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“Why do they care who you date?” I asked.
“It matters when the group of us are willing to jump onto a ship to keep you and Blake out of trouble.”
“Oh.”
Corey shifted his hands up, in an I don’t know expression. “It might not be so much us, but Blake? Blake’s the problem…not that he’s a problem. But he’s loyal to you, not to the Academy, and they’ve a lot to risk if he’s willing to give them up for you.”
“We can’t let them find out,” Raven said. “Alice. She can’t know.”
Corey nodded. “They don’t want to leave us in danger, but we put many more people in danger if any one of us get caught by her. Leaving is the only option, really. Cutting ties.”
“So this is the end? You’re out of the club?”
“Yeah.”
I pondered this. “So we arrest Alice, and then we can come back?”
Corey laughed shortly. “We need to find her first. She’s probably not working alone—”
Suddenly, a phone on the floor came to life, a dull thudding vibration with a few beeps. A text message coming through.
Raven leaned over, fished it up and looked at the screen. “They’re done. They want us to go camping.”
Corey made a strange face and reached for the phone, checking the message. “That was fast. It looks like they want us to maybe hang out at a campground somewhere.”
“Wait,” I said. “Camping? Like…literal…tent and stuff?”
“Less chance to get caught,” Raven said. “Out of trouble.” He nudged me with his foot. “My thief doesn’t cause trouble, though. They’ll see.”
“Probably part of the bigger plan,” Corey said. “But they first have to figure out a secure place and probably set up a few false trails.” He frowned. “I don’t like this. This isn’t her chasing us. This is them dealing with it.”
The three of us were silent for a moment while it sunk in. I didn’t like the plan either. I thought of the kid at the garage, the one that waved to me as we were leaving. I thought of the people at the hospital, Dr. Green.
It really was like leaving them behind to deal with this.
It was our mess.
“Can I ask you all something?” I said.
“Shoot me,” Raven said.
Corey chuckled. “I think you meant just shoot.”
“Same.” Raven sniffed and then made a gun with his fingers, pointing it over his heart and pulling the trigger. “Shoot me.”
“How obligated are you to the Academy? I mean they provide you with stuff and then you do work for them?”
“It isn’t like that,” Corey said. “Not...normally.”
“It’s exactly it,” Raven said.
Corey made a face. “We needed them when they found us, but they saw us as like a bunch of kids who tried to do good but did it in the wrong way. It was a risk because of our criminal history. They normally try to be discreet with who they help. I think the original goal was just to quietly help us and nudge us in the right direction, but they decided to make us a team. I wanted to be here to do some good.”
“I’m with them because of him,” Raven pointed at Corey. “And now for you, too.”
“Would you be with them if you didn’t owe them anything?” I asked them both.
Corey nodded.
But Raven…he hesitated, looking to Corey, then to me, which surprised me. He wasn’t often unsure.
Corey seemed interested in his reaction, too. “You don’t think so?”
“I like doing good,” he said, but he waved to the phone. “I don’t like going in not knowing what we’re doing all the time. And…I don’t like limits.”
“Like not blowing places up?” I asked.
“Sometimes it’s needed.” He paused. “But I know why they don’t want us to.”
“Because we make a mess?” I asked.
“It’s not about us,” he said. He shook his head and put a finger to his lips. “I can’t tell you. But there’s others…in the Academy. It’s bigger than you think. And involves a lot of people. What we do affects them as long as we’re with them.”
Exactly what I was thinking.
It put a weight on my heart, a realization about my actions. I’d thought I was the only one at risk at certain points, and I was willing to take that risk.
But with them, because of the Academy, there were benefits, but also limitations I couldn’t even imagine. It made sense. They worked in secret for a reason.
And we had been messing with bad people. People who could find out the Academy existed, what it was about, and possibly exploit it.
Or bring it down.
There was a lot I needed to learn. About the Academy. About their relationship with it. About what they wanted for themselves.
