The Academie

by Amy Joy

  She hesitated, and I could sense there was more.

  “Then, the other day, I went to review my bio notes, and I couldn’t find them anywhere. They should have been in my blue spiral notebook, but they weren’t. The notebook was blank. And it didn’t look like pages had been torn out; it looked brand new.

  “The next day, I went to take notes in class again, and there were all my old notes. Thought I was just losing it,” she said.

  “You and me both,” I answered.

  37. forbidden territory

  “Matt, I need to talk you.” He was lined up to be picked for a basketball team at Saturday open rec hours, but he followed me to the sidelines. “You still think weird stuff is going on here?”

  He nodded.

  “Anything new happen?”

  He shook his head.

  “I’ve had some things happen.”

  “You have?” He looked surprised and relieved.

  I recalled everything I could remember, from the room of nothing I mistakenly stepped into on testing day, to my recent excursion to the coffee shop.

  “You’ve been off-campus?” he said a little too loudly.

  “Shhh! Yes, but you’re missing the point.” I looked to see if anyone else was listening. “Matt, I think I may know what’s going on here.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want to say yet. We’ll talk tomorrow. Sign up for the movie option in the afternoon and then come find me.”

  That night, I attempted something I hadn’t even considered since the day of the incident with Shara. I meditated.

  This time I didn’t think of Bryan.

  Since it was banned, I had to be discreet. I waited until lights out and then lay in my bed, focusing not on sleep, but on clearing my mind.

  At first, my heart pounded with fear. Not only was I doing something that was now forbidden, but I still had no idea what had happened to Shara. For all I knew, she was dead.

  I shuddered at the thought.

  It took a while to slow my heartbeat. I tried to remember some of the things Shara had taught me. I focused on my breathing, gently letting my thoughts wash away.

  I don’t know how long I laid there before I was able to quiet my mind.

  I heard it before I felt anything. The quiet beeping, as though from a hundred computers.

  I didn’t attempt to open my eyes, trying hard not to draw attention to myself. I don’t want the men to return. Even so, I could sense that there were wires taped all over my body. Muscles contracted painfully in my calf, followed by my thigh.

  I gasped and opened my eyes.

  Around me I could hear the rhythmic breathing of the girls of my dorm. They slept quietly, unaware that their dreams weren’t so far off from reality.

  38. déjà vu

  “How do you know it wasn’t a dream?” Matt whispered at the movie the next day.

  “I guess there’s no way to prove it; no way to be sure. But I don’t think I was….Matt, it was so real.”

  “I’m not trying to discount it, but I’ve had very realistic dreams before.”

  I sighed.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s assume it was real. What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  It was true. I knew there was something weird going on, but I knew that a year ago. What did I know now that I didn’t know before?

  “We need to think scientifically. Let’s make a list of possibilities and then we can narrow them down one by one.”

  “Shhhh!” The girl in the row ahead of us obviously wished she had sat somewhere else.

  “Okay,” I whispered to Matt. “We’ll make our own lists and compare notes after English class.”

  The girl in the row ahead gave us a look. I smiled at Matt, and we sat quietly through the rest of the movie. I knew, like me, he wouldn’t be watching, but rather thinking, imagining what The Academie could possibly be up to.

  “Okay, I’ve got Calculus next so—”

  “You’re in Calc?” I interrupted.

  Matt nodded.

  “Well, you ought to be able to figure out our little Academie problem then, Mr. Brainiac.”

  “Little did The Academie know when they were teaching me all this stuff, that it would be used against them someday,” he whispered. He grinned, and it made me smile. It was nice to have him back.

  “Anyway, as I was saying, I have Calc next, so how about we walk in that direction to make it look discreet, and we can compare notes on the way?”

  “Why am I walking you to your class? Isn’t the guy supposed to walk the girl?”

  “One, I’m not your boyfriend, and two, I’m your little brother—as you keep reminding me—so I think you should see me safely to class.” He grinned and I laughed at the ridiculousness of it. He may be my younger brother, but he now stood a good six inches above me. Little he was not.

  “Fine. So, what’s on your list?” I asked.

  “Drugs.”

  “Naturally. I’ve thought about this one ever since you started acting weird here over a year ago.” He made a face, but I ignored it and moved on. “I can’t figure out how they’d be doing it—not that it’s not possible. I’ve looked up some drugs though and I haven’t noticed people with the side effects. Also, I did get a chance to see inside the cafeteria kitchen once, and I didn’t see anything suspicious.”

  He paused, thinking.

  “Let’s not rule it out yet though,” I added. “Remember, I did see some pretty wild things on my way back from the coffee shop the last time, and since I’ve been sane ever since, I have trouble chocking it up to insanity.”

  “Maybe it was temporary insanity?” he teased.

  I shoved him into the wall.

  “Okay…….. You’re only a little crazy!”

  I shoved him again. “I can still take you, you know.”

  “You wish.”

  “Oh yeah? Sergeant Fratelli’s been teaching us fencing! Take that!”

