“So why doesn’t he have records? Things about him in the files? Mr. Kim showed me his file and there’s nothing in there. Birth records, school records, nothing. I mean even orphans have some story. Foster homes, orphanages. Heck, Brent’s an orphan from the streets and he has more story than this guy—” Alex stopped abruptly.
Brent was standing at one of the workbenches behind the conference table tinkering with one of his gadgets. His face turned beet red when Alex spoke and he looked up at me with an expression of sadness mixed with embarrassment.
“Ah … Brent. I’m sorry, man. It just slipped out. I know it’s private. … I mean … I’m sorry. … She gets me worked up and I just forgot,” Alex said.
Brent just shrugged. He stared down at his device and continued working. But his expression was dark and something that looked suspiciously like shame clouded his face.
So that was it. What he’d kept hidden. I remembered on the plane to Hawaii, I’d asked him about his story and he’d grown very agitated with me and stormed off. It was obviously something sensitive to him. I figured he’d tell me when the time was right. Now his secret was revealed. But there had to be more to it, judging by Alex’s reaction. There were lots of orphans at Blackthorn. Brent’s story must have been worse, somehow. Poor Brent, I felt so sad for him.
Mr. Kim un-steepled his fingers and put his hands flat on the table. It was his signal to us that it was time to put this aside for now and focus on the task at hand. As I was learning every day at Blackthorn, working on time-sensitive top-secret plans, like stealing the Firehorn, meant sometimes things like this had to wait. For the next hour, we reviewed the site plans and architectural drawings and did a read-through of our mission objective. Before we knew it, it was time for us to return to our rooms for the evening. We were still students and needed to study and sleep.
We were putting everything back into the mission books and file folders when I asked Mr. Kim what we were going to do about Rinteau.
“Don’t worry,” Mr. Kim said. “I will figure out what to do about Mr. Rinteau. Perhaps he’ll decide to stay at the Academy. Perhaps he’ll even become Top Floor someday—but until then, we will find a way to keep him in the dark.”
We heard a voice from the doorway leading upstairs.
“In the dark about what?” The voice said. Pilar nearly screamed and all of us, I think even Mr. Kim, jumped a little and spun toward the door.
And there he was, Michael Rinteau, standing in the doorway. He looked at all of us, meeting our stunned gazes with a curious one of his own. His eyes moved around the room and tried to take it all in. Finally, he looked back at me and smilirked.
“Cool.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Could I Screw Anything Else Up? Let Me See That Map of the Middle East.
EVERYONE STOOD THERE IN stunned silence for a few moments. Rinteau acted almost like we weren’t there. He strolled into the room, looking around at everything, taking it all in. This was entirely my fault. Somehow, he found us out, and there was no doubt in my mind that it was because of me. I needed to find a new career path. I was not cut out for espionage. If it were left up to me, Mithras and his minions would be having lunch in the school cafeteria by next Tuesday.
“How did he …” I stammered. I looked at Mr. Kim, who stood there like a gargoyle, studying Rinteau.
“Find you?” Rinteau said. “It was pretty easy. I knew you were up to something in Mr. Kim’s office. When I followed you there, you weren’t there to meet with him. You were headed somewhere. And if Mr. Kim wasn’t in his office, then you were either looking for something there, or doing something you didn’t want anyone to know about. Which meant you were hiding something. You tried real hard to keep me out of that office. It was simple deduction, really.
“So I waited until I figured you’d left your room again and I went back to his office and started looking around.” He stopped talking and his gaze fell on Mr. Kim. “You know, you might want to consider locking your doors once in a while. Anyway, I’ve seen lots of movies and TV shows where an office has a hidden doorway or something. Thought maybe the bookcase might conceal a door to another conference room or something. Fiddled around with it until I found the trigger. Had no idea it would lead me to this, though. What is this place?”
“It’s a training simulator,” I said. I may mess everything up, I may be clumsy and a poor excuse for a spy or a goddess with dopey light powers, but I’m a freaking genius at making up lies on the spot.
