The Candidates (11 page)

“FROM THE
time of Plato and Aristotle, human beings have been fascinated by the study of ethics. In this class we have been discussing the questions people have struggled with for centuries. For example, when is an action right or wrong? How can we tell good from bad? Can we judge the rightness of our actions based on the number of people who are affected?”

Mr. Fritz, the puffy-haired troll doll of a teacher, leaped up from his desk and began to pace in front of the room, his hands an animated blur.

“My goodness, he does love his subject, doesn’t he?” Jack murmured. His seat was next to mine at the back of the class.

I ignored him and turned more squarely toward Mr. Fritz.

“He is rather cute, though,” Jack mused, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

“Quiet!” I hissed. Now that I knew Cam was watching out for me, I wanted more than ever to do the right thing and stay out of trouble. But it was hard to turn around and tell that to Jack when he and I had been sitting in the back for weeks, making fun of Mr. Fritz and the other kids in the class.

“All right, all right.” Jack held up one hand in mock surrender. He sat up straighter at his desk and poised his pen above his paper as if about to take notes.

Mr. Fritz continued to ramble about Kant and John Stuart Mill, who we were supposed to be studying. My attention began to wander, and I slid into a pleasant daydream about Cam making me eggs and holding my hand. It was pitiful, but I’d been in a semi-comatose state ever since he’d said those incredible things to me the night before. It only heightened my euphoria that my dinner with Cam was my delicious little secret. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell Esther or Hennie, but it felt as if something magic had happened between us, and sharing it might make it go away.

I’m not sure how much time passed, but when I slid a glance at Jack a little while later, he was actually listening to Mr. Fritz, nodding occasionally and taking notes. I looked down at my own blank paper with a surge of embarrassment. If Jack could pay attention, surely I could do the same.

“Now, we’re going to play a little game. Class, everyone on your feet and push your desks against the wall. We’re going to need some room.”

With a few groans, everyone stood up. Twenty sets of chairs and desks scraped against the linoleum floor. They had combined my team with another one for the class, and we’d spent enough time together over the past month and a half that I knew everyone pretty well, even the ones who weren’t on my team. Catherine wasn’t in the class, thank goodness, but Cara was. I’d been ignoring her since the pottery-class incident, though she hadn’t seemed to notice.

I moved my stuff like everyone else, hoping no one could tell I hadn’t paid a bit of attention to the lecture and had no idea what was going on.

When we were done, Mr. Fritz dragged a large wooden platform from behind his desk and dropped it in the center of the room with a loud thud. It was about a foot high and three feet wide. “My dear astronauts, you have been visiting a foreign planet, finding a life-saving cure for an epidemic that is sweeping Earth. Your mission is complete. But there has been an accident, and the body of your ship has been damaged. This is the emergency travel pod, and it only has enough gas for one trip back to Earth. Anyone left behind will die. To take off, you must get everyone on the travel pod, for three full seconds.”

He beamed at us and ran his fingers through his white hair, fluffing it to a soft cloud. “Oh yes, and you’ve got fifteen minutes before the oxygen runs out in your space suits. Better get going.”

Kurt, a skinny kid with limp hair, pushed a thick pair of glasses up his nose with a pencil. “Mr. Fritz, with all due respect, there are twenty of us. There’s no way we can all fit on that piece of wood at the same time.”

Several people, including Gideon and Hector, nodded in agreement.

“It’s your spaceship,” Mr. Fritz said. “And your crew. You must find a way.”

More groans. I was instantly reminded of our trip up the wall. What was it about this school and its obsession with group activities? I tried to force myself to hang back from the crowd, but I couldn’t help throwing out a suggestion here and there as we tried various positions on the platform. We put some of the group on shoulders, stood on each other’s feet, and held on to each other. I’m tall, so everyone thought I should be on the outside of the circle. This left the short, cute girls, like Allie, to stand on my feet, which I did not appreciate. But everyone was groaning and laughing, so I put aside my irritation. We got close to success, but someone slipped off the platform before we could count to three.

“Is this some kind of lesson in futility?” Alessandro snickered. “Is it ethical to say we quit?”

