Truancy Page 11

  “They probably know already,” Noni said. “They’ll be watching the news too.”

  “They will need to know that there will be retaliation,” Zyid said firmly, moving towards the door. “I promise you; very soon I will make the Mayor regret this move.”

  “I believe you, sir,” Noni said quietly to Zyid’s back as he opened the door and strode out of the office.

  * * *

  “Yes, it is lamentable,” Umasi said heavily, leaning back in his folding chair. “Justice is too often the first casualty of war.”

  “Why are they doing this?” Tack demanded, looking for an explanation for the madness from the only person who could give it to him. “Why don’t they just kill us?”

  At that, Umasi seemed to turn rigid, and Tack could sense that the boy was hiding something. He somehow looked sadder than Tack had ever seen him before.

  “The Educators are getting frustrated,” Umasi explained. “They are unable to retaliate against their true foes, so instead they lash out against the innocent students still under their control.”

  “But that makes no sense!” Tack raged. “What have we ever done to them?”

  “You are not a perpetrator, Tack,” Umasi said soothingly. “You are only a victim, as are all the students of this City. As for why, I can only guess that the Educators mean to strike an indirect blow to their enemy’s morale.”

  “What’s that mean?” Tack demanded, not in the mood to decipher Umasi’s explanation.

  Umasi looked at Tack carefully from behind his sunglasses. After a few uncomfortable seconds, Umasi began to speak. “The group in opposition to the Educators is known as the Truancy. The Educators believe that by making this move against the students, they will either cause the Truancy to despair or provoke them into rash action.”

  “Do you think it will work?” Tack asked, not fully appreciating the significance of what he’d been told.

  “I doubt it,” Umasi said thoughtfully. “The Truancy is competently led and organized. They will understand the Educators’ intentions and very likely outmaneuver them.”

  “I wish them luck,” Tack said with bitter sincerity.

  Umasi cocked his head to one side. “You are, naturally, embittered by what has happened,” Umasi said slowly. “But taking sides in this conflict will only lead you down a dangerous path.”

  “So what would you do?” Tack demanded.

  “I would do nothing rash,” Umasi said simply. “If you avoid doing things that might provoke the Educators, no matter what thoughts might run through your head, you will give them no reason to target you.”

  “So I should just roll myself out like a welcome mat, huh?” Tack asked, frustrated.

  “No, you should roll yourself aside so that there will be no reason to tread on you,” Umasi corrected gently. “Remember, Tack, the end of the school year is fast approaching. You will be studying for your final examinations very soon.”

  In the heat of all that was happening, Tack had forgotten about the end of the school year. Umasi was right—school would be ending in less than a month. Soon he wouldn’t have to worry about the Educators, about homework, about his teachers or other students. Not for months, anyway.

  “As you can obviously see,” Umasi observed, “things are not quite as hopeless as you had begun to feel. There is always next year, of course, but that is still distant. Stand strong for just a little longer, and this school year will have passed into unpleasant memory.”

  “I guess I can do that,” Tack conceded, his mind drifting off to plan his summer vacation.

  “Excellent.” Umasi beamed, pleased that he had succeeded in dousing Tack’s anger. “Now, we’ve spent a long time on that discussion. Let’s get our minds off of the … depressing news. I have some new work for you today.”

  “What’s that?” Tack asked, snapping back to reality.

  Over the past few days, Umasi always had the same work prepared for him. The jars of salt and pepper grew steadily bigger, but Tack was getting faster and more efficient at separating the salt and pepper to the point where it was almost easy. That left him with more time for the exercises that he was now actually finding interesting and rewarding.

  The exercises were a mixed bag. Umasi had started at first with typical things like running through natural obstacle courses formed by the rubble of District 19, lifting heavy objects, and doing push-ups. As Tack grew more and more capable with those exercises, Umasi had begun teaching him some odd things like fighting hand to hand, and during breaks Tack threw darts at a board that Umasi placed on top of the lemonade stand. Tack found that it was all difficult to get a grasp of but somehow extremely rewarding when he did.