“Rachel, give it up,” Rinteau said. “I’m not stupid. This is no ordinary boarding school. And this isn’t some simulator. You don’t teach kids criminology and micro- electronics in high school,” he said. He gestured around the room. “You don’t have sophisticated equipment and all this other stuff for home ec and algebra. What is this place?”
“Mr. Rinteau, we will need to talk. Let us return to my office, while my students return to their rooms. I promise to answer your questions as best as I can. However, you must not reveal your knowledge of this room to anyone else at Blackthorn, including the faculty, on the pain of immediate expulsion. Do you understand?” Mr. Kim said.
Rinteau’s eyes narrowed and suspicion briefly clouded his face. “Sure,” he said.
“You can’t trust him, don’t tell him anything,” Alex said.
“What’s the matter Axel? Afraid everyone in your little club will end up liking me better?” Rinteau teased.
Alex stormed around the table and closed on Rinteau.
“Alex,” Mr. Kim whispered.
Alex stopped in his tracks. He wasn’t going to have Mr. Kim reprimand him a second time, but he was in full alpha-male mode again. Somebody needed to switch to decaf.
He turned to Mr. Kim and bowed slightly. “Sir, I respect and honor you as my Sabum nim. You Sabum nim … There are no words … I … You have saved me … from a life I would not want to imagine. But sir, I must beg you. You cannot trust him. Please.”
Okay. I’ll admit. It seemed a little over dramatic. I’d never seen Alex like this before. He was standing ramrod straight, all rigid and tense, like he was ready to burst at any moment. I could also tell he was deadly serious. And there were honest-to-goodness tears forming in his eyes. He obviously felt very strongly about all of this.
Mr. Kim’s face softened and for a moment I thought I saw his eyes water as well. Were we all going to burst out crying here? He knew Alex had just paid him a great compliment and understood Alex firmly believed what he said. He put his hand on Alex’s shoulder, stepped in closer, and spoke to him so softly that we could barely hear him. I had to shuffle forward a few steps so I could eavesdrop without missing anything important.
“Alex, nothing has brought me greater pleasure than to watch you grow and embrace—no, not merely embrace, but live the code of the Hwa Rang. You are my finest student. But you must understand my obligation to help those who are entrusted to me. I now ask you to honor the code and the tenant of service and obedience to your Sa-Bum. Please. Return to your room. I promise this will be dealt with. Try to remember: above all else, the mission of this school is what matters most. This is but a minor interruption. Please. Go.”
Alex sagged. Only slightly, but it was there. Without another word, he bowed deeply to Mr. Kim, shot past Rinteau, and sprinted up the stairs. A few seconds later, Pilar followed after him, a sad and worried expression on her face.
Rinteau watched them go and turned back to us with a “what a weirdo” expression on his face.
“Man, I don’t know if it’s the ’roids or what, but if you ask me, the guy needs some chill pills,” Rinteau said.
Brent set his tools down on the workbench and was deathly quiet as he walked around the conference table. He stopped when his nose was about three inches from Rinteau’s.
“I’ve known Alex longer than I’ve known you. You helped us out at the mall. That earns you my thanks—but not my respect. If Alex thinks you’re not to be trusted, my guess is someday soon we
’ll find out that’s true. And if I had to choose, my money is on Alex.” Brent was quiet when he spoke, which only made him seem scarier. Rinteau actually leaned back a little as Brent violated his personal space. “But know something, Rinteau. You ever insult my friend in front of me again, and we will throw down. You’re from the street, I get that. But so am I. You might have once been a Fourth Street Bullhockey or whatever, but I’m not impressed. Say another word about one of my friends and you’ll find out firsthand how a Chicago kid can fight. Are we clear?”
For a moment, Rinteau clearly thought about making a macho comeback. But he saw the look, the genuine “I am not messing around” look in Brent’s eyes, and he swallowed hard and nodded. Brent bowed to Mr. Kim, and he and I left.
