The Institute (27 page)

“Longest ninety
minutes of my life,” Chad whispers to me.

I look at the
clock above the chalkboard, “Yeah, and it’s only been twenty so
far.” We both sigh and slump down in our chairs.

“So you took
your brother to see Tate?”

“Yeah, not that
it did any good. Did Tate tell you?”

“Yeah. So it
didn’t go well?” he asks but I can sense Drew is getting angry at
us for talking so I just shake my head.

After another
gruelling seventy minutes, we are finally dismissed. Everyone
except for me.

“Allira, can I
talk to you for a minute?” Drew sounds professional, like it has to
do with his class but I have a feeling it won’t be.

“I’ll wait for
you outside,” Chad says and puts his hand in the small of my back
as he walks by. I’m sure that was for Drew’s benefit more than
mine, especially because I can see the half smile he is giving out
of the corner of my eye.

I stand still,
waiting for Drew to start talking.

“So. How are
you going?” he asks in a rather friendly tone, feeling a little
sheepish.

“Umm, fine.”
What does he want?

“You’re
settling in okay then?”

“I guess.”

“You know, this
whole friendship thing works better if you’re friendly,” he
says.

I narrow my
eyes, “I didn’t realise we were friends.”

“I’d like to be
though. I just want to make sure you’re not making the same mistake
with him that you did with me. I wouldn’t trust anyone in here
Allira, only yourself.”

I don’t know
which ‘him’ he was referring to. I assume he means Tate but he
gestured to the door like he was talking about Chad.

“So, this isn’t
class related then?” I say coldly. He sighs, which I take as a sign
to be able to walk away. It is bad enough I have to still see him
at all, now he wants to be friends?

Fortunately, I
don’t have time to dwell on it, I have a torturing to get to.
Today, my focus will solely be on trying to get through the fitness
class without throwing up.

***

Our trainer has
written out our fitness programs and just looking at it makes my
body hurt and I don’t even understand half of the words. What the
hell is an oblique and why do I have to crunch it 100 times?

I feel a breath
over my shoulder. “Just remember to pull power from the jackass,”
Chad whispers in my ear and keeps walking. I smile at his words;
our trainer really is a jackass. We’ve only had one fitness class
but after our assessment yesterday where he was completely quiet,
he suddenly turned and kept yelling things like ‘Just one more,
push it!’ and when I would complain, he would just get angrier and
louder.

I am put on the
treadmill thing again, as Jack – who I will be calling our trainer
from now on, I don’t actually know his real name – calls it. Chad
is across from me on some weight lifting machine. Jack presses
buttons and I start at a slow jog and it doesn’t take me long to
start feeling tired and heavy again, and I’m still sore from
yesterday. I look up at Chad and he nods at me. I don’t need Tate
here to know that Chad is telling me to focus on Jack, then myself,
then what I want to do.

I start to draw
energy and it becomes a little easier to keep jogging. I keep
focusing on my breathing and drawing more energy and power from
Jack. Jack ups my speed and I’m running now, but I feel like I
could go even faster. I’m sweating and getting hot, my face feels
flushed and my hair is sticky from the perspiration but I feel
strong.

I start
faltering on purpose, I can’t let them know what I am doing. I fake
some panting, some aching faces, pretend to have a stitch and Jack
finally slows the treadmill down to a slow walk.

“Well, that’s
certainly better than yesterday,” he says as he writes something
down on his clipboard in front of him.

“Yeah, sorry,”
I say panting. “I think I must have been a little off yesterday.” I
wait for praise, a job well done. I’m glad I don’t hold my breath
for it to come, because it doesn’t.

“Now switch,”
Jack demands.

Chad and I swap
places and I start trying to lift weights. I know I’m going to need
Jack’s strength to keep this up. I pull strength from him again to
finish off the set of twenty reps that is in my program; I manage
it easily and for the first time, I have confidence I can fake my
way through this class. I am pleased of the fact that I won’t have
to dread this class every day.

