by Gabby Fawkes
“I’m sorry,” Kian said dully. “Won’t happen again.”
A laugh that sounded like a creaky door hinge came out of Miss Mildred. “But of course it will.” Her caterpillar brows lowered. “Only question is when, and if a Room sentence won’t be in order next time.”
“I’m sorry, too,” I said quickly.
As much of an unfair bitch as Miss Mildred was, now wasn’t the time to test our luck.
Apparently appeased, she swept back to scrape her chalk onto the board with the latest Latin phrase we were to learn.
“No, I’m not going to write that ogre an apology letter,” Kian hissed as we made our way back to our room after class.
“I’m just saying,” Demi said mildly. “It would help smooth things over.”
“There’s nothing to be smoothed over,” I argued. “She hates us and wants to catch us doing something bad so she can punish us. Why do you think she sat us right beside each other?”
“Tala’s right,” Kian said. “The whole class is stupido too. Sure, saying ‘ex nihilo nihil fit’ is fun, but what practical purpose does it serve for my life?”
“You know why,” Demi said in the tired tones of someone reciting something for the zillionth time. “John thought…”
“Yes, John the Poor Kind Orphan,” I said. “Who probably isn’t real. Just an excuse for the teachers to tell us off when we swear. And not try to pry off these stupid wristbands.”
“Except we have,” Kian said quietly.
She was right. It was a running joke in the school, how impossible the something-material of our wristbands was to get off. How even if you cut your arm off, it would appear on the other. And we had tried – bashing them, slicing at them with smuggled knives. Stupid and pointless, but the wristbands stood for something. They were just a plain thick white band, with our name, student number (mine was 0003674) and School For The Different on them.
* * *
Everyone fell silent now, even though we were at our room. No one needed to say how dubious the story of our founding was that our teachers parroted to us each and every year. There were so many holes in it it was like a woolen sock.
Why would some orphan somehow make it rich and then waste his time building a shitty school for crazy orphans, and then just leave it to deteriorate? Why were there no pictures of this so-called John?
“This whole school is messed up and we know it,” Kian declared glumly. “Latin? Didn’t the Romans die out like 3,000 years ago?”
“Only two thousand,” Demi said, an oddly sad look on her face, as if she’d been there at the time.
“So, we’re still doing it later tonight, right?” I said, turning to my friends.
Bitching about the school was fine and dandy, but I needed to find out I wasn’t going capital C crazy.
“Your mystery hallway?” Kian said, lips tightening. “Sure, why not? It’s not like I’ve got anywhere better to be.”
“This isn’t a good idea,” Demi said in a way that I knew meant she was coming along too.
“C’mon, carpe noctum,” I teased her. Seize the night was right. Maybe it was from having an extra-boring history and Latin class, or the crazy voice in my head giving lots of unwanted commentary, but I was feeling antsy.
That night, we met Jeremy at 12:15 am, almost as we’d agreed.
I checked my watch pointedly. “Jer, you’re one minute late.”
He was the one who’d insisted we’d go for 12:14 instead of 15, citing his need to feed his adopted mouse Maurice, and timing it to exactly four minutes (everyone knew the late-night teachers turned in at 12:10 at the latest).
“Maurice was hungry,” Jeremy said seriously.
“Thrilling,” Kian said. “Let’s go.”
Kian wasn’t a Maurice fan, since the one time she’d tried to pet him (cooing, “Sooo teeny!”), he’d bitten her.
This time, heading into the hidden hallway wasn’t so easy. The door was locked.
“Guess this explains why we haven’t stumbled this way before,” Demi whispered.
“You’re lucky I’m a bobby pin person,” Kian muttered, getting out the small thing.
I was lucky, especially since Kian didn’t actually wear them, only liked using them for odd jobs – substitute zipper, unclogging the bathroom drain, picking locks.
A few seconds as Kian worked her pin magic, then the door creaked open. After that, it was easy going. The shadows and patches of illumination loomed, some far-off sound spooked us, but we got into the room I’d been in without any more trouble.
There, the TV was as I’d left it, and I turned it on just as easily too.
“About what I wanted to show you…” I said, trailing off. “It’s better if you just see it yourselves.”
The channel was some cartoon, so I changed it. As I flicked through the not-news ones, I couldn’t tell if my stomach was doing leapfrog because I wanted them to see what I had – or I didn’t.
But then I came to Fox news and stopped. It was wildfire footage again. Clearly the blaze wasn’t under control yet.
My friends stared. I stared.
There it was. This time, there was no doubting what I was seeing – there, embedded in the flames, were the corpses of twenty or so dragons.
“This it?” Demi asked.
“This it,” I said. “Do you see…”
“What kinda weirdo movie is this?” Kian said, annoyed. “Cool dragons, but you seriously got us sneaking here to show us some movie?”
“It’s not a movie,” I said quietly.
Before she could protest, I changed the channel, scanning through them until I got to another news station. There it was, again, the shot of the flaming forest and dragons on ABC news, with the title ‘Wildfire Ravages Chico.’
“No,” Jeremy said weakly.
Kian gave the TV a good whack. The image jolted, but stayed the same.
