by Burns, T. R.
We shoot to the right. I grab my bagged breakfast to keep it from falling off my lap, and the smell of eggs, cheese, and fish sticks wafts toward my nose. The normally pleasant odor combined with the cart’s swerving makes my stomach churn faster. I force my head to the left and lift my hand to the glass next to me. I’m about to push to see if it’ll give in the event of a hurling emergency when I catch a flash of red.
Elinor. I didn’t see her board, but she must be sitting somewhere nearby; when the cart tilts to the left and the sun shines in from the right, I can see her hair reflected in the glass.
I keep my eyes fixed on that one spot, and soon my stomach settles. By the time we come to an abrupt stop half an hour later, I even feel hungry enough to take a big bite of my egg-and-fish bagel.
“You might want to save your breakfasts,” Mr. Tempest calls back as the glass slides down the sides of the cart. “It may be a long time until your next meal.”
“It’s zero degrees out there,” Gabby says with a shiver.
This might be a slight exaggeration, but it’s definitely colder wherever we are than it was back at Kilter. I’m wearing jeans and a fleece and am still instantly chilled as I step outside. Rubbing my arms, I look around at the leafless trees, gray sky, and frost-covered ground. We appear to be in a clearing in the middle of the woods—somewhere near the Arctic Circle.
“There are hats, gloves, and hiking shoes for each of you,” Mr. Tempest says once we’re all outside. He aims his K-Pak at the bottom of the cart and a cargo space opens; it resembles a large dresser drawer and is stuffed with gear.
“Hiking shoes?” Gabby says. “I thought we had history this morning—not gym.”
“You do have history.” Mr. Tempest takes a black wool cap from his coat pocket and puts it on. The pom-pom on top quivers in the bitter wind. “And if you do well, you just might make some too.”
If anyone besides me wonders what this means, they’re too cold to care. We all find our cold-weather accessories and bundle up quickly.
“As I mentioned in our last meeting,” Mr. Tempest continues, “over the next few weeks I’ll be telling you all you need to know about Kilter Academy’s illustrious yet top secret past. Before we begin today, you should know one very important thing.” He taps his head with one crooked finger. “What’s under here? Weakens with age and without use. That’s why your parents sometimes ask you if you’ve finished your homework two minutes after they asked the first time.”
He shoots Annika, who stands off to the side and appears to be listening attentively, a wary look.
“And why they pack broccoli in my lunch after I’ve told them a thousand times that I hate broccoli?” a tall girl named Jillian asks.
He slowly lowers his head and peers at her over the top of his sunglasses, which don’t really seem necessary since the sun is hidden by fat gray clouds. Annika clears her throat a second later, and he lifts his head and addresses us again.
“The more you train your brain, the better you’ll be at remembering things adults often don’t but should. Keen attention to detail and a sharp memory are two of the most important assets a Troublemaker can have. They’ll serve you well in nearly every scenario—including this one.”
“Which is what, exactly?” Lemon asks.
Mr. Tempest frowns. “Follow me and find out.”
He turns and starts across the clearing. Annika hurries several feet ahead of him. A few kids look back at the cart wistfully. I don’t blame them—the windows are still down, but there must be some lingering warmth inside. Plus, if Kilter’s in the middle of nowhere, where we are now is an isolated, uninhabited island completely off the map of nowhere. The cart might not be a car, but it can still take us back to some sort of civilization.
“Hinkle!”
I spin around. Lemon lopes after Mr. Tempest, Gabby runs to keep up with Lemon’s long strides, and Abe waves to me as he hurries after them all.
I follow them, and other kids follow me. I look over my shoulder halfway across the clearing and see Elinor lagging far behind. She keeps her eyes lowered and stops every few feet to squat and examine something on the ground. Thinking she might be nervous, I slow down to wait for her—but then someone grabs my hood and yanks me back.
“Hustle, Hinkle,” Abe says.
