The Academy

Everyone started to feel very on edge the first day of the second semester. Even Collin was feeling strange, acting strange. Lola and Julie were the same, but Lola was not as talkative as she was prior to the new semester. I started to think something bad was going to happen. How I was very right. I usually would’ve been fine with change, but when I was called to the office for an “urgent phone call,” I immediately regretted going down at all. A woman with thick rimmed glasses and a cardigan that looked itchy was sitting at a desk in her office, holding a phone up in her hand. I entered and she handed it to me. I was so confused. It felt like years since I even saw a telephone, and this was not the way I imagined it would go. When I picked up the phone and put it to my ear, a familiar voice over the line started urgently talking.

My hands gripped the phone into a fist. It was the voice I dreaded hearing again. He sounded very content, and his urgency was all a hoax so he could get a word with me. It was Donovan. He lied to the woman, no doubt, just to rub something in my face. I guaranteed that was the case. What was it he needed to say?

“Cal, we have to talk about this whole thing.”

I scoffed. “You didn’t seem too interested in talking about “things” when you were fleeing the scene of a murder! Now you want to talk it over? Fuck off, Donovan.”

“I get it, you are pissed at me.”

“Pissed doesn’t come close to what I’m feeling, shit-for-brains. Call me when you can get me out of this shit hole.”

I couldn’t even focus. My head was hurting and a pulsation started in my temple. I was dumbfounded by his audacity to call. How could he have gotten through, anyway? He was a smart fuck, that was for sure. I didn’t want anything to do with him, and the sound of his annoying voice made me feel hot in the face. My blood boiled a million degrees higher. Remembering that night was the last thing I wanted to do. It was always shoved to the back of my head now that I was getting used to it in here. What was the point in trying to talk it over? He was a criminal. I should’ve walked free instead of that maniac. What a sick joke. He wanted to “talk things over” like he would have won my forgiveness or something. How dumb did he think I was? I hadn’t forgotten at all what hell he put me through. How could I ever forget?

The woman at her desk was startled by my anger, and when I threw the phone down onto the receiver and left I could tell I distressed her. I felt awful, but there was no way I could be calm about an idiot move like that one. He needed some professional help if he thought I would come down here to listen to his bull again. I think I’d rather spend a week in The Pit. After I left out into the corridor and ran into Caughenour, my anger had subsided enough to put on a fake smile. He looked at me with a peculiar look in his eyes and he stepped in front of me.

“Did you figure out what the emergency was?”

I nodded and my smile faded, the anger still trying to subside. I could hear the residue of Donovan talking, his voice echoing. “Yeah. Everything is worked out now.”

He watched me closely as I wandered down the corridor to my class. It was in there outside the classroom door that I pulled my mask over my face and entered quietly. The class director looked at me with a sharp stare, irritated that I was interrupting the session. I took a seat in one of the chairs and laid my hands and arms on the surface. It was quiet in my head now. I pushed all of the tension out of my mind long enough to focus on the criteria. I was tapped on my arm by a skinny finger. I looked over slowly at the hand and arm attached to it and recognized a dirty notebook on the desk next to me.

My mind started spinning and I had to hold back the words from coming up my throat. I pressed a finger to the lips of my mask and shook my head at Lola, making sure she understood not to talk. Whatever she wanted to tell me seemed very urgent, since she again started poking me with her finger. I looked over at her now and again to see her still staring over in my direction. She had a note on her desk with scribbled pencil on the blue lines. I had to lean over the desk a little so I could see what it said. “There’s a problem.”

I took the piece of paper from her and scribbled down my response, “With what?”

“It’s Julie.”

She was right about that. Ever since the new semester began there had been minimal sightings of the brunette that sat with us. Collin didn’t seem to notice much, and he ignored it completely like it was normal. She’d been gone awhile. I asked Lola after class in the corridor if she was sick, but Lola gave me very unsatisfying look. I asked if she’d seen her in the infirmary. Turns out, she already went looking there for her friend. No sign of her. It was concerning. I started to see the urgency. If Julie wasn’t sick, and Lola hadn’t seen her like I hadn’t, where else would she be?

 “She didn’t do anything dumb,” she reassured me. “She would never get put in The Pit; not a chance. She’s a handful but she isn’t a bad person. I know Jules, and she would’ve had to fuck up so bad to end up in there.”

I shrugged. “I guess that’d be true. I don’t think Caughenour is the woman-beating kind of guy. He seemed pretty lenient of the time I was in there. What would she have done?”

