by Matt Ryan
“Just Jerry,” I said.
“The kid who worked with him, Oscar. I bet they got to him,” Jackie said.
“Or he’s with them.” Sarah faced Jackie. “Can you make stones? Jackie, was it?”
Jackie’s small smile and cocked brow showed how much she thought she could make stones. “I dabble.”
“Good. We have two options here. Make some stones from the stuff around us, or make a mad dash for my car.”
“Can he use a stone to find us?” I asked, unsure of how to proceed.
Sarah stepped toward the door. “I can hear him talking to people. He won’t need a stone if those people out there direct him our way. We need to move.”
She grabbed a couple of bottles off the shelves, and a box of powder. She slammed a bowl on the floor and thrust a box of baking soda into my gut. I took the box and knelt down next to the bowl.
“This is a simple one, Allie. But once we get going, if he has a tracking stone on him, he’ll know instantly where we are. So make it count and make it quick.” Sarah held out a wooden spoon she had pulled from her pocket. Much smaller than I was used to, but mixing is mixing.
I mixed the powder in and then a thick liquid that looked like honey. The spoon resisted the growing thickness of the mixture, and then I heard the distinct sound of a stone clunking around the bowl.
A haze of mist hung around the bowl. I blew it away, revealing an amber stone. “What does it do?” I still had a hard time dealing with what I could do.
“It gives us time.” Sarah plucked up the stone with her gloved fingertips and motioned for us to get behind her. “Get ready to leave.” She threw the stone against the door and it cracked like an egg.
An amber liquid oozed from inside it and spread over the door. It grew out from the center, like bread rising, expanding and filling in the doorway. I took a step back and saw Jackie near the metal screen door, admiring whatever it was Sarah had had me make.
“What’s it do?” I asked, shaking my head.
“The second he opens the door, that goop will cover him. It’s all I could do with the ingredients we have.” She gestured to the storage room’s contents. “It should buy us enough time, though. Get by the back door, kids.”
I took a step back, into Mark’s arms. He wrapped his hands over my shoulders and steadied me. I glanced back at his face and saw his disgust at the whole thing. Maybe it was his mom being involved in his life again, or maybe it was the cop just outside the door.
There was a knock. The noise was muffled by the amber goo on the door, but it still made me jump. Mark’s grip tightened on my shoulder.
“Hold it,” Sarah whispered, and extended her hands toward us. “We have to make sure he opens it.”
“I know you’re in there,” a man’s voice said from the other side of the door. “Come out now and we can keep this civil.”
“We’re not coming out,” Sarah said. “We’ve done nothing wrong.”
He laughed. “You just made a stone without the consent of Quinn. That alone allows me great leniency, but please, we don’t need this to be ugly. Just come out and I won’t hurt you.”
The handle turned.
“Now,” Sarah whispered to Jackie.
Jackie didn’t waste a second. She flung the door open and ran out, and Mark and I followed. I looked back to Sarah, who took her time walking backward toward the screen door.
The pantry door burst open and the cop lunged forward into the sap.
In his hand, he held a blue stone, but he couldn’t release it. His entire body was stuck in the goo like a bee in honey.
Sarah turned and ran out the door, catching up with us. The back parking lot of the restaurant looked much like the front, a sea of asphalt with a few faded, painted lines.
“He’ll get through that quick. We need to move.” She jogged around to the front of the restaurant toward a silver Honda Civic, shuffling keys from her pocket.
I kept glancing back, expecting the man to appear around the corner.
“Where’s Jackie?” Mark asked.
“Here,” Jackie said. She was kneeling next to the cop’s bike parked near the front door. She pulled a couple of hoses off the bike and threw them up onto the roof. “That should slow him for a while.”
We piled into the Civic with me and Mark in the backseat.
“You think there are others looking for us?” I asked, looking out the back window.
“Most certainly. You’re the first kids to get out of that place. They’ll want to protect their secret at all costs, and they can’t afford to have you spreading the truth.” Sarah kicked down on the gas and headed toward the freeway on-ramp.
