“The little fella?”
“Voice down. Don’t attract attention,” Violet warned. Piper put her eyes back on her basket and listened more closely. “That’s Jasper. He’s the youngest. No one knows what he can do. Story goes that when he came here, Nurse Tolle yelled at him so bad, he forgot.”
Piper looked at Jasper in amazement. She’d sure love to solve that mystery. “What about him?” Piper nodded at Conrad.
“Shhhhhhh.” Violet’s fingers accidentally snapped the twig she was twisting into place on her basket and Piper couldn’t help but marvel at the fact that she also shrank several inches. “That’s Conrad. Don’t look at him and don’t talk to him. He’s trouble. Big trouble. Just stay as far away from him as you can. Conrad runs this place. Always has. He’s a genius, but more than a genius. They say he’s fifteen times smarter than Einstein. He’s so smart they’re all afraid of him, even Nurse Tolle. Conrad’s mean and he does bad things. Terrible things.”
“What sorta terrible things?” Piper’s mouth hung open and she looked from Violet to Conrad.
“Things that will hurt you.” Violet met Piper’s eyes for the first time and Piper saw fear in her face.
“Was it him who did something to Bella?”
Violet shrugged and shrank several inches more.
“You reckon Bella’ll be alright?” Piper persisted.
“You don’t even know what you don’t know yet and I can tell that you’re the sort of girl who’ll go and get herself into trouble. Get herself hurt. Like Bella.” Violet shook her head sadly. “We have rules down here and if you don’t know them or follow them, you’ll pay the price. Rule number one: Don’t mess with Conrad and if you value your health, you’ll learn it fast.”
“But Bella—”
“Listen to me, you’ve gotta get Bella out of your head. There’s nothing we can do for her now.”
Piper wanted to argue with Violet, but Violet turned to her basket again and didn’t say another word.
“Professor Mumbleby.” Conrad raised his hand politely. “The glue is all gone.” He held up the glue container and turned it over to demonstrate its emptiness.
“Yeah, we’re—”
“—out too,” chimed in the Mustafa twins.
Professor Mumbleby sighed. The art room was on the third tier of the thirteenth level facing the atrium and the supply closet was on the first tier, about as far away as it could possibly be. He’d specifically arranged for double the necessary supplies to prevent just such a predicament.
“I see.” Professor Mumbleby irritably got to his feet. “You vill all behave until my return.” He fixed a few of the students with a pointed look.
Conrad shifted the twenty stolen glue bottles that he’d hoarded in his desk and waited long enough for Professor Mumbleby’s footsteps to quiet in the hall.
Haughtily rising to his feet, Conrad assumed command of the classroom. “Jasper, what do you have there?” He sauntered through the rows, stopping at Jasper’s desk, where the already tiny boy vainly attempted to make himself even smaller.
“This doesn’t look like a basket to me.” Conrad snatched up Jasper’s half-finished basket and swung it back and forth at eye level in front of Jasper. “Are you trying to pass this piece of rubbish off as art? You think we’re stupid? You think I’m stupid?”
Strangled whimpers started to emerge from Jasper’s throat. By this point, Nalen and Ahmed were flanking Conrad. They enjoyed a good fight and loved it when Conrad stirred up a bit of trouble.
“Say what, Jasper? What did you say?” Conrad leaned in closer to Jasper as though he could hear Jasper saying something. “You think I’m wrong? You think your basket is good?”
Piper’s agony at being forced to witness the spectacle of a small child being picked on by someone twice his size quickly morphed into a furious rage. Fidgeting in her seat on the verge of exploding, Piper’s forearm was abruptly seized by the steadying hand of Violet. “Don’t do anything, Piper. Sit down. Don’t look at them.”
“But he’s bullying! That ain’t right!”
“It’s not your business. You can’t do anything about it anyway.”
Conrad started bashing Jasper’s basket violently against his desk, and Jasper burst into sobs. A second later Piper could stomach it no longer and jerked her arm out of Violet’s hold; she leapt to her feet.
“Hey, Conrad, you let him be,” Piper yelled. “Din’t anyone ever tell you it ain’t right to bully? Why don’t you pick on someone your own size!”
