by Karen Akins
“There’s sand present in the wound,” he said. “I’ll clean it out and close it up when we get back to the Institute, but the spot may be a bit tender for a day or two, kiddo.”
Counselor Salloway bustled to the front, her unruly hair flouncing to the sides. She grabbed my hand with a showy flourish and patted it. “She might be a little emotionally tender right now, too.”
Bleh. That was me fighting the urge to throw up in my own mouth.
“We were surprised you came here instead of the Institute.”
I needn’t have looked up to know who was speaking. Dr. Quigley rubbed the polish on her nails without even glancing at me.
“I … I must have been disoriented,” I said. “Went home without thinking.”
“Of course, of course. Understandable given the circumstances.” Headmaster Bergin pinched his chin and looked at the door. “You don’t happen to remember what those circumstances were, do you?”
“I was on a bus. Wyck had landed me in a perfect spot, near a bus station. When I was getting off, my foot caught in the strap of someone’s bag. And that’s the last thing I remember.” The wound stung as I patted it for good measure. Surely a steep fall could have caused that kind of damage.
“I wish I could remember more,” I said. “When I got back, my QuantCom started blinking red, and I tried to figure out what I could have accidentally brought back with me before I remembered that I got mud all over my top when I landed in the field. A guy on the bus offered his shirt to me, so I had that on. Must have dropped my QuantCom somewhere along the way. Then, I ended up here.”
Every face in the room had settled into a stunned mask during my story. Several of them looked at Finn’s shirt like it was a rabid animal. I couldn’t imagine what they’d do if they knew I’d stashed the owner upstairs. I drew a deep breath and prepared myself for an onslaught of questions, but Bergin raised his hand to hold them back.
“Well, it’s fortuitous—just short of miraculous, really—that Miss Ellison returned so early from her mission. Or should I say your mission, Miss Bennis?” Bergin gave me a stern look, but the corners of his lips twitched up. He let out a jovial chuckle. “When I told you I remembered what it’s like to be a teenager, I was not handing you carte blanche to break every rule in the book.”
Oh, sweet shades of poo, he actually believed my story. I might make it out of this. “I know,” I said. “I’m so sorry. I promise I’ll never—”
“Hush now. I know you won’t. And now that you’ve experienced some of the repercussions, hopefully you’ve seen the reason for our many rules.” The hint of smile vanished. “But you will need to serve a detention to reinforce those very rules. There will be no dance for you tonight, Miss Bennis.”
Aww, shucks.
“Or your roommate,” he added.
“Please don’t punish Mimi. It was my idea. So she could go to the dance in the first place.”
I imagined Mimi’s crushed expression when she found out she couldn’t go. There was no way I could make this up to her. I was such a liar. But the lie had served its purpose.
“And I’m afraid,” said Bergin, “that you will also be Anchored.”
“Anchored?” He couldn’t be serious. I’d never heard of a student being Anchored. Ever. I mean, we cracked jokes about it. But we were never serious. There was no point in staying at the Institute—in being a Shifter—if I was locked down in time. If you thought of your tendrils as rubber bands, Anchorment turned them to chains.
A quiet but collective gasp went up around the room. All except for Quigley, who looked downright pleased.
“A temporary measure, I assure you,” said Bergin. “But we simply can’t ignore a forced fade. You do understand?”
I had no choice but to nod. While I was Anchored, there was no way I could do another delivery for Leto to make up for my botched one. I paled as it sank in what that meant.
Bergin turned to Quigley. “You’ll see to their punishments, Lisette?” In addition to occupying the position of the Institute’s most loathed teacher, Dr. Quigley was also the dean of discipline. On second thought, the two were probably related.
“Oh, yesss.” Quigley dragged the s out in a pleased hiss.
I stared at the Quig. It was hard to figure her out. First she almost flunked me. Then she gave me a second chance. Now, at the prospect of doling out my detention and tethering me down in time, she sounded like Bergin had handed her Santa Claus wrapped in an Easter Bunny.
