The Academie (10 page)

Later, he lay on my bed, tracing the
designs on my bedspread with a finger as I unpacked my college
things.

“
So, what’s it been like
without Matt and me here?” I asked Andy later.

“
Weird.”

“
I bet. It’s weird now—I
mean, I keep waiting for Matt to come home still.”

“
Yeah, you’ll get used to
it. I wish he could come home though. Or that I could go to The
Academie too.”

“
What?”

“
Yeah, it’d be better than
staying here with mom and dad. Both you guys will be there soon. It
stinks being here alone.”

“
Andy, please,
don’t
say that. I don’t
want to go to The Academie. I want to stay here, with
you.”

“
Why don’t you then?” His
eyes were big and full of tears, and my heart broke to see him so
hurt and confused.

“
Because I can’t…” It was
hard to explain this kind of thing to a six-year old. “I’m not
allowed, Andy. The law says I have to go or they will send me to
jail.”

“
It’s not fair,” he said,
and the tears spilled down his cheeks as his little hand went up to
rub his eyes.

“
I know. It’s not. I’m
sorry, baby,” I said, pulling him close. I hadn’t called him baby
in years. It just slipped out. Tears welled in my own eyes and I
picked Andy up and laid him across my lap like I did when he was
small. And there I rocked us both, hoping that at least one of us
might be comforted.

When his sniffing slowed, I reached
for the box of Kleenex and pulled it close. He grabbed a tissue and
began to dry his face.

“
You know, we’re just
going to have to make this the best summer we’ve ever had together,
Andy.”

He nodded and grabbed another tissue,
while I considered what I had just said. I needed to stop thinking
about the inevitable. Before I knew it, I would be at The Academie,
but right then, I wasn’t. I needed to make the best of
that.

“
Here’s what we’re going
to do, Andy,” I said with renewed confidence. “Let’s see, I’m going
to be gone three years, right?” He nodded and I could see the tears
starting to well up in his eyes again. “No, no, don’t think about
that. We’ve got to think about right now. Here’s what I’m thinking.
Three years means that I’m going to miss three of your birthdays.”
The tears grew larger and threatened to run down his cheeks again.
“No, no, you’re not getting it. I think we should celebrate
them.”

“
What?” he said, his voice
strained.

“
We should celebrate them.
I don’t want to miss them, so let’s just do it: we’ll have your
seventh, eighth, and ninth birthdays all this summer—cake,
presents, the whole deal!”

He began to crack a smile, and I knew
I was on to something.

“
Well, what about
your
birthdays? We’re
going to miss those too,” he said.

“
Good point. You want to
do those too?”
He nodded and smiled as he rubbed the tears away. “And
Christmas.”

“
Christmas? Well, now
you’re talking. Let’s do it all. We’ll do it big, we’ll do it
right. We have three months to pack three years into. I say we do
it.”

He was smiling and I knew I did good.
“You’re going to have to help me pull this off though,
okay?”

He nodded happily.

“
Good; then we have some
things to look forward to this summer. And we’ve got some planning
to do too!”

“
Think we can convince mom
and dad?”

I smiled. “You got them to buy Pop
Tarts. I think you can do this.”

14.
grandma marie

I ran my fingers over Andy’s message,
hoping that somehow it could make me feel closer to him. I wanted
to write about all the injustices of life, of the Academie. And
about how much my bunkmate was driving me crazy. But I just laid
there, studying Andy’s font, tracing the letters again and
again.

Finally, I closed it, knowing there’s
no way I could write now. But closing the pretty leather book drew
my attention to the thing itself, drawing up recent memories of my
last visit with Grandma Marie.

“
How are you, pumpkin?”
she’d asked, as she gave me a squishy hug.

“
Good,” I lied.

“
Merry Christmas Grandma!”
Andy squealed as he entered the foyer.

“
Merry Christmas darling!”
Grandma said, leaning over to embrace her grandson. “Boy are you
getting big!” She stepped back to take a look. Andy grinned. “Well,
it sure is nice that you decided to celebrate Christmas. Now we’ll
get to celebrate together for once!”

Due to the distance, I couldn’t
remember a Christmas with Grandma since I was a little girl. The
weather was always prohibitive and mom and dad said it was just too
difficult and too risky to travel all the way to upstate New York
with three kids. Grandma seemed to understand, but I think we all
missed the time together.

“
Did you bring
presents?”

“
Andy, you aren’t supposed
to ask that!” I scolded. Six-year olds; they’ll say
anything.

Grandma grinned. “Yes I
did.”

“
Yay!” he
squealed.

“
You didn’t have to do
that, mom,” my mom said as she joined us.

“
I know. I wanted to.
Regardless of the reason,” grandma said, looking at me, “we finally
have the opportunity to celebrate together. So let’s do it right.”
With that, she lifted a Tupperware from one of her bags.

“
What’s that?” mom
asked.

“
Pumpkins bars.” Pumpkins
bars were Grandma Marie’s specialty. I couldn’t remember when I’d
had them last, but apparently my mouth hadn’t forgotten. It had
already begun to water.

“
I’ll take care of those,”
I said, grinning as I reached over to take them from
her.

“
None until dinner,” mom
said.

“
Oh Sue, come on. It is
Christmas after all,” grandma said.

Mom frowned. “Just one,
Allie.”

“
No problem,” I said,
running to the kitchen with the goods. Andy followed, squealing all
the way. Even though it was our third time now, rather than getting
sick of celebrating Christmas, Andy seemed to be getting more into
it each time.

