“Sorry. Bad with names. Where are we again?”
“Somerset. School for the gifted. Your parents sent you here while they’re on sabbatical.”
“I told you all this?” I was suddenly chilled standing in the drafty bathroom in my underwear.
“No. I hacked into the school files and checked you out. You were mysteriously mum. Chelmsley and his cronies paid me to find out about your particulars.”
“And?” I prompted.
“Your DOB is January 6th, 1996. You were born in Cornwall. Your name is Aidan Argent. Your parents are Moira and Michael, both missionaries in Africa for the next three years while you finish Prep School. You have a trust that funds this place. You’re paid up until January and then, another 3000 pounds are due. Your school fees are paid with money orders or bank drafts, sometimes-prepaid credit cards that the financial officers think is odd. Your transcripts show excellent grades and exceptional language skills.”
“You hacked into my files,” I said flatly.
“A few others, too. Chelmsley and Glenellen like to make sure their victims are worthy of their attention. But then, you are so pretty he’s made an exception in your case.”
“What are you his pimp?” I was adding in my head, another 16 years had gone by since my last life. I’d been 14 in 93 and now, was only 16 in 2012.
I could only imagine the changes in the world in those sixteen years.
“Can you take me to the computer room, Khalid?”
“Why? I’ve got an I Pod. You want to surf the net?”
His words sent a bubble of unease through me. I made him explain and was in awe at the sheer volume of information out there available to anyone with a computer.
We spent the next several hours surfing the net until had a working knowledge of it. He watched me with a puzzled look before finally asking why I seemed so unused to it.
“Why? Did I seem to know about it before?” I asked him.
“Well, you weren’t taking any computer science but your files said you came from Wilson. Wilson has a strong comp program.” His eyes were dark and soft looking.
“You’re a second son of Sheikh Amani, right?”
“Twenty second, actually,” he grinned. “I’ll get a good education, a nice place to live wherever, a cushy job in finance and a fare-thee-well.”
“You’re a nice guy, Khalid.”
“For a pimp?”
“Why do you do it?” I was curious. His face hardened and he looked sad for a minute before he answered.
“Because he did it to me, Aidan. And I’m scared of him. Like everyone else except you. You’re the only one he’s after that hasn’t given in or been coerced.”
“He won’t get me,” I vowed. “And I won’t let him get you again.”
He didn’t say anything and I suspected he didn’t believe me; his eyes had that wounded look I had come to recognize. Like me, he had not found salvation in reporting such abuse but had learned to deal with it in his own way.
Chapter 24
I dressed slowly, finding jeans and long sleeved shirts in my dresser along with the silliest collection of underwear I’d ever seen. Khalid watched me holding them up as he was making his bed.
“What was I thinking?” I murmured and shook my head. “These are a five year old's boxers.” I eyed his, silk and hand sewn if I was any judge.
“I think you did it to ward off Glenellen and Chelmsley,” he said. “They laughed till they nearly pissed their own.”
I balled them up, smiled, and looked down the row of beds. Most were now empty and made up. We were obviously late for whatever was next.
“Which one’s his bed?” But from the stack of booty piled near, I picked his out. Threw the lot of kiddie shorts on his mattress and pissed on it.
“Going to declare war,” I grinned at the Saudi prince, “It’s got to be all out warfare and unconditional surrender. Let’s go get breakfast. I’m hungry.”
He led the way to the stairs and we trooped down the two turning flights, emerging on a broad corridor that was painted pale green and funneled everyone towards the dining hall. The buzz from the room was an all-pervasive hum heard all the way past to the first floor to where we stood.
I heard shrieks of laughter, the clatter of trays and adult voices shouting to quiet down.
Behind us, a man cleared his throat and made me jump. “Mr. Argent, Prince El Melek. Breakfast is over in ten minutes. Unless you want to forego food or risk being tardy for first period, I suggest you hurry in.”
I turned and saw a tall man, dressed in a conservative suit and tie, with neatly cut hair grayed at the temples and fair blue eyes.
“Mr. Compton-Baird,” his name was suddenly in my head. “Math and Science teacher.”
