Unless the Academy decided not to take Josh.
But she couldn’t worry about that until it happened; she’d learned long ago not to try to cross any bridges until she came to them. Besides, she’d already made up her mind: One way or another, the Academy would take her son.
His mind was far too good to waste in the Eden school.
He’d get into the Academy—she just knew it!
He’d get in, and he’d be the most brilliant student they’d ever had.
And then she stopped herself before she tried to run across a bridge that had barely come into view yet.
Saturday, she decided as they started home.
Saturday would tell the tale.
I
t wasn’t until she’d turned off Highway 101 and started up into the hills between San Jose and the coast that Brenda finally relaxed and began to believe that the old Chevy was going to survive the four-hundred-mile trip from Eden. They’d left at four o’clock that morning, with Josh complaining that it was too early to get up, but Brenda insisting that if the car were to get them to the Academy at all, they’d better get out of the desert before the heat of the day set in. So they’d set out in darkness, crossing the desert and into the San Joaquin Valley, then heading west just to the north of Bakersfield, picking up the freeway at Paso Robles.
Beside her, Josh stirred, awakening from the light sleep he’d fallen into an hour before. Rubbing his eyes, he blinked, then spotted one of the big green signs that hung above the road to Santa Cruz: Barrington—25 miles.
“We’re almost there,” he said, gazing around at the unfamiliar landscape. Grassy hills were dotted with clumps of eucalyptus trees and an occasional stand of coast redwoods. “It sure doesn’t look like Eden, does it?”
“It sure doesn’t,” Brenda agreed, smiling wryly. Indeed, before Josh had awakened, she’d been gazing with fascination at the area outside of San Jose. The last time she’d been here, when she was a little girl, most of it had still been farmland, and San Jose had been a fairly small town.
Now, it had spread out, serving as the center for the booming computer industry, the farms replaced by an endless parade of housing developments and industrial parks. Finally, they’d left all that behind, climbing into the hills where, except for a few large houses that appeared to have sprung from nowhere, the landscape was still largely undisturbed.
Half an hour later they came to the outskirts of Barrington. It was a small town, but still larger than Eden. Situated on the coast and nestled comfortably between the beach and the hills rising behind it, it had none of the look of self-conscious newness that clung to all the burgeoning towns around San Jose. There was a neat town center, with stores whose facades varied between mission architecture and the old arts-and-crafts shingle-covered style of the twenties and thirties. The downtown area was surrounded by a residential district of neatly laid out streets filled with small, shingled houses, and trees that had reached full maturity decades earlier. Even now, in September, fuchsias were blooming everywhere, and flowering vines crept up the walls of many of the homes.
Following a series of discreet signs, Brenda finally came to the university. The campus instantly struck her as looking exactly the way a college should look. The buildings were old brick structures, arranged around a broad green lawn dotted with towering redwoods and clumps of flowering bushes she’d never seen before. Behind the older buildings, creeping up the hills, were a series of newer structures, which almost disappeared into the surrounding landscape, adding modern space to the campus while not detracting from its charm.
“But where’s the Academy?” Brenda wondered out loud. “It’s supposed to be part of the campus.”
“There,” Josh said, pointing to another of the small signs that had guided them this far. “Turn right and go up the hill.”
Though she hadn’t seen the sign herself, Brenda followed Josh’s directions. A few minutes later they came to a wide wrought-iron double gate that stood open at the foot
of a long driveway. Awed by what she saw, Brenda brought the car to a halt.
At the head of the redwood-lined driveway, nearly a quarter of a mile away, stood the largest house Brenda could remember ever having seen. Three stories high, it had two wings that stretched away from the center of the house, which itself was surmounted by yet a fourth floor—apparently a private apartment of some kind, with large windows that would give it a panoramic view in every direction. Though the enormous house was now flanked by two other buildings, one at each end of it, Brenda understood instantly that it had originally been built as a private residence. “My Lord,” she breathed. “Can you imagine living in a place like that?”
“It was Mr. Barrington’s house,” Josh told her. “You know—he built Barrington Western Railroad.”
Brenda gazed blankly at her son. “No,” she replied, “I didn’t know. But obviously you do.”
