Viral Nation (28 page)

Clover stood next to Jude near the lookout window
and picked at the edge of one of her nails. “Are you excited for the Academy semester to start?”

“I don’t know anymore. It’s so mixed up. If anyone belongs at the Academy, you do. Who knows if either of us will be able to go now.”

Clover shrugged one shoulder and petted Mango so she’d have something to do with her hands. “You’ll be back in time. I know it. Kingston didn’t think I belonged. And I don’t think I want to go anymore, anyway. They don’t want autistic students.”

“There have been plenty of Academy graduates with autism.”

“Mine is worse, I guess.”

“You know better than that.”

Clover let her other hand flap at her side. It was her most reliable release valve.

“Kingston really should have let you stay. What was that about, anyway?” Jude asked.

“It wasn’t about anything. I can’t be around people, I can’t
handle too much noise or too much—of anything. Kingston didn’t want me at his school, that’s it.”

“If that’s true, then Kingston is an idiot.”

“Kingston is the headmaster.”

“Then even headmasters can be idiots.”

Before she could stop them, tears slipped down her cheeks. She brushed at them angrily with the backs of her hands, but more fell. “This is so stupid.”

Jude opened his arms without moving any closer to Clover. He let her come to him and didn’t hug her until she hugged him. Even then, he didn’t pet her or move his hands behind her where she couldn’t see them. He just held her like that until she could breathe again, and then let her go.

Somehow, he knew how to touch her without triggering her natural tendency to pull away. Just like he would two years from now. He reached up, slowly, and brushed a strand of her hair from her forehead.

“Who do you know who has autism?” she asked.

“My brother.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s a ghost.” Dead or missing. “If we save his daughter, Kingston will have a place for you at the Academy. I know he will.”

Clover wiped her face on her sleeve and desperately needed to change the subject. “What do you think about the classifieds?”

“You mean the quotes?” Jude asked, backing up to just outside Clover’s personal space. “Tell me one.”

The quotes were too frequent to be random, and her gut told her they were important. She flipped through her memory of several she and Jude had found on his stolen laptop. They came from several states and, other than quoting an old president, didn’t have anything in common.

“
Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.
John F. Kennedy said it.”

“Some kind of replacement alphabet?” Jude asked. “Or maybe an anagram.”

“Not one I’ve been able to figure out.”

Clover looked at her feet, at the red Chucks that someday would wear through. At least West had saved their mother’s letters for her. He would never get to work for the Company. She’d worked her last day for them, too. If they survived this, they would both be blacklisted. At least. Clover really had no idea what would happen to her. She knew all too well what they’d do to her brother, and that there was a real possibility she’d share his fate.

“I keep thinking,” she said. “Maybe it’s wrong for me to go with you guys to meet Waverly.”

“How can that be wrong?” Jude held up a hand to stop her from talking. “We stick together. That’s the plan.”

“The Company will look for me, if I leave. Harder than the rest of you, except maybe West and Bridget. If I stay, maybe it will take some of the pressure off you.”

“Don’t say that again. I’m serious. I don’t want to hear it.”

“Just think about it.”

“Just think about this. You said your trainer gave you a quote. Maybe she was trying to warn you against doing something stupid like staying behind in the city by yourself.”

Clover tracked West down outside, standing with his
back against the wall next to the door, where he could get inside again quickly if he needed to. He looked stronger. Healthier. His color was back, anyway.

“How’re you feeling?” Clover asked.

“Much better.”

“That’s good.”

West turned to face her directly. “Is everything okay with you?”

“I feel like there’s something we’re missing,” she said. “About the quotes. Remember, I told you about the Roosevelt one. What do you think they mean, West?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they don’t mean anything. Maybe someone just thinks they sound cool.”

“But people from all over the country are leaving them. They must mean
something
.”

“What are you thinking?”

“I think they’re some kind of communication. They’re in the classifieds; that means whoever is placing them wants them to be read. Everyone reads them. Everyone but you, anyway.”

“So what, like a secret handshake in the newspaper?”

“Maybe. Or a message. A code or something.”

“You’ll figure it out, Clover.”

She looked up at him. He’d changed in the last few days. Something about him was different. “I’m scared.”

“Of what?”

“All of it. Talking to Ned Waverly on the nets, him knowing stuff about us, never going home again. What if you’re arrested because of my idea? You’ll be executed. What if everything falls apart because I go AWOL from the Company?”

“I won’t be arrested, and everything won’t fall apart.”

“You can’t know that.”

