The Candidates (5 page)

“You know him?” Esther hissed as soon as we were on the bus, her forehead wrinkling with amazement.

“He was my recruiter,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant.

“Your recruiter?” Esther repeated. “What do you mean?”

“He came to my house with Mr. Judan to get me to go to Delcroix. Didn’t they come to your house?”

She shook her head. “No, I just got a letter in the mail. I think someone might have called my mom. But why would they need to recruit anyone? Everyone knows how amazing the school is.”

“Oh, yeah, right.” A little ping of discomfort colored my voice as I tried to imagine why they would have sent someone to my house and not to hers. “Well, it’s probably because I live in Danville. They must visit the people who are really close by.” I didn’t mention going out to lunch, which now seemed downright odd.

“Yeah,” she echoed. “Well, whatever. I can’t believe he touched you.” Her smile told me she didn’t care about the recruiting thing, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Esther!” A girl waved at Esther from the back of the bus.

Esther squealed in reply, “Hennie?”

The girl had long dark hair and olive skin. Her eyes were dusky brown, and a little dimple stood out in her cheek. Indian, I guessed. Even though she was prettier than Perfect Girl, something about her nervous expression made it impossible to hate her. Her gaze kept darting around the bus, and when she’d waved at Esther, she’d looked hesitant, as if unsure she’d be welcome.

Esther dragged me down the aisle until we came to a stop in front of Hennie. “Dancia, this is Hennie. She and I went to camp together for years. We were best friends until she moved to L.A.” She leaned over and gave Hennie a sideways hug. “What are you doing here?”

Hennie’s face brightened, and she giggled. It was a delicate, musical sound, the kind I dreamed about making every time I opened my mouth and a snort came out. “What do you think? We moved back to Seattle. My dad found a new job when I got the invitation to come to Delcroix. Can you sit with me?” She patted the seat next to her, then froze, her hand covering her mouth in shock. “Oh, I’m sorry, how rude! You’re probably sitting with your friend. I didn’t mean to …”

“No, no.” I waved my hand at them. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it. Dancia’s sitting with me.”

I spun around, not recognizing the voice behind me. Then my mouth dropped open. It was the dark-haired kid I had crashed a car to protect. Except now he looked anything but scared.

IT TOOK
me a second to shake off my shock.

“Who are you?” I asked.

Esther, the traitor, ditched me as quickly as she had befriended me. She was now sitting next to Hennie and chattering at a frenzied pace. They were holding hands like long-lost lovers, with huge smiles on their faces. If they weren’t so happy it might have smarted a little that I was so easily forgotten and left to the sharks.

Er … the shark. Wow. Once I focused on him, I realized the shark was way better looking than I’d remembered. He must not have showered that morning, or been sick or something, because he looked totally different now. He had thick black hair that covered his forehead and partially covered his steel-gray eyes. Spiky lines from a tattoo peeked out from the edge of his shirt. His face was all angles, with high cheekbones and hollows underneath and a sharp chin. He wore a dark T-shirt that hugged his wiry torso.

He rolled his eyes. “Come on, you know me,” he said. “In fact, I owe you a favor.”

“What do you mean?” I tried not to stare at the tattoo, but it kept catching my eye, like something was crawling on his arm.

“You got that guy off my tail. So I’m forever at your service.” He bent over in an awkward half bow.

“Forget it.” I surreptitiously scoped the bus for another open seat. The last thing I wanted was to think about that day and what I’d almost done to Sunglasses Guy. Just the memory of the car crashing, and the look of fear on the boy’s face when he’d grabbed my shoulders, was enough to make me sick all over again.

“Can everyone sit down so we can get going?” Cam called from the front of the bus.

The boy patted the seat beside him. “I don’t bite, I swear.” When I continued to hesitate, he gave me a tiny, almost apologetic smile. “I suppose I should introduce myself. My name’s Jack, and regardless of what you might be thinking, I’m a very nice person.”

“Really?” I said suspiciously. “Why was that guy following you?”

Jack waved away the question. “Oh, it was a misunderstanding. No big deal.”

“A misunderstanding? It didn’t look that way. You looked scared.”

He shifted in his seat, the smile fading. “Yeah, well, I don’t like being followed.” He peered out the window and popped a few knuckles. A second later he turned back to me again. “I think they’re waiting for you,” he said, nodding toward the front of the bus.

I realized with horror that I was the last person standing, and Cam was looking expectantly at me.

“Oh. Right.” I slunk into the seat and forced a laugh. “So you’re just Jack, huh? No last name?”

He grinned, shifting his long legs and moving his backpack so we had more room. “Jack Landry.”

The bus seats were dark green pleather, enough room for two but just barely. I tried to make sure our legs didn’t touch as we rearranged our positions on the seat and the bus started rumbling across the parking lot. But Jack didn’t seem to have the same concern. Every time he leaned against me I had to stop myself from lurching out of the seat.