“This is stupid,” a dark-haired girl named Morah said, not quite under her breath.

The momentum in the group slowly fizzled out, and before long we were reduced to aimless attempts at the same things we’d done before. Ten minutes passed. I didn’t like the idea of giving up, but I was out of ideas and starting to get frustrated.

Jack, who had been reclining against one of the desks, raised his voice above the mumbled conversations. “We’re going to have to sacrifice some of the group.”

“Are you kidding me?” Yashir looked horrified. “Sacrifice some of our group? As in, leave some of us behind?”

“Right. It’s the only way to get the cure back to Earth.” Jack spoke casually, his hands thrust deep into his pockets.

The room exploded into conversation. “What?”

“I’m not staying behind.”

“We can’t divide the group.”

“You’re sick, man. Truly sick.”

A smile played around Jack’s mouth as he watched them. For some reason, this ticked me off. We had been having a good time. Sure, we weren’t succeeding, but it had been fun trying. Everyone was in a good mood. Why did Jack have to go and ruin it?

“Let’s leave him behind.”

“Yeah, if you think we should leave someone behind, how about you?”

Jack sat down in one of the discarded chairs. He laced his fingers together behind his head and leaned back. “I was simply pointing out an option. You can leave me behind if you want.”

“You have three minutes left,” Mr. Fritz called from behind his desk. I could have sworn he was trying not to smile. That’s when I realized he must have known the platform was too small. This whole thing was nothing more than a setup to get us to realize we were going to have to do something drastic if we wanted our “mission” to succeed.

Everyone panicked. Yashir and Marika and a couple from the other team started barking orders at everyone, telling them to jump up on the platform and hold hands like we had tried once before. I stood there and watched, getting angrier by the second. A few people called me to jump on, but I waved them off. My hands clenched into fists.

They assembled on the platform, strangely serious now. Little clumps of people fell off every few seconds and then scrambled to get back in the group.

“One minute!” Mr. Fritz held up his watch.

Jack stood and ambled over to me. “What a bunch of morons,” he whispered. “You would think they’re really trying to save the earth. What do you say we knock them over?”

“No way, Jack,” I said. “I want them to do it.”

Cam would want them to do it, I thought. Cam wouldn’t like the way Jack was trying to mess things up. Cam would want them to do it, and he’d want me to help.

“Come on, it would be fun,” Jack said. “Just a little nudge and they’d all fall down, like a human domino chain. You have to admit you’d like to see that.”

“No, I wouldn’t, Jack.”

Okay, I wouldn’t have minded seeing Allie fall down, or Marika, or Cara. I stared at them, happily clutching each other as they stood on the platform, and for a minute I was back in that hallway, hearing them talking about me … laughing about me… .

“Tell you what, I’ll knock them over, and you can watch.” Jack took a purposeful step toward the group. He winked at me over his shoulder and started to raise his hands.

I shook my head to try to erase those horrible feelings. I wasn’t going to allow Jack to do something mean.

Looking back, I don’t know what I thought I could do—hold the whole group up on the platform? Drop something heavy on Jack? Whatever it was, the desire to do
something
was overpowering. The need rose inside me, almost a physical thing, and then I felt the familiar tingle and heard the whoosh in my ears.

It was the power. When I realized what was happening, I shut my eyes tightly and clenched my fists. No, I begged. Not now. What if I hurt one of my classmates? What if the whole school found out about me?

I would be in so much trouble if the power took over. I wouldn’t be able to stay. I didn’t know what they’d do with me, but they wouldn’t let me stay and pretend that I was a normal kid.

I forced myself to take a deep breath and think before I did anything stupid. I knew whatever popped into my mind was going to happen, but what if the thing I imagined was that nothing happened?

Sounded crazy, but worth a try.

I opened my eyes and stared at the platform, refusing to look away even when Jack whispered my name. I focused on the wood, trying desperately to keep my mind fixed on everything as it existed right at that moment. Surely if I filled my thoughts that way, nothing bad could happen.

