Academic Assassins

by Clay McLeod Chapman

  Be careful, kiddies… Rock the boat and the craven cannibal Spencer Pendleton will snatch you out from your bed and drag you into his hidden cave where no one will ever find you. He’ll eat you alive, sucking the very marrow from your bones….

  That Spencer is just a ghost story.

  I never existed in the first place. I’m just a figment of my own imagination.

  Sounds intensified as soon as I reentered the real world again. Somebody must have cranked up the volume while I was away. My ears quivered amid a cacophonous bog of car horns, televisions, and blathering cell phone chatter.

  Voices. That’s all I remember. Faces remain a blinding blur. I have been transported between holding cells and courtrooms for the last few days, escorted back and forth in the rear of paddy wagons, grabbed and shoved and tugged around.

  I’ve been told to stand.

  I’ve been told to sit.

  I’ve been told to stay.

  Am I a dog now? I must be on my way to obedience school.

  Or maybe the judge will just put me down. “Spencer Pendleton,” he had said when I arrived in the wood-paneled courtroom. “Never in all my years of serving this state have I seen such a blatant disregard for civilized society. And here you are, not even fifteen years old….Were you an adult, heaven help me, I would impose the most severe punishment possible with the utmost pleasure. But as a juvenile, you are protected by the law. Until our legal system recognizes that youths such as yourself are a menace to society, I regret to say our society will simply have to suffer…”

  “Your honor…?”

  The voice came from behind me. I turned and searched the courtroom for a familiar face.

  There. Mom sat a few rows behind me, hidden amongst a gallery of scornful-looking adults. No sign of Dad anywhere, even though his very own patented expression of disappointment—Discontent-O-Daddy—was displayed on just about everybody else’s face sitting in the courtroom.

  “I’m Spencer’s mother.” She stood up from her seat. “I’d like to speak for my son, if I may….”

  “It’s too late for that now, I’m afraid.”

  But Mom wouldn’t stop. “Since no one else will speak for him,” she said, “even himself, I want to go on record. I understand Spencer has done wrong, but—”

  “That’s enough, Mrs. Pendleton,” the judge cut her off.

  Mom looked away from the judge and stared directly at me. The rest of the courtroom may as well have faded away for the two of us. “Deep down,” she said. “I know there is a goodness in you. But you need to find it for yourself. No one else—”

  “I said that’s enough!” The judge brought his gavel down. “Order!”

  “No matter what, nothing is going to change the fact that I’m your mother and I love you—”

  The judge hammered his gavel once more. “One more word from you, Mrs. Pendleton, and I’ll have you thrown out of this courtroom!”

  I wanted to call out—Mom—but my throat was too dry.

  I wanted to say—Mom, I’m sorry—but the words weren’t there.

  I wanted to shout—I love you—but the judge cleared his throat, waiting for me to turn back around and give him my undivided attention.

  “Spencer Austin Pendleton,” he continued. “You are hereby charged with attacking and injuring numerous officers of the law, theft, vandalism, conspiracy, disorderly conduct, kidnapping, parole violation, and destruction of private property. It is the judgment of this court that you be sentenced to the Kesey Reclamation Center until such time as you are capable of reentering civilized society as a responsible, law-abiding citizen—or transferred to an adult correctional facility where you can serve out the remainder of your days. Court is adjourned.”

  The judge pounded his gavel down on the sounding block—bang! bang! bang!

  I can still hear the judge pummeling my eardrums. It never leaves my dreams. Only now, in my nightmares, my head is pressed against the sounding block while the judge hovers above me. Holding my head down with one hand, he grits his yellowed teeth and brings that mallet back against my skull, over and over again—

  BAM—like my mind was something to beat into submission.

  BAM—like I’m something to be talked down to.

  BAM—not even someone, but a something.

  An animal.

  A dog.

  What do parents tell their kids when they have to put their pet dog down?

  “We had to send li’l Fido to a farm upstate, honey….”