“Nothing too harsh.” Bergin must have noticed my pallor.
My feet clung to the floor as our group shuffled across the living room to the front door. Bergin led us and spoke in a low voice to Nurse Granderson by his side. The red-scrubbed guys, who I realized hadn’t said a word the whole time, trailed behind him. Counselor Salloway followed in their wake, muttering to herself and swatting dust out of the air like a cat stalking a housefly.
Quigley stayed at the back of the line with me.
Just as Bergin was halfway out the door, an unmistakable thump sounded above us. I swallowed hard and ignored it. Thankful I was at the rear of the line and that the Quig appeared not to have heard, I hurried forward. Thump.
Ms. Salloway stopped mid-step in front of us. She spun around. “Did you hear that?”
“I … Hear what?”
Quigley eyed me like she didn’t believe me for a millisecond.
Headmaster Bergin turned around and held his hand up. “We should check it out. This home is unoccupied. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to the Benniss’s possessions.”
“Of course not,” said Dr. Quigley drily. “I’ll run upstairs and look around.”
I held my breath as she ascended the stairwell. Right as Quigley was about to reach the stairway landing, Tufty flew out on the top step, hissing and spitting.
Almost as if he’d been tossed.
Dr. Quigley’s splayed fingers flew to her chest. In a fluid motion, she reached them up to smooth down her hair. “Well.”
Tufty pranced down the stairs and nuzzled Dr. Quigley’s shins, which earned him a not-so-gentle nudge onto the next step.
A frown formed on Headmaster Bergin’s face. “Who’s been caring for your cat, Bree?”
“My neighbor feeds him. We have a cat port and perimashield, so it’s not a big deal.”
“Looks like we have our culprit,” said Nurse Granderson, and scratched Tufty under the chin. “I’d like to hurry back for Bree’s full medical eval, if you don’t mind.”
Bergin nodded but threw another long look up the stairs before turning back to the front door.
Eyes on my feet, eyes on my feet, I repeated to myself as we walked out to the Institute’s Quad-pods parked on the street. I didn’t so much as glance at the Publi-pod parked right behind us, the one in which Finn and I had arrived. Headmaster Bergin rode in the first Pod. At first I thought the men in the red scrubs would get in with him, but instead they turned and walked in the direction of the Metro station.
Nurse Granderson and Counselor Salloway settled into the front of the second Pod as I took my seat with Dr. Quigley in the back. They took turns adjusting the aromatherapy controls between revive and soothe and shooting worried looks backward at me.
As we pulled away, the Quig leaned over so that her lips were even with my ear. In a hot blast of breath no one else could hear, she whispered, “So glad you managed to find a Publi-pod in your mental state. And a double even. Imagine that.”
I pulled my hands under my legs so she wouldn’t notice how hard they were shaking.
chapter 12
“CLEAN IT … BY HAND?” Mimi chewed on her thumbnail and leaned away from the bucket. “You mean, by hand hand?”
Quigley laid the cleaning supplies at our feet. “If there’s another appendage you’d care to use, Miss Ellison, by all means be my guest.”
“But this will be so hard,” Mimi whined, and stomped her foot.
“That is the general idea of a detention. Don’t for
get to wipe each individual item in my office, ladies. Except leave the frames alone. I’m particular about their alignment.” With that, Quigley clicked her stilettos together and marched out.
I could tell it was taking every scrap of my roommate’s emotional energy to keep from crying. Her thumb was always a little shabby on an otherwise perfectly manicured hand. Tonight it was a bloody nub.
“Hey, Meems, you’ve got a little something on your, uhh—” I touched a spot near my hairline.
She rubbed her forehead. “Here?”
“Nope.”
“Here?”
“On your tiara.”
She threw a rag at me. “You’re evil.”
At least I got her to laugh.
