Dozens of times during those days she would look at the telephone sitting on the desk in front of her and think how simple it would be just to phone Glen. She could punch in the familiar numbers and in thirty seconds tell him what she needed and when she would be accessible, but in the end she did not, because she was fairly certain that she would be found out, and that the repercussions would be heavy.
She was fully aware that she was being watched. It was only to be expected. All of the newcomers were under careful scrutiny. She suspected that she was more closely watched than the others simply because she was involved in teaching the children, and Change authorities needed to be certain that she could be trusted not to introduce subversive outside ideas. Her classes were monitored, the papers the students wrote for her gone over by Dominique or one of the others, her reading list vetted, her computer time observed. She took care to stick to the syllabus, and allowed only those diversions and creative ideas that fit with the community beliefs. She kept a tight lid on her personal thoughts, was careful not to voice too much criticism of the outside authorities, and left religion in the realm of sociology. She did not think her rooms had hidden microphones, but she took no chances. She wrote in her diary, she meditated with the others and by herself, she walked out into the desert each morning to watch the sun rise, and she took no chances.
Her main goal was the gathering of information and worming her way into Steven's confidence, and in both of these the school became her focal point. At first it seemed an ordinary enough teaching institution, despite its setting, with very little Change doctrine working its way into the curriculum. Gradually, this picture deepened.
Ana had been given Teresa's class—or, as she discovered, the class Teresa had been forced to assume when Change had lost two teachers, one to apostasy, the other to Boston. It seemed to Ana that her colleague stepped back into her former role as the school's administrator with a trace more relief than a seeker after psychological hair shirts ought to display.
Teresa's removal from the classroom after five months inevitably created a great deal of reorganization and makeup work, and many after-school meetings with the other teachers. It seemed to Ana that the number of these requiring the presence of one particular instructor, Dov Levinski, was quite high, although as he was responsible for the math and science side of the curriculum, it made sense. Still, Ana was intrigued. When Steven began to come down for those meetings as well, although she recalled that Steven too had been trained in the hard sciences, she thought she might take a closer look.
So it was that one afternoon two days before the museum trip was planned, she walked into Teresa's office with an administrative problem she had been saving up and found the three of them sitting at the round conference table. Teresa looked irritated at the disturbance and Dov surprised, but Steven merely wore his customary look of mild interest and wise inner amusement.
"Oh, I'm sorry," Ana said, coming farther into the room. "I needed to give you something, but I didn't realize you were busy. I'll just stick this on your desk."
Teresa nodded coldly and closed the file she had on the table in front of her, which may have hidden the specific information inside but at the same time revealed the cover to be PROPERTY OF THE ARIZONA STATE DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTION. Seven such files lay on the table, four of them stacked in a pile to one side, the others distributed between the occupants of the conference table.
"Anything I can do to help?" she asked brightly on her way past the table.
"No thank you, Ana," Teresa said repressively. Dov had closed his folder, too, and was patently waiting for her to leave the room, but Steven sat back in his chair and pushed his own file a couple of inches in her direction.
"Yes," he said. Teresa's mouth dropped open and Dov looked equally startled. "Let's see what Ana makes of this decision."
Ana stood and looked the situation over with care. She wanted to see what the files were, but she did not wish to alienate the two teachers, and although Dov was merely surprised at Steven's words, Teresa's dark cheeks had flushed. However, she couldn't very well withdraw the offer once it had been accepted, so she walked over and sat down in the chair next to Steven's, pulling the folder over in front of her.
It consisted of the brief biography and not-so-brief criminal record of a fifteen-year-old boy named Edgardo Rufina, who three years earlier had gone to live with an alcoholic aunt in Kingman with two charges of prostitution in her past. He had been in and out of trouble ever since. In school he was getting one B, one D, and the rest Cs, and had spent at least a week in custody every term. His violent acts were escalating, with his last offense the serious one of assaulting a police officer.
She read to the end and looked up. Steven reached across the table to retrieve the two folders from in front of Teresa and Dov and pushed them over to her. As she opened the first, Teresa stood.
"Does anyone else want something to drink?" she asked in a taut voice. Dov did, Steven did not, and Ana thanked her and said no. Teresa took her time in the lounge, and returned with two glasses of iced tea as Ana was nearing the end of the third and last file. They waited until Ana closed that one, which like the second had concerned a young boy with few offenses but those serious and escalating, who had a family but one that was broken and itself marked by legal wrongdoings. Gabe Martinez, the boy of the second folder, had dropped out of school in Tucson, and the third boy, Mark Gill, was in the process of flunking out in the border town of Nogales.
"Which of the three?" Steven asked.
Ana had been a teacher long enough to know a test when she heard one.
"Well, it sort of depends on what you want," she replied immediately, although keeping her voice casual, even diffident. "If your goal is to get a bad kid off the streets for a while, then by all means take Gabe or Mark and do society a favor. On the other hand, if you're looking for a bright boy who's acting out an impossible home situation and might respond to a positive environment, whose troublemaking has been spontaneous and emotional rather than premeditated and self-serving, then I'd say grab Edgardo. He's even bright enough to keep up in school despite his brushes with the law."