  Maybe that’s where I’m going.

  The farm upstate.

  “We had to send li’l Spencer to the farm upstate, honey….But don’t you worry, we’ll get you a new one, even better than the ol’ one.”

  Voices. Dozens of disembodied voices—all adults—still linger in my ears, like a greasy film I can’t wash out. I hear their sonorous octaves, low and lecturing—which is funny, when I think about it. (Funny how anything could be funny right now….) The only thing keeping me company these days are all of the hectoring, lecturing adult voices in my head.

  While I don’t have a voice anymore.

  The cave stole mine. I haven’t said a single word since returning to civilization—and I don’t plan on saying anything anymore to anyone anytime soon.

  My lips are sealed.

  A sickly sweet aroma drifted through the wire mesh covering the bus window. I took a whiff and wondered if someone had spilled a bottle of perfume on the road. I held my breath just to keep from inhaling that noxious fragrance.

  Eau de penitentiary.

  An explosion of color suddenly overwhelmed my eyes.

  I had to squint, blinded by the sprawling landscape of flowers at either side of the bus. We had driven headfirst into a sea of blood-red poinsettias. A vast expanse of purple perennials and yellow snapdragons surrounded us.

  I’d never seen so many blossoms before.

  If I had just stepped off the yellow brick road, then this must have been the magical poppy field that almost sent Dorothy off to her eternal slumber.

  Welcome to the Kesey Reclamation Center, Toto….

  The bus idled at the front gate while our driver leaned out his side window and chummed it up with a portly guard. Neither seemed in a hurry to get anywhere.

  Safe to say neither were any of us.

  Only three passengers were onboard. The kid sitting across from me couldn’t have been older than ten. Talk about a real runt of the litter. There’s no way that babyface was meant to be here.

  Had he been waiting for the yellow bus to pick him up for elementary school, accidentally hopping on board our prison caravan instead?

  This isn’t day care, I thought. This is death row.

  Our third bus-mate sat two rows ahead. I hadn’t heard a peep from her all morning. She had already chewed through her thumbnail while staring blankly out her own window during the ride. She was gnawing her pinkie next.

  What’s a good icebreaker in this kind of situation?

  So…What are you in for? Anybody know any jokes?

  We all focused our attention out our separate windows, mutely refusing to make eye contact. This didn’t seem the time to be making friends.

  I counted ten teens weeding on their knees in the garden. Why didn’t they make a break for the fence? I sure as heck would. I squinted, and made out what looked like a thin strip of brown—was that leather?—wrapping around the length of their necks. I couldn’t be sure from this distance, but they looked like…

  …Dog collars?

  A web of metal mesh divided us from the driver. Too thin to slip my fingers through and pry the gate open, grab his seatbelt and yank as hard as I could, pinning him to his seat so another prisoner could seize the steering wheel, swerve the bus off to the side of the road, press the release button on the retractable side door, and liberate the rest of us from the bullpen before reaching our final destination.

  Had any of us wanted to. Not that I wanted to. I couldn’t motivate myself to move. I
just closed my eyes and felt the hum of the engine vibrate through my bones.

  “Psst.”

  I opened my eyes.

  “Psst.”

  Pretending to be deaf, I focused on the world outside my window.

  “Hey—you.”

  I turned toward Babyface slouched in the seat across the aisle from mine. He kept his head ducked down, out of our driver’s sights, while staring straight at me.

  “You’re that guy, aren’t you?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I’ve seen your face on television,” he said. “You’re that guy! Spencer Pendle whatever. The wild child everybody’s been talking about. You’re famous!”

  I’m nobody, I wanted to say. And I’d really like it to stay that way, so if you don’t mind—mind your own friggin’ business, okay?

  “Hey, could I get an autograph? If I had a camera, I’d take a picture—”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “They put a gag order on you?” he asked. “Judge got your tongue or what?”

