Who in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?

by Rebecca Tinker

  Sheena looked toward the Russian nesting dolls I had just placed by my bed and turned back to me. “Is this where you keep your jewelry, little girl?”

  Instinctively I stepped in front of them, guarding my territory. I might have been younger and smaller than the rest of my roommates, but I was not about to let myself be bullied by a roommate who had a thing for shoplifting.

  “Please don’t touch my stuff,” I said firmly.

  Sheena raised an eyebrow. She could tell she was getting to me, and she reached toward the dolls. “What, those?”

  I clenched a fist at my side. “I said, keep your paws off!” I could feel my anger rising, and I knew that it was about to come out. Graham quickly stepped in front of Sheena, giving a lighthearted chuckle. “Play nice, princess. We all have to room together.”

  Sheena looked for a moment as though she was going to make another move for the dolls, then thought better of it. “It’s probably just cheap jewelry, anyway,” she said with a huff as she stepped away. Graham smiled at me, and I couldn’t help but smile back.

  * * *

  The next day, classes started. I woke up feeling more excited than I had ever been in my life. This was the day my career as a thief was finally going to begin.

  Graham noticed my excitement as we made our way toward our first class. “You’re really raring to go, aren’t you, Black Sheep?” he said. He was sporting an easygoing smile that I would come to be very familiar with. I shrugged. The last thing I wanted was to seem desperate or overeager. I tried to put on an air of confidence instead.

  “Are you really going to go by Graham while you’re here?” I asked.

  “What, you don’t like it?”

  “It’s not very . . . cool,” I explained knowingly. “What about Gray? That’s way cooler than Graham!”

  “Gray, huh? That’s not bad.” He cast a sly look down at me. “But nothing’s better than Lambkins.”

  “You’re right, but don’t be jealous. And remember—​it’s Black Sheep to you.”

  I felt someone bump hard into my shoulder and looked up to see Sheena scowling at us as she pushed on ahead. “Black and Gray. That’s too cute,” she said with a smirk. I simply ignored her and made my way into our first class.

  I had seen each of the classrooms many times while roaming the academy halls. But I had never known what lessons were taught within.

  Finally it’s my turn, I thought as I took my seat on a mat inside Shadowsan’s classroom for first period: Stealth 101.

  The room was decorated in a minimalist Japanese style. I gazed around at the traditional decorations—​there were bonsai trees and Japanese fans and delicate folding screens that lined the walls. My eyes moved to a long samurai sword that rested on a stone pedestal behind the teacher’s desk. Are we going to be using that? I wondered, feeling giddy with excitement.

  Shadowsan took his place at the head of the classroom. Just for an instant, I could have sworn he flashed an angry look in my direction, but I blinked, and the moment had passed. I shrugged it off. I wasn’t about to let anything get in the way of acing all my classes and being the best student this school had ever seen.

  Shadowsan reached into his pocket and pulled out an origami sheep, carefully and crisply folded. “Origami, the art of paper folding, is the best way to practice and perfect a nimble touch,” he said as he set the sheep down on a table next to a set of other paper figures. “Essential for the successful picking of pockets.”

  Moments later, we were all given our own sets of origami paper. I focused hard on mine. I folded each edge carefully, as though it were an intricate puzzle to be solved.

  I looked around at my classmates. Their origami, if you could call it that, all looked like crumpled pieces of homework that the family dog had gotten its paws on.

  Not mine, though. Mine was a flawlessly folded unicorn. The meticulous folding and precise movements of the fingers came as naturally to me as breathing.

  Shadowsan passed by, and I held up my origami toward him proudly. He kept walking, his expression completely blank. I’ll bet he was impressed, I thought. He just didn’t want to show it.

  “Nice rhinoceros,” said Gray. His origami looked like a piece of paper that had been spat out of a lawn mower. Jean-Paul and Antonio weren’t doing much better. Jean-Paul’s goat looked more like a toad, and Antonio had crumpled up his mole in frustration, leaving it a wrinkled mess.

