Academic Assassins

by Clay McLeod Chapman

  Buttercup pressed her hand into the small of my back and pushed. One second she’s batting her eyelashes at me—the next, she’s shoving me around. I’ve heard of playing hard to get, but this was taking it to a whole new level of insanity.

  I stumbled forward.

  Grayson halted, staring at the floor.

  Looking down, I realized the tip of my left foot was off the yellow line.

  I pulled my canvas shoe back as fast as I could.

  Too late.

  Grayson had his C.R.U.’s out, his thumb already on the button. “Residents must keep their feet on the yellow line at all times,” he recited. “Residents who fail to comply will receive a three-second response.”

  I held out my hands in hopes of showing him I meant no harm.

  Just an accident, I wanted to say. Won’t ever happen again, boss….

  No dice.

  Grayson pressed his thumb on the button and I felt the electricity surge down my spine and just before the jolt could flood my brain I thought quick Spence think back to a happier moment think back to something anything and block out the pain the pain oh man here comes the pain and MOM TOOK ME TO SEE SANTA CLAUS AT THE MALL WE HAD TO WAIT IN LINE TO GET MY PICTURE TAKEN WHEN HE ASKED ME WHAT I WANTED FOR CHRISTMAS I TOLD HIM I WANTED MY MOM AND DAD TO BE HAPPY AND SANTA SAID HO HO HO oh no oh no help me oh no HO HO HO HOW ABOUT WE GET YOU A BRAND-NEW FIRE TRUCK DOES THAT SOUND LIKE A GOOD GIFT TO YOU KID and Grayson’s thumb finally lifted off the button.

  The electricity dissipated from my bones, releasing me from its steely grip. I folded over and landed hard on my knees, flopping like a rag doll.

  “Get up,” Grayson said. “I said—get up.”

  Babyface leaned over and grabbed my arm, trying to tug me up from the floor. “Just give him a second, alright? Let him catch his breath.”

  Grayson tightened his eyes on Babyface. “Let him get up by himself.”

  “Come on, man…Lighten up.”

  Grayson stepped back and shouted—“Hear that, everybody? The rug rat here says I should lighten up.”

  This drew a few chuckles from the Men in White.

  “What do you think, #2643?” Grayson asked. “Should I lighten up?”

  “No, sir!” Buttercup shouted back.

  “Tell you what.” Grayson aimed his eyes at me and shouted, “Emergency pod inspection, courtesy of our two new residents here!”

  Ants moaned as three more Men in White entered the gallery, keys jangling. “Be sure to show #347678 your gratitude whenever you have the chance.”

  Grayson really wasn’t making it easy for me to make new friends.

  We were instructed to stay on the Yellow Brick Road while the Men in White tore through our pods. We had to watch them turn over our rooms, one at a time.

  Before long, a small heap of confiscated goods piled up on the gallery floor.

  See that soda can?

  The bottom was cut out and hinged to make the Men in White believe it hadn’t been opened. Perfect for hiding items nobody wanted found.

  See that comic book?

  Slipped in between its pages were a set of razor blades.

  See that knife made from a shard of Plexiglas?

  One end had been wrapped in duct tape for a handle, while the other had been sanded down to a fine point.

  See that set of nunchucks made from broken chair legs?

  Or that spear made from a scrap of metal from an old bed frame?

  “Are we gonna find anything in your pod, #347678?” Grayson asked.

  I shook my head—nope. What did he expect? I had only been at Kesey for a couple hours….

  “Got something,” one of the Men in White called from my pod.

  Say—what?!

  The orderly stepped out from my pod holding a toothbrush. Its plastic tip had been filed down to a sharp point. I’d never seen it before in my life.

  “Were you planning on poking somebody’s eye out?” Grayson turned to Buttercup. “#2643—why don’t you inform #347678 of our rule on weapons?”

  Buttercup about-faced and recited—“Any weapons discovered in a resident’s possession will automatically result in a visit to the Solitary Housing Unit.”

  Grayson stepped up to me. “Ready for a trip to the Black Hole, #347678?”

  I didn’t say anything. I stared ahead.

  Don’t take the bait, Spencer…

  “Answer me.”