Now, she was the one jabbing the button, flicking channels. From one news station – showing the flaming trees and dragons – to another. On she jabbed the button and up she cranked the volume.
Hearing the newscasters only confirmed what we could tell by their faces – they were talking about this garden-variety normal wildfire, oblivious to what madness we were seeing in the flames.
Demi placed a comforting hand on Kian’s arm, but she shoved it off. “No. It can’t be.”
“We have to go,” I said, trying to pull her away. “Kian.”
We did have to go. Coming here had been risky enough, but staying? We’d be way pushing our luck.
But Kian was mesmerized, her oval-shaped face an inch from the screen, glaring furiously – as if by sheer force of will she could change what she was seeing.
I yanked her back, turned off the TV and ripped open the door.
“You can stay if you want to,” I told her, “but I’m leaving.”
Demi and Jeremy joined me. Kian stood rooted to the spot, breathing hard. “But the dragons… the news…”
“We don’t have time to talk about it here,” I hissed. “Later. I promise. But we can’t get caught. Not here.”
For a second, I thought we’d have to physically force her along with us, but then Kian nodded and rushed out with us.
Luckily, turned out there was nothing to fear – yet. We got back to our dorms easy.
Jeremy rushed into his without saying anything.
“Jeremy!” I called after him, but Demi shook her head.
“You know how he can get with things.”
Soon we were in our room, standing in front of the closed door, staring at each other.
“No warning or nada?” Kian demanded.
“Would you have believed me?” I said.
Kian stormed past and flung herself on her bed. “We’re all losing it.”
“All four of us, though – seeing the same hallucination?” I turned to Demi. “You saw it too, right? All those burning dragons.”
She nodded, then shook her head. “I don’t understan
d.”
“There’s nothing to understand,” Kian declared direly. “We’re in a school for the mentally insane, for good reason.”
I studied her. “You don’t actually think that.”
A long silence, then, “I don’t know what I think anymore. Everything keeps getting more messed up.”
“But you remember things before,” I insisted. When she only stared at me, I insisted, “You do. You remember your aunts and your grandma and singing. You remember dollar stores and quesadillas. You remember Spanish words, for John’s sake!”
Not like Demi and I – we had virtually no memories of our parents or our lives before. All I had was this weird pair of three-lined birthmarks on either forearm and a loving murmur – Tala, Tala. That was what I’d insisted the school call me when I arrived and they’d tried going with Margaret. Seriously. Margaret. No way was I having that.
Not Kian, though. She’d been one of the older ones to come here when she was orphaned – around 7 – so she still had some memories of normal life, of being normal. Only some, though. Like most of the other kids who came here a bit older, her memories were all patchy, had been even when she’d arrived.
When Demi and I first met Kian, she’d been a bossy girl with a bowl cut who had remembered moving a lot, being protected, and not much else. She’d get all frustrated when we asked (finally storming off with a flung-back “adios”), so we’d finally given up.
Only in the past few years, Kian said, did more chunks of memories return – a woman with a heart-shaped face who had her eyes, quesadillas that crunched deliciously when you bit into them.
Back when we were kids, Kian remembering moving and being protected was enough to give us hope. Hope that maybe, just maybe, there was something more to this all. That we weren’t just crazy unwanted orphans with no future.
And now? Did I really still think that?
“You said you thought…” I said.
Kian was on her side on her bed now, facing the wall. “I said I don’t know.”
“Well, I do,” I said. “What we saw on those TVs meant something. And I’m going to find out what.”
I flung myself onto my bed, too frustrated to bother with PJs. As much as it had been anger-spurred, I meant what I’d said. I had no idea how I’d do it – find out what was going on, but I had to try. The other option was too dire to accept.
4
I woke up anew. Same bed, same room – and that was where the similarities ended. I stormed out and into the hallway, opened my mouth and let fly a blaze.
Fire, that was what was ejecting from my mouth, searing the dust-heavy walls around me.
The voice wasn’t in my head anymore – it was mine: “Burn them, make them pay. Burn the liars. Burn them all.”
Somewhere near people were screaming, but that was only white noise to the flaming soundtrack going off everywhere around me.
Smoke smelled like victory. I took in what I’d done, what I was doing with pride swelling my chest. The flames erupting all around me were mine. All of this was.
The school was going to pay for all the secrets, all the lies – and I was going to be the one to do it.
Yes, I was going to scourge this place until the only witnesses left were the ashes of remorse.
“Tal!” Kian said.
I scanned through the flames, but there was no sign of her.
“Talaa…” she said as her face loomed through them.
I blinked up at my friend as she shook me. “You want to miss breakfast again?”
“I…” I blinked at my surroundings, the very-unburning walls, and took a breath.
A dream, that was all it had been. A super psycho dream, but a dream nonetheless.
“You okay?” Kian said.
I nodded. After the craziness last night, now wasn’t the time to mention I’d had a psycho burn-them-all dream of my own. It had to be stress, I assured myself. With graduation coming up, it was no surprise that the images from the television had seeped into my dreams.
“You?”
