Tala Phoenix and the School of Secrets

by Gabby Fawkes

  Demi was saying something to me, but I didn’t hear what it was. My concentration kept drifting from her, even from the pasta I was picking at. Since when did Jenna have that locket?

  The necklace was pure Jenna, over-the-top and maybe even real gold, but that wasn’t surprising.

  What was surprising was that I wanted it. Usually, I was meh on jewelry, but this necklace I… needed.

  Ugh, and the way she was flaunting the necklace, so that, even further down our table, it was impossible to ignore.

  Who was she to have such a gorgeous necklace as that? So shiny, and gold and…

  “What the?” Jenna had stopped talking and was staring at me. I hadn’t even noticed I’d come over.

  Her face still had the black eye I’d given her. “What - want round two?” She sneered, rising. “Since you obviously cheated?”

  “Leave her alone, Jenna.” Jeremy strode up beside me. He looked pissed. What was up with our resident peacemaker?

  “Or what, Jerepee?” Jenna smirked at him.

  That bitch – she’d used the name.

  Next thing I knew, Jeremy was on the table on all fours, growling in her face.

  “You freak!” Jenna shrieked, scrambling back.

  No one looked more shocked than Jeremy, though. Clambering back to the floor, he tugged at a dark strand that had fallen in front of his eyes. “Sorry, I don’t know-”

  “Stay away from me!” Jenna yelled. Now basically everyone in the cafeteria was staring at us. Glorious. “You belong in the Room,” she shrilled, before hurrying away.

  “Nice one,” Timmy called over, but Jeremy was already booking it out of here.

  “Jeremy, wait!” I called, hurrying to keep pace. Demi had got up and was trying to catch up too.

  “Thanks for standing up for me,” I said. “And don’t feel bad, she totally had that coming. I mean, that was ten years ago.”

  Jeremy stopped and it was then I noticed he was hyperventilating. “Tala… I… need to be alone right now.”

  And then he ran through the front doors. I made to follow him, but Demi stopped me.

  I turned to face her. “What the hell is happening to us?”

  7

  That night, Jeremy and Kian met us on the roof. We wasted no time with niceties and got right to it.

  “Things are happening,” Jeremy said quietly. “It’s only been a few days since I stopped taking the pills and I feel… different.”

  “Different how?” I said.

  His gaze was set firmly on the forest. “Angrier. Out of control. Like there’s… hair prickling under my skin. My teeth hurt.”

  “My hands feel weird, too,” Kian admitted.

  They glanced my way and I shrugged. “Pretty much what I told you guys before - I have this angry voice in my head sometimes, telling me to ‘burn the liars.’”

  “Oh yeah.” Kian made a face. “That sounds perfectly normal.”

  “Maybe we really should be taking the pills,” Demi said quietly.

  “Why?” I said. “What’s been happening to you?”

  “Nothing, just…” she sighed. “You’re going to laugh.”

  “We won’t.”

  Her face was grave. “I know how this sounds, but my plants have been growing like mad. You know the pink orchid, the one I was sure was done for – it sprouted three new blossoms in the past few days.”

  Demi was right – we cracked up.

  “It’s not funny,” she protested. “If we keep this up…”

  “Then you may just escape.”

  At the unfamiliar voice, I nearly fell over.

  “Aerwyna?” Jeremy said nervously.

  There she was a few feet away on the roof in front of us, her pink and purple flower crown atop her head, her raven hair and mint dress billowing back like a painting.

  Jeremy was right to be nervous. With her purplish cat eyes and vague smile, Aerwyna had always seemed nice enough, although a bit spacey. But ‘nice enough’ didn’t mean that she wouldn’t rat us out if it came to it.

  Then again, if she was out after hours, by ratting us out, she’d get in as much trouble as we would, right?

  “Don’t worry,” Aerwyna said in her melodious low voice, as if her running into us up here was perfectly normal. “I’ve known of your roof hangs for a while.” Her long finger pointed beyond us, to the forests. “After hours that’s where I go.”

