Academic Assassins

by Clay McLeod Chapman

  I got word that our barber had been relieved of his duties after he shaved the tribe’s symbol into the hair of incoming ants. A couple kids were sporting the stick figure buzzed into the backs of their skulls without even knowing it.

  Merridew was sending more kids to the Black Hole than ever before. Suddenly there wasn’t anyone around to mop the floors or fold laundry. Nobody to cut our hair.

  Kesey couldn’t operate without its ants. We were the ones who ran this building. The Kesey machine was slowly starting to grind to a halt, one act of defiance at a time.

  The drones were now defying their queen.

  I’m youth, I’m joy, I’m a little bird that has broken out of the egg.…

  And broken free from this place—even if for just a few pages.

  The quote came from Peter Pan. Not that the Men in White knew that. Someone had stuck a wad of bubble gum over the lens of the surveillance camera right outside Merridew’s office, creating enough cover to scratch the words over her door. Nobody took responsibility for the vandalism, but you better believe Merridew was on the warpath to find out whodunit.

  To be completely honest, I was pretty curious myself. Once we were all in the library, I asked Table Scrap—“Did you do it?”

  He shook his head. “I thought you did….”

  “Nah—I dumped food coloring in the oatmeal this morning.”

  “I figured the Mimis did that.”

  Table Scrap shook his head. “They spray-painted the cameras in the cafeteria.”

  Ten ants had showed up to the library for the next gathering of Assassins. Our numbers were growing. I counted five Mimis, three Napoleons, and a stray She-Wolf. Plus Buttercup. I was nervous having her here, for fear that she was going to rat us out, but the Assassins had an open-door policy and I had to stand by it. We could hardly all fit in one aisle, so we pushed back the bookcases just to make room.

  Bring us your poor, illiterate masses….

  Orphans now sported quotes scribbled over their bodies. Table Scrap had pilfered a permanent marker and written his favorite line along his left arm:

  YOU CAN HAVE ANYTHING IN LIFE…

  Along his right, from wrist to armpit, he scribbled the rest of the quote:

  …IF YOU WILL SACRIFICE EVERYTHING ELSE FOR IT.

  Sometimes the best rebellion starts with a book.

  Reading Peter Pan had planted the seeds for an insurrection in their heads. If I could convince these kids that they didn’t need to stay under the stiletto heel of their own Captain Hook, then we might break out of here once and for all.

  “Everybody ready?” I asked, cracking open my book and clearing my throat. The first sentence for today was—“I ran away the day I was born.”

  I let the words settle over the crowd before diving into Wendy and Peter’s dialogue, taking on their voices like I was reading lines from a script:

  “But where do you live mostly now?” I’ll admit—I did a pretty dreadful Wendy impression.

  Then, as a marginally better Peter—“With the lost boys.”

  “We got ourselves a bunch of lost boys here,” Table Scrap muttered. “Ain’t one of us growing up in this place. You sure this isn’t Neverland?”

  Captain Hook’s band of pirates quickly drew comparisons to the Men in White, who apparently had traded in their knives for remote controls.

  “Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of prescription meds,” a Mimi sang to herself.

  Captain Hook was coming to attack, a pirate who “was never more sinister than when he was most polite, which is probably the truest test of breeding….”

  “Sounds a lot like Merridew,” a Napoleon suggested.

  “She thinks she’s got us figured out.” I coughed, my throat feeling like sandpaper from all the reading. “But we’ve always got to be one step ahead of her.”

  Table Scrap stepped over the ants sitting in the aisle. “You need help.”

  “I got it.”

  “Nah, man—you’re losing your voice. Here. Let me.”

  He held out his hand.

  “I didn’t pin you for the reading-out-loud type.”

  “One way to find out,” he said and grabbed the book. “Where were we?”

  You would never have known Table Scrap hadn’t cracked open a book since he was six. He shared the burden of the book with me. We read different roles out loud, volleying the book between us, until the characters’ voices filled the library.

  Peter and Hook were only a few sentences away from crossing swords.