He watched me gravely. Khalid answered. “Pay no attention, Mr. C-B. Aidan’s a little---” and he circled his head with one finger.
“I am not nuts,” I defended, punching him. Laughing, he ducked and raced down the hallway. I followed more sedately with the teacher right behind me.
The dining hall was huge, the size and height of a gymnasium with rows of windows along three sides of the perimeter. On the fourth wall were the food cases and cafeteria lines with women dressed in chefs clothes and neat caps over their hair. They served us.
The food was typical British fare, over cooked, bland with little seasoning. Lots of veggies, salad, and desserts. An alarming number of the 300+ occupants were overweight. It was plain that sports were not a big item on the curriculum.
“Pudgy lot,” the teacher muttered. “Spoiled rich blighters, most of them.”
“Which one’s Chelmsley?”
“Big brown haired boy over in the corner. In the Rugby shirt. Bit of a bruiser, likes to pick on the younger boys. Like Prince Khalid.”
“Glenellen?”
“Ginger head near the flag stand.” He was shorter, whip thin and fierce with long arms and strong wrists. He wore designer jeans and an expensive watch, was shoveling food in at an impressive rate of speed.
“Go get something to eat, Aidan,” he said. “Before they shut the line.”
I hurried, ducked in behind Khalid, and apologized to the other boys for doing so. “Thanks for saving my spot, Khalid,” I said to their grumbling complaints. I eyed the selection of food left. Rubbery eggs, cereal or a few bran muffins. Toast or biscuits. Porridge congealed to glue. Dried out kidneys, no more bacon, some kippers. Orange juice, milk or tea. I settled for toast, marmalade, and tea. The chef plunked it down on my tray and I carried it over to a free table with Khalid and three other young lads. Two were fair with ruddy cheeks, the third was dark haired and brown eyed.
“Terence and David Temple,” Khalid introduced. “Eduard Bergeron. This is Aidan. Argent.”
“How do?” they said and watched us eat. “We heard you were admitted months ago. First time we’ve seen you eat in the hall. You generally eat alone in your room.”
“My room?” I looked at Khalid.
“I told you. Man of mystery. You have a room up in the attics where you hang out and hide. Eat there, too. No one can find you. Bit of a maze this place. That’s how you avoid our two resident monsters. We have five minutes to eat and make it to Mrs. Pummelo’s class.”
I shoveled down my toast and tea. “You in my class?”
The Saudi boy shook his head. “Physics. See you for lunch?”
“What’s on the menu?”
“Steak and kidney pie or roast beef with Yorkshire pudding,” the twins offered. “Only decent meal served here. Beef is prime. Cryllwythe Farms Angus.”
I smiled at that, stood up, and deposited my dirty dishes wandering until my instincts kicked in bringing me to my required classroom. Well, that and I followed the twins to it.
Chapter 25
Mrs. Pummelo was a young woman with a tanned, lithe figure showed to advantage in a tight skirt of pale peach and a severely tailored blouse of bright orange. Her hair was braided into cornrows and she had b
rilliant hazel eyes that the orange of her shirt made greener. She was tall and of some racial mixture of African and Arabic with mysterious, exotic features. Most of the lads in her class spent the time drooling. She taught languages and English.
“Good morning, Aidan,” she said in Dutch Afrikaans and I answered the same. One of the other boys already seated sneered and whispered ‘suck up’ as I slid past him for an empty seat in the back near the cloakroom.
The classroom was medium sized and held thirty old-fashioned desks with attached chairs. Overhead fluorescent lights made the dim walls brighter and the green chalkboard glaringly shiny. A smaller dry-erase board hung to the side and had conjugated Latin verbs on it. Her desk was in front, covered with only a few papers and a laptop. Every desk had room for a monitor and terminal. I saw no evidence of papers, spiral notebooks or pens and pencils. This class was all digital.
I took my seat in the corner and leaned my back against the wall; cold paneling painted mustard yellow. It smelled like old cigarettes and mud.
“Good morning, class,” she said. “I know you’ve all studied for your test today so let’s sit and go to today’s lesson and review.”