When we’re
dismissed, I head back to the change rooms to have a shower. It may
have been easier to train today but I’m still sweaty and hot. Chad
catches up to me just before I enter the girls’ locker room.

“Your room?” he
asks, his muscles tense and defined through his shirt. It distracts
me from what he was saying.

“Umm …
what?”

“Ability
practice? For you?” he looks confused, like he can’t figure out
what I could have possibly thought he meant.

“Oh, sorry yeah
I forgot. I’m just going to shower and I’ll head up there if you
want to meet me there?”

“You sure you
can find your way?” he smiles. “I’ll grab some food for us and see
you up there.”

***

By the time I
get up to my room, Chad is sitting on the floor in the hallway with
his back against my door.

“You got lost,
didn’t you.” It wasn’t a question, he smirks at me.

“Shut up,” I
say and he laughs at me.

We enter the
room and sit at the table to eat the sandwiches Chad got us. At
least I’m starting to feel more comfortable around Chad, so
comfortable in fact, I summon the courage to talk about Eminent
Falls and Ebbodine again but I think I may ease him into talking
about her, seeing as he reacted so badly the last time I mentioned
her.

“So, does your
dad know about you?” I ask.

“My dad?”

“He spoke to me
at school, just after you and Ebb disappeared.”

“Oh,” he looks
down at his food.

“He thought you
had run off with Ebbodine.” I laugh like it is a joke, but I look
to see his reaction when I mention her.

He takes a sip
of his water nervously, “That’s just probably wishful thinking on
his part,” he responds. “He knows what I can do. I think he would
rather have me run off with a student than be living here.”

Well, he didn’t
deny they were together but it’s the second time I have mentioned
her around him and he has tensed up both times.

“Oh right, I
keep forgetting you were actually teaching at school. Why didn’t
you tell him you were turning yourself in?” I ask.

“I knew he
would talk me out of it. It was kind of a spur of the moment
decision to come here.”

“That’s a
pretty big decision to make on a whim,” I reply. He shrugs and I
can tell he doesn’t really want to talk about it so I try to change
the subject. “So are you going to go see Tate tonight?” I ask while
taking a bite out of my sandwich.

“Probably,
you?”

“Maybe. We
didn’t get a real chance to talk last night, Shilah kept getting
confused.”

“Yeah, well
that tends to happen when you only have half a conversation aloud.
It drove me nuts as a child when I would go visit him and his
mum.”

“Oh, sorry.
It’s difficult because I don’t even know that I’m doing it half of
the time.”

“I know,” he
says.

“I keep
forgetting you two grew up together, you’re quite different,” I
say.

“How so?”

“I don’t know.
You seem more like friends than family. He’s pretty laid back and
easy going and …” I pause while I try and think of a nice way to
call Chad uptight and angry.

“I’m not?” he
asks in the serious tone he had the first few times I ever spoke to
him.

I change the
subject again, “Hey, I have a question. How are you so good at
hiding your thoughts? I know I barely hear anything from you while
we’re down there with Tate, it would be really handy for me to
learn that. Tate can hear every little thing I’m thinking. It can
be quite annoying.”

“Now you know
why I practice so hard at keeping my thoughts to myself. It’s hard
to explain and it took me a while to master it, but I guess it’s
like I kind of see my thoughts as a two way radio. You’ve seen
those devices the agents use here right?” I nod. “To hear what
someone is saying, you have to be on the same channel or frequency,
so I focus on Tate and I focus on what it is I want him to hear and
run over my actual thoughts on another channel in my head. Does
that make any sense?”

“I guess so. No
not really.”

We finish our
lunch and get started on training.

“How about you
show me some of that self-defence you learnt yesterday?” asks Chad,
changing the subject. “It might make it more of a challenge if you
actually have a shot of hitting me. If you can catch me off guard
that is.” He is smiling at me, just daring me to accept his
challenge.