The words hit my gut and I sank into the seat.
“You mean after every retirement ceremony, not one kid made it home?” Jackie asked.
“Retirement ceremony? I don’t know what that means, but you should know, everything about that place was a lie. If they said there was a way out, it didn’t include going back home.” The tires squealed on the loose gravel as Sarah cut the corner of the on-ramp.
Ira had been retired, and I’d seen what was left of her in a stone. Every kid in that place had suffered the same fate, with the false hope that they were going home. I felt as if I might throw up, and I’d only seen a couple of retirements. Jackie had seen probably a hundred in her time. I could only imagine what she was feeling.
I stared at the back of her head as she slumped in her seat and stared out the window. “You okay, Jackie?” I asked. She nodded but didn’t say anything.
Carly had mentioned that a close friend had been retired the first day she got to the Academy, and how Jackie had lost it. I was sure many of the students had known something was wrong when they sent their friends into the globe, yet deep down even I wanted to believe they were going back home. That they were going to somewhere better. It might have been foolish, but when faced with an unimaginable circumstance, your brain can do some weird things in effort to soften the blow of reality.
The car sped down the freeway for a bit. Sarah checked the mirrors as much as the road in front of her.
“We need to get back there. I left something,” Jackie said.
“The restaurant?” Sarah asked.
“No. The Dark Academy.”
Sarah frowned.
“Where are we going, Mom?” Mark asked.
“I need to get you kids somewhere safe.”
“Okay, great. Didn’t you say once that we have an uncle out here?” he asked.
Sarah winced and shook her head. “No, there’s only one place we have time to get you to. Somewhere they can’t touch you while we come up with a game plan.”
“Anywhere is better than that academy,” Mark said, and leaned back.
“I’m taking you to the real academy. Alchemist Academy. The one I went to, and your mom as well, Allie.”
I jerked forward so hard my seatbelt locked up. “My mom?”
“Yes. We spent some time there together. We ran in different circles, but—”
“No offense, but I’d rather go on my own than to another academy,” Jackie interrupted. “I don’t think I can take much more of that stuff. Besides, I don’t know if you remember, but we still have people we need to free.”
I remembered. How could I forget the look on Bridget’s face when she’d lunged to take out Verity? It stuck in my head all the time. I’d thought about it so much, I’d worn out the edges and faded the details. The one fact I knew was that Bridget, Carly, and the rest of the Dark Academy students needed to get out of there before another one of them was “retired.”
“I feel the same way as Jackie,” I said. “I don’t want to get stuffed into another school, forced to follow another set of rules. I think my mom can help us. She got into that Dark Academy once. She can help us get into it again.” I tried hiding any of the selfish motivations of finding my mom by wrapping them in the noble quest to free my friends.
“What about you, Mark?” Jackie looked
over her shoulder.
“This isn’t a freaking democracy,” Sarah blurted out. “You think that alchy cop is all you have to worry about? There are dark ones who do nothing but hunt down people like you. Once they get hold of you, they’ll warp you and turn you into a drone. I’ve seen it done, and it’s worse than you can imagine.” Her voice cracked at the end.
“Yeah, but what’s to stop them from nabbing us at this Alchemist Academy?” I asked.
Sarah took a while to answer. “Listen, you obviously pissed them off something major. But they won’t attack the school just to get revenge on a few kids. If they did, they’d have the whole alchemist world coming down on them. They’d start a war.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Jackie said.
“Allie, your mom still contacts people at the Academy, from what I hear. Your best chance of finding her might be inside those walls. Plus, there will be people in there who will help you and believe me, you’re going to need all the help you can get.”
She’d said exactly what I wanted to hear, and I jumped on it. “Wait—how do you know what my mom does? And did you know she was alive this whole time?”