  “Who are you, stranger, speak?”—he read in his best pirate accent. “Hook, have you another voice?”

  He tossed the book back to me and I picked up where he left off—“I have.”

  Back to Table Scrap—“And another name?”

  “Ay, ay.”

  “Vegetable?”

  “No.”

  “Mineral?”

  “No.”

  “Animal?”

  “Yes.”

  “Man?”

  “No!”

  Several Mimis shouted out—“No!”—along with me, hanging on our every word.

  Table Scrap and I were on a roll now. We lost ourselves in the book, blurring the lines between its pages.

  “Boy?”—read Table Scrap.

  “Yes.”

  “Ordinary boy?”

  “No!”

  “Wonderful boy?”

  Yes!

  The words took over, possessing each and every one of us—until the walls of Kesey dissolved, fading into the furthest corners of our mind.

  How could we not keep reading?

  We were no longer imprisoned. For a few shining blinks, we were free.

  Free from Kesey.

  We finally reached the end of the chapter. Table Scrap, breathless, handed the book back to me so I could read the last paragraph. My voice was raw, but I forged through the rest of the text—“To die will be an awfully big adventure.”

  I closed the book and looked up to find the wide-open eyes of nearly two dozen ants, all staring back. When we had started reading, I could’ve sworn there were only ten of us. Where had all these kids come from?

  “Funny,” Table Scrap said, even though he wasn’t laughing. “This place never felt like a prison to me until I started reading a book.”

  “We’ll pick up where we left off tomorrow,” I said.

  “Read a little more,” a Mimi pleaded. “Just one more chapter? Please?”

  “One chapter a day,” I said. “Those are the rules….”

  No one moved. I could tell everyone was disappointed to call it quits for the day. The spell the book cast over us still hung in the air.

  “…But rules are meant to be broken, right?”

  The Mimi’s face brightened as I cracked the book back open. I took a deep breath, dove in and read—“Peter, you see, just said anything that came into his head.”

  “That sure sounds familiar,” someone said at the back of the library.

  I looked up from the book to find Sully leaning against the shelf, arms crossed at her chest.

  She’d made it. Sully had finally come.

  “You never met a rule you couldn’t break, have you?”

  “Take a seat,” I said, trying hard to keep my cool.

  “I’ll stand, thanks.” Her steely stare told me she was in no mood for swooning. “I just came to pick up my Wolves.”

  The two Wolves who’d made it to our meeting bowed their heads.

  “Come on,” Sully ordered.

  One slowly stood, her head still bowed. The other—a red-haired girl with freckles spread all over the bridge of her nose—remained seated.

  “What if they want to stay?” I asked.

  “That’s not your call,” Sully said. “Callie. Come on.”

  Callie hesistated, unsure of herself. “Just one more chapter? My mom used to read to me after she tucked me in…Please?”

  “Let me just read a little more.” I’d lost my place, so I read further i
n—“As time wore on did she think much about the beloved parents she had left behind her?”

  I peered up from the page at Sully. Her eyes tightened on me. Was she reading between the lines here? Her features remained stone cold, but somewhere deep in her eyes, I swore I could see a shimmer of…something. Hope? Hurt?

  “I barely remember my parents,” one Napoleon thought out loud. “My parents might as well be dead.”

  “You guys aren’t alone,” I said, and picked up reading the passage about Peter. “He was so full of wrath against grown-ups, who, as usual, were spoiling—”

  Sully cut me off. “So is that it? Are you supposed to be Peter Pan now?”

  “Ssssh!” A Mimi pressed her finger to her lips. “We’re in a library!”

  Sully’s eyes dug right into me, clearly annoyed. “You’re enlisting new members for your tribe with a book?”

  “We’re just reading, is all. This is Book Club.”

  “Just reading. Right. Your club’s a cover for your crew. You’re making converts to your cause.”

  “What if I am? If I’m remembering correctly, there once was a time not so long ago when you thought of yourself as a Wendy Darling….”

  Before I knew what was happening, Sully was on top of me, yanking the book out from my hand and slamming it back down on my head. “I’m not your Wendy!” Sully seethed. “And you’re no Peter Pan!”

