The Mysterious Case of the Allbright Academy Page 7

  “I think it’d be cool,” J. D. said. “I’ll get the book. He can pan in on your mouth while you’re reading, come in really close.” He made a funny J. D. face and wagged his tongue around.

  I was sure my mouth didn’t look like that when I was reading. All the same, I didn’t relish a close-up of my lips and tongue moving—and especially my teeth. (My PD counselor had suggested that I might want to consider cosmetic dentistry at some point, and remembering Allison and her dental perfection, I really had to agree.)

  “J. D., hold on a minute,” I said. “Beamer, I really don’t feel all that comfortable with the idea. Can’t we do something else?”

  Beamer gazed at me for an unnervingly long time. Then he said, “Sure,” and put his camera away in the bag.

  So we did do something else. We sat around in the living room and talked. I tried to keep the subjects neutral—you know, the weather, books, movies—but somehow the conversation kept straying back to the Allbright Academy: the famous guest lecturer we had just heard the week before, the Sunday Asian cooking class we had all signed up for, Dr. Gallow’s Thursday lectures, our field trip to Ford’s Theatre. Then Cal mentioned her mentor.

  “You have mentors at this school?” Beamer said.

  “Oh, yes,” Cal said with a lovely smile. “Allbright finds them for us, someone in our field who can help us on our way. Mine’s a Georgetown professor of Chinese studies. You won’t believe who Zoë’s is!”

  “Tell me,” Beamer said, his voice flat and expressionless.

  “Martha Evergood!”

  “The Martha Evergood? You’re kidding me!”

  “No,” Zoë said. “It’s true. And she’s an amazing person, too—so funny and kind and down to earth. I mean, here’s this lady who has met almost all the world’s great leaders and helped shape our country’s foreign policy, and she takes the time to mentor kids—five of us from Primrose. She has us over to her house, and next month she’s going to take us to a Christmas reception at the British embassy. Can you believe it? We’re studying protocol and everything.”

  Beamer turned to me. “Who’s your mentor, Franny?”

  “Janice Kline,” I said. “She’s not famous like Martha Evergood, but she’s really neat. A reporter for the Baltimore Sun. She took me on a tour of the newsroom last month and she’s going to arrange a junior internship for me at the paper this summer.”

  “You were in Baltimore last month and you didn’t call me?”

  “Well, it was just a quick visit,” I said. “The van brought me in, Janice picked me up at the drop-off point, gave me the tour, took me to dinner, then put me back on the van to go home. I didn’t even call Mom and Dad.”

  “Home?”

  “What?”

  “You said she ‘put you on the van to go home.’”

  What was this, anyway? The Inquisition? “I meant school,” I said, trying not to sound as annoyed as I felt. “Okay?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  I thought Beamer was being unreasonably touchy about the whole thing—I mean, I’d been in Baltimore a total of three hours! I tried to think what my PD counselor would have me do in a situation like this. Change the subject, of course. Talk about something positive.

  So I told Beamer about Brooklyn’s book of poetry, how it was actually being published and all. Brooklyn rolled his eyes and acted like it was no big deal. “Anyway,” he said, “I’m moving in a different direction now. Nonfiction, I think.”

  “What! You’re not going to write poetry anymore?” J. D. asked.

  “Sure, I’ll always write poetry—for fun. But it’s such a limited form. Not enough people read it to make a real impact on society. And that’s what we’re supposed to be doing, right? Being leaders? Changing our world?”

  “Well, yeah,” Cal said. “But that’s a big switch for you.”

  “Writing is writing. Anyway, enough about me. It’s your turn, Cal.”

  “Oh, no!” she said, but she was grinning.

  It was their little joke. Brooklyn was always giving her wacky phrases to translate into Mandarin, like “There’s a fly in my wonton” or “Don’t strike me with that banana, sir!” Of course, Cal may have just been making stuff up, but it always sounded like Chinese.

  “In Mandarin, please,” Brooklyn said, “Your ice cream is melting on my toupee.”