Mimi had actually taken news of the detention better than I expected. It didn’t hurt that in a show of solidarity Charlie had refused to attend the dance and asked if Mimi wanted to hang out after the punishment was over. And when she heard that I’d been Anchored, it put a measly detention into perspective.
The cleaning in and of itself didn’t bother me. We’d never owned a Cleanoo in my life. Even selling the occasional painting on top of her meager Temporal Art Historian’s salary, my mom never had three nickels to her name. Saving money required a plan. And planning wasn’t exactly Poppy Bennis’s strong suit. Oh. Shame bubbled up in my stomach as it did every time I had a negative thought about my mother. Besides, there were worse things than knowing my way around a sponge and mop rather than how to turn on an expensive machine.
Mimi spritzed cleaner into the air and gagged as she sucked in a deep whiff.
I took the bottle from her and handed over the dust rag. “I’ll get the office. You wipe down the desks.”
I started by polishing the large window that overlooked the classroom. I rubbed a speck in the corner, but it was just a scratch. When I looked up, I spotted Mimi walking toward the office door. Then she shook her head as if arguing with herself and went back to the desk she was cleaning. A few seconds later, she did the same thing. After the third time, I stuck my head out.
“All right, out with it.”
“Out with what?”
“Whatever it is you’re dying to say.” I leaned against the doorway.
Mimi scraped at the fingernail she’d been chewing. “Did it hurt?”
“Did what hurt?”
“The forced fade.”
“Oh.” We hadn’t talked about it since I’d returned that afternoon. The subject had hung in the air like a defunct Publi-pod as we got ready for the detention. In my defense, I’d been a little preoccupied trying to figure out how to return a temporal fugitive to a previous century. Oh, and track down my future self to steal back an illicit item she’d stolen to return it to the rightful stealer. So, yeah. Not exactly seeking Mimi out for a heart-to-heart.
“It hurt.” The worst of the pain hadn’t even been physical. I felt a new level of shame as I walked the halls, knowing the students had one more Bree thing to gossip about. I’d been thinking about that girl Jafney who left after a forced fade our first year, about how people still talked about her as a pariah. No one knew the truth about what happened to her. Most likely, we never would. And the ugly part was, it wouldn’t matter if we did. She’d done something bad, or at least something the school defined as bad, and she’d paid the price. That was the truth.
“A lot?” Mimi asked.
“A lot.”
“I’m so sorry,” Mimi whispered.
“For what?” I looked up.
“If I hadn’t been so fixated on the dance—”
“It was my idea to switch missions.” I so did not need her guilt on my conscience. I had enough of my own.
“But I should have laid low when I got back so early. It was a simple litter pickup for an environmental group. I didn’t realize when we switched that a genetic check on seeds would be so complicated or … dangerous.” She pointed at the still-raw spot on my head, and a tear popped over the edge of her eye. “I thought you’d be back right after I was. I never should have put you in that position.”
Hi there, guilt, my name is Bree. Come in and get comfortable. Looks like you’ll be staying awhile.
I twisted the corner of the cleaning rag around my pinky and mumbled, “Don’t worry about it.”
“No.” Mimi brushed the tear away and tossed her hair over her shoulder. “The last thing you need is another splotch on your record. I will make this up to you. It is my solemn vow.”
Oh, no. Mimi’s solemn vows usually ended in her either causing a dramatic scene in the cafeteria or making some craptastic heart-shaped craft representing our friendship that I’d have to wear everywhere for three weeks.
Mimi returned to her cleaning with a new fervor. She marched from desk to desk like a soldier, pausing a little longer than necessary over Charlie’s usual one.
She was right, though. The splotch on my record was bad. A forced fade and an Anchorment. That was one heck of a splotch. But the splotch on my conscience felt even worse. There was nothing I could do about either right now except clean. I turned to finish the rest of the office. Oy. Quigley’s photo collection was the stuff of legends. And not in a good way. I was thankful I didn’t have to tackle it. Pictures were arranged puzzle-style floor to ceiling across the entire back wall. Most were fairly recent shots from history, but some were quite old. A few iconic moments intermingled with scads of clandestine snapshots no doubt taken by some kiss-up shutterbug trying to get on Quigley’s good side. (Assuming the woman had one.)