Violet sighed in the way you do when you know something bad is going to happen, but hope against hope that it won’t, but it does anyway and you realize that you always knew it would and were stupid for having made yourself believe that you could stop it.
Piper came to the other side of Jasper’s desk and confronted Conrad head-on, her eyes blazing. “Get back his basket to him.”
Conrad smiled, like a cat that just swallowed a canary. “I’m sorry, what did you say? Get back his basket? Are you speaking English or is that some primitive grunting language? Unga bunga. Maybe if you could actually communicate like a human being and not a hayseed, I’d return the basket.”
Piper shook with rage. “You know what I mean. It ain’t yours. And you’re bigger than him besides. Now give it back.”
“You’re confused, new girl. It’s clear you need guidance on exactly how things work around here.”
Nalen and Ahmed sneered and nodded their heads. The rest of the class waited with bated breath.
“Don’t need no one telling me the difference between what’s right and wrong. Especially the likes of you. And I know a bully when I see one. And that basket you’re holding doesn’t belong to you. Now get it back.” Piper seethed. “NOW!” she yelled.
Conrad smirked. “Shucks, seeing as you puts it that way, I’m guessin’ I’d best do as you says.” Conrad held the basket out at arm’s length in front of Jasper. “Well, what are you waiting for, Jasper? Here it is. Take it.”
Jasper looked to Piper for guidance and she nodded for him to take it. Terrified out of his mind, Jasper reached out one thin, shaking arm. All watched the slow journey of his lone hand until it finally arrived at the basket and tentatively moved to grasp the handle. At that very second, right before his fingers could touch the wood, Conrad suddenly snapped the basket back, flung it around, and tossed it across the room.
Professor Mumbleby had opened one of the windows, but the basket avoided falling to the atrium floor by a mere three inches, and instead got caught on the rail above the window, which hung some thirteen feet above the classroom floor.
“You stinking piece of cow poo!”
“Be that as it may, there it is, Piper. If you’d like Jasper to have his basket back, I invite you to retrieve it at your earliest convenience.” Conrad nodded to the basket on the rail, challengingly. “Allow me to rephrase that so you can understand—go fetch, girl. G’on now. Fetch. Yeee-hawwww.”
Piper was fit to be tied. “Don’t think I won’t!”
“Don’t think? What I think is that you are a stupid hick who doesn’t know a basket from a brick. And if there’s any thinking to be done around here, I’ll be the one doing it.” Conrad moved around the desk and came face-to-face with Piper.
“Your fancy words don’t fool no one. All that thinking that goes on in your head don’t make you smart. Or didn’t anyone tell you that yet?” Piper stepped around Conrad and marched across the classroom to the window.
Instantly the class abandoned their seats and crowded around Piper as she climbed atop a desk located directly beneath the basket. Reaching to her full height, she was still well below her goal of reaching Jasper’s basket.
Ahmed and Nalen snickered knowingly.
Undaunted, Piper stacked a chair atop the desk and climbed both the desk and then the chair, carefully rising to her full height, only to discover that once again, the basket was still out of reach.
The kids murmured in anticipation a
s they watched Piper stack a second chair atop the desk and, with precarious movements, climb all three. Several times Piper lost her balance and Conrad, with gleeful anticipation, expected her to fall, while the other children gasped in horror.
Smitty leaned over to Kimber, speaking out of the side of his mouth. “Four bucks says her tailbone gets an introduction to the floor.”
“Make it ten.”
“You’re on, Sparky.”
At her full height, above two chairs and one desk, Piper reached and her fingers fluttered a mere two inches beneath the basket. Her feet were stretched upward and she balanced on the very tips of her toes, but could go no farther. The chairs swayed dangerously.
“Careful, Piper,” Violet urged. Lily watched through her fingers.
Piper knew that Conrad was already smugly anticipating her empty-handed descent. Thinks he’s so smart. But he doesn’t know everything and I’ll be darned if he gets the best of me. She was going to do whatever it took to get Jasper’s basket back to him and show Conrad a thing or two. Piper closed her eyes and silently said the words.
Because the rest of the class was closely gathered at the foot of the desk Piper was standing on, they weren’t able to see what was happening above them. It was Conrad, haughtily leaning off to the side, who saw everything. Like everyone else who saw it for the first time, it took his breath away.
