Piper nodded, knowing Dr. Hellion was right.
Dr. Hellion stood up and walked to the large glass window in her office to look out over the amazing facility that stretched high above them.
“This is the bottom line, Piper. I have been doing this long enough to know that ultimately you can’t force someone to do something that they don’t want to do. Therefore I won’t try to tell you what to do or what choices to make. Those decisions belong entirely to you and I will respect whatever path you take.” Dr. Hellion spoke firmly, harshly even. “However, if you choose to stay with us, you will follow the rules. And that is non-negotiable. One more incident, regardless of who is at fault, and you will leave. From this moment on, if you choose to stay, you will be a model student and anything less is entirely unacceptable.” Dr. Hellion turned, holding Piper’s eyes in her own with a firm stare. “Is that understood?”
Piper’s body flooded with relief. “Yes, Dr. Hellion.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear it, Piper.” Dr. Hellion smiled warmly. “Anyone can make a mistake. I understand that. I will be very disappointed, though, if I ever find out that you are willfully being disobedient. You see, Piper, I wouldn’t be surprised if one day, not too long from now, you’ll be standing right where I am and running this entire institute.”
“Me?” Piper was shocked.
“Yes, you. I see so much of myself in you, Piper. I have faith in you and I know you have what it takes.”
Piper was deeply moved. No one had ever said something like that to her before, let alone thought it. She wanted to be deserving of Dr. Hellion’s high opinion and make her proud of her. “That’d be swell.”
“Wonderful,” Dr. Hellion corrected.
“That’d be wonderful,” Piper repeated.
“You’re like an innocent and naive lamb, Piper McCloud, just waiting to find your way back to the safety of the flock. I hope that you’ll let me shepherd you back.” Dr. Hellion sighed and returned to her desk, remembering herself. “Well, I think that is enough excitement for one day. I believe your classmates are all preparing for lights-out. If you hurry, you won’t be late.”
“Thank you, Dr. Hellion.” Relieved and thrilled to have so narrowly escaped a near disaster, Piper rushed from the room before Dr. Hellion changed her mind. Passing through the adjoining waiting room, Nurse Tolle and Professor Mumbleby immediately shot her dirty looks.
“She can stay, for now,” Dr. Hellion stated flatly when they came back into her office. It was clear that both Nurse Tolle and Professor Mumbleby adamantly disagreed, as testified to by the expression on their faces. Dr. Hellion either didn’t notice, which was unlikely, or didn’t care, which was closer to the truth. “But keep an eye on Conrad. He’s up to something, that much is certain. He never does anything without a carefully calculated reason.”
THE DORMITORY was on the third tier of the thirteenth level and each student had their own room. Piper’s room was toward the very end of the hallway and was a cozy retreat. A fluffy down duvet rested on a cushy bed. The small corner desk held a shiny, white computer above which rested shelves of books deemed by Professor Mumbleby as suitable for the development of young minds. Pictures of trees and forests and brightly colored flowers completed an overall cheerful and incredibly inviting effect.
Rushing to meet the bedtime deadline, Piper went to her closet, where a fresh uniform, pressed and ready for her to wear the following day, was waiting. Next to it hung a gym outfit, a nightdress, and a bathrobe, all arranged neatly in a row. They were all new and perfectly tailored to meet Piper’s measurements. Despite the time pressure, she paused to run her fingers appreciatively down the soft robe before quickly shedding her uniform and slipping into her nightdress. A moment later she jumped into bed and turned off the lights.
“That’s it, lights-out.” Nurse Tolle’s voice boomed up and down the dormitory hallway. “That means you, Smitty.”
Nurse Tolle passed by and checked in on Piper, completing what would be the first of many night checks performed throughout the course of the evening.
“Good night and God bless, Nurse Tolle,” Piper said as he passed.
Nurse Tolle stopped dead in his tracks and spun around to face Piper. “What’d you say, McCloud?”
Piper gulped, peeping over her covers at the hulking figure of Nurse Tolle lodged in her doorway. “Uh, good night and God bless. It’s what my ma says every night before I go to sleep, sir.”
“That right?”
Piper nodded.
