Truancy Read online

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Prologue: Follow Instructions

  PART I: STUDENT

  1: The Bell

  2: Testing Patience

  3: The Truancy

  4: A Rebellious Child

  5: The Report Card

  6: Tardy

  7: Expulsion

  8: When Life Gives You Lemons

  9: Zero Tolerance

  10: Final Exams

  11: Death

  PART II: MISCREANT

  12: Rebirth

  13: A Show of Force

  14: The Aftermath

  15: Swords

  16: Without Mercy

  17: The Taste of Blood

  18: The Heat of Battle

  19: His Most Dangerous Student

  PART III: TRUANT

  20: A Treacherous Threshold

  21: The Definition of Love

  22: A Student Militia

  23: Backed into a Corner

  24: At the Hands of a Pacifist

  25: No Regrets

  26: A Guilty Conscience

  27: The Fall

  Copyright

  I dedicate this story

  to every student

  who has ever suffered

  in the name of education.

  PROLOGUE

  FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS

  The man sighed and flipped his lighter open, light reflecting off its chrome finish as he slowly brought a thick cigar to his mouth and lit it. Gray ash flaked down to match his expensively tailored suit, though he made no motion to brush it off. Grunting, he shut the lighter with a resounding click.

  Looking around at the other men seated at the mahogany table, he noted that more than one of them seemed to dislike the fumes that his recently acquired habit tended to generate. Still, it seemed to keep him relaxed, which was why he did it and why they didn’t mind. Not that they would’ve complained anyway. Especially not today.

  “So,” the man said grimly as he extinguished the butt of the cigar on a polished marble ashtray, “it looks bad, doesn’t it?”

  The room was silent. Glaring at the other men fidgeting in their equally expensive and uncomfortable outfits, the man managed a humorless grin.

  “Yes, it does look bad,” he answered himself. “Especially for you.”

  There was more uncomfortable silence, and then one of the men spoke up foolhardily.

  “Mr. Mayor, you can’t blame us for this debacle.”

  The tension in the room suddenly increased, and the Mayor twitched as his eyes snapped towards the audacious man. His name was Mr. Caine, the Mayor recalled, vaguely recognizing his face. He had joined the Mayor’s cabinet two weeks ago. Obviously, two weeks was not enough time to get a clear idea of how things worked in the Mayor’s City.

  The other cabinet members looked at the unfortunate individual with a mix of subdued approval and pity. The Mayor gripped his lighter as Mr. Caine held his gaze. The Mayor had always known that, sooner or later, one of them would end up talking back to him. It was just as well that he would be making an example out of someone new.

  “Mr. Caine, do you know the first thing our teachers are supposed to do when they get ahold of a student?” the Mayor asked pleasantly.

  “No, sir, I can’t say that I do,” Mr. Caine answered, frowning now, sensing something subtly dangerous in the Mayor’s voice.

  “They are told to see how well the students will follow instructions,” the Mayor explained. “Students are to obey every command given to them, they are not to speak without permission, they may not eat without permission, and they cannot even perform bodily functions without our consent.”

  “What’s that got to do with me, sir?” Mr. Caine asked, causing a few cabinet members to gasp audibly.

  “Because, Mr. Caine,” the Mayor said patiently, “in my presence, the City is just one very large class, and I am its teacher. You are to speak only when I allow you to, say only what I want you to, and do everything I tell you to.”

  Mr. Caine flushed red and for a moment looked as though he might argue, but the Mayor’s withering glare quickly silenced him.

  The Mayor had no sympathy for Mr. Caine; the new cabinet member had undoubtedly endured worse, having once been a student himself, as they all had been. The entire purpose of school in the City was to produce civil and obedient adults—apparently this Mr. Caine had thought that being an Educator, being among the few that not only governed but truly controlled the City, would make him exempt. Some lessons learned in school, the Mayor reflected, were forgotten entirely too easily.

  “Now, I believe you were saying that I can’t blame you, Mr. Caine?” the Mayor continued. “I recall having a meeting to discuss the Truancy just before last week’s attack. I believe I was assured that this ‘handful of desperate children, poorly armed, with little organization and no competent leadership,’ would soon fall apart. It seems clear to me now that my entire cabinet has been playing me for a fool.”

  “Mr. Mayor, we didn’t understand the breadth and scale of the problem,” Mr. Caine protested again, causing the rest of the cabinet to shake their heads in admonishment. “The Truancy is comprised of mere children! It was impossible to take them seriously at the time!”

  The Mayor flicked his lighter open in agitation.

  “They’ve been running amok for nearly two years now! Have you forgotten that they demolished the District 1 School itself?” the Mayor snarled, and the entire cabinet winced at the mention of that event. “Your reports led me to believe that they had been diminishing since then, not growing!”

  “As far as we knew, they were, Mr. Mayor,” Mr. Caine argued. “They had lain relatively low, and it was assumed that they didn’t have the tenacity to just stick around like that. It was hard to believe that they hate us that much, sir.”