Deep inside of me, I knew this couldn’t be how it ended. Disappearing into a tent in the woods and waiting for them to sort it.
They wanted to protect us.
Somehow, I knew, it had to be the opposite. We had to protect them. From people like Alice.
Which meant we couldn’t bail.
WE DON’T RUN
Raven, Corey and I went back into the living room after they’d gotten properly dressed again. We were waiting for someone to get back, to fill us in on the details. The secret meeting we weren’t allowed in on continued for a while.
We were back in the living room watching some mindless TV when the door to the apartment burst open.
Axel walked in first. He was wearing dark pants and a drab olive shirt and combat boots, like he was ready to go kick ass. He wore a hard expression that was completely unreadable, set into his dark eyes and high cheekbones.
Without a word, he walked right past us on the couch, going into his bedroom, and shut the door, only slightly less than a slam.
Marc appeared in the still open doorway and strolled in, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders lowered. When he realized we were on the couch, he murmured. “Meeting didn’t go so good.”
As he was saying it, the tornado in Axel’s room started. I thought maybe a shelf had fallen off the wall after the slam, but the drop of books and notebooks and other objects from wall to floor continued.
I shot up, heading to Axel’s door.
Marc inserted himself between me and my target. “Wait,” he said. “Just wait.”
“Is he throwing a tantrum?” I asked.
Marc shook his head and said nothing. The noise continued behind the door at his back, but he stayed still, listening. Without anything to do but listen and wait, I watched Marc for signs of what to do. His hair was growing out, almost framing his cheeks, and he’d shaved underneath around the base of his skull. He had some rock star style that was very appealing. He’d a few extra black plastic and leather bracelets along his wrists, and the silver sand dollar hanging from a cord around his neck sparked off the light in the living room.
&nbs
p; There came a moment in the crashing of stuff in Axel’s room where it didn’t lessened as much as it slowed down. Like when popcorn was almost ready in the microwave.
Marc nodded and kept his voice down. “Normally, this is when I go in, let him yell it out with me. But I mean…if you want to…”
Someone needed to vent. I got it. They let me do it to them, it was about time I got a chance to return the favor. “Anything I should know?”
“Don’t help him,” he said. “Let him do it. Just stand there and listen.” He turned the handle and slid over, giving me enough room to pass by. “Come back out if it’s too much. I’ll take over.”
I wasn’t sure I was ready for this, but I owed it to him. There was no one I owed it more to.
Prior to this, Axel’s bedroom was more like an office, with a foldable table in the middle set up like a desk and hundreds of notebooks, books and binders along with paperwork on shelves, on the desk and everywhere. There were tanks of animal specimens on a dresser, and the bed was shoved against the wall to make more room for the office part.
When I entered, the tanks were completely fine, their various species of animals safe.
For the rest of the room, he’d gone all around the shelves and taken down every book and notebook and thrown them all to the floor.
Axel stood on the bed, reaching for the last of some on a shelf, and was throwing them, one by one, onto the floor near the bed.
I stood by, watching him as he stretched out trying to reach some that were pretty dusty. He was more careful to create less dust falling onto his sheets.
“You’ve been here in this room a while,” I said.
“I just got in,” he said, without much feeling one way or the other. Not really sounding angry, just talking.
“I mean you’ve been living in this space a while. The dust on the books…”
“It’s a dusty place,” he said, finally reaching the last one and dropping it on the pile on the floor. It didn’t look like he was sorting them, just getting them all in the same general area.
When he turned and looked at me, he paused. He’d taken off the shirt and was just wearing a black tank shirt. His shoulders and arms were flexed and engaged while he was balancing on the bed. His dark hair was tied back in a very short ponytail at the crown of his head. With the way his face looked, and maybe because of odd lighting, it just accentuated the Native features of his face. Just darker skin, high cheekbones and an expression of …not peace. Not like he normally was, a breath of calm against chaos.