  “Don’t you care about being caught?” Kian asked, her almond eyes already narrowed with suspicion. I was glad I wasn’t the only one.

  “Don’t you?” Aerwyna returned.

  “Yeah,” I said, frowning. “But... won’t you get sent to the Room if you’re caught?”

  “We’re all headed to the same place, in any case.” Her words in that light tone made me shiver.

  “What?” I said.

  With her gaze still resting on the forest lovingly, she didn’t seem to have heard me. “You know why they rarely allow us there.” A wispy smile. “There’s no cliffs beyond the forests at all. There’s barbed wire, then desert.”

  “Desert?” Jeremy said. “There can’t be. We’re on an island in Vermont.”

  Her head tilted, though it didn’t turn. “Are we?”

  As that question hung over us like a storm cloud, she studied our faces. As if trying to decide something. Then, decision apparently made, she glided back the way she’d come.

  “Wait!” I said, standing up.

  No way was I letting her go after she dropped those truth bombs. Claiming that we were in the middle of the desert, instead of the forested island in Vermont they’d always claimed we were on? Yeah, we definitely needed some answers. First off, why she’d even moseyed on up here if she’d been doing her forest trips solo a bunch of times already.

  “Why’d you come here?” I asked her.

  When Aerwyna turned, her eyes went directly to mine. “To ask if you’d like to come along when I leave.” Seeing our suspicious faces, she added. “They’ll try to chase me, I’m sure, and the more kids they’re after, the more chance some have at actually getting out. Although I can’t exactly go telling everyone what I’m planning, either.”

  It made sense. With us coming up here sometimes, Aerwyna knew we were already rule-breakers and that we’d be open to the idea of escaping.

  “But how – when?” I sputtered.

  “I already told you how,” she said impatiently, as if making it past the barbed wire was as simple as running through it. She fluttered her fingers in the direction of our school now. “When’s the one time the whole school is in the same place?”

  “The Founder’s Assembly,” Demi whispered, and Aerwyna smiled again.

  I found myself smiling too. It was, I had to admit, a not-terrible idea. The Founder’s Assembly was an actual shitshow - with the months-ahead planned assembly, several choice people from the outside coming in, and every staff member running amok making sure the VIPs were well-looked-after and the assembly ran smoothly.

  Kian spoke up now. “But the Founder’s Assembly is in three days.”

  Aerwyna’s expression grew puzzled. “So?”

  “So we’ll do it,” I said.

  “Tala,” Demi said, the warning in her voice impossible to miss.

  I shot her a we’ll-discuss-this-later look, then nodded to Aerwyna. “We’d meet at the assembly?”

  Musical laughter escaped her lips. “Of course not. We’ll meet before, at the cracked glass door.”

  She turned to go.

  “That’s it?” I asked.

  “That’s it,” she said, and then she was gone.

  The night was quiet until we all started talking at once.

  “Tala, what the hell-”

  “You don’t even know…”

  “Guys.”

  “GUYS!” Jeremy yelled, and we all fell silent.

  “I think Tala is right,” he said.

  Kian and Demi gawked at him. “Have you lost it?”

  “Maybe,” he s
aid. “Maybe we all have. All I know is I’ve never heard of four different people having the same hallucination, when they didn’t have any cues as to what they were supposed to be seeing.”

  There was silence between us, and he continued, “We’ve known for a while now that something was wrong. I mean, think about it – all the people they’ve transferred. Like Joey – the normalest of the bunch, a bit of a loudmouth, but still. Transferred.”

  “And what about Carly, Lila, Penelope, Stuart? What about James and Howie?” I continued.

  Jeremy was pacing now, his head shaking. “Think about it: half our class has been transferred - and admin won’t say where. They claim some of them were cured, but why don’t we ever see them? Why no TVs, why the locked-down computers, why the Sleep Tests?” He’d stopped, was looking to the forest. “And why, most of all, now that I stopped taking the pills, do I feel better than I ever have in my life?”