  While Cal was thinking, Beamer excused himself, I assumed to use the bathroom. But then I heard him talking on the phone. About twenty minutes later, the doorbell rang. It was his ride home—Beamer’s second cousin, Ray, a scraggly-looking kid with acne who was living with Beamer’s family for a while, and who played in his dad’s rock band.

  “You’re leaving already?” I said. “I thought you were staying for lunch.”

  “Yeah,” Beamer said, “but I need to go.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Is something wrong?”

  Ray was still standing there, and it was kind of awkward. Beamer looked unhappy, unsure whether to speak his mind. Finally he took a deep breath. “Something just doesn’t feel right,” he said.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I’m not sure I do either, but there’s something very changed about you. And I don’t know how to handle it.”

  “What do you mean? I haven’t changed.”

  “Yes, you have. You even look different.”

  “I look better. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing, I guess. This is stupid.”

  “I don’t know what you want me to do.”

  “I want you to be yourself. Not some fake, perfect robot person.”

  “Fake, perfect robot person! Give me a break, Beamer!”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was mean. Maybe I should leave now.”

  “He’s right, Franny.”

  I turned around and saw J. D. standing there. “You have changed. So has Zoë.”

  “J. D.! How have I changed?” Zoë asked, truly shocked.

  I realized then that everyone had followed us to the door, to say good-bye to Beamer, and that they had been standing there the whole time, listening to us argue. It was a total nightmare.

  “Like, you count to five before you answer a question. And you do this squinty thing with your eyes when you smile. And you walk around like you’re in a beauty pageant or something…”

  “Okay, everybody,” I said. “Sorry about this. J. D., go crawl back under the table. Beamer, I’ll walk you to the car.” He said an embarrassed good-bye to Cal and Brooklyn, and we followed Ray down the sidewalk. Ray got into the car while Beamer and I stood there, staring at each other in silence.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, finally. “I don’t know what to say. Maybe next time it should just be you and me. Maybe we can pick up the pieces.”

  “Sure,” I said. And then they drove away.

  It would be almost four months before we would talk to each other again.

  10

  Every weekday afternoon at three we met at the gym for our hike. There were seven different trails on the Allbright grounds, so the PE instructors had divided us up into seven groups and we rotated through the various hikes. Each day they would tell us where our group was supposed to go. We signed in, and then when we got back we signed out again. They wanted to make sure nobody was accidentally left behind on the mountain.

  They asked us to keep together for safety’s sake, and we tried very hard to do that. But some of us walked much faster than others, and pretty soon we had spread out along the trail. Up front were two very tall senior girls, real power walkers. Judging from their conversation on our first day out, they were in a hurry to get back to their cottages so they could finish up their history papers or Bio II lab sheets or whatever.

  Naturally, Cal and Brooklyn and I were anxious to get back to our schoolwork too. But we knew that America’s future leaders needed strong bodies as well as strong minds. Dr. Gallow had mentioned this several times in his weekly lectures. The PE program was important too. A
nyway, we always ended up in the middle, behind the seniors, with three little sixth-grade boys bringing up the rear.

  And then, of course, there was Prescott.

  I know. What are the odds?

  We almost never saw him at school. He wasn’t in any of our classes and we lived in different cottages. Even on the hiking trail he walked faster than we did, staying just far enough ahead to be out of sight. This may have had something to do with his natural stride—Prescott does have very long legs. But still. Out of nine people, he was the only one hiking by himself. I actually felt sorry for him.

  And while I’m being so fair and reasonable, I guess I ought to admit that the few times we were around Prescott he seemed a lot more mellow. Instead of his usual scornful look, he now had this faraway gaze, sort of like he was busy considering all the great matters of the universe. It was a little weird, but a definite improvement. I gave his PD counselor full credit for it.

  In early December we had a freak snowfall, ten or twelve inches, turning the campus into a winter wonderland. We assumed we wouldn’t be hiking that day; they usually had us run laps or lift weights when the weather was bad. But they had a surprise in store for us.

  Snowshoes.