The desire to look away was so strong, my hands began to shake. I set my jaw, determined not to let go. I told myself it was just like being in a staring match with Grandma. The vision of the wood wavered but did not disappear.

Jack leaned forward, his face close to mine. I ignored him as deliberately as I shut out the power. A second later, the tingle faded. The tight grip I had on my body relaxed so suddenly I stumbled backward and almost fell to the ground. At the same time, I heard the group chant, “One, two, three!”

They exploded into cheers. They must have done it, I realized dimly. The taste of bile unexpectedly filled my throat.

I raised my hand. “I need to go to the bathroom, Mr. Fritz,” I managed to croak out as my stomach lurched.

Without waiting for a response, I ran down the hall to the girls’ room and made it into a stall just in time to bring up the foul remnants of the frosted flakes I had eaten for breakfast.

Again and again I retched until I had emptied my stomach and the stuff I was bringing up burned my mouth and my nose. When I could see clearly, I leaned back against the bathroom stall and raised a shaking hand to wipe the sweat off my forehead. I was hot and cold at the same time, and so tired, I thought I might pass out.

Was this the price to be paid for refusing to use my power? My stomach roiled and cramped, and my limbs were like limp white noodles on the floor of the bathroom. A tear dribbled out of the corner of my eye and slid down my cheek. I was too tired to wipe it away.

Someone knocked on the stall door. “Dancia, are you all right?”

Great. That’s all I needed. A rescue party.

“Yeah, thanks.” I tried not to groan the words.

“Are you sure? Mr. Fritz wanted me to check on you.”

I looked at the bottom of the stall door, where I could see a pair of cute brown boots with stacked heels. It was Allie.

“No, I’m feeling better. I must have had eaten something funny at breakfast.” I tried to make my voice sound strong, but I don’t think it worked.

“Okay.” She sounded doubtful. “If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.”

I watched the boots pause for a moment, then clomp out of the bathroom. When I heard the door swing closed, I pushed my hair back from my face and tried to stand. My legs felt decidedly unsteady, so I stopped halfway and sat on the toilet.

I didn’t seem to be feeling any better, but I also didn’t seem to be getting worse. I decided to try to walk back to class. My head spun as I got to my feet and started to pull open the door.

My legs started to shake. Just before they buckled, I leaned against the wall. My body slid against the cold metal like a jellyfish. When I reached the ground, I dropped my head onto my knees.

Damn, damn, damn. A sob of rage and frustration built deep in my throat. I refused to let it escape. Not here, not when Mr. Fritz could burst in at any second.

My brief triumph at having squelched my power faded as the colors swirled behind my closed eyes. I might have discovered the ability to stop the power, but clearly this was no alternative. I couldn’t spend my life throwing up, passing out, or huddling in a bathroom, unable to walk. Apparently, my power was a part of me, and trying to stop it was like trying to cut off my arm.

But what was the alternative? Going back to the way things had been in middle school? Hiding and making myself invisible? Blowing off Cam, Jack, even Hennie and Esther, and making myself into a pariah? That no longer sounded like much of an option. For one, it hadn’t really worked in the past. I’d been doing it since I was ten, after all, and I hadn’t been able to stop myself from wreaking havoc. If anything, I was using my power more as I got older, not less.

For another … well … I thought about the feeling of Cam’s hand covering mine, and the way my heart skipped when he’d said, “I’m looking out for you, Dancia.” I couldn’t hide from Cam—or if I could, I sure didn’t want to try. And Esther and Hennie were the best friends I’d ever had. When they were around, I forgot how different I was, and felt like someone who could fit in. Someone who belonged.

In an odd way, Delcroix was giving me my first chance to be a regular kid, and I didn’t want to give it up. No, I refused to give it up. The fact was, in the short time since Mr. Judan and Cam had first come to my house, I had changed. Hiding and trying to be invisible weren’t enough for me.

Not anymore.

BY THE
time I came out of the bathroom, the bell had rung and people were headed down to lunch. I waited for the crowds to thin out before I tried to move down the hall. I limped along slowly, still dizzy and weak enough that I had to stop every few feet and take a deep breath. I wasn’t sure how I was going to make it back to my locker, which was all the way in the basement. Then I heard a familiar voice behind me.