“Huh.” He turned to go and then changed his mind. “My mama said the same thing to me too.” An unexpected softness blazed across his face, but he ruthlessly squashed it. “No talking after lights-out, McCloud. That’s the rules.”
“I’m sure sorry.”
“I can still hear you talking, McCloud!!”
“But there’s no one here to say it to me. It’s the first time in all my days I’ll go to bed not hearing it.” Piper suddenly wanted her ma and pa so badly it hurt all over.
“That’s tough, McCloud, ’cause you’re not hearing it from me. So suck it up.”
“But—”
“You got a problem, McCloud? You want me to call Dr. Hellion for you?”
Piper swallowed her tears as best she could. “No, sir. No problem.”
“Glad to hear it. Now lights-out and no talking.” Nurse Tolle waited to make sure Piper really was good and quiet before he continued down the corridor.
“I can see that light on, Lily. One more bounce of that ball, Ahmed or Nalen or whoever the heck you are, and it’ll belong to me.”
Before long, all the noise died and the soft hum of the facility filled the air. It was the first quiet Piper had heard in what had to be the most exhausting and confusing day of her life. A wave of tiredness passed over her. She’d never slept anywhere but the farm, never on any bed but her own, and her day always ended with a “Good night and God bless” from her ma. But not tonight. Tonight she was all alone in a place far, far away, surrounded by strangers.
Snuggling down under her covers, she clung to the little wood bird her father had so lovingly carved and said a quick prayer for Bella, and her ma and pa, and Dr. Hellion, and all of the other kids too.
“Good night and God bless, Piper,” she whispered quietly to herself.
“Good night and God bless, Ma. Good night and God bless, Pa.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
WITH SURPRISING ease, Piper settled into the routine at her new home. She discovered that she wanted for nothing, and everything from her soft bed to the delicious food was specifically tailored for her comfort. Like a fivestar resort catering to the very rich and finicky, Professor Mumbleby and Nurse Tolle overlooked no detail no matter how small when considering the kids’ needs—from arts and crafts to music to a varied athletic schedule.
“I can’t turn this way or that without having to learn something new these days,” Piper told Dr. Hellion one evening several weeks into her stay. Dr. Hellion often invited Piper to stroll in the atrium with her before lights-out, and Piper looked forward to their special time together more than anything else. Dr. Hellion never granted individual time to any of the other children, despite the fact that they were clamoring to get her attention, and Piper was grateful for her attentiveness and advice.
“Professor Mumbleby says that I’m pretty much the slowest student he’s ever had. He says that for someone with so many grand ideas, I can’t spell worth nothing and he thinks it’s more likely we’ll make first contact with aliens before I end up getting the hang of those multiplication tables. I can learn ’em fine—I just can’t think up a good enough reason to pay them any mind. What’s the point learnin’ eleven times eleven anyways? Doesn’t do anyone any good knowing such things. Besides, if someone’s gotta know it, seems to me that Conrad’s got that covered nine ways to Sunday. I asked Professor Mumbleby just the other day when I could fly again and he said it wasn’t likely to be soon, and I thought I’d be real sad but I ain?
??t. I mean, I’m not.” Piper was trying to talk like the other children, and was making progress. “But I guess that’s because we’re doin’ so much stuff I hardly have time to think straight. Didya know that Nurse Tolle said I’d get to be on the trampoline next exercise class and he’s going to teach me somersaults? He sure comes off mean, but the other night when I said, ‘Good night and God bless, Nurse Tolle,’ he didn’t once tell me I was breaking the rules like he normally does. Course he didn’t say it back, but I bet he was thinking it, and it won’t be long before he’s saying it loud as you please. I reckon deep down he wants to. You think?”
Dr. Hellion considered the matter. “I don’t see any harm in trying, regardless of whether he does or doesn’t.”
