Live and Let Shop

by Michael P. Spradlin

  Then we had lunch. And it was a really good lunch. In fact, I’d never eaten in a cafeteria at any school in my life with food that good.

  After lunch it was on to my Cultures class, and I was sure that here was where I would be able to catch up on my sleep. I was wrong. This teacher was Mr. Pollock, and I was taking a wild guess that he was married to Mrs. Pollock from Comp Lab. He was medium height and kind of stocky, with sandy brown hair. He had very expressive eyes and a really bright smile.

  Today he was lecturing on the religious rituals of countries in South America. The way he talked made it sound like we’d be leaving for South America very soon and we’d need to make sure we knew all this stuff. And once again, I was surprised at how not boring it was. There was all kinds of weird stuff about animal gods and ritual sacrifices and other cool stuff like that.

  I thought I couldn’t get more excited than I had about Computer Lab, but Code Theory blew me away. It was exactly like it sounds—sort of an advanced math class where we studied how algorithms and patterns of numbers sequenced and became codes. The instructor, Mr. Chapman, was tall and thin and wore sort of geeky-looking horn-rimmed glasses, but you could tell by how he talked that he was super-smart. He told us that with the rise of the Internet and the importance of computers and computer security, a basic understanding of Code Theory was going to be essential for all of us. He explained that after graduation, we might be working with computer networks in our jobs and the Code Theory we were learning here could help us understand how to keep networks secure, and in case the network was breached, how to decipher the new code and restore the network. I could have sworn by the way he was talking that he expected us to start hacking into computer systems as soon as we left class. Why would a school teach you something like that?

  Anyway, I was always good at math, and to my surprise I found the class interesting as well. They sure didn’t have classes like this at my old school.

  Before I knew it, it was time for Intro to Criminal Justice. Pilar and I had been together all day in the same classes, but for Intro to Criminal Justice, Alex joined us for the first time, and it was the only other class we had with Brent besides Microelectronics. We sat by them and waited for Mr. Quinn to arrive. Turned out that this class was in room 221—the very same room that I had tried to escape from. Instead of desks, we all sat in these really comfortable leather recliners. It was awesome.

  Pilar was totally right about Mr. Quinn. He was young and good-looking, with a sort of blond George Clooney thing going. He was tall and he looked pretty buff. When he smiled, he had a dimple on one cheek that made his face look slightly crooked, but not in a bad way. He came over to where I sat.

  “You must be our new student, Rachel Buchanan, right?” He stuck out his hand. I shook it. “Welcome aboard. I’m happy to have you here.” That seemed to be the consensus of everybody at Blackthorn so far. Except for maybe Mrs. Marquardt the chatterbox. The jury was still out on her.

  Mr. Quinn started his lecture, which was about the development of crime-scene analysis. The best part was about halfway through, when he killed the lights and showed a video on the big-screen TV of some techs working a crime scene. Mr. Quinn would describe how they approached the scene, broke it into a grid, and then searched each section (which they called “walking the grid”) for evidence. It was way better than CSI. Again the hour was over quickly. I didn’t even realize he’d been talking for a whole fifty minutes, because he was kind of mesmerizing.

  The only thing that was really boring during the whole day was Kitchen Duty. I’m totally helpless in a kitchen. At home our maid, Rosa, does all the cooking and housekeeping. God knows Cynthia never cooked, and I never really learned how to do much beyond pour cereal. Mrs. Clausen was totally unlike the cafeteria lady who ran the Beverly Hills High cafeteria back home. She was a small woman with a loud voice, and she spoke in a very thick German accent. The food she put out, I have to say, was a lot better than what we had back home. There was a lot of fresh stuff, like fruits and vegetables, and nothing that came out of a box. Okay. One more mark in Blackthorn’s favor: good food.