  “Jer,” Demi said gently. “It could just be the meds’ side effects and-”

  “Yeah,” he said. “It could be. Could be that we really are all wackos who belong in an institution the rest of our lives. But here’s the thing – if that’s going to be my life, then I want one day of freedom. I want to be in the normal world for at least a few seconds, know what it is to not have history in the morning and Latin in the afternoon and then gym, to not feel like I have no future. And if I screw it up and lose it, if they catch me and take me back here or somewhere worse, if I don’t even manage to escape at all– at least I’ll know I tried. I want to at least try.”

  He was standing on the edge of the roof now, tips of his sneakers in thin air. I stood up, going over to stand beside him. “I do too.”

  “But Tala-” Demi began.

  Kian stood up. “They’re right. There’s nothing for us here.”

  A few beats of a pause, then Demi got up, sighing.

  “C’mon,” I teased. “You’re just worried about your plants.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to worry about that,” she said. “I’m taking the wheelbarrow the gardener Pike uses to cart around dirt.”

  I turned to gape at her. “You’re joking.”

  Demi’s chin was set at a tilt. “I am not. Those are my plants, Tala, my babies, no way am I leaving them behind.”

  A few seconds of incredulous staring did nothing to dim her determination. I sighed. “Fine, but when you get caught – please note how I said when not if – I’m not lagging behind with you.”

  We all smiled grimly at that.

  “So that’s it then,” Kian said.

  “That’s it,” I said. “Esse quam videri.”

  “To be free rather than to seem free, indeed,” Jeremy said gravely.

  That night, as I was drifting off, the voice returned. It had quieted a bit when I’d taken that extra dose after the gym mishap. Apparently an escape attempt excited it too.

  Burn forest. Run far.

  “Thanks for your input,” I muttered to myself.

  Run on rubble to freedom. Make them pay.

  “Keep this up and I might just try those meds again.”

  My stomach contracted with a spasm.

  Only fools swallow destruction willingly from those who should be burned.

  “Awesomesauce,” I murmured as I finally, gratefully, drifted off.

  8

  As soon as we got to history, we realized what was wrong. Aerwyna wasn’t in class. Although that wasn’t exactly abnormal lately, after the talk we’d had on the roof, it did make me nervous.

  Prolly forest, Kian scrawled on the noteraser, passing it to me.

  I calmed myself with that, until the announcement came over the loudspeaker. “Hello all, this is your Headmistress speaking. This announcement is to inform all students that Aerwyna Briar has been transferred to another facility. Thank you.”

  “Thank you,” Kian muttered. “For nada.”

  I couldn’t speak. My hands clenched onto my desk edge, my knuckles white. Just as we’d had the opportunity to escape, it had been snatched right out from under us. Did administration know our plan? Did we dare still try to escape ourselves?

  “Told you she was weirrrrrd,” Jenna said.

  The others said nothing, their faces conveying what we all knew. Another one gone. Their expressions weren’t even sad anymore, just wore a sort of ingrained weariness. By now, it wasn’t like we were expecting any different. We all had Classmate PTSD – we’d lost so many at this point that getting upset and missing another would just take too much energy.

  For me, it was after losing Mary, my first best friend when I was seven, that I started to get it. Kids got transferred here, disappeared. You made your friends to survive, sure, but that was it. You didn’t get up in arms when another student got transferred, you just accepted it as part and parcel of everyday life at the school. You kept to your small cliques, and tried to forget.

  The rest of history passed as a blur. I only came out of it once we got out of class.

  “We need to go to Her,” I told Demi, who blanched.

  “Not She Who Does Not Wish to be Named,” Kian said, so sure I didn’t mean the Headmistress that she snickered.

  “Yeah,” I said, and the cackles died away.

  “But why?” Kian asked.

  “Answers,” I said. “I want to see her face when we ask about Aerwyna.”

  “But why?” Kian insisted. “I mean, it’s not like she’s going to be like: oh, you know what, you’re right –all this talk of ‘transferring’ half our students is sketchy – here, let me show you the paperwork and let you have a video chat with her right this instant.”

  “We want answers out of her,” Demi piped in. “But she might want answers out of us too.”