“You look horrible.”

“Jack, I don’t want to talk to you right now.” I tried to ignore him, but he reached over and grabbed my backpack and slung it over one shoulder, and then took my elbow and supported my weight as we hobbled along.

“Because I made some comment in ethics class?” He was incredulous. “I don’t get it. What’s wrong with you?”

“Look,” I snapped. “It’s been a long day. I’d really rather not end it by fighting with you.”

He frowned, a look of concern crossing his face. “Sorry. Anything you want to talk about?”

I had to grit my teeth at the sting of tears in the back of my eyes. Though I’d gone years without anyone to confide in, now it seemed I couldn’t get enough of it. And I was so used to confiding in Jack, it was odd to remember that there was something huge and horrible in my life I could never tell him about.

“No.”

“Well, don’t pull any punches on my account.”

The corners of my mouth turned up just a hair. “Sorry, I’m not trying to be rude. It’s just …” We reached the top of the staircase and peered over. There was a long line of kids waiting to get into the cafeteria. It was loud, people were laughing and yelling at each other, and I spotted Hennie and Esther a few feet away.

I imagined facing Hennie and having her hear that “second voice” she had told us about the day before. A groan escaped from my throat. “I don’t think I can handle this right now.”

Jack nodded. “You look pretty green. I’m not sure the cafeteria is the best place for you. Why don’t we skip lunch? I want to show you something anyway.”

“Show me what?”

“It’s hard to describe. You’ll have to follow me.”

Hennie and Esther were, of course, engaged in conversation, so they hadn’t seen us yet. If they saw me, I would have no excuse not to sit with them. I looked back at Jack.

Too much had happened that morning, and the last thing I wanted was Hennie figuring it out with her weird way of sensing things. And I definitely couldn’t take Esther’s bubbly confidence right now.

“Come on,” Jack said, a mischievous look in his gray eyes. “I won’t get us in trouble, I promise.”

I shook my head. “You have a way of saying ‘I promise’ that is entirely unconvincing.”

He laughed. “You’re a smart cookie, Dancia Lewis. Now come with me.”

He turned and headed up the stairs while I followed a pace or two behind. We were on the second floor, where most of the classrooms were, but Jack led me up to the third. I hadn’t been to the third floor since orientation. Trevor had briefly walked us around up there, mainly to show us a couple of dance studios and practice rooms for the orchestra students. I think they said the honors seminars, like Cam’s class, met up there as well.

“We’re going to walk around the building, and as we do, I want you to picture what it looks like from the outside.”

“What do you mean?”

“The shape of the building,” he said patiently. “From the outside.”

I pictured it, three stories of red brick, tall windows on every side. “Okay, I’ve got the picture. Now what do you have in mind?”

“Come on.” We walked past a bunch of studios and smaller classrooms with chairs arranged in a circle. The halls were deserted, and the squeak of my sneakers reverberated in the silent air.

The school was shaped like a square doughnut, with the auditorium filling the middle. Jack opened a few doors, pointing out that each outside room had windows overlooking the grounds, and all the inside rooms looked over the auditorium roof. They all appeared to be about the same size and shape. We turned two corners and walked down two sides of the square, then got to the back of the building.

“Now these are the practice rooms.” Jack pushed open the door to a gleaming white studio with scattered chairs and a dry-erase board along one wall, with a staff for writing music. “They’re rectangles, right? And unlike the other outside rooms, they don’t have windows.”

I shifted uneasily on my feet. “That’s because they have special acoustic panels on the walls.” I took a few hesitant steps through the door. “They told us that. I heard that guy Tony who plays guitar raving about how great it was to practice in here.”

“Sure,” he agreed. “But humor me for a minute and let’s try something.” He carefully walked from the door to the back wall, placing the heel of each foot next to the toe of the other as he did. “Thirty paces,” he said, a note of triumph in his voice. “I walked the rooms on the other side of the building this morning. They were forty-five paces. Now granted, I was doing it fast because we were supposed to be meeting with our advisers, but still. That’s a considerable difference, yet the building is a square, and the cutout in the middle is a square, so the front and back rooms should match, right?”