  I focused onto a point along the gallery wall, refusing to look away.

  “I said—Answer me, #347678.”

  I imagined my eyes boring directly through the cinder blocks and finding freedom on the other side.

  Grayson held up his C.R.U., thumb ready. “Last warning,” he said, barely even waiting a breath before pressing the button and I tried bracing myself for the jolt but too late here it is it seizes my spine I WAITED AND WAITED FOR DAD TO PICK ME UP AFTER SCHOOL HE KNEW IT WAS HIS DAY TO PICK ME UP WHERE WERE YOU DAD and now I am a marionette and Grayson is some evil puppeteer plucking the strings the strings I can’t control my body MOM CALLED DAD THE NIGHT BEFORE TO MAKE SURE HE REMEMBERED WHICH ONLY GOT HIM MAD OF COURSE I’LL BE THERE STOP MICROMANAGING ME and Grayson released the button and I stumbled back, stepping off the Yellow Brick Road.

  “Off the line!” Grayson pressed the button and there’s the electricity again rushing down my backbone into every rib and HE WASN’T THERE HE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE HERE AN HOUR AGO TWO HOURS AGO FINALLY MOM SHOWED UP AND TOOK ME HOME and the current cut itself off. I wobbled as soon as the electrical grip of my collar released me. I couldn’t feel my feet anymore.

  Babyface pressed his shoulder against mine and wrapped his arm around my back. He leaned into me, holding me up and on the line before I could fall over.

  I stared Grayson down. A tide of bile rose up from the back of my throat.

  “Looks like somebody’s getting ticked!” Grayson seemed pleased. “You got something you want to say, #347678? You’re gonna have to speak a little louder.”

  Grayson cupped his hand around his half-eaten ear.

  The rest of the ants stared, waiting for me—willing me—to knock Grayson’s lights out. Everybody, ants and orderlies alike, were begging for it with their hungry eyes.

  I could feel my hand clenching, almost as if it were happening independently from the rest of myself. This was somebody else’s hand, not mine.

  This was everybody’s fist.

  “You gonna hit me, #347678?” Grayson lifted his chin. “Take your best shot.”

  That’s when it dawned on me: So that’s the social order of things. The Men in White beat us ants down and the ants respond by beating back, which allows the orderlies to beat us even harder.

  My fist unfurled itself.

  Grayson’s grin withered. He seemed genuinely disappointed.

  “So help me, I’m gonna make you talk, #347678,” he said. “The first words out of your mouth are gonna be you begging me to spare your miserable life.”

  He turned to the other Men in White.

  “We wanna start #347678 off on the right foot, don’t we?”

  I didn’t like the sound of that.

  “Tell you what….If you can make it from one end of the gallery to the other without stepping off the Yellow Brick Road, I’ll overlook today’s little infraction. Is that understood?”

  What other choice did I have?

  I gathered my breath and turned my feet so that I was now facing the lengthy stretch of yellow paint extending across the gallery floor.

  About thirty steps between me and the far wall.

  A cakewalk.

  The ants parted down the line and stepped back, forming a corridor.

  Alright, Spence. You can do this.

  I started walking.

  Just one foot in front of the other.

  Passing Buttercup, I hadn’t noticed her foot sliding out in front of mine.

  “Watch out!” Babyface shouted.

  Too late. I stumbled forward a few
steps and quickly corrected my balance like a tightrope walker regaining his equilibrium fifty feet in the air.

  I looked down. Both feet were still planted on the paint.

  “Back off, #2643,” Grayson barked. “Let #347678 handle this on his own.”

  I felt dizzy. The room was starting to spin and the yellow line began to wobble underneath my feet.

  Just watch your step, Spencer…

  Watch it…

  Watch…

  I can make it, I thought and picked up the pace.

  Almost there.

  More than halfway to the wall and the remora leeched to my neck bites down on my spinal column until it curves backward, both arms flung out at my shoulders and YOU PROMISED YOU’D BE THERE WHERE WERE YOU SORRY DOESN’T CUT IT ANYMORE WHAT WERE YOU THINKING HE WAS STUCK THERE FOR OVER AN HOUR WHAT WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO TELL HIM YOUR OWN SON and suddenly I found myself toppling over. The floor was closing in.