  “What? No way.”

  “Oh yeah. And I’m quite good at it too.”

  “We’ve been working on bowling,” he mumbled.

  “Ha! Yeah, well, you have to get into the special class to get to do the cool stuff, I guess.”

  “What class?”

  “Basic Fitness.”

  He laughed and shook his head. “Yeah, that’s about right…. Anyway, back to business. We’re almost to my classroom.”

  “Okay, I came up with a theory: hypnosis.”

  “Hmmm…possible. Have you looked anything up on it yet?”

  “In fact, I have.”

  He looked impressed.

  “Some of it seems to correspond with what we are seeing: increased suggestibility and a relaxed state.”

  “You think people here seem relaxed?”

  “So relaxed they are apathetic.”

  “Yeah, okay. I see your point,” he said.

  “Here’s what doesn’t add up though: hypnosis is also associated with increased imagination. Now I realize that you can express imagination in ways other than the arts—which of course have been cut from this curriculum—but I haven’t been seeing imagination expressed anywhere else either. All I see is people regurgitating what the sergeants tell them.”

  “Yeah, I’ll have to think on that, but I think you’re right. What it may mean though is that the hypnosis allows them the imagination to do things that they wouldn’t normally.”

  “Good point. But the stuff I read also said that people who are hypnotized are super-focused—as in they aren’t distracted by other things going on around them. To a certain extent that’s true of the students here, but well, let’s say that it hasn’t stopped guys from being distracted when a pretty girl walks by.”

  “I’m not sure if anything could get a guy that focused.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Anyway, everything I read said that the hypnotized still always know that it’s not real.” I paused. “Did you know?”

  “No,”
he admitted.

  “Okay, so let’s not rule it out entirely, but it’s looking unlikely.”

  “Any other theories?”

  “Just your run-of-the-mill brainwashing,” I said.

  “Right. I considered that too.”

  “But doing the research, it just doesn’t fit.”

  “I agree. Brainwashing is so severe—requiring isolation and an emotional attack on the person,” he said.

  “Yeah, and while we are isolated from the rest of society, we certainly aren’t isolated from each other.”

  “And the sergeants here are strict, but not like in brainwashing.”

  “There’s major guilt involved in brainwashing,” I said. “As much as I hate to admit it, I just haven’t seen it here.”

  “So I think it’s safe to rule that one out,” he said.

  “So where does that leave us?”

  “Slightly ahead of where we were before.”

  I sighed. “Well, it’s something anyway.”

  “Yeah. I’ll keep thinking and do some research on drugs and hypnosis. Maybe there’s some new stuff out there we don’t know about?”

  “But if there is, will they post it on the Acadenet?”

  He shrugged. “You better get to class before you’re late.”

  “Right. See ya tomorrow.”

  That night, I dreamt of my journey to the coffee shop. I left the Academie, slipping easily through the fence. On the way, I stopped at Bryan’s house where I had seen in it on my last trip through the neighborhood. I rang the doorbell and Anna answered, greeting me warmly as always. Bryan was right behind her, and as he came out, we waved goodbye to his mom—and to James, who had now appeared as well.

  “I’m glad you could find me at my new house in Canada,” Bryan said as we walked. He took my hand.

  “I knew you’d be here,” I said.

  We walked to the coffee shop—which was now Dean’s Bagels—and instead of ordering, we went straight for our place at the table—the one we had both sat at when we didn’t meet up.

  “Have you figured it out?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “You know, programmers use a lot of the same code over and over, when we know we don’t have to write new lines—when we know redundancy is all we need.”

  “Look around you. Do you notice anything strange?”

  I scanned the room.

  A perky lady with red lipstick greeting customers.

  An old lady with her caregiver.

  A little boy who didn’t want to eat his meal.

  A tray crashed to the floor.

  I gasped and sat up in bed.

  Drenched in sweat, chills ran over me.

  39. the run around

  I couldn’t wait to talk to Matt in English class the next morning. He was usually one of the first people to class—always there long before I was—but today when I got there, his seat lay empty. I scanned the room, but there was no sign of him.

  Running late. Weird.

  As the minutes ticked by, I became increasingly nervous as he didn’t appear. When Sergeant Roke started class, I felt a hole start to burn in my stomach.

  Where is he?

  I expected Roke to say something. After all, Matt’s seat was directly in front of where she stood, and besides the rare family visit, no one ever skipped an Academie class that I was aware of. No one, that is, except me. But everyone here knew that Matt would never skip class. Would he?

  Roke said nothing about Matt’s absence, and when class was over, I considered asking her if she had heard anything. But then, Matt had changed a lot in recent weeks. If he thought he were close to figuring out what was going on here, he might just skip class to do more research. I decided against talking to Roke.

  But Matt didn’t show in English the next day. Or the day after that.

  Finally, I’d had enough. I knew Matt couldn’t be skipping this much, and I even if he was, I simply couldn’t wait any longer to talk to him.