“No, but I believe it. Or I want to, anyway. Waverly says we all get out safe. And I had an article in the zine.”

He did. “I didn’t.”

“Don’t overthink this. You’ll only drive yourself crazy. We have to move forward. We have no choice.”

“Do you think Waverly will agree to our plan?”

“Yes, I do.”

She was already driving herself crazy. Everything depended on Waverly agreeing to a plan that she would never have any memory of telling him about.

It took an hour to organize and prepare the Dinosaur
for their absence. They arranged the rooms they’d slept in like no one had been there and moved their storage into a room at the end of a hallway where it would be less likely to be found.

Phire and Christopher let the chickens go in the yard of a house they’d taken food from before. Clover hoped they’d be taken care of.

“I still think this is a crazy plan,” Phire said before they left.

Jude pushed the last bird into its cage. “We should eat these birds, at least.”

Maybe, but they didn’t have time to butcher them. What Clover wished was that they were just leaving the chickens at the Dinosaur. Giving their birds away was a silent acceptance that they might not be back.

Jude set the cage with the others, against the wall. “Just be careful, okay. You see the guard, get out of the way.”

“Fine,” Phire said. “But if after all this, ‘Waverly’ turns out not to be
the
Waverly, I’m going to shove a big piece of I-told-you-so in your face.”

“Agreed.”

“What did you say?” Clover asked. She had a strong mental image of a groom shoving cake in a bride’s face during a wedding reception. She’d never been to one, but she’d seen it happen in old movies. There was a picture in her trunk at home, one she’d probably never see again, of her father with white frosting all over his face and her mother laughing with a chunk of cake in her hand.

“It just means he’s going to rub it in my face.”

Laughter bubbled up and out, and it felt good. Like a teakettle releasing steam. Both boys looked at her like she’d lost her mind, but she didn’t care. “Maybe Waverly will know what Bennett wanted with Bridget in the first place.”

“She’s a pretty girl. Could be he’s just a perv,” Jude said.

Clover sobered as she remembered feeling uncomfortable when he touched her. “He put a dispatch out on West. He’s more than a perv.”

“The headmaster and the man in charge of student recruitment at the Company,” Jude said. “They’re an odd couple, for sure.”

“Kingston sent me to Bennett directly. He gave me a letter—” Clover inhaled, and blinked several times as she tried to remember something that flirted around the edges of her memory.

“What?” Jude asked. “What is it?”

She closed her eyes and saw Kingston’s office. The picture of Bridget on the bookshelf, the window that opened out into the campus courtyard. The electric lights that were such a waste. The huge desk with a thousand drawers.

“When I came to Kingston’s office, the letter was already written. Already addressed to Bennett.”

“Maybe it was just a standard letter of introduction or something.”

“No. It had my test scores inside. And information about my brother and our dad.”

“He knew he was going to send you to the Company before your interview?”

“Where’s West?”

Clover flung open the door to West’s bedroom and
nearly gave him a heart attack. She barreled in with Mango at her heels.
How can someone so small be so much like a hurricane?
Their father used to say that, and it was true. She slid to a stop with Jude right behind her.

“I think your dad has something to do with this,” she said to Bridget.

“What’s going on?” West put a hand out to stop Bridget from getting defensive too quickly.

Clover pointed a finger at Bridget, then flapped both of her hands a few times and started to bounce on her toes. Mango huffed and pressed against her legs. “Her dad had a letter of introduction all ready for me when I got to my interview. It was in his desk, addressed to Bennett with my test scores inside. Before he ever met me, he planned to send me to work at the Company. I want to know why.”

“Calm down, Clover. Whatever happened at the Academy, it isn’t Bridget’s fault.”

“Stop protecting her!”

“Stop attacking her.”

“What did your father get out of sending students to Bennett?” Jude asked Bridget.

“What do you think he got? A promotion he had no business getting. A big house, enough food. Horses, for God’s sake. My father traded kids like Clover for advancement and security and comfort for himself and me.”

“Kids like me?” Clover said. “Like with autism?”

The room went silent. Could that be it? It seemed so obvious once Clover said it out loud.

“Why does Bennett want kids with autism?” Clover asked Bridget.

“She doesn’t know,” West said.

Bridget cut him off before he could defend her further. “You don’t understand.”

“What is there to understand?” Clover’s voice rose almost to the point of yelling. “That he needed an
estate
.”

“That’s enough,” West said.

“No. She’s right. He’s greedy. Do you think I don’t know my own father?”

Clover split a glare between West and Bridget. “You should have told us.”