  I let out a shout as my knees made impact with the cold concrete floor, landing directly on the yellow line. I could hear each patella pop. The pain pulsed through my spine, but I was still teetering within the bounds of the paint.

  Looking over my shoulder, I saw Grayson holding his C.R.U. “Come on, #347678,” he said. “Don’t get clumsy on me. You’re almost there.”

  I climbed back up to my feet. The dizzy spell kept swirling through my head. The room wouldn’t stay still. I had to close my eyes for a moment.

  “You got this, man,” Babyface called out. “Just don’t look down.”

  What kind of advice is that?

  I could feel my body start to list to one side. I couldn’t keep my balance.

  I was tipping over.

  I was—

  Something braced my fall.

  I looked to my left and saw an ant, the same hollow-eyed kid who’d come to my pod, holding my arm.

  “Hands off,” Grayson ordered. “Let him go or you’re getting a response.”

  “You can do it,” the ant whispered. “Just focus on the wall and run for it.” He released his grip—and for a second, I felt like I was going to fall over again. But my foot edged forward just in time to hold me upright.

  The tip of my canvas shoe was about to reach over the yellow line.

  I stepped back, teetering on the edge.

  “Spencer…Spencer…Spencer…”

  It started with Babyface, spreading amongst the rest.

  “Spencer…Spencer…Spencer…”

  A handful of ants were suddenly chanting my name—“Spencer! Spencer! Spencer!”

  They were clapping now, both rows, lifting my spirits. Holding my hopes up.

  “Spencer! Spencer! Spencer!”

  I shook my head, hard, shaking the residual electricity out from my brain. I inhaled through my nose and put one foot in front of the other.

  I could do this.

  I think I can I think I can I think I can…

  My pace picked itself up again. I was running now. I was in a marathon and here were all the onlookers cheering me on as I made my way toward the finish line.

  The wall was only twenty steps ahead.

  “Spencer! Spencer! Spencer!”

  Fifteen.

  “Spencer! Spencer! Spencer!”

  Ten.

  I knew another shock was coming. I just had to be ready for the electricity before IF YOU CAN’T BE THERE FOR HIM THEN WHO WILL WHO DOES HE HAVE TO LOOK UP TO WHO CAN HE COUNT ON IF HE CAN’T COUNT ON HIS OWN PARENTS and just as my knees gave out, I flung myself forward at the wall.

  My right knee hit the floor first with a dull THWOMP.

  The rest of my body toppled forward. My head was on its way toward the floor. I held out my hand and my palm planted itself flat against the far wall.

  Cheering.

  The Ant Farm filled with shouts as I peered down at my own feet, finding them both still within the parameters of the painted yellow line.

  I had made it. Actually made it.

  Safe.

  I curled up into a ball on the floor, out of breath and exhausted, making sure my body stayed inside the lines before passing out.

  Everything was a white blur as I slowly came to. Shadows passed beyond the cotton contours in front of my face, fuzzy and phantasmal.

  Was I wearing a pillowcase over my head?

  I was. It’s a feeling I was unfortunately all too familiar with at this tender age. The fabric pressed against my nose, tightening with each suffocating second.

  My captors had slipped their arms under mine and hoisted me up. My feet barely touched the ground, the tips of my canvas shoes skidding over the floor.

  We suddenly came to a halt. I heard a rusted door screech open before me. With a heave-ho, I was tossed onto the ground with an unceremonious thud.

  The door shut, this time behind me.

  Silence.

  Was I alone? Only one way to find out. I struggled to my knees and quickly yanked the pillowcase off my head.

  I winced at the sudden burst of light. My eyes adjusted to the flashlight thrust into my face. I could barely make out the silhouette of someone looming behind the battery-powered torch.

  The flashlight clicked off and the glare gradually evaporated.

  I was in a broom closet.

  I focused on a figure standing before me. The closet’s florescent lights gave off a dull glow over what appeared to be a shaved head.

  “When I first heard the news,” the voice said, “I didn’t believe it.”

