The Academy (21 page)

Taddler, sprawled across the SUV bench that was pushed up against the wall, used a blue marking pen to effect deep semicircles under both eyes of the white hockey goalie mask. He held the mask out at arm’s length and examined his work approvingly.

“Come on!” said Johnny, dressed as a
Harry Potter
schoolboy in a black robe, looking a lot like Draco Malfoy, with a Quidditch broom, white hair, and sullen eyes.

“Cool it,” Taddler said, working with a black marker to enhance a scar on the mask. “It’s got to look right. We can’t all be altar boys.”

“I’m not an altar boy. Shut up.”

“Boys! You must hurry,” said Mrs. D., rebuking Johnny for his pestering. “The traffic is horrible.”

Taddler couldn’t believe Mrs. D. was actually going to give them a ride in her car. It was a first for the Corinthians, and one he was proud to have been chosen for. The other boys were envious, which was all that mattered. The competition within the boathouse was for Mrs. D.’s attention, and little else.

The arrangements for her to drive them had been hastily put together—she’d arrived only minutes before to tell them of the change in plans—a water main break had closed the bus line west on Commonwealth. Taddler, who’d waited until the last minute to prepare his costume, found himself caught off guard. A Halloween costume shouldn’t be rushed. He didn’t appreciate being hurried. He too donned a robe, and thought it amazing that, although he and Johnny shared the robes as part of their look, Johnny came off as a choirboy, while the disturbing hockey mask turned Taddler into a homicidal maniac.

“Your tickets,” Mrs. D. said, handing them to the two boys. Several boys were missing. Taddler assumed they were already at the Armstrad Hotel; Mrs. D. had said that one way or another, all the boys would be involved with this job.

3rd Annual Halloween Charity Event for Autism! Tenright, Templeton & Lawrence
read the ticket. A law firm was sponsoring the event, and Mrs. D. had apparently donated the $75.00 per ticket. Three hundred kids at a Halloween “extravaganza” at the Armstrad. There were supposed to be gift bags, candy, and games for the kids, and a silent auction for the adults. It sounded stupid to Taddler—
boring
—but the point wasn’t the fund-raiser; it was the job once they were inside. Mrs. D. had obviously gone to a good deal of trouble, so Taddler put down the markers and paid attention.

“You look wonderful,” she said. “That is,” she corrected herself, seeing Taddler’s disappointed face, “appropriate to the occasion. We mustn’t be late. Your marks—the boy and girl—will likely be some of the last to arrive, but no use taking chances.” She checked her watch and gasped. “Let’s get a move on.”

She took in the remaining four boys. “You will prepare the river escape as planned….” Taddler had heard nothing about any such plan. “And keep your ears to the ground. If you hear from me, it can mean only one thing.”

“Yes, ma’am,” a boy said.

“And those of you standing guard, you’re to stay on heightened alert.”

“Yes, Mrs. D.,” said another.

She motioned to Taddler and Johnny, and they stepped in behind her and followed her out of the building through a labyrinth of hallways and into air the color of charcoal. Johnny squared his shoulders, proud to be one of two boys allowed to ride in her car.

He sighed happily. This was one of the good days.

Steel and Kaileigh had just sneaked up to the side of the old crumbling boathouse when the driveway was washed in glare from head- and taillights.

“Car!” Kaileigh said, pointing.

They were trapped in the driveway. Too far from the street to make it there without being seen. Nowhere to hide.

Steel didn’t have to look up: he already had an image of the building filed in his head: five recessed windows and, above those, another three on the top floor. A slate stone roof. Three chimneys. An old television antenna, looking prehistoric. Some of the glass panes in the windows had been replaced by pieces of plywood.

“Lose the backpack and give me your foot,” he said, dumping his own backpack behind a rusted trash can.

“What?”

“Your foot!” he whispered sharply, stepping forward with cradled hands.

He stripped Kaileigh of her backpack and hoisted her. She pulled herself up, surprisingly gracefully, and scrambled onto the window ledge. He wedged the toe of his running shoe into a crack between stones and made three tries to catch hold of the ledge. Finally he pulled himself up, though the effort was anything but graceful.

“Just in time!” Kaileigh whispered, the taillights now snaking down the drive.

The same Volvo backed past. Steel leaned out to see the driver—quite possibly the woman—one boy in the front seat, and a shadow of one in the back.

He turned around to look through a grimy window, into the boathouse. “What is this place?”

“What
was
this place?” Kaileigh asked. “A theater or something? I think the windows are all painted on the inside.”

