Academic Assassins

by Clay McLeod Chapman

  I spun around to discover Buttercup leaning against the shelf, flipping through Mimi Learns How to Play Well With Others without looking at the pages.

  “Where’s the orderly?” I asked.

  “Pee break.” Buttercup slid the book back on the shelf.

  “Guess I should be going, too….”

  “What’s your rush?” she asked with a coy grin. “It’s just you and me now. We’ve finally got a chance to…get to know each other a little better.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. “What’s left to know? I think you get the gist. My life’s pretty much an open book.”

  “Oh, I dunno. What about….” Buttercup ran her finger along the haphazardly stacked row of Mimi books as she sauntered over. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

  I suddenly had a hard time swallowing. “Presently? Well…it’s complicated.”

  She dipped her chin. A rosy tone seeped into her cheeks. Was she blushing? “Merridew wants me to keep an eye on you,” she said. “Make sure you keep in line.”

  “Merridew wants you to spy on me?”

  Buttercup nodded. “Why hide? You and me could just, you know…hang out.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, Buttercup, but I’m kinda off the market right now.”

  “Why…?” I could sense the hurt in her voice. “You don’t like me?”

  “Not like that….”

  Her eyes tightened on me. “Not as much as Sully.” There was a sudden edge to her words. They were sharper, harder now, like a clenched fist.

  “I really should get going.” I tried to pass.

  Buttercup’s arm shot out and blocked my way. “Stick around.”

  “It completely slipped my mind,” I said. “I was gonna wash my hair tonight.”

  Buttercup summoned a phlegm wad from her lungs and spat on my forehead. She rubbed her hand over the slope of my buzz-cutted skull, polishing my dome.

  “All clean.”

  “That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind….”

  “Most of the guys here are creeps,” she said. “I’ve been here so long, I gave up on ever meeting somebody whose face I didn’t want to smash.”

  “Gee…Thanks?”

  “Don’t worry,” she whispered. “You’ll learn to like it here. Everybody does.” Her face brightened. “Just think about all we can do together! We could run this place, you and me! I could be queen of the Hive and you—you could be my king.”

  Buttercup closed her eyes. Pursing her lips, she leaned in.

  Dive-bombing delinquent, coming in for a kiss!

  I ducked.

  Buttercup puckered up to a book—Mimi Learns How to French—while I quickly scrambled through her legs.

  I had crawled halfway down the aisle—only for a hand to grab my ankle and drag me back the way I came. I clawed at the carpeting, rug-burning my elbows.

  Buttercup clasped onto the back of my collar and yanked me off the floor. My feet kicked for solid ground but found nothing. I was dangling by my neck, choking from the leather noose around my throat.

  “Buttercup,” I tried to reason with her between gasps. “I think…you’re a nice person and everything….Honest…but I…just don’t think…of you…that way….”

  Buttercup let go. I dropped to the floor, hitting the ground like a sack of smashed potatoes. It took me a moment to get my breath back, coughing up a storm.

  “If I can’t have you,” she muttered above me, “then nobody can.”

  Buttercup pulled a plastic comb out from the elastic waistband of her uniform. I noticed the glint of metal amidst the plastic teeth. A pair of razor blades were tucked in between its tines, bound in place with a piece of twine.

  What did I have to protect myself?

  One of Mimi’s books?

  Foul language?

  “Am I interrupting something?”

  Glancing up, I discovered Sully straddling the bookcase, slingshot in hand. I don’t think I’d ever been so relieved to see her in all my life—and that’s saying something.

  “Not at all,” I said, breathing freely.

  Sully and Buttercup stared each other down. From the looks they were exchanging, I don’t think anyone would have mistaken these two for BFFs.

  “You gonna babysit your boyfriend for the rest of his sentence?” Buttercup asked.

  “He’s not my boyfriend.” Sully pulled the rubber band back, taking aim at…

  …Me?

  Well—this is a little awkward.

  “Careful where you aim that,” I said. “You might take someone’s eye out.”