Piper flew. Not much. Just those two inches and then she grabbed the basket and got her feet right back onto the chair.
Conrad was shocked and surprised. Novel emotions for a genius for whom the unexpected was often anticipated with unerring accuracy. His facial muscles registered nothing of the electromagnetic firestorm of cognitive excitement that was instantly sparked inside his brain. In short order (meaning in less than two to three seconds, tops) Conrad processed Piper’s capacity to fly, generated and then reviewed all options, selected a course of action, and then calculated its success to a two percent plus or minus degree. Thus accomplished, Conrad confidently set forth.
Piper turned triumphantly to the class, holding the basket like a trophy above her head.
“She did it!” Kimber shouted, excited to have won the bet with Smitty. Except for Nalen and Ahmed, the others gave out various cheers and excited gasps. Especially Violet.
Piper gently dropped the basket into Jasper’s grateful little hands and he smiled nervously up at her and blushed in appreciation.
“Looks like you owe someone an apology.” Piper grinned, noticing that Conrad’s face kept a stony calm as the kids turned to him. He’d been the undisputed class leader for so long, it was both sacrilegious and exhilarating to have him challenged.
“You mean, apologize? To Jasper?” Conrad strutted forward and the children parted to allow him a path to the desk. “Perhaps you’re right. An apology is in order. But not to Jasper, to you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you.” Conrad reached the desk. “For the record, I’m very sorry. Perhaps one day you’ll know exactly how much.” With that, Conrad reached forward and gently touched the edge of the bottom chair upon which Piper was delicately balanced. It was the exact amount of pressure placed at precisely the point required, as Conrad well knew, to send Piper toppling in only one direction.
“Whoa.” Piper flailed, her arms swinging.
“Watch out,” Violet squeaked.
Piper swayed first left, then right, then left again, and to the surprise of all gathered, except Conrad, at last fell backward, arms swinging like a windmill, out the open window directly behind her. A second later she was gone.
Silence.
Not a child moved, so shocked were they by the outcome of events. The classroom was three floors above the atrium floor—a fall that would have killed any one of them. Kimber’s face went bright red. Violet’s face went white and she forgot herself and all the rules completely and turned on Conrad furiously. “You killed her. You killed her!”
Conrad sauntered away unperturbed. “You think?”
Still none of the other kids moved and absolutely no one went to the window to look out, for fear of what terrible sight might be waiting for them on the hard stone of the atrium floor below.
Jasper, being the youngest and most fragile, began to cry.
“She’s dead,” Lily whimpered. And they all believed it to be true, except one.
Then suddenly, Piper shot upward, soaring through the air. “Ha. I told ya, you ain’t none too smart, Conrad, or else you’d know well and good that you can’t keep a good girl down.”
Conrad snorted and rolled his eyes. Everyone else was rendered mute with astonishment.
“She can fly.” Violet almost fainted with relief. “She’s alright because she can fly.”
“Man, would ya look at her fly.” Smitty clapped his hands together.
The cheer that rose was deafening. Daisy pounded the floor and her strength was so great, the very room shook. Myrtle began clapping her hands together so fast, it sounded as though she was an entire stadium of fans. And the others just cheered.
“She can fly!”
“I wish I could do that!”
“I knew she wasn’t psychic.”
Piper smirked at Conrad and performed a few twirls and loops for his benefit and to rub it in a little bit too. “How do you like them apples, Conrad?”
“I like them just fine. Please, carry on.” Turning his back, he returned to his seat and casually sat down.
“Do another twirl, Piper,” Lily called out, clapping.
“And go faster,” Kimber prompted.
The kids hung out the windows raptly cheering Piper’s every move, and Piper couldn’t have been more thrilled. Not only did they accept her flying, they welcomed it. Truly, she had finally found a home! She completed a complicated twist loop combination in sheer pleasure.
So great was the excitement and distraction that no one heard Professor Mumbleby’s approaching footsteps, nor see him stop dead at the threshold of the class and gasp. Except, of course, Conrad.
“VHAT IS GOING ON HERE?” he roared. Kids scattered like buckshot, clearly exposing Piper outside the window. Piper froze in midair, a deer in the crosshairs.
