Undetectable (Great Minds Thriller) (6 page)

He turned and left the way he had come.

When he reached the lounge again he found Danny Fisher already there. Ron and Jean were picking themselves up, dusting themselves off, preparing for another period of teaching.

“You’d better get going,” Danny said when he saw him.

Kevin shook his head, not understanding.

“The lab,” Danny said. “I saw your schedule. You’re on the ground floor, all the way at the far side of the building. You’ll be late.”

“Lab?”

Danny gave him another one of his sarcastic, knowing grins, and he clapped him affectionately on the shoulder. Kevin wondered if the man realized how much force he was putting behind this casual gesture.

He’d knock me down with that if I weren’t squarely planted.

“Not about to teach computer programming without a computer lab, are you?”

Kevin’s eyebrows shot up. His job was almost starting to sound interesting.

“And the kid’s going to be there,” Danny added. “You were going to show up early, remember?”

No, I don’t remember. I don’t remember shit, Danny.

“Which kid?”

“The
kid
. You were so excited about him, the son of that big shot. The engineer you kept trying to tell me about, Pascal Bow? So smart that even his grade-school kid would probably know more about computers than you. That’s what you said.”

Kevin put his hands up. Now Danny had his full attention. “Pascal
Billaud
?”

“Right, that’s what I said. A real big shot, right?”

“His son goes to this school?”

Now I’m interested. Fully interested.

“His son’s in your
class
,” Danny corrected him. He glanced at his watch, then back at Kevin. “Your 8th grade Java Programming class that starts in about 45 seconds. You need to go all the way downstairs, then take a left and keep going until you – ”

Kevin grabbed his papers off the snack table, and he was out the door before Danny could finish speaking.

He found the lab with ten seconds to spare. The students were there already, each one of them sitting quietly in front of a computer. Every computer had an arcade game of one kind or another loaded up and running at full tilt.

“Shut that stuff down,” Kevin said briskly. He didn’t bother looking through his stack of papers for a lesson plan. Whether it was there or not, he knew exactly how he would run this kind of class. “I’m Mr. Brooks. Are there Java compilers on these machines?”

Silence from the class. Blank stares as some of the students turned to look at him.
Go back to speaking English
, their expressions said.

But one of them had understood him perfectly.

“Metrowerks is pre-installed,” said a small boy at the far end of the lab. “There’s also a NetBeans shortcut on the desktop.” The boy was speaking quietly, with the barest hint of an accent. “Either one would work, but I recommend NetBeans. Much better pre-compiling features.”

The other students in the class turned to look at the one who had spoken. One of them whispered, not very quietly: “Who the heck is
that
?”

Kevin tried to keep himself from smiling. “I agree. We’ll go with NetBeans. Tell me your name?”

“Anselm Billaud.”

Another boy, this one bigger than the others, leaned back in his chair so that he could get a better look at the new kid. “
Anselm
?” The bigger boy had khakis that were frayed at the cuffs, and he had made a calculated effort to pull his tie down, keeping it as loose as possible without actually violating the dress code. “What the hell kind of name is that?”

Kevin frowned. “And
your
name, please?”

The bigger boy turned with exaggerated slowness to face the teacher. “Connor Feeney.”

“Mr. Feeney, watch your language.”

Connor scowled. “Sorry.”

“Put your chair flat on the floor.”

A heavy, drawn out sigh from Connor as he returned his seat to a flat position.

“Connor?” The small boy at the end of the lab had spoken again. He was trying to get Connor’s attention.

Connor leaned his head back, careful not to tip his chair. “Huh?”

“Anselm is a French name. French is a language, and France is a country in Europe.”

“I know
that
,” Connor said scornfully. “I’m not – ”

“You
are
, though,” Anselm interrupted, and he nodded slowly. There was a little spark of amusement in his eyes.

Connor’s face reddened, and now he slid his chair backwards on the rug so that he could face Anselm directly. Having been the biggest child in his grade since kindergarten, Connor Feeney was not a boy who was accustomed to being interrupted. Certainly not by a little kid like this. And absolutely not by a kid who was not only
little
, not only
new
, but
foreign
. No, thank you.