  That evening, after Kitchen Duty and dinner, I was back in the do jang for Tae Kwon Do. Mr. Torres, the other Tae Kwon Do master they had told me about, taught the class. He was about six feet two with black hair and green eyes. When we got there he was doing handstand push-ups, and he did twenty of them, which I know because I counted. I was impressed. He seemed nice enough, but he also gave off the impression that he was a no-nonsense kind of guy. There would be no karaoke nights in the do jang while Mr. Torres was in charge. After calisthenics, he put me off to the side with Alex to work on my first pattern some more. I could remember all of the words of the sound-off, but I was still pretty hopeless with the movements. Alex laughed at me only a couple of times that night.

  The next day and the day after were pretty much the same. I had to admit that as much as I didn’t want them to be, the classes were pretty interesting. Even Physical Conditioning. Mr. Elliot came up with a lot of cool exercises and games that seemed to make the hour go by fast, yet you still felt like you’d done something. I still didn’t like the Kitchen Duty so much, but Mrs. Clausen was a sweet little lady and it was hard not to like her. She was patient and explained everything and was really hands-on about teaching you stuff about food.

  By the end of the first week I even managed to get through the movements of the first pattern of Tae Kwon Do with only two mistakes and falling down only once. But Alex was still an arrogant jerk in the do jang, as far as I was concerned. No matter how much he drilled me on the techniques, I just couldn’t pick it up fast enough.

  There was this one technique called chwa dwi chagi, which is Korean for left backward kick. It should have been easy for me since I’m left-handed, but for some reason it got all confused in my mind, and each time Alex gave the command I would kick back with my right foot instead.

  “No, Rachel, the left foot,” he said after I’d done it wrong again.

  “I’m trying, Alex, give me a break,” I said. I stopped a moment to mop the sweat off my forehead. All I seemed to do at this stupid school was sweat.

  “It’s Mr. Scott in the do jang, not Alex,” he said.

  “Yeah, whatever,” I said. He hated my laxity with the manners in the do jang, so of course my only option was to be even more lax. Loser.

  “Someday, when I’m fourth Dan, you’ll have to call me Master Scott,” he said. He was trying to goad me, and it was working.

  “The day I call you master is the day Eminem joins the Backstreet Boys,” I said.

  “Do jang rules,” he said.

  “Yeah, well, don’t hold your breath,” I said. “I’ll be long gone from this place before that ever happens.” I took my stance again because Mr. Kim had come into the do jang and was watching us, but when Alex gave the command, I messed it up again and kicked back with my right foot. Alex just shook his head.

  So I couldn’t say that the Tae Kwon Do lessons were going along so well.

  Still, the weeks went by fast. So fast that I almost forgot about the red door and the Top Floor wing. But one day during physical conditioning, we went outside to do some work on a rock-climbing wall that was part of the athletic fields. When we came back in, we went down the same corridor and past the hallway that led to the red door.

  “Hey, Pilar, what is the Top Floor wing, anyway?” I asked.

  “It’s a special wing for students that have special abilities,” she said. That’s not an answer. That is being Mr. Kim’s little parrot.

  “I know that; that’s what Mr. Kim told me. But what is it? Who gets to be part of it?”

  “It’s mostly students in the final year of classes here. If you’re good at something like Code Theory or Languages, you can take the Top Floor–level courses. It’s a lot tougher and stricter. You sometimes get to go to special assignments or classes off site. But it’s all pretty secret.”

  “Why the hush-hush?”

&nb
sp; “I don’t know. Mr. Kim just wants everybody to concentrate on their work and not worry about other stuff, I guess.”

  “How come nobody else can go up there except them?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just Mr. Kim’s rule. Nobody questions it,” she said.

  Nobody questions his rules, huh? We’ll see about that.

  The next day we were out on the climbing wall again and I was having my usual klutzy time of it. I did okay going up, though it took me longer than anybody else. Today, instead of being lowered back down on the safety rope like before, Mr. Elliot wanted me to try rappelling back down on the rope. This is much harder than it looks, and as I got about two-thirds of the way down, my leg got tangled up in the rope and I twisted upside down and fell the rest of the way, landing in a heap.

  One of the girls in the class apparently thought this was quite funny, because she started laughing. I didn’t know what her name was, but she was one of those disgustingly athletic people who never fall off rock-climbing walls.