"He's not bright enough to avoid being caught," Dov pointed out.
"Some kids find the structured setting of being in custody a nice change compared to their home life," Ana suggested mildly, and stood up. By the smug expression on Steven's face she seemed to have passed his test, and nothing would now be gained by outstaying what small welcome she'd been given. On the contrary, enigmatic statements and tantalizing glimpses of Ana Wakefield's abilities were precisely the effect she was striving for. A game, yes, but one she had to win.
Chapter Sixteen
To: [email protected]
From:
Subject: Homecoming
August whatever, 1995 (That's still the year, isn't it??)
Dearest Tonio, just a short one to let you and Maria know I'm out and okay, as okay as I ever am at this stage. I'm off to the boys in Virginia for a couple of weeks for debriefing (which always makes me think of male strippers, most inappropriately) so let Eliot know he needs to stay on for a bit longer. I don't know if I'll then be directly home or if I'll go somewhere for a few days to let my nerves jangle—Glen says they have a safe house somewhere in Wisconsin that's not being used, but I'm torn between peace and quiet (God, communes can be noisy) and putting my head down and getting back to work to take my mind off everything. I'll let you know. It'ss probably a good thing I don't have any decisions to make for a while, since the choice between tea and coffee reduces me to tears. Poor Glen.
Anyway, I will be back in time to open up shop, so don't let anyone cancel my classes like they did last time. I'll send you confirmation of the reading list for the bookstore, when I can concentrate on it, and if you'd get in touch with those three people whose names I left with you, and tell then I'll definitely want them each for a guest lecture or two.
Tell Maria hello. Give her my love, tell her I look forward
to many long sessions.
The children are the worst, walking away from them and not knowing if I should be doing anything else for them. I hear their voices in my sleep, over the sound of the water when I take a shower, when the kettle is coming to a boil. Absolute silence is tolerable, or noises loud enough to drown out anything in the back of my ears, but in between is difficult. Funny—you'd think I'd be grateful for the absence of children's racket, the arguments and continuous uproar, but I suppose one gets used to things. God, I hope they will be all right.
Enough. I'll let you know when I'm home.
—Anne
Letter via e-mail from Anne Waverly to Antony Makepeace, August 25, 1995
The drive to the Heard Museum in downtown Phoenix took a little over three hours, so the bus carrying twenty-nine students and the twelve adults necessary to keep them in line left at seven in the morning. This would be the first time some of the students had been off the compound in months, and excitement was high. The adults, scattered throughout the bus, were kept busy asking them to sit down, changing seat partners who in some way or another rubbed on each other, and deflecting teenage misbehaviors.
Ana was sitting toward the rear of the bus, looking four rows forward at the back of Jason Delgado, who, along with about half of the other eighth graders, had been included in this high school outing. He was rigid, staring out the window and radiating animosity, and the source of his discomfort was not difficult to determine: It was seated right beside him.
The boy in the aisle seat was an overweight blond boy with bad skin and a worse attitude. Bryan was two years older than Jason, looked younger, and resented the fact—and Jason—mightily. Ana already knew him as a troublemaker, although the school avoided that judgmental term, and she could see that he was deliberately provoking Jason with regular excursions of elbow and shoulder into the younger boy's space and the odd muttered phrase, inaudible in the next row over the noise of the bus but causing Jason to stiffen further.
After an hour and a half, the bus stopped to allow the cramped passengers to stretch and use the toilets. Ana walked her way over to the two teachers sitting in Jason's section, one of whom was Dov Levinski, and suggested that either he or Bryan be moved.
"We can't, sorry," said Dov.
"Why not? Just trade seats with somebody—Bryan gets along okay with Marcos; put him there."
"Bryan and Jason have to sit together," he said. "Steven's orders."
"Steven? But that's—" Ana caught herself before she committed the offense of criticizing Steven, and changed it to "He must not be aware of the problems between the two boys."
"He knows," Dov said curtly, and moved away to suggest that two girls might not want to squirt each other from the drinking fountain.
Strange, Ana thought. Why would Steven force two boys who hate each other to sit together? And particularly when one of them was a boy in whom he had expressed an interest?
They got through the rest of the trip without a scuffle and were met at the museum by three strong and determined-looking docents, who divided them up into groups with the big, scar-faced wood worker and shop teacher David Carteret in charge of the first group, Dov Levinski the second, and Teresa Montoya the third. As they went inside, Ana glanced at the map in her hands, looking for the location of the public telephones, and found one under some stairs near a rest room on the other side of the courtyard. It was very exposed, but she needed only two minutes to make the call. There didn't seem to be much choice but to leave her group when everyone was safely in the depths of the museum and make an emergency bathroom break, hiding her diary and a brief note for Glen somewhere—in the towel dispenser perhaps, or the toilet seat cover case—and make the call. No time to find a photocopy machine; Glen would have to arrange the journal's return somehow.
