Live and Let Shop (8 page)

I needed time to think about this. I was going to be late for Kitchen Duty if I didn’t hustle. I’d probably just missed Mr. Kim leaving his office. He’d just skipped out without my knowing. That had to be it. You can’t just disappear from a closed room.

I crossed to the door and opened it a crack. Mrs. Marquardt’s door was closed, so I stepped quietly into the hall. Okay, I knew this was crazy, but I wanted to see if those guys were still in the atrium or out in front of the school. If I got a closer look at them, maybe I could figure out where I’d seen that one guy before.

I started down the hall to the atrium, thinking what a strange day this had been. Mr. Kim acting more worked up than I’d ever seen him. Mrs. Marquardt acting like she’d seen a ghost. And what the heck was MITHRAS? But Kitchen Duty was in fifteen minutes, and I needed to haul butt if I was going to be on time. I would have made it too—if I hadn’t rounded the corner and run square into Special Agent Nathan Tyler of the FBI.

“Oops. Sorry,” I said. He was the guy that looked familiar somehow. I started to go around him, trying to act casual. But his voice stopped me.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

I thought about answering “growing older.” But he kind of had a cop attitude and instinct told me not to crack wise. Maybe he didn’t realize that he was the one out of place here.

“Going to the kitchen,” I said.

“The kitchen is on the other side of the building,”
he said. How did he know that?

“Well, duh. I know that. I’m on my way to the atrium. It’s my turn to dust the trophy cases this week.” That was an incredibly good lie, and I was really proud of myself for thinking of it so fast.

The guy just looked at me for a minute.

“I thought you said you were going to the kitchen,” he said. Oops.

“I meant I’m going to the kitchen
after
I dust the trophy cases.” Whew.

He squinted at me.

“Didn’t I see you in this hallway a few minutes ago?”

“I’m sorry, may I ask who you are? You’re not a teacher, are you? I’ve only been here a short while and I don’t know everyone, but you don’t look familiar.” Another lie. I stared back at him. He didn’t say anything, so I went on, “You know, we’re not supposed to have strangers lurking around the school. Maybe I should call Mr. Kim and report you.” That ought to fix him. You can’t push Rachel Buchanan around!

He reached into his suit and pulled out a badge case. He flipped it open and showed me his official FBI badge and ID.

“My name’s Tyler, Nathan. I’m a Special Agent for the FBI. My partner and I were leaving, and I forgot something I wanted to ask Mr. Kim. Now answer my question. Didn’t I see you in the hallway a few minutes ago?”

“Is Tyler your first name or your last? Because you’ve got one of those names that could go either way. Tyler Nathan or Nathan Tyler. Me, I can’t do that, my last name’s Buchanan. Buchanan Rachel doesn’t make sense. I always wanted one of those two-way names just to shake things up.” I was stalling. Agent Tyler was staring at me. I didn’t know what was going on yet, but until I did, I wasn’t going to sing to the Feds. Then, as luck would have it, Mrs. Marquardt came around the corner.

“May I help you, Agent Tyler?” she asked. She strolled down the hall to where we stood.

“I just had another question for Mr. Kim,” Tyler said.

“I’m sorry, he is no longer in his office. In fact, I don’t know where he is. I can have him call you when he comes in.”

“Sure. Okay. Umm. All right, that’ll be fine.” For some reason he was acting nervous, like he wanted to say something but didn’t want to say it in front of me.

Finally Agent Tyler gave me another look, then turned and left. Where had I seen him before? It was driving me nuts.

I was watching him walk down the hall and darn near jumped out of my skin when I felt Mrs. Marquardt’s hand on my shoulder.

“Rachel, what are you doing here? This isn’t the way to the kitchen.”

Mrs. Marquardt was turning into quite the chatterbox.

“I know. I was on my way, then I heard a noise down here.” (Oh, how lame. I heard a noise? But it was all I could think of.) “I was just checking it out and then that agent guy came up. What’s up with that? Why is an FBI agent talking to Mr. Kim?”

“Go to Kitchen Duty, Rachel.”