Piper liked the way Dr. Hellion always spoke to her like an equal and listened, not just pretended to listen. “Did I tell you that last week in gym class when Nurse Tolle told us to get partners, Violet asked me to be her partner? She did. Just like that she said real quietly, ‘You wanna be partners?’ and I said, ‘You betcha!’ right off. No one’s ever asked me before. I’ve gotta admit I felt real special afterwards. Now whenever there’s supposed to be partners Violet and I just know that we’ll be partners. It’s comforting to have that. And we walk to classes together too, and Violet waits for me to finish up in the morning and tells me not to be late ’cause of how sore Nurse Tolle gets about lateness. She doesn’t even mind the fact that I like to talk so much. Ma says that I’d talk the hind leg off a donkey, but Violet says she likes it ’cause then she don’t have to talk, which she doesn’t like to do, as it makes her shrink. Wasn’t that nice of her? I think that makes us friends. Don’t you?”
“I think that does,” Dr. Hellion agreed.
“She’s my first friend ever. It’s real nice having a friend. It makes you feel . . .” Piper thought for a moment, trying to put the right words to it, “. . . connected. Like someone is watching out for you and you’re watching out for them.”
“That’s a nice way of putting it, Piper.” Dr. Hellion received daily reports from Professor Mumbleby and Nurse Tolle, and although Piper may not have been aware of it, she was already very popular with most of the other children, which said a lot, because they were a prickly and difficult lot who routinely rejected and ostracized classmates, particularly new ones. Just the other day, Professor Mumbleby had recounted how Jasper wouldn’t let Piper out of his sight and followed her around like a lost puppy. The others were starting to follow Piper’s example and look to her for leadership too.
“D’ya think I’ll get a letter from my ma and pa soon? I write to them almost every other day and I haven’t heard a thing back yet. Course, it’s getting close to harvesttime and things are awfully busy on the farm, so maybe they didn’t get time. That’s one thing about being down here, it’s like time took a holiday and you can’t tell one day from the next.”
“I’ll keep an eye out for any letter.”
A bell sounded on the third tier, jolting Piper. “Jiminy, that’s first bell. Lights out in less than three minutes.”
“Good night, Piper.”
“Good night, Dr. Hellion.” Piper dashed off and thankfully slipped beneath her covers and switched her light off moments before Nurse Tolle’s form filled her door frame.
“You’re lucky, McCloud. You were almost late!”
“But I wasn’t, Nurse Tolle, sir.”
“I got my eye on you, McCloud.”
“I know it, sir.”
Nurse Tolle lingered a beat.
“Good night and God bless, Nurse Tolle.”
“Huh.” He gruffly turned on his heel and left. Piper could hear him moving from room to room as she settled more deeply beneath her covers. Something she hadn’t told Dr. Hellion, probably because she didn’t quite realize it herself, was that a calm had begun to settle over her like none she had ever known before, thanks to the structured and regulated environment. Her thoughts settled and slowed in such a way that they were more manageable and relaxing. She slept more deeply at night and the burning sensation that had relentlessly pushed her to ask, discover, and explore grew less persistent and bothersome. Piper found she liked it better this way.
As weeks quickly slipped by, Piper settled in further and this feeling deepened. It was exactly when Piper had reached the point of almost blissful relaxation and when everything seemed to finally all make sense that, as if on cue, things started to go very wrong very quickly. And Conrad was entirely to blame.
FROM THE very first day she arrived, Conrad Harrington had refocused all his energy on one single purpose—the demise of Piper McCloud. With unerring accuracy and a dark insight, Conrad systematically targeted Piper to the nth degree and caused her trouble at every turn. First Piper’s homework assignment went inexplicably missing, then Nurse Tolle discovered her bed unmade (even though Piper swore up and down she had made it). In gym class the rope Piper was climbing broke and she fell to the floor, and then her pen exploded, leaving a large black ink stain on her dress. And that was only what Conrad did in the first week.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if Conrad didn’t even have a soul,” Piper confided in Violet after Conrad locked her in a classroom, making her late for lunch. Piper couldn’t begin to imagine what perverse satisfaction Conrad derived from orchestrating his malicious pranks. Whether he was motivated by boredom, or he enjoyed causing other people grief, or he just had a black heart, such cruelty was completely outside Piper’s range of experience.