She opened her laptop and everyone did the same. I flipped mine open and stared at the blue screen, perplexed. It asked for a password and user name and my mind drew a blank. She must have seen my face, and asked me what was wrong.
“I forgot this,” I muttered. She came around and studied my screen.
“Your user name is aidanargent,” she told me. “I have your password in my files.”
Her fingers performed some ritual and in five minutes, she told me. I pretended to remember it and the thing came to life and brought me into an advanced lesson on Mandarin. My test was simply to translate it into another language, preferably one she could read.
Mandarin was notoriously difficult and flowery; it took me nearly an hour to make the correct translation, mostly because of all the errors in the original. For extra credit, she gave me an actual paper with a cryptogram on it and asked me if I could break it. I studied it and was perplexed. “Can I take it to my room and work on it later?”
“I don’t expect any of you to solve it now, Aidan, or even today,” she said with mysteriously. “Everyone has a puzzle to figure out for extra credit. I expect some kind of result by next Friday. I will tell you this, one is unsolvable and the others are guaranteed to have a solution but only if you’re given the key. I do not have the key. However, it is a language and is in English. Those of you who are done with your tests may leave and go to your next class or the study period in the Library.”
Half of the class departed, she spoke to me in a dialect of the Bantu of Ethiopia and told me not to go out the door I’d come in by but to leave through the cloakroom.
I nodded and slipped into the small closet and found a door that opened into a maintenance hallway and housed linen carts, mops, brooms and the like leading to a freight lift. I stepped in, closed the inner barred grate and then the outer steel hatch, pushed the button for the top floor and the thing creaked slowly to a rise giving me a narrow view of different floors as I ascended.
The door opened on what was the attic, little cubbyholes and rooms tucked into strange shapes and ells, a warren of passageways. My feet knew the way better than my memory. I found myself in a small room tucked into a dormer with a window that merged onto the roof.
The room was big enough for a bed, dresser, and chair. A small lamp stood on the top next to folded jeans. No pictures on the walls, no photos, no identification or personal items of any kind to make its ownership yet I knew I lived there.
There was no heat up here and the only light was a 40-watt bulb. I punched the mattress, hard with a thick feather comforter so I knew well how cold it must be. I opened the drawers and found only a few pair of pants, underwear---plain white briefs, socks worn thin, t-shirts, and a thin, leather belt. A beautiful emerald covered cross in gold and on a gold chain.
I remembered my mum had given it to me. Raised my shirt and fingered the scars on my chest and belly, remembered falling from the roof onto the fence spikes and dying.
I sat on the bed, the cryptogram forgotten. I mourned Cammy and Tom, wondered how she fared now that he was gone, I wondered how a further sixteen years had treated my mother and father, wondered what had happened to the 10,000 Tom had invested for me, who was paying for my schooling and how.
I knew I had no other classes that day; the rest of the afternoon was mine. I sat at the open window and looked out on the skyline of trees and distant buildings, the steeples of churches and smokestacks. A fairish sized city lay some twenty kilometers away and the glow it made as night descended could be seen from my perch.
I was just about to close the panes when I spotted the string nailed to the sill and pulled it up.
Chapter 26
What I pulled up was a nylon backpack and it unzipped easily considering it had been outside in the weather long enough to bleach the black to a dingy gray. The inside held Ziploc plastic bag and inside that were papers and a spare wad of cash. Euros, about forty of them, in denominations of one, ten, and twenty. Some four hundred in all.
I found notes and letters from the Head Master to imaginary parents advising them of my progress and gentle reminders of my school fees, that meals were not included and an additional 500 per term, suggesting if they (my parents) were in financial straits, they could apply for a scholarship. Next terms fees were 3379 or 2995E with a 10% reduction if paid in cash. Due by January 31st.
No bankbook, no bank account numbers, and I couldn’t remember wither the name of the bank or the account number of the one Tom had set up for me.