I backed out of the doorway and into the hall. “You must have measured wrong. I think we ought to be getting back downstairs. I’m feeling much better now. We can still get lunch if we hurry.”

He paced back to me. I couldn’t help but count along. Thirty paces.

“They didn’t tell us we couldn’t come in here.” He flipped a lock of black hair out of his eyes as he stared down at his shoes. “And lunch just started. Trevor won’t even know we aren’t there yet. It usually takes him ten minutes to come find me. We need to go to the front rooms now. You can watch me pace it.”

I bit my lip. Something about this felt wrong, like we were doing something we shouldn’t. But we were just looking at classrooms, right? Not stealing or anything. And it would be weird, wouldn’t it? If the rooms were different sizes?

“Okay, but let’s be quick.”

We ran back along the silent hallways, our feet slapping against the smooth wood floors. The front of the school flooded with a blaze of yellow light as gray clouds slipped past the sun. The classrooms had tall windows divided by dozens of individual glass panes, all sparkling with reflections from the sun’s glare.

Jack paced carefully from the door to the windows. Forty-five steps. He paced back again. Forty-five steps.

“Someone’s going to be pissed at the architect,” I joked weakly. “His square isn’t exactly square.”

Jack spun around, facing the window. “There’s something weird about this place. I knew it from the first time Judan showed up at my house. I bet there’s a secret corridor on the back of the school. They didn’t have any excuse to put it on the first or second floors, so they’ve got it up here. I wonder what it’s for? How do you get to it?”

His words caught me by surprise. I hadn’t thought about Mr. Judan, or recruiting, since the first day of cross-country. So he had visited Jack? He hadn’t visited Esther, but had he visited Jack?

“You mean he came to recruit you?” I asked. “He came to your house?”

“Of course. Along with Pretty Boy.”

“Pretty Boy?” I asked, though I suspected I knew exactly who he meant.

“You know,
Cameron
,” he said with an exaggerated air of importance.

Cam had gone with Mr. Judan to visit Jack, but not Esther or Catherine? Jack didn’t even live in Danville, which blew apart my theory that he only visited people in town.

What did that mean?

“I’m going downstairs,” I said. “This is crazy. The hall must be a different width on the other side, or the inner classrooms must be different.”

“Wanna bet?”

I shook my head. “No. I don’t.”

“What about the gates, and the keys, and codes, and all the places for cameras. What about all that, Dancia?”

“That was a joke, Jack.”

“Maybe for you.”

“You’re crazy. They’re into security, that’s all. If I knew you were taking any of this seriously I would have stopped it a long time ago.” I turned and headed back toward the stairs. A moment later I heard Jack’s footsteps behind me.

“Maybe you can ignore it all, but I can’t. Not anymore.” He got in front of me. “Cam nearly killed me with that electric handshake of his, and Judan would make a snake nervous. And now this? The whole building’s probably rigged so they can spy on us. Who knows what’s in the secret corridor up here.”

I stared up at him, wide-eyed. Cam had given him a shock?

He picked up on it immediately. “He shocked you too, didn’t he?” Jack crowed. “I knew it. They handpicked us, Dancia. You and me. But why? What for?”

“They’re recruiters,” I snapped. “That’s what they do. They find kids with special talents and try to get them to come to Delcroix. No mystery.”

“Okay, so tell me why I’m here. You and I both know I don’t fit in. Delcroix students are dancers and debaters, and they’ve got parents who sent them to special camps and enrichment programs starting when they were two. They’re lab rats and Button-downs, like your friend Catherine. I barely made it through eighth grade.” He started to tick off items on his fingers. “I don’t do sports, dance, draw, or sing. I can’t add numbers in my head. My penmanship is lousy. So you tell me, what am I doing here? What’s so special about me?”

I grabbed the banister for support as I started down the stairs. “How should I know why you’re here? Maybe they need poor kids.” I hated myself for sounding like Catherine, but the words just came out. I couldn’t help it.