  “Let her then,” I said, headed that way.

  Inside me, the voice was egging me on – Let the bitch then, Let the bitch then, LET THE BITCH THEN!

  “Can I just say that this is a very bad idea?” Demi said.

  “You don’t have to come,” I said.

  Right now, I sensed if I stopped and I thought about it, then I’d never do it. And – maybe it was the voice or this adrenaline sizzling through me, but I also sensed I had to.

  Demi scowled. “Don’t be silly. ‘Course I have to come.”

  “Do I?” Kian said, then smirked at my glare. “Kidding.”

  “I’m hungry,” Jeremy said, casting a longing look at the cafeteria as we passed it. “But I’ll come too.”

  “That’s it, then,” I said. “We got this.”

  Although I wished I could get the memo to my heart. It was flapping against my chest like it wanted to escape. I could barely smile back at Sammy when she passed by with some friends.

  Inside the office that led to the Headmistress’ office, the secretary studied us with colorless, rheumy eyes. “You children are here because?”

  “To see the Headmistress,” I said.

  “She doesn’t have an appointment with you,” the lipless woman said without even consulting her computer.

  “It’s urgent,” Kian said. She fixed the woman with an I-can-be-a-huge-pain-in-the-ass-if-I-want-to-be look.

  The secretary didn’t react for a moment, before she nodded. Picking up a phone, she muttered something into it, then nodded again. “She’ll see you.”

  Whoa, just like that?

  Ahead of us, the door leading to her office swung open. Just like that.

  Unless… she’d wanted to see us already. I shivered. Maybe Miss Mildred hadn’t been bluffing about them getting close to ‘narrowing down the perpetrators.’

  Inside, it took a few moments for my eyes to adjust. The light was dim, cast by several tall floral-patterned lamps, while the air was thick with fur and that old rose potpourri scent of hers.

  Jeremy sneezed, his typical one-two-three sneeze.

  “Tissue?” the Headmistress said.

  “I’m fine,” he said, rubbing his nose. “Just allergies.”

  “Ah yes. I do have my fair
share of cats,” she allowed.

  None of us said anything to that. If by ‘fair share’ she meant pushing ten, then yeah, she had that.

  “What brings you all here?” she asked in a neutral voice.

  “It’s about Aerwyna,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “We want to know where she was transferred,” I said.

  The Headmistress’ hands were clasped on the table as she scrutinized me. With her snow-white hair, softly lined face and propensity for wearing crochet, you were more likely to mistake her for someone’s grandma. Until she spoke, that was – her voice was powerful, sonorous.

  “Unfortunately, as you know, that is not school policy.”

  “So, we can’t ever speak to our friend again?” Kian demanded. “Did she get better?”

  The Headmistress’ lips puckered with what may have been amusement. “What, may I ask, is your cause for such an interest?” She tilted her head, bird-like, so her gaze could sweep along us. “Perhaps there is something you know of Aerwyna that we should to ease her transition?”

  I resisted the urge to ask what transition, and instead simply said, “No.”

  “Ah.” She nodded, smiling pleasantly, waiting.

  I was pretty sure I was breathing way too loud, although the fact that my psycho inner voice was repeating DO WHAT WE CAME HERE FOR –BURN HER – BURN THE BITCH – BURN HER in my head wasn’t helping matters.

  -Stop, I counselled it quietly. Not right now.

  You fool – do you not see her before you, the one who-

  -I mean it.

  Nor am I jesting.

  “You may go now,” the Headmistress said.

  She was on her feet now, taller than I would’ve expected.

  As I rose, she stopped me. “Not you.”

  Yes, yes, this is exactly what we-

  Kian and the others lingered at the door, where her head swiveled to address them. “Did you not hear me the first time? You may go now.”

  Kian looked to me questioningly, but I nodded, our silent exchange – if I’m not out in five, you … hell yeah – done with a look.

  As soon as my friends were out and the door was shut behind them, the Headmistress sat down and swept a hand to the chair I’d been on. “Please. Sit down.”