  She stormed out of the library.

  “Sully! Wait—”

  I picked up the book and raced after her.

  I nearly collided with her. She stood stock-still just outside the library door. Her attention was locked on the hallway wall. Someone had sketched in soap—

  THE LOST BOYZ ARE NOT FORGOTTEN. BRING BACK BABYFACE. BREAK OUT FROM THE BLACK HOLE.

  Sully and I stood side by side, staring at the fresh vandalism.

  “You really are rocking the boat….” Sully shook her head. I could detect the slightest, infinitesimal hint of respect in her voice. Not much—but I’d take it.

  “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

  I slipped my hand into hers. We kept our eyes forward, staring ahead, while our fingers intertwined themselves, almost unbeknownst to us both.

  “#347678!”

  Sully yanked her hand back. We turned to find Grayson racing down the hall.

  “We got graffiti!” he barked into his walkie-talkie. “Fresh graffiti in front of the library!”

  Sully and I sat in silence before Merridew’s desk, waiting for our hostess with the mostest to arrive. The only sound in the room was the persistent ticktocking of the grandfather clock right behind my shoulder, chiseling away at my ears.

  I can’t take that ticking anymore.

  I stood up and stared the antique down, its serpentine black hands imperceptibly spinning around the clock face. I opened the beveled glass door and clutched the swaying pendulum, like seizing the spine of a wriggling skeleton.

  The ticking halted. “Gotta kill the time somehow,” I said.

  “We’re next if she catches you.” She muttered this under her breath as she slumped in her chair, arms crossed at her chest. “You want to go to the Black Hole?”

  “As a matter of fact….”

  “You really have a death wish, don’t you?”

  “Merridew’s got no choice. She’s tried to make an example out of me. Show the others she can break me. But guess what? Not happening in this lifetime. If she doesn’t send me to the Black Hole soon, everybody’s going to start fighting back.”

  “How’s a one-way ticket to solitary a good thing?”

  “Because if she can’t break me down for everyone to see—she loses.”

  Sully shook her head. “You can’t win. Not here. Not against Merridew.”

  “Wanna bet?”

  I scanned the room. My eyes settled on the wall of picture frames.

  Lightbulb moment.

  Sully turned around in her seat. “What are you doing?”

  “Just a second,” I said as I proceeded to take down each and every last picture frame—Merridew training her Men in White, Merridew standing before her prized poinsettias, Merridew riding a horse—and hang them back up again. Sort of.

  High heels click-clacked across the hallway floor.

  “She’s coming,” Sully whispered. “She’s coming!”

  I raced back to my seat just as Merridew entered, her face as placid as a pond.

  “Forgive me,” she said. “I hope I have not kept you waiting long.” She sat behind her desk, her reflection cast across its immaculately polished oak surface. Her features barely betrayed a shred of anger, her face stretched into a smile, as if she were wearing a Halloween mask of her own grinning self.

  Nobody spoke. Merridew simply stared back at us, waiting patiently. “And how are my most prized residents doing today?”

  “Just peachy,” I said.

  “Mr. Pendleton,” Merridew said. “Within your first month here at Kesey, you and your friends have ushered quite a bit of disorder into our daily mix.”

  “Has it really only been a month?” I asked. “I thought I’d been cooped up here for years….”

  Merridew’s smile remained rigid, her lips held up like a sharpened sickle. “There has been an uptick in graffiti throughout Kesey since you have arrived.”

  “Horrible,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Mr. Grayson discovered a new bit of vandalism in the hallway this very afternoon, which the two of you just so happened to be standing in front of.”

  “And what an eyesore it was, Miss Merridew!”

  Merridew leaned back into her chair. The leather squealed beneath her. “You are a pioneer of my patience, Mr. Pendleton. Always exploring. Always foraging to see how far you can push my fortitude. But if you think that I will break before—”

  Merridew hesitated. Her body started to rise up from her seat. Her eyes locked onto a spot directly behind us. “What have you done?”