I step forward
and aim for his stomach. My fist makes the blue force field appear
immediately on impact. He was ready for it. They showed us really
basic manoeuvres yesterday in class. I try to remember them as I
incorporate it into my punching. I smile and go for his stomach
again with my right hand, while preparing to punch his face with my
left. He’s ready for that too. He steps out of my way and I almost
trip over from completely missing him with my fist. He laughs and I
feel myself getting frustrated.

“I’ve only had
one class,” I complain.

“Yeah and by
the look of it, they can’t even show you how to punch properly.”
Chad grabs my hand and rearranges my fingers so my thumb is on the
outside of my fist instead of inside. “Now you won’t break your
thumb if you ever actually manage to hit me,” he smirks.

I sigh. “To be
honest, I don’t think they know much of what they’re teaching down
there. I spent most of yesterday’s class just trying not to get hit
by a fifteen year old.”

“I can show you
properly if you like?” Chad offers.

“You can?”

“Dad taught me
everything he knows.”

I can’t help
but laugh, “Really? Mr. Williams knows how to fight?”

“Yeah,” Chad
says. “He thought it would be a good idea for me to learn how to
protect myself without using my ability and exposing myself.”

Chad shows me
an old form of self-defence called Krav Maga. It’s brutal, but it
makes me feel strong by using Chad’s body weight against him. The
good thing about using Chad’s ability when we train is we can hit
each other as hard as possible and it won’t hurt. In self-defence
class yesterday, I was too worried to hit my sparring partner in
fear of breaking her. She, however, didn't seem to care either way;
I have a bruise on my left hand side that proves that.

Krav Maga is
aggressive. I still laugh when I think of Mr. Williams ever being
able to do this. I look at the clock and realise we are late for
class.

“Oh crap, we
have to go,” I say. We quickly head out of the door into the
hallway when I realise just how messy we look. My hair is
dishevelled and my face feels hot, I assume it is bright red from
the effort I was putting in. Both of us are sweaty.

As we are
adjusting our clothes and I am trying to flatten my hair, Drew
comes around the corner. He has finished teaching for the day, I’m
guessing.

His look says
it all. He’s hurt. I guess it does look pretty bad. I suddenly feel
guilty and I don’t know why. This is good for him, maybe this will
help him move on and leave me alone. We don’t exchange words. Drew
goes into his apartment and Chad and I head to class.

“Well, that was
just a bit awkward,” states Chad with a laugh.

Chapter
Seventeen

It has been
twenty-three days since we started training, I know this because I
started counting days by marking off a page in one of my training
notebooks. Well, I think it is twenty-three anyway; the monotony of
doing the same thing all of the time makes me forget whether I have
actually marked it off or not. I’m sure there have been days where
I have doubled up and days I have skipped completely.

I’m getting
ready for class when Chad lets himself in. Ever since he saw me in
a towel we are fairly comfortable with each other. Well that, and I
make sure I get out of bed and dressed in the bathroom before he is
due to get here. “So how has Shilah been doing?” I ask Chad, like I
do every day. He sits down at the dining table and helps himself to
my breakfast, like
he
does every day. I have to ask Chad
because he is in Shilah’s ability class and Shilah refuses to talk
to me about it.

“Still the same
as the last time you asked me,” Chad responds with a slight
annoyance to his voice.

“Okay, okay, I
will try and stop asking about him.” I guess I may be getting a bit
obsessive over Shilah’s progress; I just miss him. We are both as
stubborn as each other, can’t agree to disagree, so every time I
see him we end up arguing. He is also very big on interacting with
others here. Shilah fitting in is something I have never seen
before. In a way, I’m happy that he feels he finally belongs
somewhere. I kind of wish I did, maybe that would make it easier
for me to be here.

Chad has told
me that just like my ability – which is getting easier to control
and stronger every day thanks to our lunchtime practices – Shilah’s
ability is also growing. He is now able to see two different
futures simultaneously on his own without my ability helping him.
The premonitions are getting longer but he can still only see his
own future. I want to say that I am happy for him, but a growing
ability means he is more desirable to them and more likely to be
moved through the training program quicker. That makes me feel
uneasy, like I am losing against Mr. Brookfield, against the
Institute.