  “It’s our job to brand numbers on these children like cattle, shove them into our schools as one faceless herd, treat them like inferior beasts, and then cast them out to rot in the gutter if they don’t obey.” The Mayor shut his lighter. “They’re angry, and understandably so! Did you think that after a while they would just return to the playgrounds, whining for someone to help push them on the swings?”

  “No, sir,” Mr. Caine conceded. “But the City’s educational system has always proved to be successful in the past, and the vast majority of children have always shown remarkable submission to our methods. There was nothing to forewarn us of such a dramatic reversal—”

  “Nonsense,” the Mayor snapped. “You went through the schools. I went through the schools. We all did. Do you even remember what it was like? Tell me, what are some of the side effects of the recent programs we’ve tested on the students?”

  “Well, before they’re broken in and their brains fully mature”—Mr. Caine began ticking points off his fingers—“students typically demonstrate depression, anger, anxiety, insomnia, and sometimes, relatively rarely, of course, irrational violence.”

  “Correct. Not exactly the flawless acceptance that you’d have us believe,” the Mayor pointed out. “Remember, the City is strictly experimental. Perfect control through education, that is our
ultimate goal, and we were getting close. But as with all experiments, there are bound to be setbacks. It took several generations and a number of other Mayors, but those setbacks are here at last.”

  “Yes, but we never predicted armed revolt,” Mr. Caine argued. “The notion of children taking up arms against us is just absurd!”

  “Was absurd, before the Truancy, at least to you,” the Mayor rebutted. “Children were the most obvious individuals to expect failure from. Education is the harshest phase of every citizen’s life. Only if the students view their entire future as relying on education can they be easily forced into obedience. We, as Educators, have to crush any rebellious thoughts by denying them any alternative.”

  Rising from the table, the Mayor began pacing around the dimly lit room, his hands folded behind his back.

  “But now, our system has been undermined,” the Mayor muttered. “The Truancy provides them with an alternative. They can choose to fight us instead of obeying us.”

  Mr. Caine seemed to fight an internal battle with himself. For a moment he wavered, but then he opened his mouth anyway. The other cabinet members stared at him, wondering if the man was suicidal, or just stupid. They knew that while the Mayor wasn’t fond of petty revenge, he wasn’t one to let disrespect go unpunished either.

  “Mr. Mayor, the Truancy is still just an underground movement of isolated, outcast children,” Mr. Caine pointed out. “We’ve kept a tight hold on the media, and the general populace doesn’t even know a resistance exists yet. The experiment hasn’t been compromised. School attendance rates remain as high as they were two weeks ago. There’s little chance of students just rising up and becoming Truants.”

  “Yet they are rising up and becoming Truants,” the Mayor said, flipping his lighter open. “And it’s growing painfully hard to hide this from the public. People are not so stupid that they didn’t notice the unseasonable power blackouts in the City. Soon they’re going to wonder why.”

  “We’ve already explained it as a mechanical malfunction—”

  “Some will buy that,” the Mayor conceded. “But others are going to start to wonder.”

  “We got auxiliary power running quickly, though,” Mr. Caine protested. “It wasn’t quite the disaster it might’ve been, since the Truancy seems to have avoided a total blackout for some reason. This whole thing will just end up being forgotten in a week or two—we’ll throw something out there to distract the people. Maybe news of another impending disease epidemic.”

  “That gives the Truancy plenty of time to plan its next attack,” the Mayor snapped. “We still know next to nothing about them. How are they supplying themselves? Where are they holed up? How do they keep evading the Enforcers? And most important, who’s leading them? These are things we need to know, and should have known a long time ago.” The Mayor clicked his lighter shut. “We’ve been relaxed for too long. We have to start to become aggressive. We have to authorize unlimited use of lethal force.”

  “That goes against City code,” Mr. Caine said weakly.

  “Forget the code!” the Mayor growled. “Let’s measure the damage to our social institutions after the threat is eliminated. Generations have worked to build the City into what it is, and I’m not about to let a gang of kids destroy it.” The Mayor halted and turned towards the table. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” the cabinet replied as one.

  “Good.” The Mayor glanced towards the only one of them that seemed willing to hold his gaze. “And you, Mr. Caine. Since you were so unconvinced of the threat the Truancy posed, you are now officially appointed as a Disciplinary Officer. It’s time that you get to know what you’re dealing with.”

  Mr. Caine’s eyes widened and his face drained of all color.

  “But … Mr. Mayor…” Mr. Caine struggled to keep his voice under control. “The Truancy assassinated three Disciplinary Officers last month alone!”

  “Short life expectancy comes along with the title. You should have remembered that before you earned it,” the Mayor countered curtly. Mr. Caine seemed to visibly deflate. “Now, on to other business. During the attack last week, the Truancy left several districts with power. I want to know why. Give me the district numbers.”

  There was a mad scramble to be the first or at least not to be the last one to draw out the thick folders stuffed with information about the attack. The Mayor gritted his teeth as the six men fumbled with the papers until one of them finally found the proper sheet.