Piper fought against his onslaught with passive resistance, hoping he would soon tire and find other things to occupy his attention. To all outward appearances, she acted as though Conrad didn’t exist and met all his mischief with calm equanimity. It must be noted that this was easier said than done, and much to Piper’s credit, she had ingeniously devised a foolproof way of accomplishing this each and every time, regardless of Conrad’s dirty tactics. With great care, Piper had used a ribbon to fasten Joe’s wood bird around her neck so that it rested against her heart. Her precious wood bird provided her with a link to her parents and her home, giving her the strength, despite anything Conrad happened to be doing, to take the high road. Besides which, she learned her lesson after the art class incident and couldn’t risk being expelled.
Unfortunately, nothing irked Conrad more and his fixation was violently inflamed by Piper’s seeming indifference and Zen-like acceptance. Conrad first doubled, then tripled his efforts, until at last things reached the point of complete intolerability (and even Gandhi himself would have shaken his fist and shouted warlike cries) as he pushed Piper to the brink.
“Move it, fatso.” Conrad gave Piper a sharp shove in the corridor on the way to morning class. He pushed her forcefully, throwing her off balance so that her books scattered every which way. Nalen and Ahmed snickered, enjoying the spectacle of Piper crawling on her hands and knees to collect her tangled books. The rest of the kids carefully kept out of the fray, except Violet, who stayed loyally by Piper’s side.
“Don’t pay any attention to him,” Violet urged Piper.
“Aren’t you supposed to eat like a bird, fly girl?” Conrad kicked a book out of Piper’s reach. “You look like a turkey gobbling your breakfast. Or a pig. Gobble gobble. Oink. Oink.”
“It’s plain as day that you’re green with envy.” Piper calmly picked up her last book as her hand instinctively took hold of her wood bird. “And green isn’t your color, Conrad.”
“Envious of what? You?” Conrad laughed. Nalen and Ahmed joined him.
“I saw you spying on me last night when I was walking with Dr. Hellion. You were trying to listen to us too. It chaps your big toe knowing Dr. Hellion wants to walk with me and not you.”
Piper’s aim was true and Conrad flushed in response. Lashing out, he grabbed hold of her arm, holding it so tightly that she would notice bruise marks later on. “You’re as dumb as a fence post, Piper McCloud.” Conrad got into her face, staring her down. “Why don’t you open your eyes?”
<
br /> “I see plenty. Like how you’re always stealing food from Jasper.” From what Piper could discern, Conrad seemed to subsist on a diet of plain lettuce leaves and rice. A habit that, in Piper’s mind, would turn anyone mean or crazy and went a long way in explaining his peculiar behavior. While he had no appetite for his own food, he routinely stole food from everyone else and his victim of choice was Jasper, who was too weak and helpless to defend himself. “In case you never learned it, when you take stuff that belongs to other people that’s called stealing, and that makes you a thief.”
Conrad’s lip curled up and his eyes squinted in fury as the morning bell rang. In the mad dash to class, the meanness and madness deep inside Conrad bubbled to the surface and swallowed him whole. By the end of that very day, come what may, Conrad silently vowed that he would break Piper McCloud.
“Class, you vill be pleased to hear that Bella has completely recovered and vill be graduating,” Professor Mumbleby announced as soon as Piper and Violet were seated. Immediately an eruption of surprised gasps and whispers rippled through the room. “Later zhis afternoon you vill all attend her graduation party and I expect zhat you vill be on your very, very best behavior.”
Piper shared a gleeful smile of anticipation with Violet. Since Bella’s collapse, Piper had lost count of the number of times she’d asked after her, only to receive the same response: “Bella’s not feeling well and needs her rest.” Piper was overjoyed at the prospect of seeing her again, and when afternoon finally came, she rushed with Violet to the atrium and found that it had been festively decorated with balloons and streamers and a large sign that read, GOOD LUCK, BELLA! in multicolored, bright lettering. While waiting for the guest of honor, games were organized and played with much gusto. Graduations were few and far between and the excitement level was running high. As was often the case when something new and off of the ordinary schedule was allowed, which hardly ever happened, the students couldn’t quite seem to control themselves. Try as they might, it just proved too difficult for most of them to remember the rules and restrain themselves when there was so much fun and excitement to be had. Needless to say, there were many slipups, both big and small.