  How did this tyke get stuck on this bus? He should be in elementary school, making macaroni necklaces or finger painting self-portraits or—

  “You looked taller on TV,” he said. “I figured you’d be like, seven feet.”

  More like seven inches. I felt so small. Even smaller than this chatty scamp.

  “So how long before you take over this place?” he asked. “I bet you’ll be running the joint before—”

  “Put a cork in it, kid.” Our driver had cut his own conversation short to turn around and shout at us.

  Babyface sank deeper into his seat. Once the driver wasn’t paying attention again, he leaned back to me. “Psst.”

  This kid wasn’t going to leave me alone.

  Please stop talking to me…

  “Name’s Cody,” he whispered.

  I stared him down, burrowing my eyes into his with as much wrath as I could rally, trying to say without any words—Keep your mouth shut before you get us both in trouble, okay?

  Babyface didn’t take the hint.

  “I’d ask you why you’re here, but I already know.” He lifted his chin and crossed his arms over his chest in a clear display of pride. “Me—this is my third time in the hothouse. I’m in now because I visited a car dealership with my dad’s favorite nine iron. A hundred cars, nobody around…and a game of windshield putt-putt.”

  He turned his head towards his window and surveyed the brilliant floral scene outside. “Now I’ve got myself a year living it up in this country club.”

  When he turned back to me, he was grinning ear to ear.

  “Check it out,” he whispered. “The judge was about to send me up the river to some juvie spot, so all I had to do was start acting crazy. Drooling or whatevs. Ta-da—I’m sentenced to Kesey instead. Minimum security. This place is gonna be a cakewalk to break out of.”

  I turned to the fence just outside my window and noticed a white plastic bag snagged on the razor wire. It flickered in the wind, almost as if the bag had been waiting for our bus to pull up. The steel barbs had sunk in and stripped the plastic to tatters, its white shreds billowing in the breeze. It looked like a long-forgotten flag from some lost battle the history books would never mention. Not even a footnote.

  We surrender.

  From what I could make out, the entire perimeter of the Kesey Reclamation Center was giftwrapped in an aluminum chain-link security fence, reaching ten feet high. The upper rim was laced with a rusted ribbon of concertina razor-coil wire.

  I pictured a bow on a birthday present nobody would ever want to open.

  Happy birthday, Spencer. Sorry about your fingers.

  Sounded like the conversation between the guard and our driver was coming to an end. The guard leaned into his vestibule and the gate opened before the bus.

  “Psst.” Babyface again. “How ’bout we make a break for it? Now or never…”

  I didn’t budge.

  “Suit yourself.” He shrugged. “Nice knowing you, Pendletongue-tied.”

  This kid was starting to remind me of myself when I was his age. Only my quips were much wittier. And quicker. And I was much more handsome.

  Babyface bolted for the emergency exit located at the rear of the bus. He grabbed the manual release lever attached to the door and yanked.

  Locked.

  Had this actually been an emergency and we needed to escape, I wondered, would the door have released?

  Doubtful.

  Babyface grew frantic. He bum-rushed the barrier between our seats and the bus driver, ramming his shoulder against the diamond mesh.

  “You can’t do this!” He pounded his fists against the metal webbing. “I’ve got rights!”

  “You’ve got the right to sit your ass back in your seat.” Our chauffer barely cricked his neck this time, completely indifferent. “How’s that for rights?”

  “This is maltreatment!” Babyface wouldn’t shut up, acting like a gerbil in a cage. He was a gerbil in a cage. We all were. “This is exploitation! This is—”

  The bus abruptly lurched forward. The sudden thrust sent Babyface stumbling back into the aisle, cutting him off in mid-sentence.

  I turned to see the main gate slowly close behind the bus, sealing us in. For a brief moment, staring at the barbed wire lacing the fence, all I could see were teeth.

  Whale’s teeth.

  Thar she blows…

  Felt like I was Jonah and the whale had just slammed his jaws on us, swallowing the bus whole, plunging us deep into the belly of the beast—Gulp.