I glance behind me once more before picking up the pace. At the edge of the clearing we enter a narrow trail that starts out flat but steepens almost immediately. It’s covered in dead branches and loose rocks, which the thick, ridged soles of the hiking shoes grip better than my sneakers could. The temperature drops as we climb; when we reach a second clearing twenty minutes later, snowflakes are falling.
“Rest stop,” Mr. Tempest says. He leans against the clearing’s lone, dead tree, removes a water bottle from his coat pocket, and drinks. For an older guy, he must be in pretty good shape. He’s breathing quickly—but not as quickly as some of my classmates.
“You mean we’re not there yet?” Gabby gasps, collapsing to the ground. She shares the bad news with our classmates as they emerge from the trail. Many groan and whine, but all eventually follow Mr. Tempest’s lead and take water bottles from their bagged breakfasts.
I drink and look around. Annika’s already started up another trail. Elinor enters the clearing last, just as Mr. Tempest starts walking again. While the rest of the alliance starts after him, I jog over to her.
“This was just a rest stop,” I explain.
She’s wearing her parka hood, which is rimmed in fake white fur. When she looks up, she reminds me of an Arctic Circle snow bunny. “Oh,” she says.
“Yeah. So.” Despite the cold and snow, I’m suddenly warm. “You should probably drink some water.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
This isn’t the answer I’m expecting. I have no idea what to say next.
“You were looking out for me,” she says a moment later.
I shake my head. The heat in my cheeks intensifies. “I was looking out for everyone. You know—leave no man behind and all that.”
“Who’s looking out for you, Seamus?” she asks. Then, “Your boys are gone.”
I look behind us. The only other person in the clearing is a quiet, chubby Troublemaker named Marcus. He sits on a rock, eating a sandwich.
“Go ahead,” Elinor says. “We’ll be fine.”
I turn back, and our eyes meet. Hers are clear, steady. They make me believe her.
It doesn’t take long to catch up with the rest of the class. I weave through the stragglers and rejoin Lemon, Gabby, and Abe at the front of the pack. The farther we go, the happier I am to have listened to Elinor, because if I’d waited five more minutes I never would’ve found them. There are countless trails up here, and as soon as we take one we turn off onto another. They twist and wind, cutting through a million identical dead trees and throwing off any sense of direction. When we finally enter a third clearing, I have no idea how long it took us to get there.
“Holy horror movie,” Abe says.
It’s an accurate response. Because unlike the first two, this clearing isn’t empty. There’s a carousel. A Ferris wheel. A spinning swing set. A small roller coaster. Game booths and concession stands are scattered between the rides.
Only no one’s screaming from the roller coaster. No one’s shooting hoops for cheap stuffed animals or eating funnel cakes with powdered sugar. Judging by the rusty rails, peeling paint, and rotting booths, no one’s done any of those things in a very, very long time.
Mr. Tempest opens his arms wide.
“Welcome,” he says, “to Annika’s Apex.”
Chapter 15
DEMERITS: 760
GOLD STARS: 120
Doesn’t he mean Annika’s Asylum?” Abe whispers to Lemon.
Lemon doesn’t answer. He surveys the deteriorating amusement park, then turns his attention to Mr. Tempest. Mr. Tempest waits for everyone—including Elinor and Marcus, who have made remarkable time—to come into the clearing an
d gather around him before continuing.
“Thanks to shrewd investing, Annika’s father, Maximus Kilter, was a very wealthy man. Annika grew up in a sprawling stone estate not far from the academy grounds and spent holidays at other sprawling estates in Georgia, Montana, and California. She received whatever she wanted, including puppies, ponies, and more porcelain dolls than the world’s biggest toy store could ever sell.”
Mr. Tempest leads us to the park’s entrance, which is marked by a crooked iron arch. At the top of the arch, “Annika’s Apex” is spelled out in loopy, curly letters and surrounded by elaborate iron flowers. Annika herself stands off to the side, her face blank, listening but not contributing.
“Before each birthday,” Mr. Tempest continues, “Maximus would ask Annika to name the one thing she absolutely couldn’t spend the next year without. For her sixth birthday, Annika’s answer was Candy Land.”