  Feeling like arctic explorers, we set out to survey our now familiar woods in winter. For unknown reasons, Prescott decided to join our group that day. Maybe he just couldn’t go fast enough on snowshoes to get ahead of us. Whatever the reason, it felt strange to have him along. Cal and Brooklyn and I were such a trio; we had our own little jokes and our way of talking. None of us knew quite what to expect from Prescott.

  “I’ve done this before,” he announced. “In Switzerland. You’ll get the hang of it pretty quickly. It’s not that hard.”

  Ah, all was now clear. He had joined us to show off his snowshoe skills. And casually mentioning Switzerland—that was so Prescott!

  I was reminding myself that harmony with my schoolmates was an important life goal, that I was only responsible for my own behavior, not anyone else’s, when I stepped on my left snowshoe with my right and pitched over, face-first. I will say this much for Prescott: he helped me up and he didn’t laugh.

  After a while I did get the hang of it. I forgot about Prescott and just enjoyed walking softly—pluff, pluff—on the snowy trail, reveling in the magical quiet of the woods. The branches hung heavy with fat, white dollops of snow, delicately balanced. The slightest breeze or a passing bird was enough to send a fine shower of sparkling white crystals flying into the air.

  “It’s like some giant sprinkled all the trees with powdered sugar,” I said. “Or no, it’s thicker than that. How about this: It’s like the trees were dipped in tempura batter.”

  Brooklyn stopped in his tracks.

  “Not powdered sugar,

  But trees dipped in tempura.

  Battered, but not fried,”

  he recited.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “A completely spontaneous haiku.” He looked rather proud of himself. “You get eighty percent credit, though. They were your images.”

  “I thought you didn’t write poems anymore,” I said.

  “Mostly I don’t. Poetry isn’t an important art form, at least not in terms of influencing the thoughts and opinions of the masses. Hardly anybody reads it. But my counselor said it was all right to play around with poems for fun. Keeps my brain nimble.”

  “Makes sense, I guess. But you can have credit for the whole thing. It would be nothing without that last line. Not very poetic, though—sorry.”

  He pretended to pout. “You don’t like it? ‘Battered, but not fried?’ I thought it was witty. Okay. Hold on a minute. How about this:

  “Silent, white, and still,

  A branch hangs heavy with snow.

  Touch it and—beware!”

  And at the very moment he said “beware,” Brooklyn, who was slightly behind me, delicately nudged a branch with one of his poles and a shower of snow dropped onto my head, enough of it going under my collar and down my back to make me scream.

  “Agggh!” I said. “Oh, man, you are so asking for it!” I reached down and made a fat snowball, turned around, and smacked him with it. Only then did I notice that Cal was quite a way behind us, standing in the middle of the trail, oddly bent over.

  “Cal,” I called. “Are you okay?”

  “Not really,” she said. “My stomach hurts.”

  “Hurts how?” asked Prescott, who was the first to reach her side.

  “A lot,” Cal said, and I saw she had tears in her eyes.

  “Then we need to turn back,” Prescott said, taking charge. “Could be nothing, could be appendicitis. Did it just start?”

  “No. It’s been coming and going for a while. Only now it’s worse. And I…feel like I’m going to throw up.”

  “Come on, let’s get you back down the mountain,” Brooklyn said.

  “I don’t think I can walk that far.”

  “Put your arm around my shoulder.”

  Brooklyn supported her on one side and I took the other (Prescott was too tall), but it was a total disaster. Cal really didn’t have the strength to hold on to us, plus we were walking so close together that our snowshoes got all tangled and we fell in a heap. We stopped for a minute to regroup.

  Cal was sitting there in the snow, breathing hard and looking panicked.

  I touched her face. “You’re burning up,” I said.

  “I know.” And she began to cry.

  If we had been characters in a story, we would have gathered branches and made a stretcher or a travois. But since we didn’t happen to have any rope or animal hide, we probably would have spent an hour contriving something that would fall apart the minute we tried to use it.

  “Let’s just carry her,” Prescott said.