Josh grinned, his face taking on an impish look. “I went to the library yesterday and looked it up. The man who built that was named Eustace Barrington, and he used to own practically all the land from here to San Francisco. This was his summer house, and the town started because it took so many people to run the ranch.”
“Ranch?” Brenda echoed blankly. “I thought you said he started a railroad.”
“He
did,”
Josh insisted, his tone indicating that he thought his mother was being deliberately dense. “But he made a deal with the government, and got most of the land next to the railroad tracks. That’s when he started the ranch, and just kept buying more and more land. And he got most of it practically free, too, because the only way to get to it was the railroad, and he wouldn’t let the trains stop at anyone else’s land.”
“And now they think he was some kind of hero, right?” Brenda replied, shaking her head in wonder at the sheer gall of Barrington’s scheme. To her, it sounded like nothing short of blackmail. She put the car back in gear and started up the long drive toward the house. As they passed between the twin rows of redwoods, they could glimpse children
here and there, some of them in groups of two or three, but several of them by themselves, sprawled out on the lawn, reading or working over sketch pads. And yet, though the scene looked perfectly peaceful—idyllic, even—Brenda felt an uncanny chill of foreboding creep down her spine.
It was
too
peaceful.
Too
quiet.
There was something wrong, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
But that’s ridiculous
, she told herself.
There’s nothing wrong! You just have cold feet about Josh leaving home!
Of course, she decided. That was it. There wasn’t anything wrong with the scene. It was just different from Eden, that was all.
In Eden, if a group of kids this size—and there must have been nearly twenty of them—had been thrown together, raucous games would already have sprung up, and they would be milling around, shouting and arguing with each other.
The children of the Academy, however, were subdued, absorbed in quiet activities. Even the groups of two or three were quiet, the kids talking softly among themselves.
Firmly, she put aside her first reaction of instinctive apprehension and drew the car up to the immense Mediterranean-style villa. Two boys, no more than twelve years old, were hunched over a chessboard that was set up between them on the tiled loggia that ran the full length of the front of the mansion and curved around it at either side. The boys glanced up at her, then their gaze shifted to Josh, who was just coming around the front of the car.
“You the new guy?” one of them asked.
Before Josh could reply, the front door opened and a somewhat overweight woman of about forty-five appeared. She was dressed in a pair of loose-fitting white cotton slacks and a brightly colored tunic that made her look somewhat thinner than she really was. Her feet were clad in sandals, and around her neck was draped an elegantly patterned silk scarf. Suddenly Brenda felt embarrassed by her own lime-green polyester pants and jacket. Back in Eden, the outfit had seemed like the right thing to wear today. Now it felt like exactly the wrong thing.
But the woman on the porch didn’t seem to notice her clothes at all. She had started down the steps, her hand outstretched. “Mrs. MacCallum? I’m Hildie Kramer. I was beginning to get a little worried about you.”
“I—We weren’t really sure how long it would take,” Brenda stammered. “We’re not too late, are we?”
Hildie laughed, a warm, bubbling sound that welled up from deep within her and immediately made Brenda feel better. “Oh my, no. Any time would have been fine.” She turned to Josh and offered him her hand just as she had to his mother. “And you’re Josh, right? Or is it Joshua?”
“Josh,” the boy replied, uncertainly taking the woman’s hand.
“Good,” Hildie declared. “I like that name. It’s nice and strong-sounding. Have you met Jeff Aldrich and Brad Hinshaw?” she asked, turning to the two boys who were once again hunched over the chessboard. Hearing their names, they glanced up, then scrambled to their feet. Hildie introduced them to Josh. “Do you know how to play chess?” she added.
Josh hesitated, then shook his head.
“Then they’ll teach you, while I have a talk with your mother. Okay?”
Josh paled slightly, his eyes darting to the two other boys. They looked like they were a couple of years older than he was. He was sure they’d groan and start rolling their eyes, like the boys in Eden had last summer when his mother had made him go to the summer sports program at the school, and the coach had put him on the softball team. He’d played one inning, then gone home, the taunts of the other guys still ringing in his ears after he’d been unable to catch a single ball in right field, and had struck out on three pitches when he’d come up to bat.