  “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t,” she said.

  Where was this jealous streak coming from?

  “Uh…Because we go way, way back?” I offered, staring down the V-necked barrel of Sully’s slingshot. She squinted back at me from the other side.

  “Is that before or after you betrayed me?”

  “Sounds like you two have some issues to work out,” Buttercup said as she backed off, leaving me in the line of fire. “Why don’t I just leave you two—”

  “Stay where you are,” Sully ordered.

  Somebody pushed against the door. I tried to ignore the fists knocking against the other side, but I knew that broom wouldn’t hold forever.

  “What about that about-face you pulled on me at Greenfield?” I asked Sully. “Felt like you doused my heart with gasoline and struck the match against my ribs before incinerating what was left of me. So I’d say we’re pretty even about now.”

  Sully’s aiming eye slowly opened from behind her slingshot. “Fine,” she said. “You’re on your own from here on.”

  “Does that mean I can have him?” Buttercup asked, slipping her razor comb back into her waistband.

  “All yours,” Sully said.

  “Ladies, ladies,” I interjected. “Really. You don’t have to fight over li’l ol’ me….”

  CRACK! The broom snapped. The doors fanned open as Rip van Elderly fumbled into the library. “What’s going on here? What’re you—?”

  Buttercup distanced herself even farther from me, hands up. “He did it.”

  “Me—?”

  I looked up to discover the fiberglass panel over the shelves had been pushed back. Sully was long gone.

  Rip van Elderly stormed up to me, fuming. “Why’d you lock the door?”

  “I wanted to surprise you?” My voice trailed off. Think fast, Spencer. “See how much cleaner the library’s looking already? Spic and span, right?”

  Rip scanned the dusty shelves. The cobwebbed corners. The moldy tomes.

  “You won’t even recognize this place when I’m done.”

  “Please, please don’t make me regret this,” he lamented. “The last thing I need is Merridew breathing down my neck.”

  I gave him a pat on the back, a cloud of dust puffing up from his shoulder.

  “You and me both,” I said.

  I could already picture it. I was going to rebuild this library. I was making it my home. My headquarters….

  That is, of course, if I could find a way to keep Cupcakes from kissing me to death. No PDA, please.

  Welcome to Academic Assassins mission control.

  Take off your C.R.U.s,” Grayson instructed the ant processional. “Hang them up here. You can pick them up when you’re done visiting and put them back on.”

  The orders were given while the group of us waited along the Yellow Brick Road. I slowly unbuckled my collar, half expecting this all to be some kind of trick.

  Was I gonna get shocked?

  Not a jolt. I rubbed my throat, sore from cinching, and breathed freely. It felt so good to have my neck back.

  “Alright,” Grayson said. “Everybody inside.”

  The visitors’ room was beyond spotless. The blindingly white tile floors were polished to a pearly pristineness that made me wince when I first walked in.

  Our small colony of ants shuffled up and halted, waiting single file for the Men in White to assign us
to one of ten booths at the center of the room. Each booth had a number stenciled across the top for easy identification.

  I quickly caught a whiff of flowers, but I couldn’t see a single bouquet anywhere within these cafeteria-like quarters.

  Merridew must pump her perfume through the air ducts, I thought. The pungent odor seemed to be blanketing a different smell. Something chemical. Ammonia or some kind of nerve agent. My nostrils were burning, whatever it was.

  Mom was waiting for me at booth four.

  Mom….

  I spotted her before she knew I had entered the visiting room, kneading her hands as she stared off into the distance. Other parents sat in the booths beside her, waiting patiently for their sons or daughters to take a seat on the opposite side of the Plexiglas partition and pick up the black plastic telephone mounted to the wall.

  Finding her framed in the window made me imagine she was a portrait hanging in a museum. Her hair had gone grayer since the trial. Slivers of silver now threaded themselves through, like Christmas tinsel tucked behind her ears.

  How long has it been since I last saw her?