  Sully and I turned around in our seats to face the wall of rearranged picture frames, now all hanging upside down.

  Merridew finally noticed.

  “Mr. Pendleton.” A fleck of spit shot out from her mouth and landed on the polished surface of her desk. I waited for the saliva to eat through the oak like acid. Even underneath the foundation of face powder spackling Merridew’s face, I could see the blood rise up into her cheeks. This was it. Merridew was going to lose it—I knew it. Her head was on the verge of exploding all over the walls.

  Come on come on come on, I thought. Go ahead. I want to see you break.

  Time for that porcelain face of yours to break into a million shards.

  Break, Merridew!

  Break!

  Just as quickly as it came, the blood flooding her skull dispersed, shrinking back from her skin.

  The smile returned.

  Merridew craned her neck toward Sully. “Congratulations, Miss Tulliver,” she said, her voice as sweet and acrid as cough syrup. “You have secured yourself a visit to solitary housing.”

  Sully’s eyes widened.

  “You can thank Mr. Pendleton for your time away.”

  “But—” I started. “That’s not fair!”

  “Of course it is not fair,” Merridew seethed through her gritted teeth, jaw clamped tight. “This has nothing to do with being fair! Life is not fair!”

  “If you don’t send me to the Black Hole,” I insisted, “then I’m going to keep wreaking havoc! I’ll turn this place upside down!”

  “And I will keep sending your associates to solitary until there is no one left!”

  “What good is your plan if there’s nobody around to see it? You need to make an example of me—right? Show the others that you broke me? Send me! Send me!”

  Grayson stepped inside the office.

  “Take her to solitary,” Merridew instructed.

  Sully leapt up from her seat. “No—don’t!”

  Grayson grabbed Sully by the shoulders and started pulling her away. S
he yanked free and tried to run, forcing Grayson to wrap his arm around her waist and lift her off the ground. Sully kicked at the air as he carried her out of the office.

  “Let me go,” she yelled. “Let go let go let go!”

  I raced for Grayson and pounced on his back. He swatted his free hand through the air, attempting to pull me off, but I clung tightly to his shoulders in hopes of prying Sully away. My fingers wriggled over his face, slipping into his nose, his mouth, even his ears, as if his head were a bowling ball and I was ready to play.

  “Let go!” I shouted—only to feel the cold blue jolt of electricity at my throat it won’t let go of me it’s going to choke me to death I can’t breathe I can’t breathe I LOVE YOU SULLY I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU and I can’t seem to focus on anything anymore I’m trapped inside an iceberg of cold blue ice and the electricity finally released me and I fall to the floor gasping for air. I could’ve sworn I heard a bell ring. Maybe it was the flicker of residual electricity coursing through my brain. They rang so many bells at Kesey, even when they weren’t rattling off, I swore the clang of metal was still hammering in my ears.

  Rolling onto my back, I looked up to see Sully slip out the door. She was reaching for me, her eyes filled with panic. She was calling out my name, but the wattage of electricity still pulsed through my ears, drowning out all other sound.

  And then Sully was gone.

  The halls now felt empty even when they were crowded. The amber luster of the Yellow Brick Road had faded beneath my feet.

  Voices were muffled, as if my ears were stuffed with cotton. I barely heard what anyone said to me anymore.

  Words meant nothing now. It was just white noise coming out of people’s mouths. All I saw were moving lips, flapping open and shut. I could barely focus on their faces anymore. Everybody was a blur.

  Phantom faces.

  A piece of me was missing. Not like a bone or an organ or a limb—but something elemental. Something that made me…

  Me.

  Our bodies are comprised of a dozen different systems—the circulatory system, skeletal system, nervous system.

  So what about the Sully system?

  As soon as Grayson had taken her away, it felt as if an entire cellular thread had been ripped out from my body. I couldn’t function without her. No single organ can work alone on its own. It needs the support of other organs to fulfill its obligation to the body. I needed Sully to survive. I needed Sully so that I could be me. Even when she was mad at me, even when she acted as if she wanted to throttle me—she was still a part of me. She was the part of me that mattered the most.