  And that wasn’t even really taking into consideration the generous payments Umasi gave him. Within a week Tack had amassed a small fortune … only to find that he was usually too busy to spend any of it.

  “Your body builds muscle fairly quickly, and you’re a quick learner when it comes to fighting,” Umasi said, standing up and leading Tack over to a crude wooden target he’d set up in the middle of the road. “Your aim with the darts is likewise impressive. I think it’s time that we moved you on up to throwing knives.”

  “Knives?” Tack repeated eagerly.

  “That’s right.” Umasi nodded. “But first, as I alluded to before, I have a new type of jar for you to look at.”

  “What’s in it?” Tack asked as Umasi placed a jar that seemed filled completely with white grains on the table.

  “Sugar and salt,” Umasi said, smiling slightly at the look on Tack’s face as he said it.

  “And I’m supposed to sort those out?” Tack asked, aghast.

  “Yes,” Umasi confirmed gravely. “Only afterwards will I teach you how to throw knives.”

  Tack frowned. Having come to know Umasi reasonably well, Tack concluded that the odd boy was not likely to elaborate, so he refrained from further questioning and instead turned his attention towards the jar.

  He unscrewed the jar and poured the contents out onto the table. The salt and the sugar were so well mixed that he found it extremely difficult to tell them apart at all. However, the patience and attention to detail that had been instilled in him from his long experience with salt and pepper meant that Tack soon noted the small differences between them—the difference in size, how the light affected the different particles, the vaguest of color differences.

  A few minutes later, Tack was industriously at work. His efforts, he knew, were far from perfect. On more than one occasion he knew for certain that he’d swept the wrong particles into the wrong pile, where they instantly became lost beyond recovery. The words needle and haystack immediately sprang to Tack’s mind as he contemplated searching for a single grain of salt in his small mountain of sugar. But Tack was confident that his mistakes were small enough to pass unnoticed, and so he merely let them slide as he worked, and soon the salt and the sugar were sorted into two separate and neat piles, though Tack couldn’t honestly vouch for their purity.

  “Do you think that your performance is adequate?” Umasi asked as he shut his book and leaned forward.

  “Fairly good, yeah,” Tack said, hoping that it was true.

  “People evaluate their work best only after they sample it,” Umasi said gravely. “Which pile is sugar, Tack?”

  Tack pointed at the pile that he was certain was mostly sugar, now feeling slightly discomfited by Umasi’s ominous words. Without explanation, Umasi scooped up the pile of sugar into his hand and stood up.

  “Please, wait here,” Umasi said.

  Tack sat in his chair obediently as Umasi turned and disappeared into the abandoned brownstone building behind him. When Umasi finally emerged, his left hand was empty and in his right hand he clutched a small glass of lemonade. Tack watched him approach in silence, and eyed him apprehensively as he sat down and placed the glass onto the table.

  “This glass of lemonade,” Umasi explained, “has been made from the pile of sugar that you prese
nted me.”

  Tack cringed. He saw where this was going, and he didn’t like it at all.

  “If you did a good job,” Umasi said, “consider it a refreshing reward. If, on the other hand, you did a bad job,” Umasi continued, “consider improving next time. The lesson here is about consequences and responsibility. Learn it well.”

  Umasi pushed the glass across the table. Knowing what the gesture meant, and not feeling particularly up to protesting—it was fair, after all—Tack steeled himself and grabbed the glass. He brought it up to his mouth, tilted it back, and gulped it down as fast as he could.

  The flavor wasn’t as bad as he’d imagined it might be. Still, there was a definite trace of saltiness that did not go well at all with the sweet and sour flavor of lemonade.

  “Well,” Tack said, managing a small grin, “that wasn’t so bad.”

  “Good,” Umasi said in satisfaction, standing up and leading Tack over to a crude wooden target in the middle of the road. “And now it is time for the main event.”

  Tack could feel his excitement return as Umasi bent down to pick a knife out of a box he’d prepared. The idea of knife throwing felt somehow … striking to him.