“What?” When you’re being asked to do something you don’t want to do, I’ve often found it very useful to fake hearing loss.

“Kitchen Duty. Now.”

That Mrs. Marquardt. She could be a real cutup when she wanted to be.

All the way to the kitchen, I kept thinking about
three things: Where did Mr. Kim go? What was Mithras and where had I heard it? And where had I seen that Agent Tyler before? I hadn’t been anywhere but the Academy for the last four weeks, except for the class trip to D.C., and the more I thought about it, I doubted I’d seen him in California after my unfortunate misunderstanding with the police. If the FBI were going to send someone to check me out, they would have used someone from one of the offices out there, right? But I know I’d seen him somewhere.

I was more convinced than ever that something about this school was just not right. If this place was supposed to be a school for kids with problems, why weren’t they teaching normal classes? I mean, why not science and geography instead of Code Theory and Criminology? And why the emphasis on martial arts? It was all just too bizarre.

Not to mention this mysterious Top Floor. Well, that was enough for me. After Kitchen Duty today I was heading back to Mr. Kim’s office and we were going to have a little chat about all this. I was going to get some answers. Okay, probably not. But I was sure going to ask numerous questions. Besides, today was the day I’d completed my
month, and I meant to hold him to his promise to get me out of here.

I got to the kitchen with about thirty seconds to spare, and for the first time since I’d been at Blackthorn, the time dragged. I couldn’t concentrate, and Mrs. Clausen kept asking me if I was feeling all right. After my shift was over, I grabbed a tray of food and headed out to the tables to find Pilar. I was dying to tell someone about all of this stuff, and she seemed like my only logical candidate. Despite the night murmurs and the staring at me all the time, she seemed pretty smart. She’d been here longer than me and maybe she’d have some ideas.

I told her what I’d seen. I could tell she didn’t believe me when I said the part about Mr. Kim disappearing from his office. But she admitted the other stuff was weird.

Then it hit me. I suddenly knew where I’d seen Agent Tyler before.

“That’s it,” I said out loud.

“What’s it?” asked Pilar.

“I know where I saw that Agent Tyler before,” I said.

“Where?”

“Here!”

“In the lunchroom?”

“No. Here at Blackthorn. He used to be a student here. I’m sure of it.” I looked at my watch and saw that there was twenty minutes left in the dinner period. I grabbed Pilar’s arm.

“Come on. I’ve got to show you this.”

Pilar protested but didn’t put up much of a fight. I led her from the cafeteria all the way across the building and back to the atrium. When we got there, I raced over to the trophy case where Mr. Kim had shown me the Blackthorn highlights a few weeks before. I searched through all of the photos, looking at the faces. There he was. Nathan Tyler, co-captain of the Blackthorn Academy basketball team from the year 1990.

“Aha!” I said, and pointed. Pilar looked at the picture.

“How do you know it’s the same guy?”

“It’s him. There’s no doubt. A little older now, but he still looks the same. Besides, the caption says ‘Nathan Tyler, Co-Captain.’ It’s totally him. So why was he talking to Mr. Kim?”

“Maybe he was just coming back to visit,” she said. “Maybe he and Mr. Kim have kept in touch and he was
in the area, so he dropped by to say hello.”

Sweet, reasonable, non-conspiracy-believing Pilar. So much work to do on her.

“But (a) Mr. Kim was annoyed or upset, and (b) he freaking disappeared from an office with only one door!”

“Well, I don’t know about that. But I don’t think it’s anything. Mr. Quinn works for the FBI sometimes, and he was a student here too. I don’t see how it’s any big deal.”

“Did I mention the part about Mr. Kim disappearing? From an office with only one door? And the word ‘MITHRAS’ on the pad of paper and Mrs. Marquardt being all shocked when she saw it? Did I not mention that?”

“I think you’ve watched too much
X Files
on TV, Raych.”

Pilar had taken to calling me Raych lately, short for Rachel. Jamie used to call me that. I have to admit I kind of liked it. If it wasn’t for Pilar staring at me all the time and keeping me up all night with the sleep-talking, we could be pals.