  A girl’s voice. It wasn’t Buttercup. It was someone else.

  Someone very familiar.

  “Here,” she said. “You dropped this.”

  My eyes focused on her hand. She was holding an inhaler, scuffed up and chipped, flames wrapping around its mouthpiece.

  My Little Friend.

  She brought the inhaler up to my lips—and with a push of her thumb, she sent a gust of medicated air deep into my lungs. I exhaled, the supercharged oxygen creating an airstream in my trachea, the vocal folds now empowered to produce sound, sending a soft vibration through my larynx, my lips shaping the sound into a single, heartfelt name that I hadn’t spoken out loud in months.

  “…Sully?”

  Sully was standing in front of me within this suffocatingly small broom closet.

  I was beyond words. Or, more to the point—back to words. All it took was one name to break my voice out of its linguistic prison. Saying it out loud returned the blood to my body. I felt like my heart was pumping for the first time since I arrived here.

  My voice had broken the second I said it, cracking her name in half—“Sul-ly?” I might as well have been ten years old.

  “You sound like you ate a bullfrog.”

  “Sorry,” I rasped. “I’m a little rusty.”

  Her summer camp cornrows had been shaved off, exposing the slope of her scalp. The sleeves on her uniform were rolled up. She had a pair of taut biceps that could probably out-muscle most of the boys around Kesey. She tilted her head to one shoulder, examining me as if she were trying to determine what she was going to do.

  “Long time, no see,” she said in an even tone that barely masked a knife’s edge. “No write, no call, no nothing.”

  “My cave didn’t get great cell phone service.”

  Her face had hardened since the summer, with sharper angles than I remembered. This wasn’t the same chubby-cheeked Sully from her missing flyer.

  Did that girl exist anymore?

  “You gonna take your inhaler back or what?”

  “I haven’t needed my inhaler for—”

  Sully gut-punched me. The air flushed from my lungs as I buckled forward. She caught me before I could collapse on the floor.

  “Now I need it,” I croaked, struggling to breathe.

  Sully let me go, watching me drop, then tossed My Little Friend to the floor. I swiftly picked it up and took another puff. The pressurized burst of air calmed my bronchioles.

  “Have you
been—” I coughed. “Holding onto my inhaler all this time?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself, hypocrite.” She shook her head. “If Holden Caulfield knew what you were up to these days, he’d call you a phony straight to your face.”

  “Gee, Sully….I really missed you too.”

  Sully lifted her leg and planted her heel against my chest. Before I could react, her foot had pinned me flat against the ground.

  “You left me.”

  “That’s…not…entirely true,” I managed to say under her heel. “Technically…”

  “What do you call that little about-face in the woods? Getting exercise? Taking a stroll?”

  “I didn’t…want to…leave….”

  Sully leaned forward even farther, her heel digging deeper into my chest.

  “I left everything,” I strained. “I left everybody! Seeing all those moms and dads with their kids—but not seeing mine—it felt like I didn’t have anybody.”

  Sully hesitated. Her face softened for just a second, eventually lifting her heel and walking away.

  “You had me,” she muttered over her shoulder as she grabbed a chair. Spinning it around, she sat and leaned over the back. “Then you left the rest of us to clean up the mess you made.”

  “If memory serves,” I coughed, “you were the one who brought an entire army of slingshot-wielding amazons to the party.”

  “I wasn’t the one who started the war with Peashooter,” she said. “That’s on you.”

  I rubbed my sore chest. “But you were going to end it, right?”

  “Somebody needed to stop him,” she huffed. “You sure couldn’t.”

  “I was working on it,” I said.

  “From where?” Sully asked. “Inside your cage?”

  “Peashooter started it,” I mumbled.

  “What are you? Six? You left us—left me—when we needed you the most. When I needed you the most.”

  “You left me first!”

  The two of us stewed in the silence. My head echoed her name—Sully.

  Sully.

  Sully.

  To see her now, even if she wasn’t all too pleased to be seeing me, filled my chest up with a bliss that I had kept imprisoned within for months.

  Sully was alive. Sully was sharing the same broom closet air with me.

  I tried to break the tension. “Nice haircut.”