Something passed across Kian’s eyes, but next thing I knew, she was turning away. “Better hurry up, yo. No way am I giving up the crispy bacon for you.”
I paused. Something was definitely up with Kian. Something more than just being freaked about what we’d seen.
But she clearly wasn’t in the mood to talk about it. And if there was one thing I’d learned about my friend in the 11 years I’d known her, it was that, unless you were admin or a teacher (and even sometimes if you were), no-one forced Kian to do anything she didn’t want to.
We didn’t really have time for a heart-to-heart anyway, with us being our usual five minutes late for breakfast.
As she applied some of her signature bright red lipstick in front of our cracked mirror, I ambled across the room. “Where’s Demi?”
Kian didn’t miss a beat. “Feeding her children breakfast.”
Sure enough, I heard the water running in the bathroom next door. Demi doted over her plants – some of which she kept next door - like an anxious mother, checking on them and tending to them several times a day. She had a knack for keeping them alive too –Kian’s and my half-dead plant attempts she’d adopted for her own. It was one of the few hobbies the school encouraged, probably since it required zero funding on their part.
Getting dressed, going to the dining hall and eating was all autopilot. Except for the realization I had as we were walking out of there. The realization that - even though I’d had the same mooshtastic scrambled eggs I’d had every morning, even though I was heading to the same boring-ass history class as always, even though freaking Timmy stole my water bottle before chucking it back at my head, I actually felt pretty good.
Better than good – I felt like an Energizer bunny on speed.
“What is up with you?” Kian said as on the way to class I easily outpaced our classmates, and she, Demi and Jeremy huffed to keep up.
“I feel really good.” I smiled at her while she eyed me suspiciously.
“You did it, didn’t you?”
I didn’t have time to find out what, though, because just then the last person I wanted to see caught up with us.
“Heard there were students out and about last night,” Jenna said with an ominous smile.
“And you’re telling us this because….” Kian said.
Jenna screwed her lips together in a sort of duck-face expression that was supposed to be condescending. “Just because they’re going to be caught.”
Another significant look before she gave us a wiggly wave and sashayed on. As we watched her, Kian nudged me. “Would anyone really notice if our amiga disappeared?”
“You mean, if she accidentally got locked in the Room for a few days?” I said.
“Was thinking more along the lines of her getting lost in the big-ass forest and never coming back, but that’d do.”
By now, we were in class, so had to quiet down.
The next few hours were same old, same old. Mostly, Miss Jane gabbed about the ancient Greeks, and then at lunch, Jeremy once again ate an insane amount of food. Some eight-year-old started wailing about something, while the others almost drowned it out with their loudness (apparently the new mythology teacher was actually fun). Partway through, Sammy stopped by and we shared some sweet potato fries, while Kian murdered us all at hangman (who chooses ‘poppycock’ for a word, anyway?).
I did palm my meds and manage to lie about it with a straight face. Yes, everything went more or less smoothly – until Latin class, that was.
As soon as we stepped foot in the conjugation-poster-plastered walls, I knew something was up. Miss Mildred was standing in her usual tweed blazer and long socks, in the front of the class, but looking like a cougar waiting to pounce.
“Take your seats,” she said in her nasal voice as we entered.
Cody slung himself in his seat, looking like he actually might not fall asleep this time. Kian, Demi and Jeremy carefully avoided looking my way, althou
gh I’m sure they were filled with the same buzzing nerves I was.
Stevie was the last in, a few minutes late.
“You’re late,” Miss Mildred barked. “Close the door behind you.”
Stevie did as told with a kohl-lined glare, then went to her seat in a hostile silence. I waited for Miss Mildred to flip shit as she did at the slightest inkling of disrespect, but she stayed in place, immobile and silent for a good few minutes.
Long enough for one long-ass mental freak-out. Jenna had just been bluffing – right? No one had seen us the other night. At least we hadn’t seen anyone. But what if they had just been too quiet for us to notice?
Chances were that Miss Mildred had some sort of announcement about the Founder’s Assembly, which was in a few days. Some sort of threatening no-skipping-class-or-we’ll-know-and-punish-you speech. Which was true in that they would punish us. But false in the part where they’d actually catch us. Founder’s Assembly was typically so busy that teachers barely had time to cough, let alone pinpoint which students were the ones skipping.
When Miss Mildred finally spoke, all my hopes came crashing down.
“We have been informed of trespassing after hours,” she said, her gaze roving around like a searchlight. “The perpetrators were traced to Dormitory 12B.”
Ok yeah, now it was time to freak the hell out. We all knew what that meant – girls in the 12th year, which had all of eight people to choose from.
Knowing Jenna, she’d probably found a way to rat us out too.
Jenna’s hand shot up. “It wasn’t anyone in my room. Which, by process of elimination – and really just logical deduction, means….” She twisted her head to shot a pointed look Kian’s and my way.
“That you want your ass kicked?” Kian said sweetly.
“Ladies,” Miss Mildred shrilled.
We fell silent, while I imagined that the back of Jenna’s head was a dartboard for my recently sharpened pencil. Impalement by pencil wouldn’t be fatal, but it would put her out of commission for at least a few days, right?