Now, to Josh’s surprise, the boy named Jeff motioned him to come over to the board. As Josh hunkered down between the two of them, Brad said, “That’s the king,” and pointed to the largest of the pieces. “I’m playing white, and Jeff’s playing black, and all you have to do is capture the other guy’s king.” He pointed quickly to the various other
pieces, naming each of them. “Just watch for a while, and you’ll see how it works.”
“And make them tell you
all
the possible moves,” Hildie warned. “They like to hold a few things back, then spring them on you. Like castling. Make sure they tell you how to do it.”
“Aw, come on, Hildie,” Jeff Aldrich complained. “It’s more fun if we cheat.”
“Sure it is,” Hildie agreed. “And if what I know about Josh is right, cheating’s going to be about the only way you’ll beat him, once he catches on.”
Jeff grinned slyly up at her. “Wanta bet?”
Hildie’s brows rose. “Sure,” she agreed. “I’ve got a dollar that says Josh beats you first time out. But you have to promise to show him all the moves, and not get creative when you play. Deal?”
“Deal,” Jeff agreed.
“I’ll make sure he doesn’t cheat,” Brad Hinshaw said. Instantly, he shifted from playing against Jeff to demonstrating to Josh how all the moves worked and why he was making them. Though he talked so quickly that Brenda was immediately confused, Josh seemed to be following every word he said. After watching for only a few seconds, Brenda let herself be guided into the house.
Thirty minutes later, after she’d had a full tour of the house—save for the cupola on the fourth floor, which Hildie had explained was Dr. Engersol’s private apartment—Brenda sank down into the depths of the leather-covered sofa in Hildie Kramer’s office, grateful for a moment in which to collect her thoughts in such a comfortable setting. Hildie’s big desk was cluttered with papers and framed photos, and a well-used ceramic mug sat next to a plate on which a doughnut—clearly part of Hildie’s morning snack—remained. Brenda felt overwhelmed by everything she’d seen. Nothing about the place was anything like what she’d been expecting. From what she’d seen so far, the Academy didn’t resemble a school at all. Instead it appeared to be just what it looked like from the outside: a huge home where people lived.
She’d
seen the immense dining room. Like most of the house, it appeared very much as it had been when old Eustace Barrington had died back in 1942, at the age of 103. The walls were still covered with red silk, and the original sideboards, filled with china, stood against them as they had for more than a century. An immense crystal chandelier hung in the center of the room, its pendants brightly polished. The only change, Hildie explained, was that the original dining table at which Eustace Barrington had often entertained fifty people at formal dinners, was gone, replaced by much smaller tables for four or six.
In each of the more than twenty rooms Brenda had been shown, mahogany paneling gleamed on the wainscoting, and ornate plaster moldings adorned the ceilings.
A music room at the back of the ground floor overlooked a broad terrace and the hills rising up behind the school. “According to Mr. Barrington’s will,” Hildie had explained as they’d entered, “the house was to be preserved in its original condition, right down to the furniture. He left a huge endowment, and directed that the place be kept as a museum. But he did realize that a time might come when even the endowment wouldn’t be enough to maintain the mansion, and he put in a clause to the effect that in the event the endowment wasn’t sufficient for upkeep, the university could put the house to use, provided that—and I quote—‘it be maintained as a residence in as close as is practically possible to its original condition, which was as a home for the children to use and enjoy.’ ”
She’d gone on to note that the word “children” had proved to be the key. The lawyers were able to argue that since he hadn’t specified
his
children, the clause could be interpreted to mean that
any
children could enjoy the house, and that as long as the building was used for the benefit of children, the will would be satisfied. “Actually, it was Dr. Engersol who first came up with the idea,” Hildie told her now.
“Dr. Engersol?” Brenda asked.
“The director of the school,” Hildie explained. “The Academy was his idea. He’s always been interested in gifted children, and when it became obvious that the house was
turning into a massive white elephant, he went to work.” She smiled as she recounted the manner in which George Engersol had gone about building his school. “I assume you’re familiar with the term ‘nerd’?”