“I don’t know, honestly. She doesn’t sneak out nearly as much, and the nights she has I saw her go back into her room. I listen to everything outside my room. I once heard her flirt her way out of sneaking back in. She said to this guard that she “needed some air” and he bought it. Can you stand it? She’s a sex goddess.”

I almost didn’t believe it, but Julie was a very appealing girl when she wanted to be. Under that apathetic and boring shell, she had a flirtatious and dominating side that I couldn’t see. I wouldn’t have known that about her if she didn’t tell us about it. I didn’t want it to be true, but the idea of sexual favors in a place like this could get somebody seriously hurt; especially for a little thing like Julie.

“She could’ve gotten into some sex shit,” I murmured, shaking my head with disappointment. “She could’ve asked the wrong guard for the wrong things and gotten herself into some shit. She could be sitting in The Pit right now with nobody.”

Lola stood there in the hall as people passed, their horrifyingly blank faces staring down at the floor. It was a sea of grey again, but this time it seemed sadder. Maybe it was because I felt sadness. It was more worry, though, than sadness. Her blue eyes were softer, and I could make out a shimmering pool of tears on her lower waterline. I didn’t want it to happen, but those tears cascaded down her eyes like waterfalls, her mascara running black in the same spaces of the tears. I wanted to wipe them away but it was too hard to reach underneath her mask. She sniffled and wiped them herself, seeing that there was a true possibility my idea was a reason.

Her head shook slowly. “This can’t be true. If we just forget this whole thing, she’ll pop up again and we’ll laugh about it. She’d have been gone for some stupid reason and we would laugh about it for days after. She can’t be in trouble.”

In my head I was thinking the exact opposite. Externally, I couldn’t give her the truthfulness I was imagining, so I just nodded my head softly in agreement. Laughing about it would be so much easier, but it wasn’t going to happen. If Julie was in trouble, I wasn’t going to be the one to announce it. Especially not to Lola. Lola’s eyes were deep with worry and I stroked her arm gently as she began to cry. I tried my best to console her and she leaned into my chest. I set my books down at my feet so I could wrap my arms around her, and the pity of her worries made me feel sick to my stomach. Overthinking, my head stirred up very dark ideas about the whole situation. I didn’t want it to be true, but that next morning was even harder.

In class, Lola hadn’t changed her expression. She was just as worried and she couldn’t stop looking over at me from her desk. Tossing back and forth notes, she asked me if I could ask around about Julie. I agreed to ask around, but I didn’t know anybody in particular who would have an idea about where she would be. I didn’t know Julie’s friends or if Julie had any friends. It was sad to think about her being hurt. The truth of the matter was that Julie was a lonely girl. She was a prostitute, after all, and a girl like her is vulnerable. This place would’ve eaten her alive if she weren’t in The Pit or someplace else in the building. I wanted this to be over and the worry to end, but lunch came with something else to offer. Something offered itself to me that was twice as unbearable and twice as horrible. Collin came into the room and sat with Lola and me, slumping down into the seat across from me. His face was empty. His mask hid his face like usual, but he looked slumped over with disappointment. He knew something. I could see it in his eyes that there was something horrible in his head.

“Anything about Julie,” I asked.

He stared at me and nodded his head, turning back to look at the table beneath him.

“And? Do you know where she is?”

Lola locked eyes with me and we both bothered at Collin’s feet to know, begging for the truth. If he had something to say we were close and leaning over the table to hear it. I heard him whisper under his breath. “Go ask Jimmy.”

Before I could hear Lola and him talk about something else, I was up on my feet hurriedly staring around the room at the empty faces of the crowded lunch room. I searched and searched and I found the booth where he usually sat. I couldn’t miss him. His large mass of a body was slumped over his lunch in silence as he was usually. He was poking at the slop on his tray when I felt my feet sticking to the floor. I had to force myself forward and move. The room felt like it was spinning and I couldn’t help but race over to him. I may have bumped into a table or two on my way there, but how could I stop the frantic speed in my head and my body? I had too many concerns and I wanted to help my friends. The only people I could trust.

“Jimmy,” I said sitting down hurriedly. “You need to talk to me for a minute. It’s about this girl. Have you seen her? She’s got brown hair, she’s a junior, and she’s in for stealing and prostitu”-

“Prostitution,” he murmured. “Yeah, I know that girl. She’s the only one in here for that shit.”

“Have you seen her at all?”