  Thar she goes…

  Babyface climbed back into his seat, down but not quite out yet. “This place can’t hold me,” he shouted to the driver, who could’ve cared less. “Nobody can!”

  Kesey suddenly came into full view. I pressed my head against the window to get a better view of the bland cinder block building coming up ahead.

  It looked like a school.

  Just a run-of-the-mill, shoebox-shaped, no-frills photocopy of any other school I’d ever seen. I could have been going back to Greenfield for all I knew.

  So this was the Kesey Reclamation Center?

  This was home?

  “I know someone who was sent here,” the girl ahead of us broke her silence, chewing on her middle finger now. “Came in when she was twelve and didn’t leave until her seventeenth birthday. When they released her, she’d lost fifty pounds. Most of it in the eyes. Her soul got sucked right out through the sockets. Ssssssslurp.…”

  Out of nowhere, she thrust her head against her window.

  Bang.

  “Get me out get…”

  Bang.

  “…me out get…

  Bang.

  “…me out.”

  She wasn’t shouting. She was simply talking to herself—or the window.

  Bang.

  “Get me out get…

  Bang.

  “…me out get me out…”

  Bang.

  A raspberry swelled out from across her forehead, growing darker each time she reeled her head back and slammed her skull against the window.

  Babyface looked away, pretending like none of this was happening. Was it? The bus finally screeched to a halt. Our driver cut the engine off and turned around.

  “Last stop,” he said. Through the wire mesh I could see his thin maggoty lips curve upwards. “Welcome to Kesey. Welcome home.”

  Bang.

  “Get me out get…”

  Bang.

  “…me out get me…”

  Bang.

  “…out get me out….”

  The clock had already given me a headache.

  I couldn’t locate it. Wherever that ice-picking timepiece was hiding, its ticktocking chiseled away at my eardrums from within the waiting room.

  Here I was, five minutes off the bus, and already I was separated from the rest of the herd and sent to the office.

  Some things never change….

  The
brass plaque bolted to the office door said PROGRAM DIRECTOR.

  Well—some things change.

  The days of visiting Assistant Principal Pritchard were long gone. No more after-school detention for me. Now I was being sent to the prison warden.

  The door opened. A grandmotherly miasma wafted out from the office—the sickly sweet odor of mothballs and prune juice and petrified hard candies.

  Out shuffled a petite lady wearing a button-down gray jacket and pencil skirt. Her gray hair was pinned back perfectly, with a metallic glint under the lights.

  Her eyes settled on me, radiating a warmth I hadn’t felt in a while.

  “You must be Mr. Pendleton,” she said. She looked at me as if we were family.

  So this must be the warden’s secretary, I thought.

  “I am Louise Merridew.” She extended her hand out for me to shake. “Program director. It is such a pleasure to finally meet you.”

  I took her hand as if I were about to escort my great aunt across the street.

  “We will have to work on that handshake.” Her fingers tightened around mine. The looseness of her senior citizen skin gave way to an iron fist.

  “Always keep a firm grip, Mr. Pendleton.”

  I could feel the phalanges in my hand crumble under her clutch.

  “Look your fellow right in the eye.”

  Merridew pumped her arm three times through the air.

  “And thrust, Mr. Pendleton. Thrust!”

  She released me. I yanked my mangled hand back, palm throbbing.

  “Please,” she said. “Come in.”

  My eyes immediately locked onto the engraved brass-faced antique grandfather clock pounding away in the far corner. It was suspended from the wall in a varnished walnut case, its swinging arm slicing back and forth through the air.

  “Have a seat.”

  Merridew politely cleared her throat. Once she realized she had my full attention, she smiled.

  “Three months, Mr. Pendleton.” She gazed appraisingly at me from behind her desk. “You were left to your own devices out in the harsh woods for eighty-seven days.”

  But who’s counting, right?

  “I imagine that provided some time for a bit of…introspection.”