“Yes,” Sam said with a sigh. “That had to be the worst day of his life. It tore my dad apart. He was never the same again. And that poor kid … well, I was seven at the time so I don’t remember exactly what happened, just that once again nobody had read the instructions that would’ve told them how to make the Invisiblimp waterproof. Nobody read about the life vest and the shoe-chute tucked in their compartments in case of emergency—”
“Shoe-chute? What’s that?” Jory interrupted.
“It’s a parachute that comes out of your shoes. You hold on to the cords and balance upright. You’re supposed to put them on before you start flying. It makes landing much easier than the typical backpack-style parachute.”
“Can I have one?”
“Jory, focus,” Victoria reprimanded. “Edie, continue.”
Edie nodded. “So then there was a lawsuit, and George Ackerbloom was convicted and sent to prison.”
“He was sentenced to twenty-two years. I never saw him after that. My life changed completely. Right after the trial, a mob of people showed up at Ackerbloom Industries. They were furious that the murder charge hadn’t stuck. They torched the place. It went up like a huge bonfire. But the thing was, we lived at that factory, in a suite of rooms over the factory floor. My mom and I … we lost everything—all the inventory, all of our stuff, our furniture, clothes, keepsakes … everything. That’s when my mom snapped. She started keeping everything that came into her possession. She couldn’t let anything go.… I don’t know, maybe she was trying to replace what she’d lost. And she never took me to see my dad in prison because she didn’t want me to think of him as a criminal. I wrote him letters, though, and he always wrote back. He regretted that he was not there to raise me, and that our name would forever be stained by scandal. In his last letter he begged me to be strong and not let his fate affect my own. I was fourteen when he died in prison.
“As you can probably guess, I did not have a happy childhood with a father behind bars. Because the entire country had heard of the scandal, right after the trial, Mom and I legally changed our name to Marblecook, an anagram I came up with in honor of my dad’s love of puzzles, and we moved to Horsemouth to get away from everything. Horsemouth is a good place to hide. Nothing happens here. Nobody would ever suspect any resident of being famous, or infamous, as the case may be. I went through the Horsemouth school system, which was not a good experience for me. And though we were trying to blend in and pretend we were just as boring and bland as everyone else, my mother’s mind was slowly deteriorating. She kept collecting and collecting. She amassed so much junk I moved into my tree house. I set up a cot and sleeping bag and kept my clothes in a big suitcase.”
“Did her friends really get lost in that mess?” Edie whispered.
“Yes, but don’t worry, they all made it out alive. I finished high school as quickly as I could so that I could move out and get away from all that clutter. I was so happy when I finally left for college.…”
“Right. College. I’d love to read your thesis paper on learnomology, thinkonomics, and edumechanics,” Victoria interjected wryly.
“Ah, yes. Well, I did make that up. I didn’t major in any of those things. I went to a small technical school in Canada that I doubt you’ve heard of and majored in mechanical engineering and industrial design with a minor in education. I was thinking about becoming a physics teacher, but at the same time, I was reluctant to become part of an institution that was so pedantic, so bereft of fun and joy. It was around this time that I started toying with the idea of creating a school where I would want to teach, and better yet, a place where I would want to learn. I spent hours daydreaming about the physical structure, the courses, the teachers.… Of course, at this point it was hypothetical. It would be years before I could make it a reality.”
“Jump ahead, then,” Edie ordered. “Where did you get the money to create Kaboom Academy?”
“I won the lottery. Literally. About ten years ago I was just bumping around in my thirties, living in upstate New York, and I was at a really low point. My mom had just been institutionalized two years earlier, right here, actually. As you know, this property used to be an insane asylum, quite a nice one in fact.”
“Yes, Mr. Mister gave us the first clue, and your mom pretty much confirmed it,” Jory said. “But please, continue.”