“I was pretty sure I knew who your mom was, but I wasn’t positive. You know, she’s sort of a legend in the alchemy world, and it took me a long time to find you.” Sarah sighed and kept the Civic barreling down the freeway, weaving around slower traffic. “I know what the three of you want, and I want the same thing. I want to get every kid out of there. I really think the fastest way of doing this is going through the Alchemist Academy. You can do research there, learn new stones, and find Allie’s mom. I don’t know who exactly she communicates with at the Academy. It could be all kinds of people there. An old friend, maybe? It could just be a rumor I heard, but I’ll bet the president of the Academy is the one.”
I didn’t like hearing about the president of the Academy. The last president, Verity, had tried to kill me and my friends and was probably torturing said friends at this very moment. “Whatever is the fastest way. We’ll go to the Academy.”
Jackie huffed but didn’t put up any further protests.
“Just tell me they don’t have Blues and Reds pitted against each other?” Mark asked.
Sarah laughed. “I think you’ll find this academy very different from your first experience.”
“Are you sure this isn’t the Walmart Academy?” Jackie asked.
“Looks can be deceiving,” Sarah said.
I leaned forward next to Jackie in the middle of the car and looked at the huge, plain building ahead. I searched for any identifying marks or a sign of an actual academy, but only a few steel rollup doors changed the landscape of the tall beige walls.
Sarah drove down the hill and pulled up next to one of the doors. She honked three times and the door opened. Dust shook off the door as it ascended. I took off my seatbelt and leaned forward, putting my hands on the back of Sarah’s seat.
Sarah pulled forward into the building. “There are a few major differences in this academy versus the last one,” Sarah said. “They don’t approve of hate or anger-filled stones. They aren’t interested in the number of stones you make, but more the path you take to make each stone. Think of it like a holistic approach towards alchemy.”
“I thought you said you weren’t good enough, and they kicked you out?” Mark asked.
Sarah tightened her hands on the steering wheel as we crossed into the shadows of the building and stopped. Pinching her lips, she turned to him. “I got kicked out because I didn’t obey the rules. I created a club and got the talented students to make me stones through hate. Plus, they frowned upon my pregnancy.”
Mark’s mouth dropped. “You got pregnant at the Academy?”
She moved the car forward. “I was young, and there are a lot of temptations here. So be extra safe.”
Mark stared holes into the side of her head before looking forward.
We entered the building and took a quick right turn. A wall hid the rest of the building, and to the right and left of us were parked cars and trucks. Finding a parking spot, we came to a stop.
“You didn’t bring us in here to kill us or anything?” Jackie’s said, taking in Sarah suspiciously.
Sarah laughed. “No, you won’t find any of that kind of behavior here.” She opened the door and grabbed her purse. “Come on. It isn’t far.”
We got out of the car and I took a moment to look around again for signs of an academy. It felt more like a mall parking garage than anything else.
“Another thing you should note. Don’t be mean to other students, don’t smoke or use prank stones, or anything stupid like that,” Sarah said. “Just be good and you’ll be fine.”
“When are they going to help us get back to the Dark Academy?” I asked. Bridget’s face flashed in my mind. Ever since I’d left her and the others behind, a knot had sat in my stomach. “And help me find my mom?”
“I don’t know. The president here is . . . non-confrontational.”
“Great. Some wuss isn’t going to help us. Why are we even here, then?” Jackie said.
Sarah glanced over her shoulder at Jackie but kept walking along the row of cars. “Do you even know where it is? Do you think you’re just going to walk into the Dark Academy and Pied Piper the kids out with you?”
“Just the Reds. I’m going to kick a few Blues in the balls on the way out, though.”
Sarah sighed and stopped. “All of those kids have parents, and some, like Allie’s mom, are desperately trying to find them and get them out of there.”
“Then why don’t we go to them instead of some hippie compound?”