“What’d you say?” Connor asked slowly.

“I’m sorry?”

“What did you just
say
to me?”

“I said you
are
.”

The class was silent. The other students were watching this exchange with a breathless fascination, many of them wondering whether the new kid realized just how close he was coming to a full-fledged beating. A full-fledged
pummeling
. He was near the line. Actually, many of them believed he had already jumped right past that line.

Far past it.

Don’t you understand? Don’t you see that Mr. Brooks won’t always be here? The school day will end. You’ll have to leave this building. Connor Feeney will be waiting for you. And then the pummeling will begin.

Connor glared. He took an extra moment before speaking again. “I am
what
?”

Anselm smiled brightly at him. “Well, I suppose that’s up to you.”

“What?”

“You don’t understand me?”

Kevin broke it up. “Enough,” he said. He thought it would be best for the two of them to work this out on their own (even though he, too, worried that Anselm might have a pummeling not too far in his future), but this was not the time. There was work to be done. “Everybody with your eyes on your own computer,” he announced, speaking loudly now. “Open up that NetBeans shortcut.”

The rest of the period went fast, just as the others had. And this one was more fun than the others. They were fearless with computers, these boys. They didn’t worry that something might go wrong. It wasn’t like math class, in which the students volunteered solutions with hesitation, nervous that they would be embarrassed. They were willing to experiment. To poke and prod and try things they thought might not work. Even Connor Feeney seemed to be getting into the spirit of it. Kevin heard him congratulating himself more than once. “
There
it is,” Connor said under his breath. Kevin grinned, and he reminded himself that Connor was still only a teenaged boy. There were few creatures more naturally suited to programming; it was a discipline that rewarded bravado, that encouraged reckless confidence. His own life with computers had started at age nine. Everything about these machines had always made sense to him.

He glanced over at Anselm. The boy had not spoken since the beginning of the period, and Kevin found himself wondering just how much the son of Pascal Billaud already knew. He also wondered whether he might be able, somehow, to get an introduction to the boy’s father.

Imagine having the chance to speak with Pascal Billaud. Even for a minute. Holy shit.

But that would have to wait.

When the period ended, Kevin was surprised to see Emily Beck standing at the entrance to the lab.

“Hi,” he said, too eagerly.

She nodded silently and gave him a tight, polite smile. Kevin felt something drop in his stomach. She was being too formal with him; he had offended her somehow. He should not have gone up to the roof. He had made her cautious of him. He was –

“Mr. Brooks?”

Anselm was trying to get his attention. Standing before him now, the boy seemed unreasonably small.

Kevin forgot himself. “Wait, you’re in 8th grade? Seriously?”

Anselm paused. Tilted his head to the side. “No, 5th.”

“Oh.” He caught Emily giving him a strange look, and he cursed himself.

Idiot. Of course he’s in a class above his grade level.

“How can I help you?”

Anselm smiled. “Could you give me extra stuff?”

“Extra?”

The boy nodded vigorously. “Projects,” he said. “Something interesting. I’ve done a lot of programming already, is the thing.”

“Have you?” The temptation to bring up the boy’s father was very strong. Kevin resisted it, but only barely.

“Yeah. So could you?”

Kevin smiled. “Give me until tomorrow to come up with a few things.”

“Great.” The boy grinned again, and off he ran.

Kevin watched him go, hoping Anselm wouldn’t be intercepted by Connor Feeney anytime soon. Kevin looked around the lab, and now he noticed that there were far too many students in here. Every computer was taken, and there were still twenty small boys milling around, looking lost. Emily noticed, too. She looked about her with a troubled expression. Kevin supposed he should be moving onto wherever his next class was, but his legs didn’t seem to want to move.

“Hold on,” Emily said. “
All
of you are in French Three?”

One of the boys without a place to sit came over to her. He shook his head solemnly. “Art,” he said. He spoke the word as if it were something very heavy. Very difficult to say. “Clemson Art.”

A look of understanding crossed Ms. Beck’s face, and she nodded seriously at the student. “Okay,” she said gently.