Chapter One - Part Three
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Jack
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Statistics, According to Microsoft Word:
Words: 5,873
Passive Sentences: 4%
Flesch Reading Ease: 88.8
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 3.2
Microsoft Word Pages: ~15
"We do the orientations by grade, so you'll have to hang out in the hallway for a few minutes." Elsa says, holding the door open for Norman and Coraline. I nod, though I don't understand why I can't join them. Must be some sort of age-specific thing.
For the first time I notice the murals covering both walls of the hallway. On the western wall, there are warm colours, with a tower in the centre, and what looks a girl with long golden hair looking up at the sky. Abstract patterns decorate the mural, and, upon closer inspection, I notice the sun pattern hidden everywhere in the mural. I think it's safe to assume this is the work of the same person who painted the suns in the hallways.
I don't notice how long I spend looking at the mural, and before I know it the door opens and Elsa, Norman, and Coraline come walking out.
"I'm just going to bring them to their rooms, you can wait in my office if you'd like," She offers, but I shake my head, wanting to examine the murals further. She apologizes for the wait and hurries off.
I turn towards the eastern wall, which has Elsa's office just on the other side. A magnificent ice palace on a mountain is the main focus. Beautiful snowflakes are everywhere, and various pictures of two children playing in the snow are in the corners. I can see a small, blue figure with their hands widely spread above their head on the balcony of the ice palace, and ice seems to be flowing from their fingertips. The figure is too small to see any details, though, but I can tell they have blonde hair.
I think about the school, and though it doesn't seem like the best school ever, I decided to give it, and the students, a chance. I decide to make the most of it.
Soon, Elsa comes back muttering a few more apologies as she opens her office door. We both enter, and I can't say I'm surprised of what I see.
There isn't a thing out of place, a simple, white desk is stainless, the papers on it in perfect order. A small laptop is centred on the desk, still shiny, as if it just came out of the box. Next to it is a box, the only thing that might be out of place. There's a grey couch in front of the desk. A bookshelf to the left seems to be organized in alphabetical order. A filing cabinet is tucked in the corner, and I don't even want to think about how organized it must be.
She seems to notice my amazement, and her cheeks turn rosy with embarrassment.
"Well, you sure are… organized." I say, but she remains quiet. "So what were the rules the runners broke? The real rules."
"No is supposed to talk to the new students. Like I said, it makes more sense if I can explain what the school is like in a prepared presentation."
Right.
"It's also against the rules to chase after the car."
"Who are 'they'?"
She sits in her white office chair. I follow her lead and sit in the leather couch in front of the desk. Rummaging through a drawer, she pulls out a steel blue, three-ring binder with my name already written on its spine, and when she looks back at me she smirks. "Ah, that's the real question, isn't it?"
She's starting to drive me crazy. Or maybe she is crazy. "And what's the answer?"
She shrugs, clasping her hands together on the desk and looks me straight in the eyes. "They're the D. W. D. Academy. The woman who drove you in and the corporate office."
"You don't know? Don't you want to?"
Elsa rolls her eyes. "Of course I want to know. But I don't know, so I'm trying to make the most of it."
She picks up the binder and gets up from her seat, making sure to push her chair in just the right position. She walks around the desk and sits next to me on the couch, crossing her legs and smoothing out her skirt.
"Here's the deal, Jack." She says in a serious tone, losing her tour guide façade. "There are some people, like Anna and Eep out there, who go running into the woods every chance they get. They go stand at the wall and talk about trying to climb over it and get away. They complain about every little thing."
"But they have nothing to complain about, right?"
She only gives a half smile in response. "Right now, the only thing we can do is play along. Just try and lay low for awhile. People like Anna and Eep have decided otherwise. People like Anna and Eep are the ones who get no good outcome out of what they do." I want to protest, but I can see where she's coming at. Laying low seems like the best option, but that doesn't mean I won't have a little fun along the way. I small smirk gradually makes its way on my face.
Elsa places her hands over the binder. "This is your manual for all things related to D. W. D. Academy. It has the rules, a map of the grounds, and a list of services. Everything you'll need." She pauses. "Now, listen. We need to go over a couple of the bigger rules, and then I'll take you up to your dorm."
I don't particularly want to go to my dorm. I need a moment alone to mull this over.
"Jack?" Elsa points at the manual.
I open the binder, preparing myself for the worst. The front page has a black-and-white photocopy of the school's coat of arms. It's barely visible on the paper, and looks like a photocopy of a photocopy. It looked far more regal on the website.
"Are the rules as stupid as everything else?" I ask, half serious, half joking.
She chuckles. "They're not stupid at all. Very basic stuff."
I wonder what her definition of 'basic' is, but I nod anyways. She certainly has a screwed-up version of normal.
"There are lots of rules, you can look them up in your book any time, but there are four big ones. First of all, no sex. It's the first thing students think of when they find out that there are no adults here. But, there are these." She points to a security camera in the corner. I'm surprised I never noticed them until now. She avoids my eyes, and I can tell she's uncomfortable talking about the cameras.