  “It’s a unicorn,” I corrected. “What’s yours, anyway?”

  “It’s supposed to be a kangaroo,” Gray said dryly. “This class is Stealth 101. I heard our instructor used to be a ninja. When is he going to show us some moves?”

  “I’ll find out,” I said as my hand shot up in the air. Gray and I were beginning to become friends. It was an experience that was completely new to me, and I found myself wanting to impress him and the others.

  I caught the attention of Shadowsan. He turned to me slowly, raising his eyebrow ever so slightly at my raised hand. “Instructor Shadowsan, sir,” I blurted out, “aren’t we going to learn how to use that?” I pointed at the sword resting on the pedestal.

  He gestured to the sword behind him. “The sword? That is an antique. It is only for looking at.” He turned his gaze back to me, and I flinched under his critical look. “But if you wish to play with toys, Coach Brunt will be teaching you the art of self-defense.”

  There were snickers from the other students. Sheena was laughing the loudest. I looked across the room to see her grinning triumphantly. She looked all too happy about Shadowsan putting me in my place.

  I walked quickly to my next class, determined to do better in this one. The class was Coach Brunt’s Combat and Weaponry. It was held in Brunt’s gymnasium, where we had access to everything from punching bags to long wooden sticks, called bo staffs, that were used for practice fighting. It was a room that hung heavy with an air of athleticism and discipline.

  I had always been fast and nimble on my feet, but I would be going up against students who were twice my size. I was suddenly noticing how short I was compared to everyone else. I tried to calm my nerves as we made our way inside. It didn’t matter if the other students were bigger or older than me, I decided. I was going to use my own strengths against them.

  Coach Brunt sized us up, one by one. She gave me a reassuring nod when she saw me in line. “In this class, I’m going to drill you hard—​understand?” she yelled out as she walked back and forth in front of us. “Don’t ever let your guard down! When you’re in the field, no one’s going to go easy on you, so I don’t want to see you going easy on each other!”

  She picked up a set of bo staffs and tossed them to us. “The first rule of self-defense . . .” Brunt yelled in her thick Southern accent. “. . . Always protect the face!”

  We split up into pairs as Brunt told us, “Do your worst!”

  I held my bo staff tightly in my hands and lunged toward Gray. He sidestepped me easily. “Too slow,” he teased. Before he had a chance to come at me, I snarled and lunged toward him a second time. He was taken aback, just as I’d hoped. He once again managed to avoid me, clumsily this time. While he stumbled, I did a low spin-kick that took out his feet, and he fell to the floor. “Whoa!” he exclaimed. “Not bad, Black Sheep!”

  Gray and I traded blows with our staffs for a while. Next to us, Antonio and Jean-Paul were doing the same, with Antonio eventually taking Jean-Paul down by barreling into him with his shoulder.

  Gray nudged me and gestured across the room. “Who’s the bloke that Sheena’s fighting with?”

  Sheena was paired with a quiet student I had seen at orientation but not spoken to. He was distractedly looking around the gymnasium, his back turned slightly toward Sheena. Before I had a chance to warn him, Sheena jabbed her bo staff into him, knocking him flat on his back.

  I quickly walked over, extended my hand to him, and helped him up. “You okay?” I asked. He said nothing, giving only a slight shrug and a nod.

  “I di
dn’t realize this was a team-building exercise,” Sheena said as she took a swing at me with her staff. In a flash, I caught her staff with my hand and pulled on it. She went tumbling down with a squeal.

  “That’s how it’s done, Lambkins!” Brunt said with a grin, and she winked at me proudly. Sheena hissed angrily as she got to her feet, glaring daggers at me.

  Soon enough it was time to move on to Countess Cleo’s class. I was unsure of what to expect from a class called Criminal Etiquette, but I knew that Cleo would be all too eager to make a more polite person out of me if given the chance. In her eyes, I was a wild little child—​and she wasn’t completely wrong.

  Cleo’s classroom was a place of elegance, with beautiful patterned curtains hanging from the windows and priceless artwork arranged in perfectly positioned spots on the walls.