“PIPER McCLOUD!!! YOU ARE BREAKING ZHE RULES.”
CHAPTER TEN
“NEIN. NEIN. Sie nuss verwiefen werden!” Infuriated, Professor Mumbleby had temporarily lost his English vocabulary entirely and was pacing back and forth in Dr. Hellion’s office, spitting out German in such a way that his meaning was entirely all too clear.
Sitting behind her desk in her large, white office, Dr. Hellion was the picture of calm, composure, and rationality. Agent A. Agent stood silently behind her right shoulder like a statue, and behind him was a wall of glass through which you could see the rest of the facility. Piper, who’d been placed in the hot seat before the desk, sat on the edge of her chair, nervously waiting to plead her case, which was not an easy task with Professor Mumbleby and Nurse Tolle competing to be heard.
“She had Daisy pounding the floor,” Nurse Tolle pitched in as soon as Professor Mumbleby momentarily paused for breath. “The entire building was shaking and now we’ve got structural damage on levels eight to thirteen. And I’m not even getting into Myrtle’s clapping. Sounded like the Super Bowl and there’s a snail with hearing damage on level three because of it. Not to mention the others . . .”
“Conrad went and pushed me out the window. I’da died if I didn’t fly,” Piper hotly protested in her own defense.
“We don’t need another Bella.”
“Zhis one is a bad influence!”
“She’s a troublemaker.”
“I keep tellin’ you that Conrad was bullying a smaller kid,” Piper repeated, all too aware that Conrad had, hands down, won the battle. She’d swallowed his bait, hook, line, and sinker, while he sat back enjoying the spectacle of having her unceremoniously yanked from the classroom. “It’s not right. Surely you can see that. And I didn’t jump out the window, I was pushed.”
> Dr. Hellion listened to Piper thoughtfully.
“I demand zhat you send her home. Immediately.”
All at once Piper realized that things were a lot more serious than she had first imagined. They’re gonna pack me off home with my tail between my legs? Then what? Piper silently begged Dr. Hellion to give her another chance.
“Piper,” Dr. Hellion interjected evenly before Nurse Tolle or Professor Mumbleby could interrupt. “Do you remember the discussion we had earlier today? You told me that you wouldn’t fly. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes, but . . .” Dr. Hellion raised an eyebrow and Piper stopped herself before she continued. “Yes, ma’am. I remember.”
“I’m glad to hear that, Piper. Now, when you agreed not to fly, did you understand that you were making a commitment both to me and this institution?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“So, you understand that you broke that agreement?” Dr. Hellion quietly pointed out.
“But . . .” Piper gulped, feeling lower than a snake’s belly. “I guess, well, yes. And I’m truly sorry. More than you’ll ever know.”
“Albeit you had your reasons, but Piper, you must understand that Professor Mumbleby is responsible for your safety as well as order in the classroom. If you have a problem, you must ask for help. Understand?”
Piper nodded contritely. “Yes.”
“I’d like a moment alone with Piper if you wouldn’t mind,” Dr. Hellion said to Professor Mumbleby and Nurse Tolle. Reluctantly, they allowed Agent Agent to escort them from the office, closing the door after them.
“I’m awful sorry, Dr. Hellion,” Piper stammered, tears welling. “I’m begging you not to send me home. I swear I won’t fly like that again.”
Dr. Hellion watched Piper closely. In the uncomfortable pause that followed, Piper shifted back and forth, waiting on tenterhooks for Dr. Hellion’s verdict. After the way Dr. Hellion had been so nice to her, Piper felt just terrible for letting her down.
When Dr. Hellion finally did speak, she did so in the same even tones and rational manner that made everything make sense. “Piper, I am here to help you. We are all here to help you and the rules we have created are for precisely that purpose. They ensure your safety, protection, and growth. If you don’t follow them it won’t be possible for us to assist you, and if that’s the case, there is no reason for you to be here or to participate in our program.” Dr. Hellion paused, watching Piper to make sure she was really listening and understanding. “The reality of your situation is that there is nowhere else for you to go and no one else who can help you. We’re it. This opportunity is the best you’ll ever get.”