The problem was, I could have been sitting next to an alien for all the experience I had with guys like Jack. My middle school wasn’t exactly chock-full of dangerous-looking guys with tattoos. Not that I’d spent much time scoping out the boys at Danville Middle. Since I figured boyfriends were right up there with best friends for having the potential to set off my power, I didn’t bother. I ignored them, and for the most part they ignored me.

“I do appreciate it,” he said. “Not everyone would go out of their way to help a stranger.”

“No problem.” I glanced away, hoping he’d drop the subject.

“What did you say to him? I thought he was right behind me.”

“I told him I hadn’t seen you, like you said.”

“That’s it? You must be convincing.” A note of skepticism seemed to underlie his words.

Was he skeptical of me? What could he possibly think I had done?

I shrugged, trying to look unconcerned. “Well, you’re the one who told me to say it. You must have thought it would work.”

“I guess.” He stared at me as if he were waiting for some sort of explanation.

As I was thinking of something to say that might distract him, the bus stopped and everyone got quiet. A cloud of dust drifted through our open window. The big iron gates that circled the school loomed in front of us. The driver held something up to a square, black-armed device that stood just to the left of the road leading up to the school. It issued a loud beep, and then, with a sound like a roller coaster going up the first big hill, the gate slowly began to retract.

When the gate had opened wide enough for the bus, we pulled forward. I lost sight of the gate after we cleared the opening, but you couldn’t miss the mechanical voice calling out loudly, “Caution, the gates are closing! Caution, the gates are closing!”

A second later the clang of heavy metal bars slamming together echoed through the bus.

Jack jumped and whipped his head around, as if expecting someone to sneak up behind him.

The bus fell silent. Everyone seemed to watch, fixated, as the gate disappeared from view. Then someone broke the quiet with a burp, and you could almost hear the relief in people’s voices as they laughed and restarted their conversations.

“I guess some kids think they’re still in middle school.” I tried to smile, but it was hard when Jack’s face looked so pale. He didn’t respond.

I studied my fingernails. Jack’s hands were in his lap, his knuckles white. When I looked up, I saw his throat moving as he swallowed. He craned his neck around to look at the road behind us.

“They must be serious about the whole security thing,” I offered.

“Security?” Jack asked.

“You know, protect the students and visitors.” I gestured toward the rest of the bus. “Keep the bad guys out?”

“Keep the bad guys out, or us in?”

He said it under his breath, and I wasn’t sure if he meant for me to hear. But his words settled between us, heavy and impossible to ignore. When I looked down, I realized I had clenched my hand into a fist. Deliberately, I released each finger, one by one.

“You’re kidding, right?”

He snorted. “Yeah, I’m kidding. Why would they want to keep us in? We’re just kids, right? Just a bunch of kids.”

He turned away to stare out the window, a little smirk playing around his lips. I considered saying something else, but Jack’s eyes didn’t look quite right, and I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. I turned back to the aisle, where Cam stood next to the driver.

“Now that we’re here,” Cam said, “I’d like to tell you a bit more about the place where you’ll spend the best four years of your life. Or at least, the best four years thus far.” A group in the back of the bus hooted and clapped, and the noise drowned out whatever Cam said next.

Hugely relieved by Cam’s somehow comforting presence, I turned my face toward his and tried to erase the memory of the gates slamming shut behind us.

Cam started describing the history of Delcroix: It had been established almost sixty years ago by a couple who wanted to make sure that kids with special gifts were nurtured and challenged. Their names were Peter and Cindy Delcroix, and they died in the late eighties. They left the school a huge endowment to keep it going.

What followed was more detail about Delcroix than any student could ever want to know—except maybe Esther. I’m sure she was fascinated. I wouldn’t have thought it possible for Cam to be boring, yet I found myself losing interest and sneaking glances at Jack. With one finger he tapped out a rhythm on his chest a few inches below his collarbone, not even pretending to listen. He’d regained some of his color—though his skin was still incredibly pale—and his eyes had lost the wildness I’d seen earlier.

“You okay?” I finally asked.

“Sure,” he said. “I’m fine.” His voice cracked and he cleared his throat. “I’m fine,” he repeated.

I hesitated and then said, “I’m nervous too, if that makes you feel any better.”

Jack laid his head back against the seat. “I haven’t gotten much sleep lately,” he admitted.

“Me either.”

“I wish we didn’t have to live on campus,” he said. “I don’t like the idea of being surrounded at night by a bunch of teachers. Gives me the creeps.”

“They said we could go home on the weekends. Are your folks nearby?”

He shook his head. “I’m from Portland. But I can crash with a friend. What about you? You live in Danville?”

I nodded. “I live with my grandma. She’s pretty old. I need to go home over the weekends to help her with housework.”