Jack stopped me halfway down. “If they had just wanted a poor kid, they could have picked one a whole lot nicer and smarter than me. I’m a delinquent. Ask anyone. I’m barely getting by. And what about you? How many times since school started have you told me that you don’t know why you’re here? You’re mediocre at everything. So what’s really going on?”

With that, my patience ran out. Even though I didn’t think I belonged at Delcroix, the last thing I needed was Jack acting like horrible Catherine and all her friends. “Look,” I said, poking my finger into his chest. “If you think the school is so weird, why are you still here? Why not go back to whatever place takes delinquents like you? I’m sure everyone would breathe a sigh of relief if you decided to take the bus all the way back to Portland.”

He stared at me. He was so close, I could see his nostrils flare. I thought I had gone too far, and he would get pissed and stomp away from me, but he didn’t. He just kept staring.

Noise from the stairwell below filtered up to us.

Jack pushed his hair back from his eyes. “I’ve got nowhere else to go,” he said flatly. “They told me I could start over here. They said things would be different, and I believed them. I have no idea why, but for some reason, when Pretty Boy told me that, I believed him. I must have been crazy.”

I pictured my conversation with Cam at Bev’s Café, and the night before in the kitchen. He had convinced me too. Sometimes I thought he could say anything and I’d believe him. My thoughts flew to that moment at my door when he’d told me he was looking out for me.

I’d believed that too.

“He’s right,” I said, more confidently than I felt. “Delcroix
is
different. Look, I know it seems odd, and I feel weird here too sometimes, but we’ve got to give it a try. It could be our only chance.”

“I did try,” he said. “But it isn’t working. The whole roommate thing doesn’t work for me, and those gates. Well, you know how I feel about the gates. And I think they follow me when I leave school on the weekend.” He leaned back against the wall, looking defeated. “Sometimes I want to just take off and not come back.”

I stared at him, astonished. I had no idea things had gotten so bad for Jack. Then I started to get a little panicky at the thought of him leaving. Even if he was trouble, there were times when he was the only person I could talk to. What would I do without him?

“I promised Grandma I’d stay until Christmas. You have to give it that long before you really know, one way or the other. You can’t leave now. It’s not even Thanksgiving yet. You have to stay at least that long,” I babbled.

“Maybe.” He didn’t sound convinced.

“There are things about the school I don’t like either, but we’ve got to keep trying. We’ll never know if we don’t try.” I wasn’t sure if I was talking to him or to myself, but it was suddenly vitally important that he agree.

Jack stared at the wall in front of him. After an interminable pause, he let out a loud sigh and turned to me. “All right. As long as you’re with me. No more blowing me off when you’re upset, okay?”

With a huge feeling of relief, I knocked against him. “Okay, you got me. But you can’t kill off any more of our classmates. Agreed?”

He grinned. “Sometimes you’ve got to save the Earth, Dancia.”

We laughed and walked down the steps together, our shoulders almost touching. I turned at the bottom of the landing and barreled right into a broad, masculine chest. When my eyes hit shaggy brown hair and a pair of concerned eyes, I sucked in my breath in horror.

“Cam?”

“Dancia? What were you doing upstairs?” He put his hands on my shoulders and examined my face.

I tried to school my thoughts into a semblance of coherence. Had they told us not to go upstairs? Had I forgotten a rule? Were we in huge trouble? “I … we …” Cam’s hands burned my shoulders, making it impossible to think straight.

“Dancia thought she left a book in her adviser’s classroom,” Jack interjected.

Cam dropped his hands and looked over at Jack. “Landry, what are you doing here?” He turned back to me. “Don’t you usually have lunch with Esther and Hennie?”

I nodded vigorously. It suddenly occurred to me that Jack and I had been walking way too close together when I’d bumped into Cam. Oh Lord, what if he thought we were … The last thing in the world I wanted was for Cam to think Jack and I were …

“Yeah,” I agreed, somewhat breathless with panic. “I realized my book was missing just as the bell rang for lunch. Jack happened to be around when I was heading upstairs.”