AT THE END OF HIS FIRST week at Point Blanc, Alex drew up a list of the six boys with whom he shared the school. It was midafternoon, and he was alone in his room. A notepad was open in front of him. It had taken him about half an hour to put together the names and the few details that he had. He only wished he had more.
HUGO VRIES (14) Dutch. Lives in Amsterdam. Brown hair, green eyes. Father’s name, Rudi. Owns diamond mines. Speaks little English. Reads and plays guitar. Very solitary. Sent to PB for major shoplifting and arson.
TOM MCMORIN (14) Canadian. From Vancouver. Parents divorced. Mother runs media empire (newspapers, TV). Reddish hair, blue eyes. Well built, chess player. Car thefts and drunken driving … sent to PB.
NICOLAS MARC (14) French … from Bordeaux? Expelled from private school in Paris, cause unknown. Drugs? Brown hair, brown eyes, very fit all around. Tattoo of devil on left shoulder. Good at sports. Father = Anthony Marc. Airlines, pop music, hotels. Never mentions his mother.
CASSIAN JAMES (14) American. Fair hair, brown eyes. Mother = Jill … studio chief in Hollywood. Parents divorced. Writes poetry, plays jazz piano. Expelled from six schools.
Various drugs offenses. Sent to PB after smuggling arrest. Tells jokes. Seems popular.
JOE CANTERBURY (14) American. Spends much of his time with Cassian. Brown hair, blue eyes. Mother (name unknown) New York senator. Father something major at the Pentagon.
Vandalism, truancy, shoplifting. Claims to have own motorbike and three girlfriends (!) in Los Angeles.
JAMES SPRINTZ (14) German. Father = Dieter Sprintz, banker, well-known financier (the hundred-million- dollar man). Mother living in England. Brown hair, dark blue eyes, pale. Lives in Dusseldorf. Expelled for wounding a teacher with an air pistol. Closest I’ve got to a friend at PB—the only one who really hates it here.
Lying on his bed, Alex studied the list. What did it tell him? Not a great deal.
First, all the boys were the same age: fourteen, the same age as him. At least three of them, and possibly four, had parents who were either divorced or separated. They all came from hugely wealthy backgrounds. Blunt had already told him that was the case, but Alex was surprised by just how diverse the parents were. Airlines, diamonds, politics, and movies.
France, Holland, Canada, and America. Each one of them was at the top of his or her field, and those fields covered just about every human activity. He himself was supposed to be the son of a supermarket king. Food. That was another world industry he could check off.
At least two of the boys had been arrested for shoplifting. Two had been involved with drugs. But Alex knew that the list somehow hid more than it revealed. With the exception of James, it was hard to pin down what made the boys at Point Blanc different. In a strange way, they all looked the same.
Their eyes and hair were different colors. They wore different clothes. All the faces were different: Tom handsome and confident, Joe quiet and watchful. And of course they spoke not only with different voices but also in several languages. James had talked about brains being sucked out with straws, and he had a point. It was as if the same consciousness had somehow invaded them all. They had become puppets, dancing on the same string.
The bell rang downstairs. Alex looked at his watch. It was exactly one o’clock—lunchtime.
That was another thing about the school. Everything was done to the exact minute. Lessons from nine until twelve. Lunch from one to two. And so on. James made a point of being late for everything, and Alex had taken to joining him. It was a tiny rebellion but a satisfying one. It showed they still had a little control over their own lives. The other boys, of course, turned up like clockwork. They would be in the dining room now, waiting quietly for the food to be served.
Alex rolled over on the bed and reached for a pen. He wrote a single word on the pad, underneath the names.
BRAINWASHING?
Maybe that was the answer. According to James, the other boys had arrived at the academy two months before him. He had been there for just three weeks. That added up to just eleven weeks in total, and Alex knew that you didn’t take a bunch of delinquents and turn them into perfect students just by giving them good books. Dr. Grief had to be doing something else.
Drugs. Hypnosis. Something.
He waited five more minutes, then hid the notepad under his mattress and left the room. He wished he could lock the door. There was no privacy at Point Blanc. Even the bathrooms had no locks. And Alex still couldn’t shake off the feeling that everything he did, even everything he thought, was somehow being monitored, noted down. Evidence to be used against him.
It was ten past one when he reached the dining room, and sure enough, the other boys were already there, eating their lunch and talking quietly among themselves. Nicolas and Cassian were at one table. Hugo, Tom, and Joe were at another. Nobody was flicking peas. Nobody even had their elbows on the table. Tom was talking about a visit he had made to some museum in Grenoble. Alex had been in the room only a few seconds, but already his appetite had gone.
James had arrived just ahead of him and was standing at one of the windows into the kitchen, helping himself to food. Most of the food arrived precooked, and one of the guards heated it up. Today it was stew. Alex got his lunch and sat next to James. The two of them had their own table. They had become friends quite effortlessly. Everyone else ignored them.
‚You want to go out after lunch?' James asked.
‚Sure. Why not?'
‚There’s something I want to talk to you about.'
Alex looked past James at the other boys. There was Tom, at the head of the table, reaching out for a pitcher of water. He was dressed in a polo shirt and jeans. Next to him was Joe Canterbury. He was talking to Hugo now, waving a finger to emphasize a point. Where had Alex seen that movement before? Cassian was just behind them, round faced, with fine, light brown hair, laughing at a joke.
It was all in the details, the things you wouldn’t notice unless you saw them all together, like they were now. The way they were all sitting with their backs straight and their elbows close to their sides. The way they held their knives and forks. Hugo laughed, and Alex realized that for a moment he had become a mirror image of Cassian. It was the same laugh. He watched Joe eat a mouthful of food. Then he watched Nicolas. They were two different boys. There was no doubting that. But they ate in the same way, as if mimicking each other.
There was a movement at the door, and suddenly Mrs. Stellenbosch appeared. ‚Good afternoon, boys,' she said.
‚Good afternoon, Mrs. Stellenbosch.' Five people answered, but Alex heard only one voice.
He and James had remained silent.
‚Lessons this afternoon will begin at three o’clock. The subjects will be Latin and French.'
The lessons were taught by Dr. Grief or Mrs. Stellenbosch. There were no other teachers at the school.
Alex hadn’t yet been taught anything. James dipped in and out of class, depending on his mood.
‚There will be a discussion this evening in the library,' Mrs. Stellenbosch went on. ‚The subject is violence in television and film. Tom, you will open the debate. Afterward, there will be hot chocolate, and Dr. Grief will give a lecture on the works of Mozart. Everyone is welcome to attend.'
James jabbed a finger into his open mouth and stuck out his tongue. Alex smiled. The other boys were listening quietly.
‚Dr. Grief would also like to congratulate Cassian James on winning the poetry competition.
His poem is pinned to the bulletin board in the main hall. That is all.'
She turned and left the room. James rolled his eyes. ‚Let’s go out and get some fresh air,' he said. ‚I’m feeling sick.'
The two of them went upstairs and put on their coats. James had the room next door to Alex and had done his best to make it more homey. There were posters of old sci-fi movies on the wall and a mobile with the solar system dangling above the bed. A lava lamp bubbled and swirled on the bedside table, casting an orange glow. There were clothes everywhere. James obviously didn’t believe in hanging them up. Somehow he managed to find a