  “In this class, you will learn to distinguish the finer things from the . . . not-so-finer things.” Cleo strutted to the front of the classroom like a model on a runway. “A forgery is a fake. Something that is copied to look like the real thing. It will not do for you to steal a pile of fake diamonds instead of the real deal.” She made a face of utter disgust. “If you want to be successful criminals instead of petty thieves, you will have to learn how to pass within high society and how to tell the difference between what’s valuable and what’s not.

  “Pop quiz!” Cleo said as she gestured to two identical vases on the table next to her. The vases each had very detailed blue-and-white flower designs wrapping around their sides. “One of these vases is discount flea-market garbage,” she explained. “The other is a genuine Ming vase from the Jiajing period, valued at three hundred thousand dollars. Which would you steal? Anyone?”

  “Oh! I know!” Sheena called out, waving her hand in the air. Countess Cleo gave a nod in her direction. Sheena stood up with a smirk. She leaped down the aisle and did a series of handsprings that sent her bounding toward the front of the classroom. The final handspring sent her up in the air and over the vases.

  She grabbed one of them as she landed, a triumphant look on her face. “This one!” Sheena cried proudly, enjoying all the attention she was receiving.

  The second vase wobbled on the table, then—​

  SMASH!

  It fell to the floor, bursting into a hundred pieces. Countess Cleo winced. “Tragically,” she said, “you would be wrong.”

  Sheena raised the vase she was holding, and the price tag on the bottom, reading ninety-nine cents, was visible to all of us. “She was so sure of herself!” I snickered to Gray, and we burst out laughing. Sheena shot us a look so fiery, it would have fried an egg.

  After Criminal Etiquette, we moved on to Diabolical Masterminding with Maelstrom. Of all the faculty members, he had always been the most unpredictable while I was growing up on the island. He certainly seemed strange, but I was intrigued by his unusual attitude and curious about what he might teach us.

  On either side of his classroom were two massive fish tanks with bright sea creatures that swam slowly through the water. Beyond one of the tanks, a skeleton was on display, and it felt as though it were looking right at me. Maelstrom paced in front of it, his hands clasped behind his back.

  “To properly perform a bait and switch,” Maelstrom said as he held a velvet sack high in his hands, “the objects should be of equal weight and size.” He reached a hand into the sack and pulled out a large stack of money. “A volunteer, please?”

  This time it was Antonio’s turn to walk to the front of the class.

  Maelstrom returned the money to the sack and handed it to Antonio. “Whatever you do,” Maelstrom instructed, “hold the bag tightly! As tightly as you can.”

  “I am regretting this decision,” I heard Antonio say under his breath.

  Maelstrom casually walked past him. We all watched, our eyes glued to the sack that Antonio held in his hands. Maelstrom then stepped away from Antonio, holding a second, identical sack. “And there you have . . . the switch!”

  Maelstrom reached into his own sack to reveal the stack of money. Antonio reached into the sack he was holding. “What is this?” he cried. He looked totally grossed out as he lifted up a fistful of squirming worms.

  “That, my dear boy, would be the bait!”

  Maelstrom gave a chilling chuckle. Some of the students nervously joined in. Antonio quickly stuffed the worms back into the bag and took his seat, wiping his hands on his pants. “That was disgusting,” he told Jean-Paul.

  “This guy is insane!” I heard Sheena hiss behind me.

  “Insane? Or a genius?” Jean-Paul asked quietly. “He switched those bags while all of us were watching, and none of us noticed a thing!”

  The last class of the day was Gadgetry and Tech with Dr. Bellum. There were the usual laboratory stations with beakers and basic science instruments, but then I began to gaze around at the wide range of strange devices and inventions. I had never seen anything like them before. Some were twisted into crazy shapes, and others were covered in endless rows of buttons and control panels. Given Dr. Bellum’s eccentric nature, I knew there was no telling what they were used for.