“The board game?” Abe asks.
“Yes. Her nanny’s daughter had brought it over one afternoon, and the girls played together for hours. After that, Annika wanted her own.”
“That seems like a pretty modest request,” Lemon says.
“It was,” Mr. Tempest agrees. “Perhaps too much so, because on the morning she woke up six years old, her father took her for a ride and presented her with this—her very own real-life Candy Land.”
He aims his K-Pak at the side of a dilapidated concession stand. A moving image of a tall man and a little girl in pink pajamas appears. Their backs are to the camera. As we watch, Maximus takes Annika’s hand and brings her before the arch, which is wrapped in a big white bow. She unwraps the bow and they head inside the park, which is bright and loud and filled with kids. The sky is blue and the treetops are thick and green.
At one point, Annika’s Apex looked like the happiest place on earth.
“What about the board game?” Marcus looks at Annika. “Did you get that, too?”
Annika looks at Mr. Tempest. The concession stand wall goes dark.
“No,” Mr. Tempest says. “Annika did not get the board game.”
“But that was what you—she—really wanted,” Jillian says. “Her dad didn’t listen to her.”
“He listened,” Mr. Tempest says, sounding almost sad. “He just didn’t hear.”
We follow him through the arch. The snow falls faster now, covering the rides and structures in a thin white blanket. It might look almost pretty, like something you’d see in an old picture, if not for the broken lightbulbs and exposed nails poking through the snow. Between them and the silence, it’s hard to believe this is the same place we just saw in the video. Thinking it must be hard for her to see her childhood playground like this, I sneak a peek at Annika . . . but she hurries ahead of us and ducks behind a candy-apple booth.
“So what happened?” Lemon asks. “Did Annika get tired of the park? Is that why it looks like this?”
Mr. Tempest stops by the carousel and stands before a fake black horse adorned in chipped red flowers. “She didn’t have a chance to get tired of it. Her father was called away on business the next day and was gone for months. He promised to bring her back upon his return, but then he was always busy with meetings, phone calls, and eventually, more business trips.”
“What about her mother?” I ask. “Couldn’t she bring Annika?”
Mr. Tempest looks down, seems to study the snow at his feet, and then looks up again. “Lucelia Kilter . . . wasn’t well. She was too weak to do what most mothers her age could, and her condition only worsened after Annika’s sister was born.”
“Annika has a sister?” Gabby asks. “Does she work for the academy too?”
Mr. Tempest pauses.
“Wait,” Abe says. “You mean Annika was here only once? On the morning of her sixth birthday?”
“Sadly, yes,” Mr. Tempest says.
It’s hard to feel bad for Annika when her dad went to the trouble of building her her very own amusement park—even if she did enjoy it only one time. But I still do.
“Chin up, Troublemakers!” Annika declares suddenly, zipping out from behind the candy-apple booth on a supersleek silver scooter. She does a few figure eights, sending snow flying into the air, and then stops before us. “Who here brought their bicycles with them to the academy?”
No one answers.
She tries again. “Who wishes they’d brought their bicycles with them to the academy?”
A few hands appear.
“Who wishes that instead of their bicycles they had state-of-the-art, voice-operated, Kilter Series 7000 scooters that could get them from their dorms to the Kanteen in ten seconds?”
Thirty-one hands appear, mine included.
“That’s what I thought.” Annika hops off the scooter. “The first student to complete Mr. Tempest’s history task with ten demerits will ride this baby into the sunset—or to dinner, as the case may be.”
“What task?” Abe asks.
“The one in which I find out how well you’ve been paying attention this morning,” our teacher says.
I try to recall everything I’ve learned. The first thing that comes to mind is that history is supposed to help train our brains. Guessing we’re seconds away from a pop quiz, I frantically try to remember what I just learned about Annika. Her father’s name was Maximilian, she had a lot of Barbie dolls, she wanted Chutes and Ladders on her fifth birthday but instead she got . . .