“Mr. Kim probably just stepped out when you were down the hall. And Mrs. Marquardt is weird anyway. I
think you’ve let your imagination run away with you.”

Sometimes you can’t find a sidekick when you need one. Well, something was strange at Blackthorn, and apparently I’d have to find out what it was on my own. Only, now it was late and I didn’t have time to go to Mr. Kim’s office to demand an explanation.

“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” I said. Not! “Let’s get to Tae Kwon Do class. Mr. Kim will probably be there tonight anyway. I can ask him then.”

But he wasn’t at Tae Kwon Do that night. Or the next. Mr. Torres ran both classes. In fact, Mr. Kim didn’t show his face around the school at all on the next day. No one really seemed to notice he was gone except me. I wasn’t sure why this all bothered me so much. For all I knew, maybe Mr. Kim was taking a vacation. But like I said, from what I’d seen, I didn’t think so. Something had seemed strange about this place from the beginning, and the unflappable Mr. Kim gone missing just added to my suspicion.

Later that night, as I lay in bed, unable to sleep, something else that Mr. Kim had said to me jumped into my brain for no apparent reason. It can be crazy having a teenage brain. The afternoon of our fight in the atrium,
he’d showed me pictures of Mrs. Clausen’s sons, the triplets. He’d said that two of them were in the military and another was a police detective in Miami. So that meant that Mr. Quinn, Agent Tyler, and one of Mrs. Clausen’s sons had all gone into some type of law-enforcement work. Then there was Judge Kerrigan. Another graduate of Blackthorn in a law-enforcement related field. That was a pretty high percentage of students.

Pilar was still studying at her desk.

“Pilar?” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Can I ask you a personal question?”

“Sure.”

“You said you were sent here at the recommendation of a neighbor. Was that neighbor a policeman, by any chance?”

“Wow. As a matter of fact, she was a policewoman. She was a detective with the Detroit Police Department. She went here herself. How did you guess?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Lucky guess. I figured cops and judges know about this place, since a lot of the kids are here because of problems with the law. Or else they are
unfairly persecuted, like I was.” Lucky, my butt. Now my spider-sense was going full force. Yet another item to put into the “Things That Are Weird About Blackthorn Academy” column. It was mostly cops and judges and other legal types that sent kids here, and those kids all ended up becoming cops or judges themselves. There must be some subtle kind of brainwashing going on. Something subliminal in the classes or some chemical in the food. Maybe the lights in the building blinked messages into our brains.

I decided to change the subject.

“Have you thought about college at all, Pilar?”

“Well, I’ll only be able to go if I can qualify for a scholarship. My aunt left me some money, but not enough for four years.”

“Ever thought about what you want to study?”

“I’m thinking criminology. Mr. Quinn’s class is so fascinating, and I think it might make a really cool job.”

Another aha! Poor Pilar. She was being brainwashed and she didn’t even know it. Well, watch out, Blackthorn Academy—Rachel Buchanan is now on the case.

Two more days went by and there was still no sign of Mr. Kim. But I wasn’t sitting idly by. I had been gathering intelligence, and what I learned went far beyond weird and coincidental to totally freaky. At least to me. I started by asking around to other students, and all of the kids who weren’t sent here because of “legal troubles,” every single one of them had been referred to or learned about Blackthorn from someone who was a cop or judge or social worker or in the military. Of the kids I talked to, fourteen had been sent here like I was—go to the school
or go to Juvie. Twenty-one kids were orphans like Pilar. Eighteen had been sent here by their parents for the education. But guess what? All eighteen of those kids had a mother or father who was a policeman or some other type of “authority” figure, and every single one of them had at least one parent who was an alumnus of the school. And in almost every other case, the student was sent here by their probate judge, or by a friend, neighbor, or relative who just happened to be some type of law-enforcement person. And that was just the kids I was able to talk to. There were a few hundred students enrolled here, and I’d talked to only a third of them, if that. That was just too big of a coincidence to ignore.