  “Sergeant Roke?”

  “Yes, Allie.”

  “You don’t happen to know what happened to my brother, do you?”

  “They didn’t tell you?”

  “They don’t tell us anything.”

  “All I know is that people said he was participating in banned activities—the kind of stuff that girl got into last fall.”

  I looked at her, confused.

  “You know, the one that didn’t come back?”

  “Shara?”

  “I think that was her name.”

  “Are you sure? I can’t imagine Matt doing anything—” I caught myself. “—banned. I can’t imagine him going against school rules.” The truth was, Matt was a total skeptic when it came to anything remotely mystical. The idea of him attempting meditation seemed pretty far out there.

  She shrugged and shook her head. “That’s just what I heard. They don’t always fill us in on everything either.”

  “So do you know where he is now?”

  “I would assume the medical wing.”

  “What?” I suddenly felt sick.

  “I’m sorry. I haven’t heard anything since about when—or if—we can expect him back.”

  “I gotta go,” I said, grabbing my things.

  “I hope he’s alright. Matt was one of my favorite students. Well, he’s all of our favorite.”

  I nodded and headed out the door.

  As soon as I hit the hallway, I took off running.

  When I reached the medical wing, I skipped the usual protocol and went right in. Nurse Apple was just entering from another door.

  “Where’s my brother?”

  “Your name?”

  “Alathea Thompson. I was told that my brother, Matt, was here.”

  “He was.”

  “So what was wrong with him?”

  “That’s confidential.”

  “But I’m family.”

  “Even so.”

  “Well, where is he now?”

  Nurse Apple sighed. “He was transferred from this facility Sunday night.”

  “And you didn’t notify me? Didn’t you think I’d like to know?”

  She stood there, expressionless.

  I rubbed my forehead. “I can’t believe you people.”

  “It’s not our job to keep families informed. All we do is tend to your lot when they get ill.”

  “Which doesn’t happen often, from what I’ve seen, so you should have had plenty of time to send me a simple message. Or are you too busy doling out vitamin B shots?”

  “I’ve had quite enough of this.” She turned to head back out the door.

  “Well where is he now? Is he okay? You at least owe me that.”

  “I don’t owe you anything. And for your information, since he is no longer a student, it’s no longer our business.”

  “What do you mean he’s no longer a student?”

  “Good day, Miss Thompson.”

  She exited the room.

  I turned to look at the medical ward secretary. She shrugged her shoulders and held up her hands. “Sorry, but I don’t know anything.”

  I huffed audibly on my way out the door.

  At first, all I could think about was how mad I was at everyone here—and my parents too. Somehow this entire thing reminded me of my last—my only—visit with them, and that made me even angrier.

  Then I remembered Grandma Marie. I wish she was here. She’d be the sensible voice in the midst of all this nonsense.

  Next, I moved into panic mode: Where was Matt now? Did they move him to a hospital? Was he okay?

  I pushed away the sadness that tried to take me down. There was no time for it. If I was going to get Matt back, I had to do something. Now.

  That night at dinner, I confided in my friends.

  “Matt’s gone.”

  “What do you mean gone?” Ruby asked.

  “Nurse Apple told me he’s no longer an Academie student.”

  “Well, where’d he go?” Stevie a
sked.

  “I don’t know.”

  Ruby looked stricken. “They won’t tell you?”

  “They won’t tell me anything. Of course, it doesn’t help that I insulted them.”

  “Always a good way to get answers,” Robert said, handling the mushy casserole on his place as though it were fine cuisine.

  “I know, but I was so mad. He left school Sunday night. How could they not say anything?”

  “I’m with you girl. I would have flattened that Nurse Apple,” Tina said. She’d told me all about her four younger brothers she’d been like a second mom to. I wished now that I’d had her with me earlier.

  “Are you alright?” Cayden asked. His eyes were wide and sympathetic. It was the first time he’d said anything to me since I’d told him not to follow me outside a week ago.

  “I don’t know. I’m so angry.”

  “So now what?” Ruby asked. She knew me well enough to know that I wasn’t going to let this go.

  “I have to do something.”

  “Yeah, but what?”

  “I’m not sure yet. I— ”

  I considered telling her and all of them everything—all that Matt and I had discussed, and our theories about The Academie. I held back, afraid, but they were all looking at me.

  I took deep breath and let it back out. “Do you remember how I told you that Matt came to me, about weird things he’d noticed here?”

  “Yeah,” Robert answered. The rest nodded. No one was eating anymore.

  “Well, I’ve had some pretty weird things happen to me too.”

  In the course of the ten minutes we had remaining at dinner, I disclosed as much as I could, all the way up to my recent dreams.

  “It’s a lot to soak in,” Ruby said when I’d finished.

  “I know.” My eyes pleaded with hers. If anyone was going to believe me, it was Ruby.

  The bell rang, signaling us to return to our dorms for the evening.

  “Just think about it,” I said. “We can talk more tomorrow.”

  40. shades of gray