“
What are they?” he asked
as I opened the cover.

“
You’ve never had
one?”

Andy shook his head. “Well, you’ve
gotta try one then,” I said, passing him a bar.

He took one bite and his eyes lit
up.

“
Yeah, I know,” I
answered, biting into my own.

“
Let’s sneak one more,” he
said, powder escaping from his mouth as he continued to
chew.

I signaled him to be quiet by pressing
my finger to my lips. Then I pulled one more for each of us from
the container and rearranged the rest so they’d never know they
were gone.

Andy’s smile was covered in sugar when
mom and grandma emerged from the foyer.

“
So does this mean that
you liked them, Andy?” grandma asked.

He nodded furiously.

“
Hello Marie,” dad said as
he joined us.

“
Merry Christmas,” she
answered. “So what’s the order of events for this
celebration?”

“
Well, I thought we’d hang
out a while and catch up, then do dinner, and then presents this
evening,” mom said.

Andy looked struck. “No! Presents
now!”

Grandma smiled. “It really isn’t
Christmas without presents; is it Andy?”

Andy grinned at her and then looked to
mom and dad with his puppy dog eyes. “Pleeease?”

Moments later, we were huddled around
the tree, ready to open gifts.

“
Andy, this is for you,”
grandma said, handing him a gift from one of her bags.

Grandma’s gifts were always a mystery
because she lived so far away and never had the opportunity to
really know what we wanted or needed. Andy ended the mystery
moments later when, throwing the paper aside, he revealed a small,
metal tractor and wagon. He gave it a sideways look and then looked
up at grandma.

“
This is the kind of thing
that boys used to play with when your mother was small,” she
explained. “I thought it might still hold some appeal
today.”

Andy smiled politely, but I could tell
he was having trouble figuring it out because he picked it up and
began to search for buttons to push.

“
There’s no buttons,
sweetheart. You push it around and can load things up in it. You
can put dirt in the back and haul it around.”

Andy began to push it around and
seemed to enjoy the road-like lines it left in the carpet because
he continued making them and then followed truck and wagon back
across the same path again.

Grandma smiled. “I also got you this,
honey,” she said, pulling out another package.

Andy stopped the truck mid-cycle and
reached up for the second package. The mystery was ended with one
tug at the paper. “Z.T.!” he exclaimed “I’ve been wanting this so
bad!” he said, waving the hand-held gamer around
gleefully.

Mom looked at grandma.

“
Hey, I’m not completely
out of touch with kids these days!” Laughter exploded around the
room.

With Andy now absorbed in his game,
grandma looked to me. “Do you want your gift, Allie?”

I nodded. Grandma’s gifts were hit and
miss. Lately, admittedly, they’d been a bit more of a miss because
she kept trying to buy me clothes and wasn’t quite getting it
right. But I always appreciated the gesture, and I always kept
them, even if I never wore them. After all, it’s the thought that
counts.

The package she handed me was small
and clumsily wrapped.

“
Sorry about the
wrapping,” she said. “My hands, they just don’t do what I tell them
to anymore.”

“
It’s fine,
grandma.”

I gently pulled the tape apart and
slid out the contents. It was a small, black book, held closed by
an elastic band. I pulled back the elastic and opened the pretty
leather cover to flip through the pages. Blank.

“
It’s a journal,
honey.”

“
Oh,” I answered, still a
bit unsure what to do with it. “Thank you.”

“
I thought you might need
it soon.” I noticed a serious tone in her voice.

There was a moment of silence, leaving
me to wonder what grandma could be getting at, before my mother
chimed in with, “We have something for you too, mom.”

“
Oh you shouldn’t have!”
Grandma answered happily, and I could see that she was
thrilled.

Later that evening, long after all the
presents were opened and the holiday meal was settling in our
stomachs, I snuck to the kitchen for one last pumpkin
bar.

“
I thought I heard you,”
grandma said, emerging from the living room where mom had her set
up on the pullout couch.

“
You caught me,” I said,
hand still in the pumpkin bar container.

“
I wanted to tell you
about my gift,” she said, sitting down at the table.

“
Okay. Do you want a cup
of tea?” I never knew my grandma to sit at a table without a cup of
tea, so it felt natural to ask.

“
Oh no, dear. Not at this
hour. Thank you.” She paused and then looked at me intently. “Are
you happy to be going to The Academie, Allie?”

Her question caught me by surprise,
and I choked a bit on my pumpkin bar. “You want the
truth?”

She nodded.

“
No. Not at
all.”

“
Good,” she said, smiling.
“That’s my girl.”

I was taken aback. Admittedly, I
didn’t know my grandmother well, but what I knew about her
generation as a whole was that they were very loyal to their
country, to their government. This new information about The
Academie didn’t seem to fit. “You don’t like it either?”

“
Not at all.” Her words
were emphatic. I couldn’t recall a time where I’d seen my
grandmother so serious—except perhaps when grandpa was in the
hospital.

“
Really? Do you know that
you’re in the minority?”

“
Oh, I know. It’s not the
first time.”

I looked at her, puzzled.

“
How much do you know
about World War Two, Allie?”

Her question took me by
surprise.
What did this have to do with
The Academie?
“I don’t know. I know what
they teach us in school. Hitler was evil. He killed the
Jews.”

“
The German government was
afraid of a group of people, Allie. So they locked them up, away
from society. They did horrible things to them in those prisons.
They tortured and killed thousands of people.