The Academy (5 page)

“I thought we were supposed to turn in written ballots—,” Steve Warren began.

“There will be no secret ballots,” the principal announced. “I want to know where everyone stands.”

Linda looked around at the teachers nearby. There was surprise and confusion on the faces of several, but not the defiance she would have expected nor the sense of outrage.

She stood. “If our school is really going to be a democracy, if we are all to have a say in what goes on here and vote on issues that concern us, then we should have a secret ballot.” She fixed the principal with a level stare. “This implied threat that anyone who does not vote the way the administration wishes will be remembered later and possibly retaliated against is antithetical to everything you claim this move is supposed to accomplish.”

Antithetical.
That was a good word, and she was impressed with herself for coming up with it on the fly. The way it flowed smoothly off her tongue made her reasoning that much more effective, gave intellectual heft and legitimacy to her argument.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Bobbi writing down information—her name and the nature of her transgression, no doubt—and Linda started through the crowd toward the secretary, pushing her way between various teachers’ legs and the backs of the seats in front of them. “What are you writing there?” she asked. “Let me see.”

Bobbi quickly bent over, hiding her clipboard with an encircling hand like a smart student attempting to protect test answers from the prying eyes of less-prepared classmates. “No!”

“I want to know what you’re writing.”

“That will be quite enough!” Jody thundered from the stage.

A collective intake of breath issued from the mouths of faculty and staff, a sound of shock, and the principal seemed to realize instantly that she’d gone too far. The look on her face was now one of blanched comprehension. Linda moved back to her seat, fixing her with a calm, level stare. “So much for democracy, huh? And you’re right, Jody. That
will
be quite enough. Let’s vote.”

The principal appeared flustered, was not able for several seconds to formulate or express her thoughts. Finally, she cleared her throat, adjusted the microphone and repeated her initial call for a show of hands.

“Let’s fill out our
ballots,
” Linda said, still standing.

There were nods all around, murmurs of agreement. “I need a pen,” Steve Warren announced loudly. He kept his eyes on Jody.

“Very well.” The principal smiled in an effort to be accommodating, but Linda could sense her frustration and hostility, and she only hoped that it was equally obvious to everyone else. At Jody’s behest, Bobbi retreated for a moment to the rear of the room, returning with a box of pens. The secretary walked down the right aisle and passed them out to each row. The teachers, office staff and other school employees immediately filled out their ballots and folded the sheets of paper.

“Pass your ballots to the right,” Jody said. “Bobbi will collect them and tabulate the votes. You may keep the pens.”

Linda stood again. “I think we need two pairs of eyes, just to make sure there’s no cheating.”

“This is why I wanted to have a show of hands,” Jody said sweetly. “Transparency.” She smiled. “You can help count ballots, if you like. And, of course, we will double-check them just to make sure there have been no errors.”

Giving Diane a significant look, Linda made her way to the end of the row and helped Bobbi collect the sheets of paper. The two of them then carried the ballots to a table at the back of the room and, as everyone crowded around to watch, began to count.

Linda finished tallying the results of her pile and then switched off with Bobbi. She and the secretary calculated their results independently and came up with the same numbers. Just to make sure, they did it again. The results were the same.

The ayes had it.

Three

“So what does this
really
mean for us? More work? More money? What?”

The janitorial staff—three full-time employees and two part-timers—stood in the empty cafeteria facing Enrique, the head custodian, who was focused rather too intently on putting sugar in his coffee. Carlos suddenly had the feeling that Enrique was just as out of the loop as they were, that he didn’t know anything more about what was going to happen than the rest of them did.

“I have no idea,” Enrique told them.

At least he admitted it.

“Just do your damn work the way you always did.”

“But I need to know how this is going to affect
us,
” Mike pressed. “Right now, I can transfer to another school. Until this thing’s official, we’re still with the district. And if things look like they’re going south, I can bail. But once we switch over, that’s it. I’m stuck. We’re
all
stuck. And maybe we’re screwed. I just want to know where we stand.”

“I don’t know,” Enrique said. He glanced around at the gathered custodians. “Any other complaints?”

Carlos and Rakeem looked at each other. “We don’t like working here at night,” Carlos said.

“Get another job,” Enrique told them. “Anything else?”

“It’s not that we don’t like to work,” Carlos explained. “We just don’t like to work
here.
At
night.
”

“
Maricón,
” Enrique said dismissively.

Carlos tried to describe the situation in more detail, but the head custodian was having none of it. He ignored Carlos and began going over the items he’d written down on his clipboard. “Just sit there and be quiet,” he ordered. “I have a lot to go over today.”

The meeting ended early, before the day shift even ended, and since he wasn’t scheduled to start work for another two hours, Carlos drove back home, called Maria to make a date for Friday, boiled some hot dogs for his dinner and watched the last half of
Escape from New York
before heading back to the school.

The sun was setting as he pulled into the staff parking lot, and the quad was dark with long shadows by the time he reached the janitorial-supply shed. Rakeem was waiting for him next to the cleaning carts. Carlos could tell from the expression on his face that he was unhappy, and he knew why before the other man even spoke.