  “There are two ways to approach knife throwing,” Umasi explained. “The first way is just for sport, and involves sending the knife spinning through the air. The problem with this is that in order to hit anything, you have to be either lucky or able to calculate the exact number of rotations the knife will make so that the blade and not the handle hits the target. This is best done under controlled conditions and can only be achieved with painstaking practice.”

  Tack nodded at that. “So what’s the other way?”

  “The other way is much more effective for actual combat.” Umasi demonstrated, holding up a knife. “You hold it differently, like this, and you weigh the knife carefully before throwing it like a spear or dart.”

  Umasi abruptly spun around and flicked his arm forward. The knife shot through the air and buried itself cleanly in the head of the wooden dummy.

  “The blade travels straight, and does not revolve. There’s no fancy nonsense with this method, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t take care and practice to master.” Umasi handed Tack a knife by its hilt. “Here, you try.”

  Tack did so enthusiastically, having forgotten completely about the Zero Tolerance Policy.

  But Umasi hadn’t, and though Tack never saw his face as he receded into the shadows to watch, it was lined with untold worry and sorrow even as Tack’s was plastered with a grin.

  10

  FINAL EXAMS

  As the dreaded final exams approached, the students of the City tried not to think about the tests and the now thoroughly feared Zero Tolerance Policy. Instead, they looked hopefully towards the light at the end of the scholarly tunnel—that brief summer break during which the Educators planned the next year’s curriculum, leaving them, at least for the moment, free.

  As a result, exam fever had not quite caught on among the students, though it certainly held a tight grip on the teachers, who in turn worked the students harder than ever.

  Which was why Tack had found it necessary to treat Suzie.

  “Thanks for the ice cream, Tack,” Suzie said, a smile plastered on her face as she accepted the proffered cone.

  “It’s no problem,” Tack assured her. “Vanilla is your favorite flavor, right?”

  “Yep,” Suzie confirmed, licking her cone so voraciously that melted ice cream coated her nose and mouth.

  “You should probably wash your face before we get back to school,” Tack told Suzie.

  “Yeah, maybe,” Suzie replied, sounding utterly unconcerned as she took a crunching bite out of the cone.

  Having already left the pizza parlor where Tack had piled both of their slices high with toppings, they had come across an ice-cream truck, which had strategically placed itself near the school in order to take advantage of the sweet-toothed students in the increasingly warm weather. This prompted Tack to idly suspect that the only reason that students were still allowed outdoors for lunch was to help contribute to the City economy.

  “Hey, Tack,” Suzie said suddenly, “how come you can afford this all of a sudden? I thought Mom and Dad cut off your allowance.”

  Tack willed his face to remain impassive, though inwardly the question instantly ignited a firestorm of doubt. The truth of the matter was, after all, very odd, so odd that he was sure that Suzie wouldn’t believe him.

  So what should he tell Suzie? Tack made a split-second decision.

  “I got an after-school job,” Tack said evasively.

  “Doing what?” Suzie asked in mid-lick.

  “Sorting out some stuff,” Tack said. “It’s pretty mundane.”

  “Oh, so that’s where you disappear to all the time now?” Suzie asked, her ice cream momentarily forgotten.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Tack said, quickening his pace, hoping to make it back to school before Suzie asked one too many questions.

  “So what do you sort out?” Suzie pressed.

  Tack scowled. Suzie was just too sharp for convenience.

  “Papers and stuff,” Tack said quickly, hoping to change the subject. “So how’s school for you lately?”

  Tack cheered internally as Suzie made a sour face—the dangerous topic had been derailed, at least for now.

  “It’s not been very good,” Suzie said, sounding like she had bitter medicine in her mouth instead of sweet vanilla ice cream.

  “How so?” Tack asked, glad to have the opportunity to press Suzie about her scholarly woes, instead of the other way around.

