Jeff, startled by the cold fury in his mother’s voice, obeyed her order before he even had a chance to think about it. A second later he was out in the hall, and his mother was glaring down at him.
“How dare you?” she asked. “How dare you lie to me yesterday, and how dare you keep on with your tricks this morning?”
Jeff, paling in the face of her anger, shrank back against the wall. “What?” he breathed. “What did I do?”
“This!” Jeanette spat the word at him, then shoved the paper holding the message from “Adam” in his face. “Don’t tell me you don’t know anything about this,” she told him, her voice trembling.
Jeff stared at it. “But I don’t, Mom,” he protested. “I don’t—”
“Don’t lie to me, young man. You’re coming home with me right now.”
Jeff’s eyes widened. “H-Home?” he asked. “You mean you’re taking me out of school?”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” Jeanette replied. “Now come along!”
She took Jeff’s arm and tried to lead him toward the building’s front door, but Jeff jerked free. When she turned to look at him, he was glaring at her with a fury just as cold as her own.
“No,” he said, his voice low. “I won’t go. And you can’t make me. If you do, I’ll do the same thing Adam did. I swear I will!”
Jeanette stared at her son, the words slashing into her consciousness like knives. “N-No,” she stammered, stag gering back half a step. “Don’t say that, Jeff. Don’t even kid about it.”
“I’m not kidding, Mom,” Jeff told her, his voice flat and emotionless now. “I’m just telling you what I’ll do. If you make me leave the Academy, I’ll do what Adam did. And then you won’t have any kids left at all.”
After a moment that seemed to go on for an eternity, a faint sound erupted from Jeanette’s throat. A sound that was part fear and part utter pain.
Then she turned and fled from the building.
20
“Is she really going to take you out of school?” Josh asked. The seminar was over, and Josh was trying to hurry Jeff Aldrich by cutting across the lawn toward one of the new buildings that flanked the mansion. They only had another two minutes before Steve Conners’s English class was to begin, but Jeff refused to be rushed, ambling along as if he had all the time in the world.
“Nah,” Jeff replied. “Shell let me do anything I want. Parents are easy that way — all you have to do is know how to push their buttons. And if I threaten to kill myself, they’ll let me do anything I want. Especially after what happened to Adam.”
Josh shot the other boy a sidelong glance. “I thought you didn’t think Adam was dead,” he said.
The same mysterious expression that had appeared on Jeff’s face on the day of Adam’s funeral now twisted his mouth into a scornful grin. “Who do you think’s sending those notes to my mom’s computer?”
Josh stopped walking and turned to stare at the older boy. “Come on,” he said. “Everybody knows—”
Jeff’s voice turned cold. “Nobody knows anything,” he said. “All anybody thinks they know is that Adam died. And that’s bullshit. Adam didn’t want to die. He just wanted to get out of this dumb place. The only thing he liked about it was Dr. Engersol’s class, and his computer.”
“But — But where’d he go?” Josh asked.
Jeff smiled sardonically. “You’re supposed to be smart. Figure it out. It’s not really very hard. At least it shouldn’t be for you.” Then, laughing, he dashed ahead, and before Josh could catch up to him, disappeared into the building.
The bell rang just as Josh was approaching the door to Steve Conners’s classroom. He ducked inside, hoping the teacher wouldn’t notice that he hadn’t quite made it on time. But to his surprise, Conners wasn’t there at all. The rest of the class sat at their desks, already buzzing among themselves, speculating on what might have happened to the teacher. As Josh scurried up the aisle to his own desk, next to Amy’s empty one, Jeff Aldrich snickered softly.
“Boy, are you lucky,” he said as Josh passed him.
Josh said nothing, sliding into his seat and doing his best to look as though he’d been there for at least a couple of minutes as he heard the door open. But it wasn’t Steve Conners who entered. Instead it was Carolyn Hodges, one of the university graduate students, who worked part-time assisting Hildie Kramer. The girl walked to the front of the classroom and turned to face the students, whose buzzing had died away as they realized that something unusual was happening.
Carolyn, who hadn’t yet gotten over feeling intimidated by the Academy’s children — most of whom already seemed to know everything it had taken her nearly twenty-two years to learn — smiled nervously at the group before her. “Mr. Conners isn’t here this morning,” she announced. “We’ve been trying to find someone else to teach his classes, but—”
“Where is he?” someone asked from the back of the room. “Is he sick?”
Carolyn hesitated, then shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. All I know is that he isn’t here, and that Hildie Kramer has decided we should use the hour as study time.”
“Well, if he isn’t sick, what happened to him?” someone else asked.
“We don’t know that
Though Josh sat quietly at his desk, his mind was racing. Had Steve gone out looking for Amy this morning? And even if he had, why hadn’t he come to school? Unless he’d found Amy, and something had happened to her. Josh was wondering how he could find out where Steve was, when Jeff Aldrich’s voice interrupted his thoughts.
“Is it okay if I go study in the library?” Jeff asked. “I have a project for Dr. Engersol’s seminar that I need to do research on.”
Josh turned to look at Jeff, whose face reflected all the innocence the boy was capable of summoning up. But what project was he talking about? An instant later Josh was sure he understood. Jeff was just trying to get out of the classroom.
“I–I suppose that would be all right,” Carolyn Hodges said. “As long as you’re studying, I—”
Josh’s hand shot up. “May I go with Jeff?” he asked. “I’m working on the same project.”
Carolyn’s expression reflected her sudden doubt. Her eyes shifted to Jeff. To Josh’s relief, the other boy instantly backed him up.
“It’s a project on the biology of intelligence,” Jeff explained, improvising as he went along. “We have to do some research on the relationship between hormones and intelligence. Dr. Engersol says—” He was prepared to go on, but Carolyn Hodges held up her hands in protest.
“All right, both of you, and anyone else who wants to, can go to the library. But you’re on your honor, all right?”
Instantly, the class mumbled their agreement, then gathered up their things and headed out the door. A moment later they tumbled out of the building, most of them actually setting off toward the large library a hundred yards away, on the university campus. Josh MacCallum, though, fell in next to Jeff Aldrich.
“Do you know where Steve lives?” he asked.
Jeff’s brows rose. “You mean you don’t want to go to the library and work on our project?”
Josh flushed slightly. “Thanks for not telling her,” he said. Then: “Do you really have a project you have to work on?”
Jeff laughed out loud. “Shit, no! I just didn’t want to sit there for an hour. So how come you want to know where Conners lives?”
Josh’s tongue ran nervously over his lower lip. “I–I just want to find out what’s going on, that’s all. I mean, if they don’t even know where he is, what’s going on?”
“So you want to go see?”