  “Never underestimate the power of science when you are out in the field,” Bellum began, her wild eyes moving from one student to another. “Science can take out an alarm system. Or fill a room with toxic nerve gas that will stop your enemies in their tracks.”

  Bellum walked to the wall and took down a long metal rod. It was not unlike the bo staff that we had been fighting with earlier in the day, only it seemed to be made of polished steel and electronics.

  “Take, for example, my latest invention . . . the crackle rod!” Bellum turned a dial on the rod’s side, and the invention hummed to life, buzzing with the electricity. I saw Gray lean forward. He looked like he was under a spell.

  Bellum turned the rod to show us the dial on the side of it. “Settings can be adjusted here. Directional EMP, stun mode, and so on. An EMP, for those of you who don’t know, is an electromagnetic pulse. It can take out any electronics as far as its range extends. Now, if you turn the dial all the way up . . .” Dr. Bellum cranked the dial as far as it would go. She aimed the rod directly at a crash-test dummy hanging at the far end of the classroom. With the press of a button—​

  ZAP!

  A beam of electrical energy tore through the air and hit the dummy right in the chest. Murmurs rippled throughout the classroom as smoke poured from where the dummy had been just a moment before. It was now nothing more than charred remains on the floor.

  Bellum laughed, thrilled with the results. I looked to my left and saw Gray staring at the crackle rod, his jaw slack.

  “You like it?” I asked.

  “Like it? More like love it!”

  “I’ll steal it for you later,” I promised with a wink.

  * * *

  Later that week, I snuck into the quad and hid behind a row of hedges. Talking to Player was risky with so many students around, but it was a risk worth taking. I couldn’t wait to tell him about the start of school!

  There was a ringing, and then the familiar white-hat graphic appeared on the phone’s screen.

  “Player!”

  “Yo, Black Sheep!” Player sounded just as excited to connect with me as I was with him.

  “You’ll never guess how my first day went! There were crackle rods, and worms, and fighting—”

  “What? You’re messing with me, right?”

  “Don’t worry, it was all part of class!”

  “Well, that makes it okay, I guess,” Player said sarcastically.

  I looked ahead of me and saw Gray. He was looking around, as though searching for something or someone. After I poked my head out of the bushes, Gray waved to me.

  “Black Sheep! There you are. I was looking for you. C’mon, mate!”

  “Just dropped my pen—​be right there!” I called, ducking back into the bush for a moment.

  “Who’s that?” Player asked.

  “Graham. Well, I like t
o call him Gray. He’s from down under! Where kangaroos live! He’s my best friend.”

  “Oh.” There was a sadness in Player’s voice that I had never heard before, and I quickly tried to make things right.

  “My best school friend. You know how it is, right?”

  “Not really. I’m homeschooled,” Player explained.

  “He’s actually more like a big brother. I’ve got to run. I’m going to be late for Criminal Etiquette.”

  “Wait . . . what kind of school do you go to?”

  Chapter 4

  As the days passed, my classmates and I studied hard and trained even harder. We learned how to slide from ropes down the side of a building and use a blade that could cut through glass to easily get inside a locked window. Cleo made sure we knew which types of paints artists from different time periods used so we could fake priceless paintings. Shadowsan trained us to be able to walk silently across creaky wooden floors.

  As we trained, the specialties of each of my classmates soon became evident. It was becoming more and more apparent with each passing day why they had been selected for VILE’s elite program.

  One day, in Brunt’s class, we were taking part in a difficult training exercise. I tried to concentrate as I slid down from the ceiling rafters on thin climbing ropes. All around me, the other students were doing the same. “Your goal is to be the first one to reach the target!” Brunt yelled to us. The target was a briefcase that was suspended in the air twenty feet off the floor.

  I was the first to make it from the rafters to the floor. I quickly grabbed a pair of long metal stilts from where they were leaning against the wall. “These stilts,” Brunt explained, “will help you to get up to higher places when there’s nothing else around. Use them to get to the target!” I hurriedly strapped them to my legs and tried to stand up. My legs were wobbling back and forth wildly. I took a shaky step forward, and then another.