He hesitated, and I instantly knew he was hiding something. He became more rigid and quiet. His eyes stayed on his tray and the whole room seemed to go quiet. Whispers continued and no one drew attentions, but it felt like the whole world had just gone so still. He knew. He knew something about Julie.

“Jimmy, if you know where she is, you need to talk. She’s my friend. She’s my friends’ friend. Where is Julie?”

His hands raised in hastiness and he hushed me very rudely. “Just shut up, okay? Jesus, I’ll tell you if you’ll just shut the hell up! She’s gone. She’s gone, okay? Why do you care about her, anyway? She was a whore who snuck out in the night for some extra smokes and my stash. She had it coming! You didn’t know she was a snitch, too, did you?”

“A snitch? What are you talking about? Julie is a good person.”

“Was.”

I hesitated. “She still is… So where is she? What do you mean she’s gone?”

“Dead, that’s where. She’s dead, dude.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “No, that’s crazy. That’s bull and you know it. Cut the shit, Thompson.”

“It’s not bull,” he said softly. Something changed almost suddenly in him. His voice went from careless and boastful to sorrowful and apologetic. It made no sense to me. What did he have to feel sorry about?

“Don’t do that,” I said. “Don’t act like you care about her. What do you know, Jimmy?”

His head shook with dissatisfaction. “Leave it alone, Cal. Leave it to you to make shit worse, right? I’m not talking about this. Caughenour won’t like you being near me; not now, not after the whole incident we had. We aren’t exactly pals.”

“I don’t care. I need to know what you know.”

I stared at him deeply, my head a pool of chaos. Part of me wanted peace between us, and the memory of being stuck in The Pit with him was a torment. I was in no mood to be sent back into the dark for days on end. Even though it was a good opportunity to sleep in peace, it was the aftermath that caused me the most distress. The hunger was unbearable, the brightness of the world outside was stinging, and the migraine that came with it was so painful I’d rather have shot myself in the foot. The pain was unimaginable. I didn’t care about the days spent in there, though, especially after my anger became worse. I didn’t know whether or not to be angry at Jimmy or the entire academy, but I was definitely going to do something awful if it were true. Jimmy didn’t want to tell me what was what. In fact, he practically begged me not to make him tell me. I persisted with anger, and he hung his head like a cowering dog.

“She got into some trouble.”

“No shit,” I snapped. “Tell it to me straight.”

It felt like the entire world set itself still. The trauma of my ears was astounding. I couldn’t tell if my brain had stopped functioning first or my mouth, because nothing came from my throat when I tried to speak. Jimmy had told me about a boy in his class, who had a thing for Julie the entire time she’d been in here. It was enough to set my teeth on edge. He told me about his obsession with drugs, his addiction to getting high and a long speech about how tragic it was to lose his good friend to addiction. Boo hoo. Sap stories did not amuse me; nor did they make me feel any sympathy for this guy. He wanted drugs so much he had gone to so much trouble in the past with guards that he’d ended up in The Pit for three months, minimal meals. Any longer than a week in there, they’re required to feed us one meal a day minimum. If I were the staff, I would’ve fed this guy garbage from the lunch room garbage cans.

“He offered her up,” he said softly.

“Like a trade?”

“Like a trade.”

The guard who stood watch in the lunch room was a creep in appearance, and hearing the rest of the story was enough to send my teeth gritting so tight together that I could hear the sound it made. It was a screech rather than a grinding noise. In fact, I even felt my ears become fire and my face glowing with rage. He had bargained with this drug addict in exchange for Julie. Julie must have been so scared. Jimmy spared me of the details long enough for me to ask about them, but he tried hard not to let me know the awful truth of what happened to her before her death.

“What do you think that creep did? It isn’t rocket science, Cal! It’s not difficult to get. He took advantage of a lot of other girls in here, too. It wasn’t just Julie. I knew Julie. She wasn’t good but she didn’t deserve what she got, that’s for sure. It’s done now. We can’t fix it.”

I felt disgust rising into my chest. It made my lungs feel pushed against one another and my head throbbed with a headache from too many words listened to. There was too much in my head at once and all around me I could feel dizziness emerging from within my chaotic thoughts.

“Stop.”

He tried to speak.

“Stop! I don’t want to hear anymore.”

He sighed and stared deeply at me. I tried hard to look away from him but our gaze caught on one another long enough for him to say one last thing. “He killed her, Cal. After being in here awhile, murder is the last thing you worry about.”