“Well, nice or not, I still felt guilty for abandoning her. On top of that, I’d been trying to develop a line of educational toys, things I’d devised from my daydreams, but nobody was interested in my ideas, and I was quickly getting nowhere. I moved back here, to Horsemouth, so that I could be closer to my mom, and took a tedious job drafting designs for kitchen appliances. At this point I was just trying to make ends meet so that I could afford to keep Mom at this facility, which, being private, was quite expensive. And I didn’t want to have to sell her house. Not that I wanted to live there—it was still brimming with office supplies—but I knew if I sold that place it would break her heart. Anyway, one day I went into a convenience store and bought some nachos, a copy of Scientific American, and a lottery ticket. Two days later I was worth fifty million dollars.”
“If this place was such a great asylum, didn’t you feel bad about taking it away from those patients?” Margo piped up.
“I didn’t take it away. I merely bought it from the owners, Dr. Harper and Dr. Friedkin, two psychiatrists in their late seventies who wanted to retire. They were looking for a buyer; I was looking for a campus. They had already transferred the tough cases out in anticipation of their departure; the rest of the patients were here on a volunteer basis, by a doctor’s recommendation, not a court order. Most of those people are still here. They’re the staff and faculty of Kaboom Academy.”
“Omigosh! Don’t you think that was pretty irresponsible?” Aliya squealed.
“They have no formal training!” Taliya added.
“That made them perfect for the job! I didn’t have to retrain them or change their ways. Besides, no professionally trained teacher in his right mind would agree to teach at a school using my materials and methods. The obvious solution was to find teachers that weren’t in their right mind. Lucky for me, there was no shortage of patients here with advanced degrees who were up to the task and eager to work! In fact, many of them are improving. Having a useful purpose is wonderful therapy, and working with teens, who, let’s admit, are naturally nuts, allows them to see that compared to their students, they’re not so crazy after all.”
“Really. And their families agreed to this?” Edie pressed.
“Absolutely! Their families were all for it. The patients still get the psychiatric care they need—we call the sessions ‘staff meetings.’ They’re held in the auditorium, led by the school nurse and the school psychologist, who are both licensed for that work. The only real difference, and it’s a big one, is that instead of playing backgammon and watching TV in their free time, they have something far more interesting and important to do: educate our youth. That’s what you call a real win-win situation!”
“What about Mr. Mister? He fell off the deep end. We haven’t seen him since Edie’s interview,” Margo reminded him.
“Actually, he’s hiding in the gardening shed,” Ruben said. “The balls found him a couple of days ago. I tried to get him to come back to class, but he just kept nodding and saying he didn’t want to buy my cookies. I think he’d put both his earplugs back in.”
“Ah yes, poor Mr. Mister was driven crazy by his unfortunate name. If only his parents had named him something like Jack or Fred, but no, their nasty sense of humor doomed him to a lifetime of teasing, the result being that he’s quite … eccentric, shall we say? Nice guy, though, and a good teacher. Would you believe he has a master’s degree in the classics? Greek and Latin.”
“We have veered way off the course,” Edie said, becoming impatient. “Go back to the scandal. You keep avoiding it.”
“Edie, I revisit that scandal every day of my life. I grew up living
under that shadow of shame. As a seven-year-old child, I hated my dad for what he’d done, but later, when I realized it wasn’t entirely his fault, I eventually forgave him. And then I went one step further. I decided to redeem him, to repair his reputation by making all of his inventions idiotproof, so that even if you didn’t read the instructions, the inventions would work. Once I became independently wealthy, I was able to dedicate all of my time to this, and I’m happy to say, I’ve succeeded. And it is a happy coincidence that many of my father’s devices have turned out to be excellent teaching tools.”
“Not entirely,” Victoria said. “Those book pills made me sick to my stomach.”
“Well, you’re right. That’s why I was very clear that this is an experimental school and that my methods may need modification. Those book pills are a good example. Clearly, taking them all at once is a very bad idea. Because of your experience, I know I should now package them differently, so that the pills’ casings remain locked until the appropriate date. I should stamp the name of the book directly on the pill, not on the packaging. That was very helpful, so thank you.”
“You should do both,” suggested Leo. “But please remember to stamp the name of the books in very large print.”
“Absolutely!”
“So we really are just an experiment,” Aliya murmured.