You can be around people a long time, in all kinds of situations—be they intense, relaxed, fun, serious, or whatever—but sometimes, even when you think you know someone very well, something happens and you realize you don’t. It was easy not to notice Brent, because he was always so quiet. And there’s no question that he is kind of cute and certainly he is smart. And in Hawaii, he’d dived head first out of a helicopter attached to a safety harness to rescue me from another situation where I’d made a less than reasonable choice. And he’d done it without complaint, just being brave and steadfast. Because it needed to be done.
Now he stood there, staring down an ex-gangbanger, and not because the guy was holding a knife or a gun or was about to physically harm someone else. He had stood up for a principle. His friend was more important to him than anything and he would not stand by and let him be trashed by somebody who hadn’t earned his respect.
Brent was like an onion. Layer after layer kept peeling away. And the more peeling, the better the onion smelled. Okay, I know that metaphor is a little bit icky.
As we climbed the stairs it was like he could read my mind. “You can’t keep secrets forever,” Brent said, trying to keep me from kicking myself.
“I can’t believe this,” I said. “I’m such a screw-up!”
“Rachel, you are not a screw-up; if it wasn’t for you …”
“No … I should have paid more attention. Maybe if I were smarter. I just … Brent, what is wrong with me? Why is it that I mess everything up?” I felt like crying. Rinteau had found out our secret, the book was stolen, someone was betraying us, and Alex was in perpetual mad mode. I felt responsible for everything.
Brent took my arm gently in his hand and pulled me into one of the empty classrooms. I felt the first sob working its way up from my stomach. Brent cupped my chin in his hand and looked me in the eyes.
“There’s something I want to tell you. About me. About how I came here,” he said. “About what Alex let slip earlier.”
“Brent, really, it’s okay. I know it’s something you don’t like to talk about. I don’t need to …”
“Rachel, it is okay. It’s time I told you,” he said.
And there, in that room, I learned how Brent came to Blackthorn Academy.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
More Secrets Revealed
BRENT WAS JUST OVER THIRTEEN when he came to Blackthorn. That was almost four years ago. He had grown up in a poor section of Chicago. His mother died when he was three years old.
“I don’t really remember her,” he said. “Just some glimpses really. Little ribbons of memory pop in and out of my head sometimes. She had blond hair. And I remember smells; she smelled like soap. And then … I run out of memories. She was just gone. I guess she died, but I don’t know how or why. My dad never talked about it. And I’ve never tried to find out. I don’t know why that is. I suppose Mr. Kim knows, but I’ve never asked him, and then after what happened with my dad … well, I never asked him either. Maybe I just didn’t want to know, because it would mean I’d have to remember things I’d rather forget.”
Brent’s father drank a lot. I could relate to that. Rich or poor, if your parents were alcoholics, you knew what it was like.
“I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it anymore. You just leave it in the past. Mr. Kim has always said he’s ready to talk it all out with me, and some of the counselors here have helped. And Alex, he’s actually been really cool about it.
“Anyway, my Dad was mad all the time. Couldn’t hold down a job. I remember always being hungry. There was never enough food in the house. Enough to get by, but never enough, you know? I stopped going to school regularly when I was seven. My dad didn’t care. They’d send social workers around and stuff and somehow he always managed to put them off. I’d start going to school again for a while until they forgot and moved on to something else. It went on for years like that.
“It’s funny how you can look back at your life and the choices you’ve made. I was about ten when the drinking got worse and my dad started hitting me. It didn’t matter what I did. He was drunk all the time and I was the source of all of his problems. It got to the point where he was just mad all the time, at everything I did. I started staying out of the house and running around the neighborhood. It went on like that for a couple of years, until I met Jeremiah.
“He owned a pawn shop in the neighborhood. I’ve always liked mechanical things. Ever since I was little, I liked taking things apart and figuring out how they worked. When I was avoiding my house, I’d paw through junk piles and look for old televisions and radios and stuff to see if I could get them running. I’d take them to Jeremiah’s shop and he’d buy them. It’s how I got money for food.