  I had to agree this seemed like the only option. Prescott took Cal’s snowshoes off and handed them to me, along with everybody’s poles. Then he slipped his arms under Cal’s, and Brooklyn took hold of her legs, and they moved along the trail as quickly as they could, trying not to jerk her around any more than necessary. It was awkward and probably uncomfortable, but Cal didn’t moan or complain. Then I realized why—she had lost consciousness.

  About three minutes later we ran into the sixth graders. They volunteered to run back down and get help. I wondered why I hadn’t thought of that myself; it was the obvious thing to do.

  Before long, two strapping PE instructors met us on the trail with a stretcher. By the time we reached the bottom, an ambulance was waiting.

  We didn’t see Cal again for almost two weeks. Her appendix had burst and she was in the intensive care unit of the hospital. Ms. Lollyheart went out of her way to keep us posted on Cal’s condition, coming over to Cyclamen to talk to us every day. Cal was still pretty weak from the surgery and the infection, but she was slowly improving and would be good as new in a month or so.

  Once she was moved from intensive care to a regular room, she was allowed to have visitors. Ms. Lollyheart took us to see her. To our surprise Prescott was invited to go too. I guess Ms. Lollyheart was under the impression that he was one of Cal’s friends.

  It was a long way to the hospital, but Ms. Lollyheart knew all the shortcuts. She’d been driving out there every day to see Cal (they let Ms. Lollyheart into the ICU because she was the adult in charge until Mr. Fiorello could get there from Goristovia). I thought it was amazingly sweet of her to go to all that trouble. I mean, between her day job in the headmistress’s office and her night job as girls’ Mum at Larkspur, she only had a few hours she could really call her own—and she chose to spend them in a hospital with a student. Of course, she was an old friend of Cal’s dad and had promised to look after her. That was probably why.

  We located Cal’s room, but the door was closed; Ms. Lollyheart opened it very quietly. Peeking inside, we were met by a chilling scene: Cal lay woodenly on the bed, both arms straight at her sides, the way I used to put my dolls to sleep when I was lit
tle, the covers neatly pulled up to her chest. An IV tube snaked out of her left hand. Her eyes were closed and her face was thin and ghostly pale. Beside the bed sat a big-chested man with curly, dark hair—Cal’s father. He held her right hand in both of his and was leaning over, his forehead almost resting on their clasped hands as though he was crying. In that first horrible moment I thought that Cal had died.

  But then the man heard us creep in. He sat up, turned toward us, and whispered, “She’s asleep.” We were about to tiptoe back out again, when Cal woke up.

  “Hey!” she said in a weak voice. “Look who’s here! Dad, these are my friends—Franny and Brooklyn and Prescott.” She gave us a loopy grin.

  “I’m Joe Fiorello,” he said, shaking our hands so energetically that it actually hurt. “Evelyn told me what you did, carrying Cal back down the trail, getting help. I can’t begin to thank you enough. You may very well have saved her life.”

  We were at a loss for words. “You’re welcome” would have sounded so lame. So we all just stood there smiling sheepishly and not saying anything. Finally I broke the silence.

  “All’s well that ends well,” I said, mentally congratulating myself for finding just the right innocuous comment.

  “You must be the poet, right?” Mr. Fiorello asked. “Quoting Shakespeare?”

  “No, Daddy,” Cal said, “Franny’s the one who built the robot. Brooklyn’s the poet. And Prescott’s the scientist.”

  “Actually,” I said, “just so you’ll know—it’s Brook now.”

  “What?” said Cal.

  “Pardon?” said Mr. Fiorello.

  “His name is Brooklyn, but he prefers to be called Brook.”

  “Since when?” Cal asked.

  “Since lately,” he said a little defensively. “Since last week.”

  “Wow. It’s hard to keep track of your identity changes—Brook.”

  “I understand perfectly—Calpurnia. At least you were named after Caesar’s wife, not one of the five boroughs of New York.”

  Cal giggled. “Excellent point there. Actually, I kind of like it. Brook. Sounds preppy, like you should have a sister named Muffin.”