“Like bacteria in a petri dish.” Taliya sighed.
“After all, we are the rejects from the other school,” Edie reminded them. She turned to Sam. “I guess you thought since we were totally undesirable you could do whatever you wanted with us.”
“Not so!” Sam protested. “Not at all. First, you are not rejects to me. I picked each of you specifically to be in this school.”
“Please! You know perfectly well that I saw everyone’s file! We all had the same horrible expulsion letter from the principal at Horsemouth Middle School.”
“Well, in truth, I asked Leonard Gravestone to write those letters. I told him that I planned to create a private school but that I didn’t want to compete with the Horsemouth public schools. I said, ‘Give me the kids you don’t want, your toughest-to-teach students, the worst of the worst—”
“You know, if you’re trying to suck up to us, you’re doing a terrible job,” Victoria snapped.
“Don’t you understand? You’re not the problem! My entire early childhood was about building, creating, exploring, learning … and it was all fun. My dad and I spent hours tinkering and making things that had no other purpose than to be interesting. Outsiders might think we were engaged in idle nonsense, but I learned so much about the world in those carefree days, more than most people learn in a lifetime.
“When my father went to prison, I went from being taught at home by my parents to having to attend regular school. It was then that I entered a world of rigidity. Fun was confined to fifteen minutes at recess and a half hour during lunch, and even then you were told where to play and what to play and with whom you could play. Classes were the same. You were told what you would learn, when you would learn it, and at what point you would move on to the next subject. You learned by reading and memorizing. People with excellent memories did well. People with bad memories, or who didn’t have the patience for or interest in memorization, did poorly. And then came those awful labels: gifted, slow, disruptive, teacher’s pet, prepared, disorganized, quiet, socially awkward.… It was like they had to put each student in a tidy little box, labeled and shelved. But there’s no room to grow in that box, and no matter how hard you try, those labels don’t peel off!”
The teens nodded. All of them had at one time suffered from being labeled.
“Well, personally, I hate labels,” Sam continued. “They keep you from growing and changing and becoming what you want to be. You’re trapped in other people’s expectations.… But don’t get me started on this; it’s a subject on which I can become quite passionate.”
“But this is exactly what we’re talking about,” Edie reminded him.
“Oh yes, that’s right.” Sam laughed. “Anyway, the point is, I’m one of you. I started this school for kids who were just like me, who for whatever reason didn’t fit into a little box. That’s why I approached Principal Gravestone. I also spread around a lot of flyers advertising Kaboom Academy, just to make sure I got the kids who weren’t in the public school but who still fit the profile of the kind of student I sought. That’s how I got Victoria, for instance.”
Edie held up her hand; she’d heard enough. “Look, you talk a good game, I’ll give you that, Sam, if that’s your real name.…”
“It is my real name.”
“But the fact is that this school is built on a sham. If it weren’t, you wouldn’t have to be so sneaky about it. Why couldn’t you just present yourself as the headmaster of the school, using your real name, instead of hiring some cutrate magician to play some fake person with a made-up name? Why couldn’t you try to hire real teachers instead of crazy people—I know, I know … patients. Why couldn’t you work in this office and do the sorts of things a real head of school does, instead of pretending to be a student? We trusted you! And what about poor Margo? She had a crush on you!”
“Edie! I did not.… I never …,” Margo protested lamely, betrayed by her bright pink face.
“We shared things with you that we would never have shared with an adult! And the whole time you were just studying us, taking notes. I’ve never felt so … so violated!” Edie was able to articulate these charges with ease, for she had often been on the receiving end of such speeches. Now that she was a victim, it made her furious.
“I’m sorry, but I had to pretend to be a student,” Sam explained. “I had to see how things were operating from a kid’s point of view. If something wasn’t working, I needed to know. I wanted to hear your honest opinions.”
“Well, this is our honest opinion: you stink, Sam Ackerbloom, and your whole school stinks. I’m going to write this story and I’m revealing everything. And I’ll tell you something else. This story is big. It’s huge. It’s almost too important for the Daily Dynamite. Wait, did I say ‘almost’? It is too important for the Daily Dynamite! This story is going straight to the Horsemouth Hornblower … and also to the Bravington Bugle! I’m busting this operation wide open! And it’s all coming down!”
