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“Are we interrupting something?” Taylor asked with a smile.
“Not at all, not at all.” Nigel winked at Ran. “It’s a rare occasion for us to be graced by all three of the lovely ladies of room 308. To what do we owe the pleasure?”
“Oh, stop flirting when you don’t mean it,” Isabela said with a dismissive wave. She put her hands on her hips, surveying the boys’ messy living environment. “It is truly disgusting in here.”
“I was just going to clean up,” Kopano said, unreasonably intimidated by the fiery shape-shifter. He began to gather up some loose clothes. Isabela slapped them out of his hands.
“Stop that!” she said. “Chores later. Tonight, we are going out.”
Nigel leaned forward, bony elbows on his knees. “What’s this, then?”
Isabela explained the plan to sneak away from the Academy. Her tone made it clear that the boys joining them was something of a foregone conclusion.
“My, my, my,” Nigel said. He shot Ran a baffled look. “You’re into this, even?”
Ran folded her arms. “We have been cooped up here too long, have we not?”
“Gods yes, I could use a pint,” Nigel said, his smile crooked. “When do we leave?”
“Dark,” Isabela said. “Obviously.”
“I always wanted to see America,” Kopano said dreamily. He finally found a shirt that was clean enough and tugged it on. “I thought they would show us more when we came to the Academy. There should be field trips.”
“Yeah. Instead they bring in military guys to beat us up,” Taylor added. “We deserve a night off after that ordeal today.”
Kopano smiled at her. He liked the rebellious glint that he saw in Taylor’s eye. He spoke to her in a tone of faux virtue. “It is my duty to warn you, Taylor, that this activity does not sound very boring.”
She smiled at him. “Nope. It does not.”
Just then, they all heard a loud bang from Caleb’s room, followed by a pair of identical voices agitatedly whispering to each other. Everyone slowly turned towards Caleb’s closed door. Except for Isabela. She whipped around to glare at Nigel.
“Your freak roommate is here? The whole time?”
Nigel ran a hand over his spiky hair, exchanging a look with Kopano. “We, ah . . . we didn’t check.”
Isabela stomped her foot and yelled at the closed door, “Spy! Come out of there!”
Slowly, the door to Caleb’s room creaked open and Caleb poked his head out.
“I didn’t hear anything,” he said.
Isabela groaned and flailed her arms. “This one! He is the ultimate tattletale. We must tie him up and gag him until we return.”
Kopano laughed until Isabela turned to glare at him. “Wait. You are serious?”
Taylor watched Caleb warily, their weird encounter the week before not forgotten. Ran and Nigel, meanwhile, exchanged a subtle look. For his part, Caleb seemed to regret stumbling into the whole plan. He held up his hands.
“I won’t say anything. I promise,” he said.
“No. He cannot be trusted,” countered Isabela.
Suddenly, Caleb stumbled forward. A duplicate hidden behind him had pushed Caleb out of his room. “Tell them you want to go, pansy,” the duplicate hissed.
Nigel sighed and stepped forward. “Caleb, mate, what did we say about the duplicates?”
Caleb glanced over his shoulder, then absorbed the duplicate back into himself. Isabela shuddered.
“Sorry,” Caleb said.
“Our roommate, he’s got difficulties expressing himself proper like,” Nigel declared, turning to face the rest of the group. “Bit of a weirdo, innit he? He owes it to his rigid upbringing and troubled childhood or some such.”
“Um, we don’t need to get into all that, thanks, Nigel,” Caleb said quietly.
“I don’t suppose any of us have similar back stories?” Nigel continued. “Or have had some trouble fitting in around this bloody Academy?”
“I am not a weirdo,” Isabela declared.
Taylor smirked. “You aren’t?”
Isabela shot Taylor a look. “No.”
Kopano shrugged happily, like he’d missed most of the discussion. “You should come with us, Caleb. We are going to San Francisco!”
“I . . .” Caleb looked uncertainly at Isabela. “I mean, I would go if . . .”
“Six is too many,” Isabela said, stomping her foot. “I cannot sneak out a small army.”
“Yes, you can,” Ran said, breaking her long silence.
Isabela glared at Ran. The Japanese girl stared back impassively. After a few seconds, Isabela relented with a toss of her hair.
“Fine,” she said. “Fine. I will do it because my heart is so big and full of charity.”
The six of them waited until dark before they set out from the dorms. There were no rules about the students roaming the grounds at night—at least not before the midnight curfew—so they made their way towards the woods at a casual pace.
They hiked deep into the trees, until the fence that surrounded the Academy came into view. Isabela stopped them before they got too close.
“Do we climb over?” Kopano asked.
Isabela gave him a deadpan look. “I do not climb.” She checked her watch. “We need to wait about seven more minutes.”
“For what?” Caleb asked.
“Perimeter patrol.”
Sure enough, seven minutes later, a Peacekeeper truck rumbled by on the dirt road that encircled the fence. As soon as the red taillights were out of sight, Isabela stepped out of hiding. The others followed, cautiously.
“First,” she said, “we deal with the camera.”
The others hadn’t even noticed the little camera mounted on top of the fence. With a gentle nudge of her telekinesis, Isabela turned the device so it pointed in the other direction.
“Doesn’t someone notice that?” Taylor asked.
“Of course they notice,” Isabela replied. “But it is very windy out here. A technician will come out, turn the camera back around, tighten the screws. No big deal.”
Next, Isabela stepped carefully back into the overgrown woods. She returned with a huge dead log, levitating the mossy debris with her telekinesis.
“It took me awhile to find one exactly the right size,” she said. “I keep worrying that one night it will be gone, that the groundskeepers will clean it up.”
Isabela propped the log up against the fence. She took off her heels and gracefully scaled the improvised ramp. Lightly, she jumped down on the other side of the fence, dusted off the soles of her feet and put her shoes back on.
“Coming?” she asked the others through the fence.
One by one, they each ascended the ramp and jumped down. Kopano caught Taylor when she leaped down. Caleb watched them, biting his lip. When they were all on the other side, Isabela used her telekinesis to shove the log away from the fence.
“What happens now?” Nigel asked. “It’s a long walk to San Francisco.”
Isabela pointed across the dirt road. “Now, you wait here. There is a ditch over there. Hide in it until I return.”