“That’s precisely why you’re here.” Sarah moved closer and we moved in as well. “Those parents are as hard to find as the Dark Academy itself.” She glanced at me and then to Mark. “This isn’t easy for me. I’m not allowed beyond those doors.” She pointed to the set of double steel doors at the end of the row of cars. “Lifetime ban. So it’ll be up to you to find the people in there who are in the know. They’ll be the ones who are in contact with your mom, I’ll bet my bottom dollar.”
I stared at the double doors. Another step closer to getting those students out of the Dark Academy. But if I was honest with myself, I really wanted to find my mother more. I had so many questions. My nails dug into my hands as I thought about it.
Sarah laughed. “Trust me, sweetie, this place is the farthest thing from the last place you were in.”
“Fine. Let’s check this place out. I haven’t yelled at a person in hours,” Jackie said.
Sarah shook her head and smiled. “They’re going to love you here, Jackie.” She turned and walked toward the door.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the approaching doors. I thought of Willie Wonka and his great reveal of the chocolate waterfall room. Mark moved next to me and put his arm over my shoulder.
“You ready for another academy?” he whispered.
“If it brings us closer to my mom, yes.”
“And getting those people out of the Dark Academy,” Mark added.
“Yeah, them too.”
Mark squeezed me and smiled. “As long as we stick together, we’ll be able to do anything.”
Jackie put her finger in her mouth and made a gagging sound.
We stopped at the doors. Sarah moved in front of us and put her back to the door. “This is the end for me. I’ll do what I can on the outside to find the other parents and the Dark Academy. You do what you can on the inside, and we’ll meet again in a week or so.”
“How do we get hold of you?”
“Cell phone?” Sarah said, as if that was obvious.
“They took ours,” I said.
“Here, take mine. I’ll get another and text you the number.”
I took the phone and turned it over in my hand. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed my smart phone until I had one back in my hands. “Thanks.”
“Mom, are you going to be okay?” Mark asked.
“You know me, I’ll be fine. I’ve been dodging alchemists my whole adult life.”
He hugged her and she seemed taken aback before returning the affection. “Thank you, and I’m sorry,” he said.
“You just take care of yourself.” She opened the door, stepping back to pull it all the way open.
I watched as a white, round room was revealed. I frowned, expecting something grand, but it was just another small room. I did like the clean white look and the way the walls curved in. Sarah motioned us into the room. We stepped off the concrete and onto the polished white floor.
“I’m sorry.” She closed the door.
“Sorry?” Mark rushed to the door and grabbed the handle. He pushed and pulled, but the door wouldn’t open. “She locked us in.”
Fear filled me. I rushed to the door next to Mark and helped him try to pull it open.
“There is another door,” a soft voice said from behind us.
A woman was gliding across the floor with soft steps. She was wearing a white halter top showing her midriff and plenty of cleavage. A pair of white pants hugged her thin legs and draped perfectly over her white heels. Young and beautiful she might be, but as she approached I thought she had a dull look in her eyes. Not stupid, really; more . . . glazed.
“Who are you?” Mark asked.
“I’m Lola.” She gazed at each of us with a tilt of her head.
“I’m Mark. This is Jackie, and Allie.”
“Such a pleasure to see new faces, and such pretty ones at that.” She paused on Mark. “If you want to follow me, I can show you to our introduction room.”
I looked to Mark and Jackie. Jackie smiled and looked at every inch of Lola while Mark squinted and bunched up his brow, looking at the open door Lola had come through.
“We’d love to,” I said.
“Wonderful. Follow me.” She spun, and her long blonde hair flowed behind her.
I hung back a ways and got close to Mark and Jackie. “Keep an eye out for any weird crap. They might be just as freaky as Verity’s Academy.”
“Really? You expect another academy to be a freaky as Verity’s?” Jackie said.
As we passed the doorway, I could see that the white theme carried over to the fifty-foot ceiling. White frosted glass covered most of it in a glazed patchwork that extended down one side of the building all the way to the floor. I struggled to see the far end to the building. A few people were moving around in the open space, all dressed in white. Some looked our way, but mostly they kept to themselves or talked in small groups.