the Zin boy next door,” I say in a breath. “And Dr. Z—that’s Dr. Zin. Your dad.”
“I assumed you’d pieced that together already.”
I shake my head. He looks disappointed.
“I’ve been living in that monstrosity of a house for years,” he explains. “No one’s lived with Gigi in all that time. I would have thought she’d have mentioned me.” Before I can continue with the small talk, Ben glances up the hall and lowers his voice. “Look, A.M., I assume Villicus is going to assign your Guardian to you and get you to declare your PT.”
Unsure why there’s this sudden air of secrecy, I reply with a shrug, “Your guess is as good as mine.”
“It’s no guess. Most kids get assigned this stuff the second they arrive on the island—”
“The second?” I smirk at the exaggeration.
“—but yours is a special case.”
“Special. Right.” Of course, I know he’s referring to my ghetto background.
“You’re going to get assigned a Guardian right away. We all have one—well, everyone that’s going for the Big V, at least.”
“What’s the Big V?”
“The valedictorian race. Listen,” his mint gaze darts to the secretary again, and when she finally turns away, the pace of his speech quickens, “Villicus will explain all that stuff soon. Don’t tell him I was talking to you.”
“Um, are you okay?”
“Just do this one thing for me, will you, Anne?”
“I just—I don’t even know you.”
He flinches when I say that. The brass knob on Villicus’s door squeals.
“Just make your Guardian happy,” Ben whispers to me hurriedly through his teeth, like a ventriloquist, as the door starts to swing open, “and you’ll be valedictorian next year. You have to.”
Then, abruptly, he leans back against the bench and closes his eyes, as if he’s been napping all this time. Pilot and Dr. Zin appear in the doorway. Pilot’s eyes are wet and red, and he looks furious as he’s ushered out. I’m hardly able to take in what’s happening—with Ben’s warning so fresh in my mind—as Pilot turns back and speaks boldly to our unseen headmaster. Ben slowly opens his eyes to join me in watching what follows.
“It’s called free will,” Pilot bellows, his voice deep but quaking. “I have every right to exercise it. And that means I get to make my own choices.”
“Come along, Mr. Stone,” Dr. Zin advises, taking Pilot by the arm.
Pilot shrugs his arm free and glowers at everyone but me.
“And I choose,” Pilot continues boldly, “not to declare a PT, not to take a Guardian, and not to enter this BS race to become valedictorian. Let the rest of the students here try to impress their pathetic, uninvolved parents with some stupid title, but that’s not how I’m going to live my life. And you can’t force me. I will not declare a PT!”
In a flash, Pilot runs down the hall and, blankly, Dr. Zin turns his attention to Ben. He hands him a piece of paper.
“The headmaster was kind to you,” Dr. Zin says stiffly to his son. I can easily see the resemblance now—it’s not just their height, their hair, or their eyes but the formal way they speak. “He has not declined your application to assist Mr. Weinchler, in spite of your outburst. Take this form to the front desk for processing.”
Then Dr. Zin turns to me and extends his arm toward the door, welcoming me to a room I’m pretty sure I don’t want to go into. Not that I’ve ever had a reason to fear the principal. But because I just saw a rather tough-looking dude reduced to tears by the man on the other side of the door.
I expect Ben to half-smile or at least nod at me as I go in, but he’s halfway down the hall even before I stand—confirming my worry that, in spite of what appeared to be a brief glimpse of the soft side of Ben Zin, he’s as indifferent toward me as I need to be toward him.
Even before I spy Headmaster Villicus hobbling like the old man he is toward his desk, I am assaulted by the unbearable heat of his office. An enormous orange fire roars in the largest stone fireplace I’ve ever seen, belching smoke into the chimney but letting a small trickle escape from either side of the fire enclosure and rise to create a haze near the ceiling.
“Miss Merchant,” Villicus greets. “Take a seat. Dr. Zin was just leaving.”
My gaze follows Dr. Zin as, with a nod in Villicus’s direction and none in mine, he retreats. The door closes with a faint click behind him.
“Sit,” Villicus commands me.
He turns to me, crossing his arms over the back of his high-back chair, and smiles. If you can call that a smile. His nearly brown teeth are crooked—much more crooked than mine—and his left eyebrow is permanently arched, with a large mole bursting out of it. It’s taking everything in me not to stare at it as I approach. Not to stare at his bristly hair either or the hunch in his shoulders or the potbelly that he tries to hide under a brown suit that fits like a paper bag. It’s as wrinkled as the cloak of a dead Franciscan friar, and I can smell the BO that clings to it. As the heat and odor make my head swoon, as I grip the wooden arm of my instantly uncomfortable chair, I flick my gaze toward the little window and inhale deeply through my mouth—like I’m breathing in the cool air.
He draws the shade.
In the dimness, he runs his stare over me again and again. Just as it seems he might be done looking me over, he drags his gaze up from my toes to my bare knees, all the way up, pausing where he likes and ultimately settling restlessly on the top of my head. Then his gaze drifts downward. For the first time, it occurs to me that these ultra-small uniforms are designed to give old men like Villicus something to feast their pervy eyes on.
I glance uneasily away, to an old framed map of Germany. Next to it, a cabinet holds what look like war medals, hundreds of them. Villicus’s broad desk is bare except for a pen with a huge black plume, a jumbo hourglass that counts away the days, and a complex-looking case encrusted with flame-shaped sapphires.
“Thanks for inviting me to meet you,” I begin, my voice cracking the excruciating quiet like a hammer on glass. “I have a few questions I’d love to get cleared up. For starters, I’ve been hearing a lot about Guardians and PTs, but I have no idea what those are.”
My implied question hangs in the air.
“Mizz Merchant,” he coos at last, “did you ask me to come to your office?”
He slinks around his desk and sits on it, just opposite me. Our knees are close enough to touch. I adjust my leg away.
“No.”
“Then allow me to direct this conversation, dear.”
I fold my hands on my lap.
“You do realize that, at Cania Christy, we accept only the best of the best.”
“Okay,” I say cautiously.
“Okay? Hmm.”
Unsatisfied, he pushes off his desk and wanders behind my chair. There he stands, breathing heavily. With a short shudder, I stiffen as I feel his hands—his long, thick nails—brace my shoulders.
“Do you believe you are the best of the best?” he asks, still holding my shoulders.
I am frozen in his grip. “I’ve never really thought about it.”
“Of course you have. Certainly your first art show must have given you a distinct amount of confidence in your abilities.”
My