  “Booth four, #347678,” Grayson announced.

  Mom turned to me. The anxious look in her eyes softened, but she quickly second-guessed herself and buried that excitement deep beneath her features, as if excitement was something to hide here. The Men in White might confiscate it.

  I took a seat on the mounted steel stool. Mom and I stared at each other from opposite sides of the Plexiglas. A gulf of silence separated us. All I could hear were the one-sided conversations from my fellow prisoners mumbling to their parents.

  Mom reached for her phone first, unsure of herself. I watched her tuck a fallen lock of hair back behind her ear before bringing the phone up to speak.

  I hesitated, hoping to hold onto the moment a little longer. Before anything was said, before words were exchanged—I just wanted to absorb it.

  The sight of my mother.

  My beautiful mom.

  My long-suffering, up-for-sainthood ma.

  I finally went for my phone. There was a distant hiss in the earpiece. Sounded like we had a bad connection. Mom may as well have been calling from Acapulco from the crackle, even though she was sitting only three feet away.

  I saw her take a deep breath. There was a delay, her lips forming words just a millisecond before the sound of her voice entered my ear.

  She launched right in. “You wouldn’t believe what it took just to sit here. I had to wait in line for nearly an hour. I had to show three forms of I.D. just to prove I was your mother. Then I walked through a metal detector. Then they searched my purse, just in case I snuck something in…”

  “…Mom?”

  “I had to leave my cell phone outside.” She just kept on talking, barely stopping long enough to even breathe. “No pens. Why no pens?”

  “Mom.”

  “Can a pen be a weapon? The pen is mightier than the sword. Anything can be a weapon, I guess—can’t it? I just don’t have the imagination for that sort of thing….”

  “I love you.”

  Mom stopped and stared. “I almost forgot what your voice sounded like.”

  “Saving it for a rainy day, I guess….Where’s Dad?”

  Mom bowed her head. “Your father’s having a hard time with…”

  “…This?”

  “He doesn’t think he could handle seeing you like this.”

  “Like this?”

  “You know how busy he gets….” Busy? “He asked me to send his love.”

  I knew that was a lie. “Send it right back to him.”

  Return to sender.

  The crackle and hiss from the phone sounded like the ocean. I closed my eyes and imagined I was pressing a seashell against my ear.

  I’m listening to the calm murmur of the ocean’s waves lapping at the shore, my mother’s voice drifting along with the tide.

  I looked over and noticed Nailbiter in the booth beside mine, sitting upright, spine ruler-straight. Her smile was fastened onto her face—a masking-tape mouth.

  Total Stepford Student. I wanted to see if her lips would peel off if I tugged.

  What had they done to her?

  Her parents seemed pleased. Happy to be in the company of their newly well-behaved, brainwashed daughter. I tried hard to push their blissed-out conversation out of my head—You would not believe how happy I am now, you have no idea how much better I feel—focusing my thoughts on my own mother behind the Plexiglas.

  Mom took my silence as an invitation to continue.

  “Are they feeding you? Well, I mean? I’ve asked what the menu is like. It’s our right to know what their nutritional value is. We deserve to know….”

  It felt good to hear a voice I recognized. I didn’t realize how much I missed hearing the sound of Mom talking to me, no matter what she was saying.

  “Kids can’t live off cafeteria food,” she continued. “You need more than microwaved pizza and processed tater tots….”

  I missed her so much.

  There was a burning at the back of my throat. I could feel a strain in my chest.

  I was going to cry.

  I locked onto a small tangle of graffiti secretly scratched over my head. I tried to decipher the dense knot of overlapping words.

  CLAW AND FANG

  Who would’ve written this? Sully? Another inmate? The lava in my stomach continued to rise up my throat, ready to overflow. I could feel the sting in my eyes.

  Don’t cry, Spencer. Not here. Not around the others.

  I bowed my head to hide my eyes.

  Mom hesitated. She must’ve seen the tears. “This is my fault,” she said. “I spent so much time dealing with the divorce that I lost sight of—”

  I lowered the phone. I couldn’t hear this. Not now.