  I jumped to my feet and got right in her grille.

  “What’s so funny?” I said. Loudly. The rest of the class went quiet.

  “You. You can’t do anything right, and the rest of us have to spend all of our class time waiting for you to not be a spaz. Why don’t you get in shape?” I think her name was Melinda or Miranda or something like that. Time to teach her a lesson. I may be from Beverly Hills, but nobody laughs at me.

  “Why don’t you shut your mouth!”

  “Why don’t you make me!” she said. I’d seen this girl in Tae Kwon Do and I knew she could probably kick my butt. But I was mad. The world started to turn red, and I could feel my heart start pounding in my chest. I was sick of this school. Sick of being made to do all of this stuff that I couldn’t do and didn’t understand. Then to be laughed at? That was the end of it.

  I reached out and pushed Melinda/Miranda/Whoever she was in the chest and she stumbled over a pile of rope and sat down. But she came up hard and fast, and the next thing I knew I was on my back and she was sitting on my chest holding me down. She was about to punch me in the jaw when Mr. Elliot grabbed her from behind and pulled her off me.

  “Enough!” he shouted. “What the heck is going on here?”

  Missy or Melissa or Meredith smirked at me and said, “Nothing.”

  “You know the rules. No fighting,” he said.

  “She started it.” Could I be any more lame? She started it?

  “Rachel, enough. I don’t care who started it. Marissa, hit the track and give me two laps. Rachel, you hit the showers and get ready for your next class.”

  “But—” I started to say. But Mr. Elliot just shook his head and pointed toward the school.

  I unhooked my harness. I could hear Marissa and a couple of her friends laughing as she walked through them to head out to the track. I looked at Pilar before I left, and she kind of shrugged her shoulders and looked down at the ground sheepishly. I didn’t know what the rules were about fighting among students at Blackthorn Academy, but I’d go out on a limb and say they were probably against it.

  I stormed across the athletic field, slammed my way through the door, and rounded the corner that led to the locker rooms. Sixth-sense Mr. Kim was waiting in the hall. He smiled and asked me to take a walk with him.

  As we walked, Mr. Kim spoke.

  “Would you like to tell me what happened between you and Marissa?”

  “You were watching?” I said.

  He nodded. Man, he floated around this school like a ghost. Didn’t he ever have actual work to do? Reports to write, forms to fill out and stuff? It seemed like all he had done in the weeks I’d been here was keep an eye on me.

  “I’d rather not talk about it,” I said.

  “Very well. Perhaps when you are ready to discuss it. If I may, though, I would suggest that in the future, when you are confronted with ridicule, you choose an option other than fighting one of my best Tae Kwon Do students.”

  “Well, if your best students learn to shut their pie holes, that won’t be a problem.” Again, here he was, telling me what to think and feel. I didn’t think I could take another second of this place!

  As usual, Mr. Kim abruptly changed the subject.

  “So Rachel, it’s been two weeks. I just wanted to check in with you and have a discussion about how things are going. If you’ll indulge me for a moment, there is something I want to show you first.” Like I had a choice.

  We walked back out to the atrium of the school. Off to one side of the atrium was a big glass case with all kinds of trophies, plaques, and different photos of Blackthorn students. Mr. Kim stopped in front of the case. He motioned me to stand next to him.

  “Take a look at some of these photos, Rachel,” Mr. Kim said.

  Boring. I’ll bet he was getting ready to go all Good Will Hunting on me and give me some big life lesson speech about my special abilities again. Snore. But he was in charge, so I looked at the stupid trophies and photographs. Some of them were of individual students in athletic uniforms from the school. Some were photographs of teams. Some of the trophies were for sports, some for things like math and science competitions. Some of them had little guys in Tae Kwon Do poses on top. Some of them looked like they’d been there for a long time. I was not impressed.

  “Do you see anyone you recognize?” he asked.