  “Well,” Suzie began as they reached the school doors and leaned against the side of the building, neither of them willing to go inside until they’d finished their ice cream, “see, we had this big English paper due the other day.”

  “Uh-huh,” Tack said, nodding sympathetically. In all the classes, big papers were actually more common than the small ones.

  “And you know Melissa?” Suzie continued, looking up at Tack.

  “I’ve never met her, but you told me about her,” Tack said, remembering that Melissa was Suzie’s best friend.

  “Yeah, well, we both have the same teacher for English, Mr. Grant,” Suzie said, taking another bite of her cone. “But Melissa and I are in different classes, and she hadn’t done her essay by the night before it was due. And she’s one of Mr. Grant’s favorite students, she told me.”

  “Oh,” Tack said sagely, seeing where the story was going.

  “So I let her copy mine,” Suzie said, “and so she turned in the same thing, word-for-word.”

  “You didn’t get caught, did you?” Tack asked immediately, suddenly worried that Suzie would be persecuted under the Zero Tolerance Policy.

  “Nah.” Suzie shook her head. “What makes me mad is that Mr. Grant gave me a lower grade than Melissa.”

  “You’re kidding,” Tack said, knowing full well that she wasn’t.

  “No, I’m not! She turned in the same paper as me, the one that I wrote, and she got a better grade!”

  “What grades did you get?” Tack demanded.

  “She got a ninety-five, I got an eighty-seven,” Suzie said glumly.

  “Well, eight-seven isn’t bad,” Tack pointed out thoughtfully.

  “Yeah, but Mel shouldn’t have gotten higher than me!” Suzie countered angrily. “How can the teachers just play favorites like that?”

  Tack looked at Suzie sympathetically. He could understand her anger, but that didn’t make him like it. He felt a sudden surge of hatred towards the Mr. Grant that he had never met, the one that had made his once-happy sister turn so bitter.

  “Tack, are you all right?” Suzie asked suddenly, looking up at him worriedly.

  Tack quickly made his face impassive, realizing too late that he’d let a look of unreasonable fury overtake him.

  “Well, school isn’t pleasant for anyone,” Tack pointed out truthfully. “Don’t let it b
other you too much. And it wasn’t Melissa’s fault either,” Tack added. “She didn’t know that he’d give her a better grade than you.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Suzie said dejectedly.

  Tack put his arm around her and tried to think of something comforting to say. Before he could, the shrill noise of the dreaded bell sounded. Looking at each other in panic, Tack and Suzie seized their backpacks and ran for the front doors, fear of the Zero Tolerance Policy heavy in their minds.

  * * *

  “This is a surprise, Noni. I’ve never known you to oppose any of my decisions,” Zyid said dryly.

  “I think only of your safety, sir,” Noni replied quietly, standing motionless in front of Zyid’s desk.

  Zyid let out an exasperated sigh as he leaned back in the comfortable leather chair that had been left behind when its former occupant cleared out of the office. Zyid recognized that Noni was his most fiercely loyal subordinate—though really sometimes too fiercely loyal for his preference.

  “I doubt very much that there will be much danger involved,” Zyid said. “Or at least, there shouldn’t be, provided that what you told me is true. You are confident about your observations, correct?”

  “Yes, sir,” Noni admitted reluctantly.

  “Then I will take your word and trust that what you’ve told me about this Disciplinary Officer is right,” Zyid said. “If his personal security is indeed lighter than the others’, I will not miss the opportunity to retaliate for this Zero Tolerance nonsense.”

  “But sir…” Noni took a deep breath, as if preparing to cross a dangerous threshold. “Your life is more valuable than any of ours. Let me do it.”

  “It’s not up to you to appoint such values, Noni,” Zyid said, his voice suddenly so sharp that Noni cringed. “In any case, you will not be idle. I will make sure that the incident is loud and messy—in the meantime, while the Enforcers are busy looking for the person who killed their dear Disciplinary Officer, I want you to personally drop in on the two hangouts and make sure that the preparations are on schedule. I want them to be ready within three days.”

  Noni remained silent.