  “Uhh … ‘all the districts connected to the District 19 power grid retained electricity during and after the attack,’” the lucky cabinet member read hastily.

  The Mayor froze at the mention of District 19. The Truancy had left District 19 alone. That was an abandoned district, and there was nothing of any importance there except …

  “Him. So they know about him after all,” the Mayor breathed. “How interesting.”

  The Mayor walked quietly toward a set of red velvet curtains. Drawing them back, he gazed out the window at the sprawling cityscape beneath him. It was night now, but with the power restored, a sea of lights blinked at him from building windows, street lamps, and cars, creating a moving, glowing stream that flowed throughout the layers of streets and skyscrapers that formed the City. It was a society unlike any other, its people believing that they were free while, in truth, all of their fates were determined by the educational system. It was, in a word, perfect. And it was his to control.

  “Well,” he amended quietly, “most of it, anyway.”

  He sighed and turned slowly to face the cabinet.

  “Gentlemen, I want all Enforcers and Educators to stay out of District 19. Under no circumstances will they enter that area.”

  The cabinet members stared at the Mayor, wondering if it was some sort of trap. As the silence lengthened and the Mayor retained his pensive look, they began to shift uncomfortably.

  “Mr. Mayor … if … if we stayed out of there, wouldn’t the Truancy use that district as a haven?” someone asked.

  The Mayor shook his head gently, as if recalling some distant, nostalgic memory.

  “No. If they know about him, then they know better than to trespass on his territory,” the Mayor said. “And so do I, for that matter. The order stands. Meeting adjourned.”

  The cabinet members filed out of the room, leaving the Mayor alone to think. None of them had any idea who he might be, but they did know that it wouldn’t do any good to ask.

  In the end, the general consensus was that the Mayor had been unusually easy on Mr. Caine.

  PART I

  STUDENT

  1

  THE BELL

  “I hope that most of you will see this as a wake-up call,” Mrs. Bean announced to the class, folding her arms haughtily. “If you got over an eighty-five, you’ve done tolerably. If you got lower than that, you should be concerned. If you got below a seventy, I’m going to make you concerned.”

  Tack gritted his teeth and clenched his test paper, wrinkling a good portion of it before he unceremoniously shoved the paper into his backpack along with his books and binder. Untamed brown strands of hair dropped in front of his eyes, obscuring his vision as he bent over to zip up his backpack and await the ending bell. Despite the cheerful sunlight streaming through the classroom’s single window, an unmistakable aura of gloom emanated from the students around him, which Tack actually found to be oddly comforting. It meant that he wasn’t the only one the teacher was going to “make concerned.”

  “There are a lot of you who can do better,” Mrs. Bean continued, lifting her chin. “And there are a few who are beyond hope. If you don’t work your butt off and if you don’t follow instructions, that reflects on your tests. These test grades let me know how obedient you’ve all been. As you all know, that weighs heavily on your report card.”

  “Guess that means I’m out of luck,” a boy to Tack’s right murmured tiredly under his breath.

  “Hey, is that talking back there?” Mrs. B
ean spun about, glaring wildly around like a starved lioness with an appetite for students. Spotting Tack, who looked suspicious with his gritted teeth and packed bag, she quickly drew herself up into attack position.

  “You of all people should be trying to do better!” she shouted, jabbing an accusing finger at Tack. “After your performance on this test I’d have thought you’d have learned to behave yourself!”

  “M-me?” Tack sputtered haplessly.

  At this point, Tack didn’t even want to know how the teacher could’ve made such a huge mistake at his expense so much as he wanted to know how this class could possibly have gone any worse than it already had.

  “Yes, you!” Mrs. Bean hissed. “You know what you did; you don’t need anyone else to say it for you!”

  “I didn’t do anything!” Tack protested.

  “Are you talking back to me?” Mrs. Bean stalked closer to Tack, lowering her voice menacingly.

  “N-no, but—”

  “No buts, you need to learn some respect, young man!”

  “I … I…”

  Still recovering from this latest misfortune, Tack quickly assessed his options. The teacher looked ready to sink her teeth into him, and the only thing that could save him now would be to rat out the real culprit, who was currently doing his best not to look involved. But being a rat simply wasn’t an option; betraying a fellow student to a teacher would make Tack the enemy of all the other students. He simply couldn’t afford that, as all the teachers were already by nature his enemies.

  And so there was only one way that Tack could finish his sentence.

  “I … I’m sorry.”

  Mrs. Bean purred contently. “Good. Now apologize to the class too. It was their time that you just wasted.”

  Tack felt an urge to stand up and tell Mrs. Bean that she was the one wasting their time by making such a huge deal over something so petty. Fortunately for Tack, he was quickly able to suppress that urge.

  “I’m sorry, class,” Tack mumbled, dropping his gaze.

  “I don’t think they can hear you,” Mrs. Bean said.