No cell phone, no ID other than a card from school with my name and photo. Two phone exchanges. I recognized the one as being Cornwall, knew instinctively it was the farms. Wondered if Mr. P, Sally, or Mrs. C were still alive. Wanted desperately to see my mother and father, hear their voices before it was too late.
Last was a Euro pass giving me another two months of unlimited travel on the trains and across the Chunnel. I had to research that to find out what it was.
I’d seen it mentioned in the news on the home page and clicked on the blurb; been utterly fascinated by the idea and completion of a tunnel under the Channel.
That was all that was in the bag. No notes to myself, nothing to tell me what to do or to watch for. But then, my other selves, lives had never left me so much as one scribbled word, the only thing that seemed to come with me was the emerald cross.
I picked it up and put it around my neck and the cold metal hated up against my chest.
Waiting on my bed until night darkened the sky and the rooftops; I left the cubby room and found a dormer not far down the narrow hall. In it were stored old trunks from students long past. Most of the dates on them were from the forties and fifties. Here, the windows were the size of the dormer and opened onto a flat roof. I had used it before or someone had. Old footprints marked a path on the soot of the slates and showed my slide marks where the footing was slick. I stepped out and climbed.
This place was huge, roofs, eaves, and hip joints in many directions providing a climbing challenge not because of vertical technicalities but for the sheer number of interruptions in front of your feet. You had to watch or you’d trip over some vent, chimney, and dormer, sky light, ridge, or pipe. There were even left over TV antennas and microwave tower dishes. I felt like I was traveling across an alien landscape. I found, also, a few of my favorite’s perches. From the cleared patches on the slate, it was quite evident I spent a lot of time up here doing whatever it was that captivated me. I did find a bag with a small notebook inside and that was tucked into a plastic lined sack. It started only a few months ago, and the writer’s tone was hesitant and unsure.
I woke up in this bed. I don’t know anything but my name. Aidan.
I’m so lonely. I know something bad happened. All these faces around me. They said my parents sent me here to r
ecover from a fever. I nearly died. I know I’ve died before. I remember dying. It hurts so bad but only for a little while.
There are boys here. All boys. Some of them watch me when I’m not looking. I know what those looks mean; I’ve seen them before, too. Why do people look at my face and think these crazy thoughts, wants? I’ve got two eyes, a nose, mouth and hair just like everyone else.
That big rugby player, his name is Chelmsley, he’s the worst. He tried to corner me in the gym. I climbed the wall to the rafters and sat there until he got tired of taunting me. He tried to climb but he couldn’t get more than halfway up the rope, nowhere near the struts on the roof, even with the other boys egging him on.
There’s a dark kid here. I think he’s a Saudi Arab Prince. I heard that he’s Chelmsley’s latest pet. I hear him crying in the cloakroom at night.
Last boy he got went to the Head Master and told. He was mysteriously injured after the bleachers fell on him. Fractured skull. Three other lads were hurt, too. Bad enough to go to Hospital. The one who told was brain damaged. No one said whom or could point a finger and prove it.
Head Master called me in. Asked me in a roundabout way of family and family matters. Took me a bit to figure out he was inquiring about money. Told him I left that up to the trustees. Whoever they are. Said my next term fees were due in four months. Wouldn’t throw me out or anything but they really needed to speak with my parents or trustees.
Pleaded ignorance and illness. Really, I don’t remember much.
Only place I feel safe is up high. On the roof.
Found a backpack today. In it, a bank book and account. Was close to 15,000 in it.
Now I know where the money for this place comes from. Remember Tom Watson, too.
My passport’s in the bag. I’ll hide it somewhere safe. In case, I need to travel.
Another run in with Chelmsley and his cohort, Glenellen. He scares me. His eyes are dead pools. I see the devil’s mark in him. Cornered me. Only got away because Mr. Compton-Baird came around the corner. They are scared of him. He moves like a ghost.
Took my rail pass and went into the city. Found me a place to live, a hide out. Old abandoned movie set. Director’s office still has running water, furniture, private cloakroom.
I found a hole through the chain link and explored the lot. No one hangs about, nor any guards patrolling. Been empty for years---like Pinewood this place went bankrupt.