  I looked over the faces in the photos again. At first I didn’t see anyone I knew, but then I spotted a face I’d seen before—Judge Kerrigan. Only, in this picture she looked like she was about fifteen. Her hair was long and wavy and wasn’t done up in an unfashionable bun like she wore it now. Still pretty bad hair, though. She was wearing a field hockey uniform and holding a trophy. I pointed at the photo and looked at Mr. Kim.

  “Judge Kerrigan?”

  “Yes. Judge Theresa Kerrigan, Blackthorn Academy class of 1984. She was a star forward on the Academy field hockey team. But only after she decided to stay at the school, of course. That took some convincing on my part.”

  “Field hockey, huh? I can see her using a stick to hit things,” I cracked.

  Mr. Kim smiled. He pointed to another photo of a man in a suit handing a plaque to a younger man. The younger man was Mr. Quinn, the Criminology teacher.

  “That is Mr. Quinn, at the age of sixteen, receiving an Award of Appreciation from the Director of the FBI.”

  “Yeah, right. You’re kidding me.”

  “Mr. Quinn is, as one might say, a computer genius—in addition to having a Ph.D. in abnormal psychology. When he was a student here, he spent all of his free time in the computer lab. Remember that computers and databases were not as advanced in the late 1980s as they are now. Mr. Quinn developed a program that helped the FBI catalog criminal cases from jurisdictions around the country based on common characteristics of the crime. Cataloging the information was easy. Making it usable was the hard part. That was Mr. Quinn’s breakthrough. It was an early model of their system, and it became the foundation of the FBI’s National Crime Index database that they use today.”

  I consider myself something of a computer geek, so I knew Mr. Kim was talking about the NCIC database. You saw it on TV and in movies all the time. The cops in those shows were always running names through “NCIC” to see if anyone had a criminal record.

  “He did that while he was here? As a student?” Okay, that’s impressive.

  Mr. Kim nodded. “And look here,” he said, pointing to three boys dressed in Blackthorn Academy basketball uniforms. They all looked identical to one another. “Those are Mrs. Clausen’s sons. Triplets. Mrs. Clausen’s husband died when the boys were ten years old. She took a job here and brought her boys with her. They all graduated ten years ago. Two of them are in the military, and the third is a police detective in Miami. Mrs. Clausen, luckily for us, stayed on after they left.

  “All of the students who have come to Blackthorn Academy are special to me, Rachel. All of them have become more than students; they are my family. I kn
ow that it was not your choice to come here. But in this short time, watching you and getting to know you somewhat, I’ve become very fond of you. So have your teachers. They tell me that they sense greatness in you. Especially Mr. Quinn. He has been amazed by the questions you have asked in class. He thinks you have a real aptitude for criminology.”

  He does? I thought to myself. Funny—I’d been so busy listening, I hadn’t realized I’d even asked any questions. Mr. Quinn thought I was amazing? Shut up!

  “What I am saying, Rachel, is that I hope you will choose to stay when the month is up. But I want to make sure you realize that I will honor our agreement. If you wish to return to California, I will make arrangements for you to do so. However, I hope that will not be the case. I think you would prosper here. Have you thought about your decision yet?”

  Well, the truth was that up until this morning and my tussle with that witch Marissa, I hadn’t. I had meant to. When Mr. Kim brought me back to the school that night, I had expected that I’d drag myself through the month and then jump on a plane back to BH. That was totally my plan. But then I started classes, and the first two weeks had gone by so fast, I hadn’t really thought about that part of my plan at all. So now I was caught a little off guard. Darn that Mr. Kim.

  “Well, I don’t know. There is still a lot of stuff I don’t like about this place. I don’t like the Tae Kwon Do. Mrs. Clausen is really nice, but I’m helpless in the kitchen. And I can’t get on the Internet. I like the Internet.”

  Mr. Kim smiled but didn’t say anything.

  I decided to see how far I could go.

  “I don’t feel like I’m cut out for this place. You have to do all this studying and gym, and I’m a total klutz. If I stay I don’t want to do any of that stuff.”

  Mr. Kim smiled and raised his eyebrows as if waiting for me to continue.