“Your grandma, huh? What’s she like?” he asked.

“Grandma?” The question caught me by surprise. No one ever asked about my grandmother. “She’s okay. My parents died when I was little, so she’s like my mom, I guess. What about you? Are your grandparents around?”

Jack shook his head. “I don’t really know,” he said. “No one ever introduced us.”

I laughed uneasily. “Isn’t that something parents usually do?”

“Not my parents.”

“Oh.” I knew plenty of other kids at school with screwed-up parents. In fact, sometimes I wondered who those kids were, on all those TV shows, who had moms who stayed home and helped them with their homework, and dads who put on ties and drove off to work in shiny black cars. I mean, I’m not saying those kids don’t exist. I just wondered if I’d ever meet any.

It occurred to me that Esther was probably one of those kids. And Hennie. Maybe Delcroix was full of them, and I was the only one with a screwed-up family.

Me and Jack, maybe.

“So … how does it feel to be invited to the great Delcroix Academy?” Jack asked.

I laughed. “If it’s so great, I’m not sure why they want me around.”

Jack nudged me with his elbow. “Come on, you must have some special talent. World-class mathlete? You don’t look like a computer geek. Maybe spelling bee queen?”

“Hardly. I’m not sure why I’m here, actually. I’m pretty much mediocre at everything. What about you?”

“I’m their token poor kid. Economic diversity and all that.”

“No way.” I shook my head and started to relax for the first time that morning. “They’ve already got me.”

Ten minutes later, after a tour of the grounds that I barely heard because Jack and I were busy comparing our lack of talents, the bus came to a halt in front of the school build-ing—what I think Cam called the Main Hall. Jack abruptly stopped talking, and we both gaped at our first full view of the school.

A pair of stone dragons guarded the outside of the building—I think Cam mentioned something about their being the school mascot just before I spaced out. A set of marble steps led into the dark interior of the school, with a pair of white columns framing the doors. Lush green vegetation surrounded the red brick building, a far cry from my weatherbeaten middle school with its straggly rhododendrons and dead grass.

A path ran around the side of the building, and you could see the corner of another red brick structure tucked behind the Main Hall. It must have been the Res. A third building, a square white house with shutters on the windows and a wide front porch, stood just to the left of the Main Hall. I assumed this was the house where about half the teachers lived during the week, the ones that didn’t drive to work in the morning. Cam called it the Bly. Apparently someone named Bly had died and given the school money to build it. A giant rosebush crawled up the side of the Bly, and even though it had been a hot summer, the leaves were still green, and several red roses bloomed up around the second story of the house.

Our rosebushes at home had yellow spotty leaves and one or two dying blooms.

Everything at Delcroix was different, even the flowers.

Jack and I waited, both quiet, as the bus emptied out around us. The buildings looked so serious, like a fancy college or prep school, reminding me once again that I was way out of my league. What I’d told Jack was painfully true. I wasn’t some supersmart, gifted-and-talented genius. I was a fraud, a girl they thought was a hero but was really a coward, and it was only a matter of time before they figured that out.

I got off the bus in front of Jack. He followed me down the steps, but when I turned around he had wandered off. His hands were thrust deep in his pockets, his jaw clenched as he stared up at those huge columns. He looked back and forth between the crowd and the school, glaring at everyone who walked too close. I guessed he was nervous, but he did look genuinely intimidating, so I stayed away.

It was a little disappointing, because I’d felt so comfortable with him, and it had been a relief to find someone who felt the same way I did about Delcroix. But it was for the best.

After all, I wasn’t here to make friends.

I walked up the white steps, trying not to look like a tourist as I checked everything out. Inside, the school resembled Danville High, only smaller. The walls displayed bulletin boards, glass trophy cases, and pictures of past principals. But unlike Danville, incredible paintings hung everywhere, alongside black-and-white photographs matted in silvery metallic frames. Blown-up newspaper clippings showed a new ballet company opening in Texas, a guy in an army uniform shaking the president’s hand, and a doctor cutting a ribbon by the doors of a hospital. Former students, I guessed.

Everyone seemed to walk off the bus with a crowd of friends, and even though I wanted to be alone, it was hard to watch everyone else laughing and hanging out together. I guess that’s why, when Esther and Hennie ran up to me a few seconds later, I couldn’t muster a bored look.

Hennie was even cuter standing up than she had been sitting down, but a few feet away she tripped over her shoelace, and if Esther hadn’t caught her, she would have done a spectacular face plant right in the middle of the front hall. Esther whooped with laughter. Hennie, her gorgeous skin two shades darker, tried to look nonchalant as she regained her balance. But then she turned to Esther and broke into uncontrollable giggles.

“Hennie, you’re as clumsy as ever!” Esther teased.

“Dancia, you would not believe how many times I’ve saved Hennie from total disaster. I swear, she is the most uncoordinated person you will ever meet.”