EDIE’S STORY–PART TWO
Edie sat in front of her computer, fingers tingling. She had covered the desk with all of her notes, but she didn’t need them. Every fact was seared into her memory, and pretty soon they would be spread all over the front page of every newspaper in New Hampshire. When she’d told Sam that this story would make the front page of the Horsemouth Hornblower, she wasn’t kidding. In a town like Horsemouth, where a cat having kittens is considered news and somebody backing into a mailbox and not leaving a note is the crime of the century, a scam perpetrated upon fifty-five Horsemouth families by a master of disguise with a scandalous past would be the biggest thing to hit the town since … well, since the school itself.
She cracked her knuckles and rested her fingertips on the computer keyboard, trying to think of how to begin. There were so many elements to include. First, the school itself, with all of its oddities: the teachers, the classes, the teaching methods, and the atmosphere. Most people wouldn’t believe it. They would think she was describing a circus, a dream, a hallucination. And then there was the whole history of the creation of Kaboom Academy, George Ackerbloom’s scandal, Sam’s mother’s institutionalization, Sam’s own rocky school experience. That also had to be explained. And finally, the craftiness of the scam itself: Sam’s disguising himself as a student and hiring a magician to play Dr. Kaboom, a man fabricated out of nothing but nonsense. Getting Principal Gravestone to expel them from Horsemouth Middle School. Scamming parents at the introductory meeting to get them to sign up. Experimenting on the students with his “improved” inventions … for what purpose? So that he could create more Kaboom Academies? Collect more unwanted students on which to experiment? And what woul
d their parents think once they discovered what was really going on? Sure, they knew what little their children had told them about the school, but they didn’t know the whole story. Certainly, once they found out, they would be mortified, ashamed that their desperation blinded them to such a swindle. Well, that was the price they’d have to pay. Once her story hit the presses, Sam Ackerbloom would be through. Kaboom Academy would shut down and Horsemouth Middle School would be forced to rescind the phony expulsions. Then it would be back to business as usual.…
Edie felt a weight land in her stomach with a sickening thud. Back to business as usual? Business as usual at Horsemouth Middle School was horrible! It was boring! It was frustrating! It was certainly nothing to which she wanted to return. The only thing she learned there was how to please teachers by memorizing what they said and spitting it back at them. And socially, she was an outcast. Nobody dared get anywhere near her for fear that she would gather information and use it against them.
Edie had never wanted to be a gossip. She didn’t particularly enjoy hurting people. It was just that two years earlier, when her family had first moved from Manhattan to Horsemouth, she had been lonely. This town was so quiet and dull. She was used to the fast-paced energy of the city, not the torpor of a remote suburb. Because she didn’t have any siblings and her parents were always so busy, there was nobody to talk to. She tried to make friends with some girls down the block, girls who she knew were considered popular, but they weren’t very kind. Apparently, she wasn’t wearing the right shoes, or was it jeans? Or maybe she was wearing her hair the wrong way. Whatever the problem was, it was trivial. Nevertheless, Edie knew if she was going to succeed socially, she would have to watch closely, listen carefully, and copy what the other girls did.
As Edie watched and listened, it began to dawn on her that these girls weren’t as perfect as they claimed to be. Each one had faults. Each one had secrets. It delighted Edie that deep down, these popular girls were just as self-conscious and anxious as she was; they just weren’t admitting it. A few months later, she tried approaching this same social group a second time, now matching their dress and mannerisms, but it didn’t work. They rejected her again. They were so mean! They were so insulting! Edie couldn’t believe these girls would behave that way, knowing what she knew about them … and that was when she understood the power she possessed. She could stop their tyrannical reign over the school. No longer would students have to endure their hurtful snubs and abuse. Surely that would gain her the appreciation and respect of her peers. So Edie revealed all, blabbing every single piece of embarrassing information she had gathered about the girls.
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