And that was only the beginning. I asked several more students about the Top Floor. Most of them knew about it, but nobody knew anything specific about what it was. From what I could gather, there were maybe ten students in the whole program. They were all in their last year, basically seniors in high school. They kept to themselves and didn’t mix much with the other students, and when they did, they did not discuss Top Floor. Like it was totally off-limits. All I could find out was that some of them occasionally left school for
days at a time, allegedly for “off-grounds” study or “seminar work.”

I didn’t know what to do with this information. I was sure I was on the trail of a conspiracy. A conspiracy of what, I didn’t know, but I felt that there was something out there. It may not be as big a conspiracy as UFOs or who shot Kennedy or who invented liquid soap. But it was right up there. I was yearning to burst into Mr. Kim’s office and shout “Aha!” Except he wasn’t around.

Pilar refused to be dragged into my investigation no matter how hard I tried to convince her. Even Alex and Brent, whom I confided in at dinner on day three of Mr. Kim’s disappearance, were nonbelievers. They had known Mr. Kim a lot longer than I had, and their faith in him was unshakable. They felt that if he was gone it must be for a good reason, and when he came back he’d tell us what was going on or he wouldn’t if it wasn’t any of our business. God, how I hated their confidence.

I was most annoyed at Alex, who took great delight in needling me about all this. After I had said my piece, he started to pick at me.

“Don’t you think you’re overreacting?” he said, reaching over to take a cookie from my tray.

“Hey,” I said. I grabbed for the cookie, but he’d already jammed it into his mouth.

“Don’t forget to chew,” I said. “And no, I don’t think I’m overreacting. I think you are all underreacting.”

“Well, I think maybe you haven’t adjusted yet. It’s no secret you don’t like it here, and I think you’re just looking for an excuse to shake things up,” he said.

“Oh really? May I ask where you get this information?”

“I hear things,” he said. He took a quick “look but don’t actually look” glance at Pilar when he said it, and her face colored. So the little birdie had been singing.

“Well, maybe you’re hearing the wrong things and other people should mind their beeswax about what I think or don’t think. Anybody wants to know what I think, I’m happy to tell them.” I tried and failed to keep the anger out of my voice.

Alex was sitting next to Pilar, and he nudged her with his shoulder. “Did she just say beeswax?” he said.

“What is your problem?” I asked.

“I don’t have a problem, but I think you do. Whatever Mr. Kim is doing is none of your concern, and maybe you should just keep your mouth shut.”

“Hey, take it easy, Alex,” Brent spoke up. “No need to come down like that.”

“Excuse me, Alex, nobody informed me that you’d been elected king. I must have missed that memo,” I said, giving Brent a look that said I didn’t need him to defend me.

“Make all the cracks you want. Everybody knows you don’t like it here, and that’s fine. But some of us do like it here, and we don’t need you stirring up trouble. For some of us this is the only place we’ve got. We don’t have a rich family in Beverly Hills to fall back on, so maybe you should mind your own ‘beeswax’ and stop asking so many questions.” Luckily for him, when he said beeswax he didn’t make that little air quotes sign, or I’d have gone straight for his throat.

“Guys, come on. It’s not worth arguing about. Let’s just drop it,” Pilar said.

“Fine. Consider it dropped.” I picked up my tray and stormed off. But not before I picked up my last cookie and jammed it into the pile of mashed potatoes on Alex’s tray.

“Very mature,” I heard him say on my way out. But I also heard Pilar and Brent laughing.

Later that night, I decided I couldn’t take it anymore. After Tae Kwon Do class, Pilar and I were back in our room studying. Pilar could really focus on her books. She had amazing powers of concentration, and she’d sometimes not answer me when I asked her questions or not really pay attention when I talked.

“Pilar, I’m going for a walk.”

“Uh-huh,” she mumbled. She was studying her Criminology textbook and taking notes on a yellow legal pad.

“I won’t be gone long.”

“Um-hmm.”

“Orlando Bloom is waiting for me in front of the school. We’re running away together to Vegas to get married.”

“’Kay.” She didn’t even look up. She was lost in her studies.

I left the room and headed back down the hallway toward Mr. Kim’s office.