Some of the paint on the glass had cracked and peeled and flaked, creating peepholes through which they could see.

“Looks like a church,” he said, “not a theater.”

“It’s old enough.”

“And falling apart.”

“But isn’t that…?”

“Light!” Steel said. “Yes! It is!”

Steel tried to force his fingers into a seam between the wrought iron. “I need a thin piece of…metal, or a knife…or something.”

Kaileigh reached up into her hair and produced a hair clip. “Like this?”

He accepted the curved metal clip, impressed by how quickly she’d produced it. He slipped the clip into the window frame and moved it straight up, hearing a click. The window came open with a dull shudder of rusted hinges.

Kaileigh gasped, “Oh, no…you are not going in there!”

“Oh, yes,” Steel answered. “Most definitely yes.”

The air inside the boathouse was heavy with mildew. The bottom of the windowsill was six feet off the floor. Steel allowed his eyes to adjust, his mind snapping up images and storing them.

“Get back out here!” Kaileigh hissed. “This has
nothing
to do with the operation. We were told to—”

“Get a look at whoever’s connected with the woman,” Steel reminded.

“Meaning the two in the car with her.”

“We don’t know that.” He snapped his head back into the darkness, then whispered at her. “Keep it down. I think I can hear people talking.”

“I’m not going in there,” she hissed. She crossed her arms in defiance but, by doing so, threw herself off balance. Steel grabbed her by the shirt just as she was about to fall off the ledge. He strained to hold her. She caught hold of the window frame and steadied herself.

“Nice move,” he said.

“Shut up.”

“And here I was thinking you might thank me.”

“Don’t hold your breath.”

“There’s some furniture stacked along the wall beneath me. I’m going to climb down. Are you sure you’re not coming?”

She tried to peer inside. Then she looked behind into the dark yard. “Positive.”

“Suit yourself.”

“Help me down,” she said. “I’m out of here.”

“Don’t go! I may need you. If you have to, you can jump.”

“It’s like a mile down there.”

“Ten feet, tops. I’ll tell you what: only jump if you hear me screaming.”

“This is
not
part of the operation.”

“Of course it is. The woman led us here, just as Randolph said. We need to know who’s in here and get pictures if possible.” He patted his pocket, indicating his iPhone and its camera.

“We were supposed to follow her.”

“We have Penny’s GPS thing. No worries. We can track her.”

“I’m not hanging around.”

“Don’t go anywhere. Do not desert me.”

“And what about Lyle? What if he shows up? What then?”

Steel didn’t want to think about Lyle.

“If you go inside, and he shows up…” she said, “I’m jumping. I’m out of here.”

Steel felt tempted to follow through with his plan, to show her that he knew what he was doing. The problem was that her reasoning made too much sense. Being right wasn’t nearly as important as
doing
right, and he had a feeling she was right.

“Okay,” he said. “We’ll follow the car.”

Kaileigh swelled with pride.

But just then, something moved deep inside the room. Steel pressed his finger to Kaileigh’s lips to silence her as a faint shadow spread along the far wall, and the silhouettes of two boys appeared in the hall.

“It’s not fair, her leaving us here,” a boy’s voice said. It was lower than Steel’s—the boy was older by at least a year or two. Steel couldn’t see their faces, and there wasn’t enough light for the phone’s camera.

“Who cares? Johnny and Taddler are the ones gonna get busted if something goes bad. Not us. Doesn’t bother me.”

Johnny and Taddler
, Steel noted.
The boys in the car?
The reference to getting busted could mean the fund-raiser Steel and Kaileigh were supposed to attend.

“Yeah, but have you seen that place? I scouted it last week. Going to a party there? I’d do that.”

Steel sensed the bigger of the two boys turning before he actually did. He wasn’t sure if this was a result of his ga-ga training, or a sixth sense, or just blind luck. But a fraction of a second before the boy turned, Steel instinctively stepped back deeper into shadow to avoid being seen. As he did, his shoe crunched down on a piece of broken glass, and the sound echoed through the room.

Both boys turned toward the windows. His adrenaline pumping, Steel reached through the window and grabbed Kaileigh’s arm and gave a subtle push, signaling her to jump.

She sprang from the ledge, and he heard her thud to the ground. She groaned as if she’d hurt herself.

“Hey!” one of the boys shouted.

Steel stepped through the window and onto the ledge, and eased the window shut, wondering if there’d been enough light for them to see him.

“Clear!” Kaileigh hissed.

He jumped and rolled and came to his feet. Kaileigh tossed him his backpack and they took off running, she with a slight limp.

“They’ll come after us,” he warned.