“Shit. Why’d you have to say anything?” Rakeem asked.

“Come on, man. We talked about it.”

“That doesn’t mean you had to tell Enrique. Now we’re on night shift till the day we fuckin’ die.”

“You
knew
I was gonna tell him. You
wanted
me to tell him.”

“Yeah, well . . .”

“ ’Sides, you didn’t say nothing. Anyone’s stuck on night shift, it’s me. You’re free and clear.”

“Nah, bro. Wherever you go, I go. We’re partners.”

“Partners?”

“Yeah.”

“You just don’t wanna work with Mike.”

Rakeem grinned. “This is true.”

They flipped a coin for jobs, the way they always did, and Carlos lost. That meant Rakeem got to clean the office, the library and the downstairs classrooms, while Carlos had to take care of PE, art, band and the upstairs classrooms. “Great,” Carlos mumbled.

Rakeem laughed loudly. “Have fun!”

Carlos pushed his cart across the quad, acutely aware of the silent, empty rooms in the minimally lit buildings around him. The clacking of the wheels and the rattling of the tools and cleaning supplies in the cart sounded loud, too loud, and he found himself hunching down a little, as though trying to minimize his presence and not draw attention to himself. Something had happened to the school over the summer. He’d worked here for eight years, the past three on night shift, and he had never had any qualms about being alone on the campus after dark. He wasn’t a little kid, after all. But suddenly it started seeming to him that there was something odd and unnerving about this place, a creepiness he couldn’t quite pinpoint but that made him feel very uncomfortable. Rakeem had noticed it, too. They’d even talked about it, although not directly at first. Carlos had casually mentioned one night, in an offhand manner, that he had been startled in one of the classrooms by a loud thump on the wall and when he’d gone next door to investigate, he hadn’t been able to find the source of the noise. Rakeem had revealed that he’d nearly jumped out of his shoes a few nights prior when a pile of textbooks on a teacher’s desk fell of their own accord, joking that he’d spilled his cleaning fluid and had ended up having to clean up his own mess instead of just the students’. When they found out a week or so later that both events had taken place in the same room, and that each of them had heard and seen
other
strange things around the school, they dropped all pretext of nonchalance and compared notes. Sure enough, they’d both experienced weird sights and sounds all over the campus. Which was why he’d wanted to tell Enrique—although he didn’t really know what he’d expected his boss to do about it.

Now, of course, the head custodian thought they were the two biggest pansies on the planet. And the other workers were probably laughing behind their backs—or even planning some type of prank to scare them.

Rakeem was right. He should have kept his big mouth shut.

Carlos winced as the cart went over a crack in the concrete, clattering loudly. He glanced quickly around.

What was he afraid of?

That
something
hiding in the dark would know he was here.

Carlos pushed his cart up the slight incline to the music room. Using his master key, he opened the door and walked inside, flipping on the lights as he did so. Maybe it was his imagination, but the lights in the classrooms didn’t appear to be as bright as they had been last year. None of the fixtures had been changed, but it seemed as if all over the school the illumination was dimmer than it had been before summer. He tried to tell himself that it was intentional, part of an effort to save electricity and cut down on energy expenses, but he couldn’t make himself believe it.

Like members of the football team and the cheerleading squad, the kids in band returned to school a few weeks earlier than everyone else to practice. Carlos scanned the low risers on the left side of the room. Most of the instruments had been put away or taken home, but as always, a couple of them had been left out, and right in the center of the practice area, leaning against a metal folding chair, was a tuba. Carlos’ gaze stopped on the instrument. Overhead lights glinted off the circle of gold metal that surrounded the black hole at the center of the large horn, and there seemed something mesmerizing about the sight. He found it hard to pull his attention away. He kept staring at that dark opening, and it was as though his gaze was being drawn
inside
it, his mind swirling down like water in a whirlpool.

He forced himself to look away. He felt chilled, frightened, and he decided that if he did not see any visible trash on the floor or furniture, if there were no major messes to clean up, he would leave. There didn’t really need to be any mopping or dusting done. The room would survive one night without a thorough cleansing.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmm . . .

Carlos jumped at the sound. It was a low sustained note, and for a second he couldn’t place it.

Then he realized it reminded him of someone blowing on a tuba.

He glanced quickly in that direction, but the instrument remained where it was, untouched, unmoving, its dark center in the midst of that gleaming gold seeming ever more eerie.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmm . . .

The noise continued, as though the invisible player possessed an unlimited breathing capacity and was planning to blow on the oversized horn forever.

Slowly, a drumbeat started, though there was no drum to be seen. Together, the sound of the two instruments blended and coalesced into a funereal dirge.

“Fuck this shit,” Carlos said aloud, hoping tough words would prove to whoever—

whatever

—was in here that he was not scared.

But just the acknowledgment that he thought someone or something
was
in here, that he didn’t believe the noises he was hearing were simply random night sounds, made him even more afraid, and with that unpausing dirge in the background, he turned tail, pushed his cleaning cart out of the music room and locked the door behind him. He left faster than he would have liked—it was obvious he was running away—but it still felt good to be outside again, out of the confines of that creepy chamber.