Accordingly, halfway along the tour and deep in a lecture on Navajo building techniques, she sidled up to Dov and told him "You guys'll have to watch the kids by yourselves for a couple of minutes. I have to go use the rest room."
Dov looked annoyed. "Can't you wait for twenty minutes?"
"I don't need to pee," she whispered cheerfully. "It's this menopause business; a person has really hard flows at the weirdest times."
He turned scarlet and pulled away from her as if it might be contagious, and Ana strode off toward the ladies' room.
To her irritation, there were two women already in the rest room and another followed her in the door. Even worse, there was no seat cover dispenser in the stall she entered, and the toilet paper holder was too small for her diary. The women left, Ana flushed (Her period was quite regular, and not due for a week), and went out to see if she could jimmy the towel holder, and there stood the woman who had followed her in, waiting for her.
"Agent Steinberg, FBI," the woman said, and flashed a badge in front of Ana's startled eyes before making it vanish into a pocket. "Glen McCarthy told me to follow you around the museum, to see if you had anything for him."
For a moment, Ana could only stand and gape at this evidence of the FBI man's all-seeing and omnipotent presence, but then her brain kicked in. Of course—with all the activity involving the school board to set up this trip, the news had leaked to Glen's ears somehow. She yanked her diary out of her bag and thrust it at Agent Steinberg.
"Photocopy all the pages after the marker and give them to Glen. Tell him I need information on alchemy. Got that? In two days—not tomorrow morning but the next day—I'll walk down the road at dawn. I need this diary back along with any material he can get together; have him put them underneath the big rock with the white chip out of it exactly half a mile outside the gates, on the east side of the road. Now go."
"Alchemy," the woman said. The diary was already hidden.
"Go." Ana turned to wash her hands, and Agent Steinberg was gone before she could reach for the towels.
The half-closed door was pulled open and Teresa walked in.
"You okay?" she asked.
"Just fine," Ana answered, and left to find the others.
The trouble erupted over lunch.
Jason and Bryan were in the group behind Ana's, the last to finish. When the assorted students and teachers spilled into the small courtyard behind the bookstore where the others were already settled with sandwiches and drinks in hand Teresa and the other woman chaperone were looking extremely apprehensive, and the two men, whom Ana knew only as Dean and Peter, were trying to position themselves between the two boys, with limited success. Bryan's sneers and feint pokes were kerosene to Jason's smoldering anger. Watching them, she could see the meaning of the slang term "mad-dogging". The two boys glared at each other, daring the other to be the first to move, encouraged by the low remarks and glances of the other students.
Steven be damned, Ana cursed to herself; those two have to be separated.
She grabbed Teresa by the arm and hissed in her ear, "Do you want a fistfight right here in the museum? Wouldn't that make Change look really good? I know Steven said to keep those two together, but Steven isn't here. Split them up, and we can settle it with him later."
Teresa looked over at the two boys and decided to agree with Ana. She went over to speak urgently into the ear of David Carteret, who then moved his six-feet six-inch bulk over to the table where the sandwiches had been set out.
"C'mon, man," he said to Bryan. Time to cool down,"
Ana went to stand next to Jason, who was positively vibrating with repressed fury. She spoke his name, picked up a wrapped sandwich, and thrust it into his hand, trying to distract him, make him focus on her and return him to himself. He glanced at her distractedly, but then from behind her came Bryan's voice saying something she barely heard but which sent Jason's control through the roof. He dropped the sandwich, whirled, and reached out for Bryan, roaring his fury straight into Ana's face. She was caught up in a swift whirl of movement. Her shoulder slammed against some hard object, men were shouting, a woman shrieked—she shrieked—pain shot up from her knee and then a shockin
g impact spun her face around and she was buried beneath two furious and very strong young men. She cried out again when a shoe ground down hard across her fingers, and then just as suddenly as it had begun it was over, leaving her crouching on hands and knees, waiting for her body to report its injuries. Her head spun, her hand throbbed, her mouth hurt, and she watched the drops of bright red blood splash regularly down onto the courtyard tiles and across her bruised knuckles.
Hands tentatively touched her back, heads were bent to hers, shocked voices came from nearby, and at a distance a man, full of rage and disgust, harangued.
Jason, she thought suddenly. Where—?
She raised her head, grimacing at the taste of blood in her mouth, and tried to see him through the legs.
"Ice," a voice said. "Get a wet cloth," said another, and "Who's got the first aid kit?"
A dripping towel appeared; Ana took it with her right hand and put it gingerly to her mouth, which seemed to be alarmingly full of sharp pieces of tooth. No—not teeth.
She sat down on the pavement and pulled out the remains of her two front teeth, which caused a quick frisson of horror to run through the crowd of onlookers until they saw the broken plate of the bridge and the wire bits that were attached, and the tight laughter of relieved stress replaced the horror. Several of the girls began to giggle uncontrollably, and Ana was reminded of Dulcie. Great icebreakers, missing front teeth, she thought. Well worth all the trouble of getting shot up and crashing your face into a steering wheel.
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