“No. I’m saying… A student’s numeric grade reflects more than their academic achievement. I mean, sometimes it reflects a teacher’s bad mood on certain days. So if you wanted to change it, no one would blame you,” said Hathaway.
“I’d blame myself.”
“Then there’s your answer.”
“Benji is a good kid.”
“He is. I heard his brother was different but I like Benji. Don’t change the grade, Mr. Jennings. You’d hate yourself, I can tell.”
Jennings nodded. She was right, the idea felt akin to a police officer accepting his first bribe, the initial step down a dark alley.
She said, “It’s still the first semester. Don’t lose heart yet. You’re better company than Reggie.”
He grinned, feeling like an expanding helium balloon. “Yes ma’am.”
“We’re the same age. Stop calling me ma’am. If you don’t, I’ll call you Captain America more often. I can tell you don’t like it.”
“You know what?” he said.
“What?”
“I think you should marry Lynch. You’re made for each other.”
Although Hathaway laughed at it, a cringing laugh, he wished he’d kept quiet. Stupid joke.
She said, “Want to hear something strange? Mr. Lynch told me how much I owe in student loans. And he was right! He’d looked it up somehow. So gross.”
“That means he was at a computer, thinking about you, researching you,” said Jennings.
“I know!”
A lengthy pause. He was out of words but he didn’t want to leave yet. Wanted to keep talking. The silence was brutal, though, and Hathaway looked like she was waiting.
He turned to go.
Stopped.
“I heard there’s rumors about Lynch? Nothing confirmed.”
She did a shrugging motion. “There’re a lot of rumors. Look him up on Google sometime. He beats his boys to toughen them up, someone told me. Maybe that’s the rumor but I don’t think it’s a secret.”
“He abuses his children? You’re sure?”
“No. I’m repeating gossip.”
“Handle him. That’s what Ms. Pierce told me. Handle Mr. Lynch. You think she was referring to child abuse?”
“I don’t know. I know she can’t handle him. That’s one reason you were hired, I guarantee it. They’re hoping you, a Green Beret, can,” said Hathaway.
“A discharged Green Beret.”
“Survive your first semester. That’s my advice, Mr. Jennings. Put on your own oxygen mask first, like on an airplane. Then deal with the people around you.”
“That’s a superb analogy. I’m impressed.”
She smiled at the compliment.
He returned to his room to pack. Everywhere he looked he saw Daisy Hathaway. She was superimposed into his vision, an improvement over Lynch.
4
Roanoke County was located in a vast valley created by the farthest eastern ripple of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The city’s population was one hundred thousand and the surrounding county was another hundred thousand.
The Academy aimed to reach two hundred students by its fifth year, including room and board for one hundred and forty—the remainder would be day students. Aggressive figures but the board of trustees’ vision was solvency during the second half of the decade.
Currently in its fourth year, enrollment numbers were low. Building prestige, it turned out, didn’t happen overnight. The Academy had one hundred thirty-five total, with eighty boarding. Despite operating at a loss, the numbers were better than pessimists predicted. The boarding school venture would survive, though, as long as the benefactors didn’t balk.
Daniel Jennings lived on campus in the New River Dormitory. His suite was on the main level, and he existed in that hazy realm of being a full-time dorm parent despite his job description insisting he wasn’t. He rotated evening dorm duty with two other boarding faculty members, Mr. Barry and Mr. Hogan. During the first three months he’d taken two students to the emergency department at Carilion Hospital after midnight, victims of stupidity and cruelty. Jennings slept fitfully, ready for an alarm, waking each morning groggy and relieved that the students hadn’t maimed one another.
He woke before six Tuesday, still raw from Lynch’s mauling. He pulled on track pants and prepped for jogging. The last thing he did before stepping out the door, he turned on his coffee maker. The dining hall’s tasted like gruel.
The night had turned the planet wet and cool, and he shivered on his way to the track. The Academy trees were immature, planted only five years ago. Nothing like the grand flora of Episcopal High School or Woodberry Forest. Styling itself as a future ivy league prep school, the Academy’s actual ivy was in infancy, halfway up the portcullis.
The nascent grandeur filled Jennings with hope.
He jogged the track eight times, conceding inner lanes to the cross-country team. He focused on stride symmetry and arm carriage, aspects of running that still eluded him. Eight circuits equaled two miles and he did it in twenty-two minutes, drenched and shaky after. The cost of running was enormous and he’d never reach his previous endurance, no matter the progress with symmetry and trust.
He hated his limp. Lynch was right, it made him stick out.
Aching, Jennings walked unevenly back to his suite, grateful for the welcoming scent of coffee. With his hands he removed his right Nike and then detached the running prosthesis from his left knee. To jog, he wore a black carbon fiber Ottobock, like a curved blade. His knee throbbed from the pressure within the socket and he rubbed it, ignoring phantom pain in his left foot—the foot he’d left behind in the sand of Afghanistan.
He hopped to the coffee maker and poured a mug. Let it cool on the counter as he showered.
He dressed and attached a walking prosthesis to his left knee. Instead of a curved blade, it consisted of a liner, socket, shin tube, and foot. He slid the foot into a sock and shoe and he stood, shifting to get comfortable. The locking pin clicked. It’d been a year since the transtibial amputation and he still felt closer to natural wearing hardware. A fake leg was better than no leg.
He examined himself in the mirror. Jennings had gained over half of the atrophied muscle back since the hospital, within ten pounds of his Special Forces weight. His hips and shoulders were
