“Only a little?” Reynie said.
“He was turning the pages pretty fast. . . .”
“Sorry, I tried to stall him as best I could.”
“And I could only see a small part of each page,” Sticky said. He glanced down at Reynie with an impish smile. “But I do remember what I saw.”
“Is it any good?” Reynie asked.
“Beats me. I haven’t had time to think about it. There’s a difference between remembering and thinking, at least for me.” He returned to the spyglass. “Could you see us at all?”
“Kate’s forearms and your elbows, but you’re pretty well hidden,” Reynie said. “Anyway, from below it’s impossible to see what you’re doing.”
“What about from above?” Sticky asked. “Are we still clear in that direction?”
Reynie turned to check on Constance. It was good that he did. Constance was hurrying down the path toward them. For Constance, though, “hurrying” meant running a few steps and tripping, running a few steps more and stumbling. . . .
And walking about twenty yards behind her was Jackson.
“Jackson’s coming!” Reynie hissed.
He was immediately knocked to the ground. Sticky, in his fright, had fallen off Kate’s back and crashed onto Reynie. The spyglass flew out of Sticky’s hand and onto the gravel path . . . and before the boys could gather themselves, Jackson had brushed past Constance — knocking her roughly to her knees — and was upon them. “What’s going on here?”
“We were . . . trying to make a human pyramid,” Reynie said.
“A human pyramid? With three kids?” Jackson said with a sneer. “That’s pathetic. And what’s this?” He had seen the spyglass and was bending to pick it up.
Kate sprang forward and snatched it away. “It’s mine, that’s what it is!”
Jackson stared at Kate, amazed a student had spoken to him that way. Then his amazement gave way to anger. “You’ll show it to me
Kate stared back at him, defiant. The others held their breath.
“Fine,” Jackson said with a smile. He was beginning to enjoy himself. “Let me just tell you how this works. I’m about to grab your arm — and I intend to squeeze so hard it hurts — and escort you to the Waiting Room. If you try to run away or fight me, I’ll personally see to it that you get kicked out of the Institute . . .
Kate had no choice. Reluctantly she held out the spyglass. As Jackson snatched it from her grasp, Sticky turned away, his face hidden in his hands. He couldn’t bear to look.
Jackson burst into laughter. “A kaleidoscope? You risked going to the Waiting Room for a
“Yes, but it’s
“Well, you can keep it,” Jackson said in disgust. He handed Kate her spyglass back. “This is the sorriest kaleidoscope I’ve ever seen.”
Reynie grimaced his way through studytime, trying to ignore a broadcast that went on for two hours. After it ended, Reynie noticed Sticky was still grimacing. Sticky had spent all of studytime reproducing what he’d seen in Mr. Curtain’s journal and was still at his desk. “What’s the matter?” Reynie asked him. “Forget something?”
Sticky groaned. “Forgetting isn’t the problem. Art is the problem.” He threw down his pencil. “There was a diagram in there, but I can’t draw worth a flip. Words and numbers, yes. Pictures? Hopeless.”
“You can always try again,” Reynie said, looking over Sticky’s shoulder at the drawing. It seemed to depict a mound of spaghetti with numbered meatballs. “We have a minute before lights out. It’ll be easier if you don’t have to use the flashlight.”
“Flashlight or floodlight, it won’t matter. I’d do just as well in the dark. This was my fourth try. It was supposed to be a diagram of Mr. Curtain’s brain, with lots of numbers on every region.”
Reynie stared doubtfully at the picture. “Are you sure it was Mr. Curtain’s brain?”
“It said ‘MY BRAIN’ at the top of the page.”
“Oh. Well, I don’t suppose there was a key to those numbers, was there? Or an explanation of the diagram?”
Sticky shook his head. “Not on that page.”
Reynie patted him on the back. “Then don’t worry about it. We don’t need a diagram to know what a brain looks like.”
Sticky’s face shone with relief. “Really? Oh, I hoped you would say that!” He tore the page into tiny bits. Reynie helped him shred the other attempted drawings, too, most of which resembled misshapen balls of yarn with numbered threads. They finished just as the girls made their appearance in the ceiling.
Everyone was eager to begin. In no time the lights were off and they were all seated in a circle on the floor.
“Okay, I have all the entries written down,” said Sticky, showing them a thin stack of papers. “They cover a lot of time — the first is from years ago, and the last was written today. Shall I read them aloud?”
The others agreed, and so, starting with the first entry, Sticky read:
No one seems to realize how much we are driven by FEAR, the essential component of human personality. Everything else — from