“Before long, Jeremiah was giving me broken stuff from his shop and having me fix it. I learned a lot about electronics. Jeremiah would buy me books and manuals. He set me up with a computer so I could search the Internet for schematics of all the different mechanisms that ended up in the shop. It got to the point where I could fix almost anything.
“What I didn’t know until later was that Jeremiah … he was a thief. Well, not a thief exactly, since he didn’t steal anything himself—but he was running a giant fencing operation out of his shop.
“One day he handed me a piece of equipment I’d never seen before. It was slightly smaller than a laptop computer with a cable attached to it and on the other end of the cable was a small, thin circuit board, about the size of a credit card. Jeremiah asked me if I could figure out how it worked. Someone had sold it to him and he wanted to know if I could operate it. It took me about half a day to figure out it was a card reader for robbing ATM machines. The circuit board slid into the slot for the ATM card and the device ran a program that would crack the encryption codes on the pin number of the last person to use the machine. With the pin number you could take money out of the account. I had it up and running in no time.
“I became a thief. Jeremiah gave me bus fare and sent me all around the city, taking money out of ATMs. I was taking ten thousand dollars on a good day, several hundred dollars per machine. Eventually, I quit going home at all. Jeremiah had an apartment over the shop and I slept there. A few weeks later, I stopped back by my house. It was empty. My dad was gone. I never saw him again. As far as I know, he never tried to find me, never looked for me or anything. He just disappeared.
“Jeremiah had a good thing going. But I was only thirteen and not as smart as I thought. I got sloppy. They installed security cameras at ATMs and I didn’t vary my pattern from machine to machine, because I was always in a hurry and Jeremiah didn’t like it if I didn’t bring home enough cash. Eventually, somebody figured out the same machines were being ripped off. The cops staked out a couple of them and they followed me back to Jeremiah’s pawnshop. They arrested him. They took me in. I had no place to go. They couldn’t find my dad and I didn’t have any other family. I was on my way to juvenile detention. One of the cops who arrested me took me into an interview room and asked me all kinds of questions about the machine and the materials in Jeremiah’s place. He took me back to the shop and had me show him all my tools and the stuff I’d repaired. The cop took me to his house, where I spent the night, and the next day, Mr. Kim sho
wed up and brought me here to Blackthorn.”
The whole time Brent told me this story he stood close to me, his eyes never leaving mine. Like he needed to make sure I paid attention to every word that he said.
“Brent, I’m so sorry for what happened to you. I …” He put his finger to my lips.
“Shh. Let me finish. I just need you to hear this, so you’ll understand. For a long time after I got here, I was ashamed of who and what I was. The things I’d done, being a liar and a thief. I stole people’s money, probably from a lot of folks who couldn’t afford to lose it. And for a while I tried to rationalize it, telling myself that I was just a kid, that I was manipulated, that it wasn’t my fault—all those things. But I still knew it was wrong.”
“But you were a kid; you just made a mistake,” I said.
He shook his head.
“When I came here, Mr. Kim changed everything for me. I learned to trust him. It’s still hard for me to talk about my past. I still feel guilty about it. You’re the first person besides Alex I’ve ever told any of this to.”
I didn’t know what to say. Brent was so earnest and kind and sweet. And my heart just broke for him after learning how he’d lived. I wanted to kick my own butt for feeling so sorry for myself all the time.
“Why are you telling me this now?” I asked.
“Because you need to understand something. I don’t like talking about myself. Sometimes I’m more comfortable with machines than people. But I can’t stand to see you upset. Nothing that has happened to you here is your fault. All you’ve done is what’s needed to be done. Whatever it was, you figured it out and did it. So don’t blame yourself for any of this. You are the smartest, most amazing person I’ve ever met.”
I felt myself blushing. No one, besides my grandfather—and maybe Mr. Kim—had ever said anything so kind about me. I’d never had anyone think about me this way.
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