  All I ever wanted was my parents’ attention. I understood that now. But now that I had my Mom’s, what could I do with it? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  I was stuck here.

  I banged my head against the Plexiglas. The pain in my skull reduced the strain in my chest for a split second.

  So I did it again.

  I could sense the conversations surrounding me slowly fade, suddenly aware that my neighbors were now peering over their shoulders at me.

  Weakness has a smell. Warm apple pie.

  Mom rapped her knuckles against her side of the window, bringing me back. I lifted my head and saw that she was fighting off her own tears. She raised her phone up, motioning for me to do the same. I brought the shell back to my ear, the lull of the ocean warm and welcoming.

  “You’ve got to be strong for me, Spencer,” she said. “Please. You’ll see this through. You can do it—I know you can.”

  “I want to come home….”

  “I met with the program director,” she offered, a hint of optimism in her voice. “Miss Merridew talked me through your treatment program and she sounded very confident about your recovery. She thinks you might come home in a year.”

  “A year?” The word year came out a little louder than I had planned it. “Mom. Listen to me. Something’s wrong here. I think they….” I leaned in and lowered my voice. “The people here are doing something to the kids. Experimenting on them.”

  Mom took this information in with a slight nod. Did she believe me? She scanned the Visitors’ Room, taking in the docile-looking kids with their parents. I noticed Nailbiter had turned away from her family and was looking at me.

  Staring. Listening in.

  Great, I thought to myself. Not only do I have to worry about the surveillance cameras—but my fellow residents. There are lobotomized snitches in our midst.

  “All I know is,” I whispered into my phone, “kids come here one way and become something else. Changed. Altered. And not in the I’ve-seen-the-error-of-my-ways-and-want-to-go-the-straight-and-narrow kinda way. I’m talking brainwashed.”

  Mom slowly shook her head. “How…?”

  “They shoc
k us.”

  “…Shock you?”

  “With these dog coll—”

  A hand clasped my shoulder. I looked up to find Grayson hovering behind me.

  Where did he come from? Had he been behind me this whole time?

  “Alright,” he said. “Visiting time’s up.”

  “We’ve got fifteen minutes,” I protested. “It hasn’t even been five…”

  “There’s been a mistake. You’re not on the visitors’ list today.”

  “Says who?” I asked.

  “That would be me, Mr. Pendleton.” The warmth of Merridew’s voice crept over my skin as she strolled toward me. Her finger glided over the shoulders of each ant she passed, as if to check for dust. “Family visits are not a right here at Kesey. They have always been a privilege. Tell me, Mr. Pendleton—do you feel that you have earned the privilege to visit your mother? What have you done recently that should be rewarded with some family time?”

  “You can’t do that….”

  “I am merely making sure you are mindful of what information you share with the outside world, Mr. Pendleton.” Merridew leaned over and whispered in my ear so that only I could hear her—“I want you all to myself.”

  I looked to Mom through the partition. All of the other mothers were side-glancing at her, silently judging her. None of them could hear what Merridew was saying, but it was easy to see that I was in trouble.

  “You’re not getting away with this,” I muttered to Merridew. “I won’t let you.”

  “But I already have.”

  I noticed a guard walk up behind Mom before she did. He tapped her on the shoulder, catching her by surprise. They had a clipped conversation I couldn’t hear.

  “Mom!” I tried to stand, but Grayson was quick to grab me and hold me down.

  I pounded my fists against the Plexiglas.

  “They electroshock us here,” I shouted, hoping she could hear me. “They jolt us with remote controls! They won’t stop shocking until our brains are fried! Merridew takes away our individuality and makes us her slaves!”

  Mom was forced to watch me get wrestled to the ground. Grayson pressed my head against the floor with his palm. I could just manage to look up and spot Mom, her hand held up to her mouth, her horrified eyes taking in the sight before her—her son acting like a paranoid lunatic.