The wall had the same dizzying effect as the entryway to Finn’s house, only with photographs instead of art. Finn. My guilt got another little dagger swipe in. There was so little time to settle him at my house. He had to be bored out of his bazinga. And completely freaked out. The important thing was that he stayed hidden.
I turned my attention back to the task at hand. Running the dust cloth over my teacher’s possessions felt like spying somehow. That is, if spying was tedious, mundane work.
Still, several of the pictures held surprises. Whoever painted that famous portrait of the signers of the Declaration of Independence was delusional. John Adams was shorter and squattier in real life. Queen Victoria at her coronation was prettier. The Treaty of Fiji was signed on a dreary-skied day, not bright and sunshiny as I had always pictured it.
There was one snapshot of Quigley herself posing with Leonardo daVinci as he sketched the Mona Lisa. So he was definitely a Haven member. Well, not much of a shocker there. I dusted the snapshot quickly and moved on. Of all the pictures on the wall, that one felt the most like I was prying. Something about their smiles or the way the two of them had their heads together, like they’d been sharing an inside joke. Quigley almost looked … happy.
The remainder of the wall was filled with the usual suspects, pictures that no History teacher’s office would be complete without. Moments that started wars and ended them. I dusted her lamp and walked out to the classroom to help Mimi finish.
“So when’s Casanova picking you up?” I asked.
Mimi’s cheeks crimsoned. “It’s not like that. At least, I don’t think it is for him. He offered to show me how to beat level twenty-nine in Bocce Blaster is all.”
“He didn’t ask me to come.”
“That’s true.” Mimi brightened. “Maybe I should suggest we all go on a double date some time. That’s no pressure, right?”
“Are you serious?” I choked on a mouthful of air. The thought of Finn in a modern restaurant ordering who knows what was ludicrous. And he’d pee his man-panties if he stepped foot in a modern cinemaplex. He was probably used to stationary seats and only three- or four-story screens. Not to mention how awkward it would be when we said “good night” at the—
“Sure. He’s always flirting with you,” Mimi said.
“Who?”
“Wyck. Who are you thinking of?”
“Oh. Wyck. Of course.”
“Charlie even said he took his name off the duty roster
from next week on. I bet he’s waiting to see when you get de-Anchored so he can make sure he’s your transporter.”
“I … I doubt it.” Huh. Nice, normal Wyck O’Banion who didn’t run around breaking the laws of physics or harassing my cat. Something in my chest fluttered. “I’ve never really thought about it.”
“Well, let me know.”
“Hey, Mimi. You ready to go?” Charlie appeared in the doorway looking equal parts nervous and excited.
Mimi pursed her lips and turned to me. She pointed at Charlie. “Do you mind if I—?”
“Go.” I pushed her toward him.
The desks gleamed as I walked down the aisles. I went back and double-checked the office to make sure I hadn’t missed a spot. The picture of Dr. Quigley with da Vinci was a tiny bit crooked. Surely Quigley wouldn’t mind if I straightened it. The frame was secured tightly to the wall. As I adjusted it, bits of plaster fell all over the floor and the other pictures.
“Crap.” I tried to brush it off, but I only succeeded in knocking several other photos wonky.
Out in the classroom, a pair of footsteps approached. Blark. Quigley would kill me for disobeying her orders. I got down on my hands and knees and tried to blow the dusty plaster away, but it got in my eyes and mouth. Phbbt. The steps came closer. And closer.
I scooted around on my heinie trying to dust up as much of the plaster as I could on my pants.
A peal of laughter rang in the doorway. I let out a sigh of relief. Wyck.
“I thought you were the Quig,” I said.
“I get that a lot.” He shot me a lopsided grin that brought the flutter back.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Detention.”
“Quigley assigned you to dust with your butt?”