My thoughts keep going, but I no longer hear them. A weird whirring noise that sounds like an enormous lawn mower capable of cutting all the grass in New York in a single push grows louder, comes closer.
And a silver helicopter appears over the tree line.
“Here’s our ride!” Mr. Tempest shouts. “If you want yours, be the first one back down the mountain!”
“You’re leaving?” Gabby yells.
The helicopter swoops toward us. The wind from the whipping blades pushes us back, forces our arms over our heads. A metal ladder falls from the open helicopter door. Annika climbs it easily, and Mr. Tempest follows close behind.
“I’ll be watching from above!” he shouts. “If you get into trouble, I’ll know!”
To me, getting into trouble in the woods means getting lost. Crossing a protective mama bear and her cubs. Being so hungry you eat the pretty red berries you know are poisonous but hope will give you enough energy to find the nearest emergency room.
But I’m pretty sure Mr. Tempest’s referring to a completely different kind of trouble.
There’s a tug on my hood. I spin around to see Lemon jogging, head lowered, toward the iron arch. Gabby’s a few feet behind him, and Abe’s a few feet behind her. Abe waves for me to follow.
“Shouldn’t we all stick together?” Jillian shouts. “For, like, safety in numbers?”
“Don’t you want to win that scooter?” Eric hollers.
“Not more than I want to stay alive!”
For a second, the group’s torn and I’m relieved. There is safety in numbers—and control, too. If we stick together and refuse to participate in the task, Annika and Mr. Tempest will have no choice but to cancel it and send helicopters for the rest of us. They wouldn’t let us freeze to death up here.
Or maybe they would. Because the helicopter, with them inside, has already disappeared back over the tree line.
“It’s too quiet,” Marcus says when the air stills.
“This place is kind of scary,” Jillian adds.
“I’m out of here,” Eric says.
With that, kids start running. I do too. We stay in a loose clump until we reach the woods, and then we’re forced apart by rocks, fallen branches, and a dozen different trail entrances. The paths all look the same, and everyone has a different idea of which one led us to the top of the mountain. I’m scanning the snow for fresh footprints when something small and hard hits the top of my head—and a pebble lands at my feet. I look up to see Lemon, Gabby, and Abe perched in the limbs of a tall, leafless tree.
Well, Lemon and Ab
e are perched. Gabby’s arms and legs are wrapped so tightly around the tree trunk I wouldn’t be surprised if it snapped in two.
My allegiance to the alliance isn’t particularly strong, but with everyone else scattering, a group of four seems to be the biggest—and safest—I’m going to get. Plus, Lemon’s fire-starting skills will come in handy when the sun finally sets over this icy tundra. They don’t seem to want to share their location, so I wait for a cluster of classmates to pass by before turning toward the tree. Plenty of grooves for my fingers and toes make for a fairly easy climb.
“Way to keep up,” Abe hisses when I reach the branch beneath his.
“Sorry,” I whisper.
“Relax,” Lemon says. “Look.”
We do. The elevation gives us a good view of this part of the mountain—including the trails. We can see where they lead and which ones our classmates have taken. To our right, Elinor and Marcus move slowly down a longer, twisty trail. Elinor holds out her hand every few feet to help her partner across slippery patches. Our other classmates fill the paths to our left.
“Hudson, Taylor, and Brown.” Abe nods to a trio of Troublemakers taking the lead. “They’re the fastest—and our biggest competition.”
“Are they?” Lemon asks.
Abe looks at him. Lemon looks up. The silver helicopter hovers overhead, so far away you could mistake it for a bird.
“Besides Mystery, I mean.” Abe’s cheeks, already pink from the cold, darken to fuchsia. “Obviously.”
“He’s, like, ten thousand feet in the air,” Gabby says. “Unless one of you has a secret flying talent you didn’t tell the rest of us about, I think we’re out of luck.”
Lemon settles back against the branch. Crosses his arms over his chest. Waits.
“The golf cart,” I say.