“I know.”

“We need to follow the Volvo.”

“Duh! Never heard that before!”

They’d put fifty yards between themselves and the boathouse, but looking back, Steel saw several boys coming after them.

“I count four,” he said to Kaileigh.

“Do we split up?” she gasped between breaths.

Randolph had instructed them:
Establish a rendezvous. Divide the pursuit.
Steel didn’t like the thought of separating from Kaileigh, of risking her being caught by the boys behind them. But her bad ankle was slowing them down.

“The river,” he said. He could make out a running path down the sloping lawn, like a ribbon along the edge of the water. There were dozens, maybe a hundred or more people walking in both directions, jogging, Rollerblading beneath the lamps that lined the path. Another two people mixed in would be difficult to spot. The string of boathouses, for there were five or six in a row, offered possible places for them to hide, but Steel thought it wise to keep moving. Again, he looked back. One of the boys was exceptionally fast and had gained on them.

“At the next building,” he said breathlessly, “you keep going toward the running path. I’m going to peel off.”

“No.”

“Do it! Trust me.”

They reached a line of big old trees, leaves crunching beneath their shoes.

“I’ll catch up,” he said, sliding like a baseball player into home plate directly behind the next tree trunk. He listened carefully, awaiting the crush of leaves as his signal.

One…Two…

He dove out from behind the tree, caught the approaching boy’s legs, and tackled him. The two rolled, and Steel recovered, immediately springing to his feet and taking off. The tackled boy was not nearly as fast getting up—stunned by the surprise of the attack, and sprawled out on the lawn. Steel took off at a sprint, hoping he’d bought himself and Kaileigh a few extra seconds.

“Over here! This way!” he heard the fallen boy call out.

Steel reached the path, and a quick glance told him he’d succeeded—no one was behind him. He ran down the path, dodging his way between the late-evening strollers, amazed by the number of people. Thirty seconds later he caught up to Kaileigh.

Up the path, another boathouse was all lit up, its barnlike doors hanging open. There were people gathered outside—a team of oarsmen tidying up.

“There!” he said. “Past that boathouse we’ll cut back up the hill.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“We won’t make it,” she said. “They’ll see us.”

“And you have a better idea?”

“I do,” she said. “Where’s the best place to hide?”

“Out in the open,” he replied.

“I’ve been telling you this for…like…forever. The next bench. Right up there.”

“What about it?”

She reached down and took his hand, slowed—the limp more apparent—and pulled him to the open bench with her. She pulled him close to her, pressing her body against his and directing his arm around her shoulder, and behind her neck.

“There’s no faking this,” she whispered, panting from the running.

She placed her lips to his and she kissed him, the two of them gasping for breath in between the soft contact.

He’d passed other couples on benches, and some on the grass in the gray light of evening, wrapped up in a lovers’ embrace. He hadn’t given it a second thought. But he also hadn’t seen himself as
one of them
.

The stampede of pursuing boys approached. Three of them, and a fourth trailing. Kaileigh tensed and clung to him even tighter, continuing the kiss.

Steel wanted to focus, wanted to remember things about the boys for Randolph, but the only thing he was going to remember was the light-headed feeling and warm sensation that overwhelmed him, the tingling of his lips and the sweet smell of Kaileigh’s breath.

The boys ran past. Kaileigh kept kissing him, but began to laugh as the boys passed, and soon the two of them were hugging and laughing aloud, no one giving them a second thought—boyfriend and girlfriend on a park bench in Boston.

“You’re…that was…” He pulled away, though reluctantly. His heart was about to explode.

Her eyes sparkled in the light off the water. Her lips twisted into a grin. He’d never seen her smile like that—like there was something amusing she wasn’t about to share. She chuckled, but it was self-amusement, not meant for him. He had no tools with which to interpret it.

“You don’t get it, do you?” she asked.

He stared at her, not knowing what to say.

“You really don’t get it?” she said, amused all the more.

“Get what?”

She stood from the bench.

“We’d better hurry,” she said. “Before they figure out they’ve lost us.”

“Get what?” he repeated, still sitting on the bench.

She reached out her hand and pulled him off the bench. “Come on,” she said.

They walked up the hill, hand in hand. He didn’t know if they were still acting or not.

“What was I supposed to get?” he said. “Back there? What was so funny?”

“Forget it,” she said.

No way, he thought. He would never forget
that
. “As if,” he said. “But what am I supposed to forget?”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot that you don’t forget.” She chuckled to herself again and hung her head, her chin to her chest. “Don’t worry: you’ll figure it out.”