Most everyone had settled in for the night and I didn’t pass anyone on my way. About halfway there, I stopped because I thought I heard someone behind me, but when I looked, no one was there. I turned back and started
forward, but I had to stop again, because I felt for sure that someone was watching me. I looked around more carefully, but there was still no one in sight. Then I could have sworn I heard a door click shut. It was so quiet I almost didn’t hear it. But there was definitely a noise. I walked back up the hallway and looked at all the doors that I passed. They were all closed. I had goose bumps by then. This whole school just gave me the creeps.

My search didn’t turn up anyone, but I still had a feeling I was being watched. Maybe it was Mrs. Marquardt. What would I do if she caught me in Mr. Kim’s office? Well, I had come this far. I wasn’t going to turn back now. I’d just have to stay alert and be ready with a good story if someone caught me.

When I got to the hallway leading to Mr. Kim’s office, I stopped and peered around the corner. I didn’t want to barge in on someone like I almost did last time. It was deserted, so I scampered down to his office door and listened. No sounds from his or Mrs. Marquardt’s office. I tried the door. As usual, it was unlocked.

From the dim light of the hallway I could see that all of the blinds were closed. I flipped on the light and looked around the office. No Mr. Kim anywhere.

Where to start? The pad of paper was still on his desk. I crossed to it and checked all of the drawers again. Still completely empty. So he hadn’t been gone on an emergency trip to Staples.

The only other things in the office were the file cabinets and a bookcase along the wall to the left of the desk. I tried the first drawer on the file cabinet. Strangely, it was locked. That was weird. All the time I’d been at this school, I’d yet to see anyone lock anything, and the only other locked door in the whole school led to the Top Floor. But in Mr. Kim’s unlocked office, the filing cabinet was locked.

Well, I guess some things have to be private. Like school records and stuff. Or maybe Mr. Kim kept all of his office supplies locked up in the cabinet. Maybe Mrs. Marquardt was a klepto and he had to keep the pencils from disappearing. That must be it. Maybe there was a key around here somewhere.

I went to the bookcase. It was divided into two sections. The top two shelves on each section had books on them. The bottom two shelves held little mementos and plaques and trophies and stuff. I scanned the books, getting a sense of Mr. Kim’s reading tastes. Lots of
books on martial arts.
The Art of War
.
The Way of the Samurai. The Bushido
. Some books on psychology and child development. Plus
The Great Gatsby. The Grapes of Wrath. The Hunt for Red October.
A criminology textbook. Interesting. Sadly, no book with a title like “Where to Look When I’m Missing” or “Obvious Clue Here!”

I looked at the little statues and plaques. Many were little carvings of martial arts figures. A plaque from a Philadelphia charity. A signed picture of Jackie Chan and Mr. Kim that said “To the Best Martial Artist I Know, Your Friend, Jackie Chan.” Jackie Chan! Holy cow! Mr. Kim knew Jackie Chan? The picture was of Jackie and Mr. Kim in their
do baks
in front of a banner that said “
Kick-a-thon for St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital
.” Must have been some fund-raising tournament or something. Jackie Chan. Wow.

The next photo was in a metal frame, and it was pretty small. I had to stoop down to look at it, and I saw it was a picture of Mr. Kim and some other guy that I didn’t recognize. Mr. Kim was much younger in the picture, and they both were wearing some kind of uniform. The other guy appeared to be a little older than Mr. Kim. He was very handsome, tall with jet-black hair and blue
eyes that you could call steely.

I wanted to get a closer look at Mr. Kim when he was younger, so I reached to pick up the picture frame. But when I grabbed it, it flipped forward and lay facedown on the shelf. I saw it was attached to the shelf with a little hinged spring. Then I heard a little hiss, like steam escaping from a pipe, and then the other section of the bookshelf swung out away from the wall. When it finished moving, and the hissing sound faded and my heart stopped hammering in my chest, I saw that behind the bookcase, just like in the movies or a Batman cartoon, was a stairway leading down into the darkness. I stood at the top of the stairs looking down, wondering what to do. But I’d answered one of my questions. At least now I knew how Mr. Kim had disappeared.