer monitor, five feet from Aiden, started screeching. One of the debaters sat at the computer, fingers ready.
“Does anybody use actual books anymore?” Aiden asked.
“Yes.” Peter rolled his eyes. “Jayme does.”
“I heard that,” a voice called back from between the stacks.
“Okay.” Peter stood, shaking out both legs. “Can we go over what we know? I don’t feel like we’ve found anything useful yet.”
The room was silent.
“Okay, I’ll go first,” Peter said. “The Griou Research Center opened in 1955. It became an elite high school in 1975, and they added the extra buildings—we know that because we’ve got the first yearbook. What else?”
“It’s French?” Mika offered. “Or French-inspired? Puy Griou is a mountain in France.”
“The recruiting is making no sense,” said Mischa, a German boy whose facial hair Aiden recognized from his photo of the hoods, sitting backward on a chair in the far corner. “You know Peteo? He gets recruited for having the world’s roundest head. And Luca Martinez sings onstage with Madonna. That’s it. No science at all. No reason.”
“I guess . . .” Lauren looked back to her article. “There was a fire in the sixties? But the fire department couldn’t find them?”
“It was started by Princeton,” Mika added. “Princeton started it, as a research facility—”
“For what?” Aiden asked.
The group was silent.
“What do you mean?” Mischa asked.
“I mean, why start a facility all the way out here? Why start a high school out here? What’s it all for?”
“For research,” Peter answered, slowly but matter-of-fact.
Aiden shrugged. “Then where’s the research?”
It was quiet for another moment, before Frank, the kid at the computer, answered. “There is none.”
Everyone turned to him.
“I’m on the Princeton website; they don’t list anything about it. They have a web page for all their satellite facilities, past and present—Griou Research Center isn’t on here. There are no published papers with the names of any of the instructors. There’s a page for Redemption, but—there’s nothing on the internet that says ‘Griou,’ except this one website you guys found, which has news articles about students and no more context.”
“Okay,” Peter said, pacing the room. “What if the research they’re doing is secret? There’s some reason they don’t publish it—”
“What kind of research doesn’t get published?” Mika asked.
“Or . . .” Peter stopped. “It’s not a research center at all. It’s here for another reason.” He looked around. “We’re here for another reason.”
Mischa’s face lit up. “Like a cult or something?”
“It’s already a cult,” Katie said. “Christianity is a cult, especially when they force it down our throats like this.”
Peter stopped in front of Mika, picking up the article she’d found to read it more closely, then looking around to the group. “I thought the school always said it was five professors? It’s five schools. This article says it was four—”
“I found it!” Jayme’s voice sang out from between the stacks. “I found it, I fucking found it! I knew it. I knew they’d have it! And now I have them!” Jayme came charging out, a stack of old pages in her arms. “Real books until I fucking die!”
She dropped them on top of the tubs, and the debaters crowded around.
“What is this?” Peter asked, thumbing through them. Upside down, Aiden could see angular drawings, with scales and numbers, units of measurements surrounding them.
“Building documents,” Jayme said. As soon as she said it, he saw it. In the top left corner, it read: GRIOU RESEARCH CENTER. The entire team crowded around and started offering their opinions—
“These are . . . horrible. That’s not even a blueprint?”
<
br /> “Could you actually make a building with that?”
“It looks like it’s calling for the whole thing to get made from stone; since when do people in America build with stone?”
“Have you seen the walls in the GRC?”
“Look—the research center wasn’t the only building they built.”
“How old is this design?”
Their eyes all chased to the bottom of the drawings. Peter said it aloud.
“1851.”
The room was silent. The whole library was silent.
“So . . . it’s not forty years old.” Peter did the math in his head. “It’s a hundred and forty years old?”
“What’s this?” Jayme flipped the page; there was a design for another building that was just as old. “It’s called the Reception Room.”
She held it up and everyone leaned closer. It was a small room, with pillars and low walls.
“An office?” Mischa tried.
The next page was a map of the grounds of the school, which placed both buildings. The Reception Room was north of the school, distant from the main building.
“It’s so small,” Peter said. “Is it possible we’ve just never really noticed it out there?”
They sat in silence. Jayme turned the map all the way upside down, flipping it right-side up for Aiden.
“Oh,” he said. “It’s the chapel.”
Evan.
HE SAT IN the third row for evening mass. His classmates looked at him more than usual, but he squeezed his hands together and avoided them. He could feel the instructors watching them, cold water on his neck, staring down at the rats in their maze.
Neesha and Zaza sat in the back row with their heads down. There was no sign of Peter or Aiden.
Father Farke took the pulpit, as always. “Weeks like this,” he said, “it’s important to remember that we are at our strongest when we are sharing all that we have and all we believe with each other. The foundation of this school, and our illustrious history, is built on trust, an understanding of each other’s needs, and an ability to see one another where we stand.
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