"They're in every room, every hallway. That's how they know if you've broken a rule, and if you break a big one, you get detention."
"What's detention?" I ask. It doesn't seem nearly as bad as she makes it out to be.
She looks down at her gloved hands. "Detention is bad enough that you don't want to end up there."
"Well… What does that mean?" I ask.
Elsa stammers for a moment or two, refusing to look anywhere but her hands.
"What is detention?" I ask again, speaking slowly.
She sighs, and looks up at me momentarily, looking just a little bit to my left as she speaks. "In the first six months or so, they let us off easy. No one got detention, and the school didn't seem so bad. Then, after those six months, people started getting detention. There was only four, all at different times. None have come back."
"What? Do they get sent home or something?"
"I'm sure they don't."
"Do you have any idea what happens?"
"The students have theories." She whispers, and suddenly she has a mixture between fear and sadness in her eyes.
There's a heavy silence.
"Well, that's the first rule. What are the other three?" I finally say.
She seems to snap out of it, and says, "No trying to escape," She crosses her arms, leaning back against the couch, and trying to seem relaxed, but I can still see that her shoulders are tense. "No refusing punishments. And no violent fights."
I laugh. "Violent fights? What other kinds of fights are there? Gentle fights?"
She softly laughs with me. "Yeah, that rule is weird. Fights are rarely punished, but if they are there usually minor."
"So how do you know if the fighting's minor or not?"
"You don't," She gets up, slowly walking backwards towards her desk while talking. "It's probably best to avoid fighting altogether." She pulls out a bracelet and a watch from the box on her desk. The bracelet is simple, silver metal with a small space to carve something in it, reminding me of those medical alert bracelets. The watch looks expensive; it's one of those ones you'd find in the jewelry section of a store.
"What are those for?"
"You get to choose a bracelet or a watch. Be careful, though. They don't come off." She explains, sort of.
"Yeah, but what is it for? Why don't they come off?"
"Oh," She says. "Sorry." Elsa walks towards the door and reaches for the handle, it unlocks with a buzz and click, just like before. She walks back to her desk, handing the bracelet and watch to me.
"It's the chip," She sits back down next to me. "It will give you access to your dorm and to any places that you're contracted to work. The door can sense your chip, and it unlocks."
I'm trapped in this school, and I have to wear a chip?
"What if I refuse?" I say, just a tad cheeky about it.
She gives a small smile and cocks her head at me. "What if I say please?"
Suddenly, I explode, and I get up from my seat, pacing across the room. I begin ranting about how stupid all of this is. How we're prisoners in this school. How Elsa doesn't seem to mind. I even yell at her a bit, but she takes it with the grace of a queen. She only watches and listens, patiently waiting. I try the knob, but it had locked again after she moved away. I'm even a prisoner in this room.
I smack the door with my open palm, and turn back to glare at her. She's standing now, only a few feet away.
"Can we sit down?" She seems genuine and concerned.
She's talking about the couch, but instead I sit on the floor, my back to the wall. She sits next to me, our shoulders almost touching.
"Like I said before, our best bet is to follow the rules. Our only other option is detention. There's no way to escape from here. People have tried, and they're lucky they didn't get detention." She holds onto her left wrist, and I assume that's where her bracelet or watch is.
I reach for her hand, pulling her sleeve back and yanking her glove off. She's frozen with shock as I roughly yank her up from the floor, and I shove her against the door, my hands angrily pinning her arms back against the wood. Her eyes are wide with fear, and she takes quick, short breaths.
There is no sound, and I stare at the still-locked door.
Elsa's words are barely audible. "They watch on those cameras," she whispers, her face only inches from mine. Our chests are pressed together, and I don't know if it's my pounding heart or her's that I feel. "You can only get out with your chip."
I'm sure my eyes are filled with panic as I stare back at her. There's no way I'm getting out of here on my own. I'm trapped. Helpless.
She tries to smile. "It's okay…" She trails off as she tries to find something reassuring to say. She's just as freaked out as I am.
I let go of her, and relief floods over her face. She ducks under my arms and retrieves her glove, her back to me, taking deep breaths as she puts it back on.
After a few minutes, I speak. "Okay."
"You'll wear it then?" Her voice is lightened, but her back is still to me.
"I guess I have no choice."
She turns, a small smile on her face. "Which do you want?" She walks back to the couch, where I had left the bracelet and the watch.
"The watch, I guess."
"That's what most people choose, once they find out that we don't have calendars. It helps a little, y'know?" She walks towards me with the watch, quickly snapping it on my wrist, but making sure it's secure, and manages to avoid as much contact with me as possible. I can't blame her, after what I did. "You'll be pleased to know that it's built for nature. It has a long-lasting battery and is waterproof. You could bring a hammer to it and it wouldn't break. It will let you in to all the places you need to go – your dorm, your classroom, any place you have the contract for."
"What contract?" I ask. I think she's mentioned it before, though she didn't explain.
"Oh, yes. That's not exactly a rule, but here's the ten-second version of how the contracts work. There are a lot of jobs that need to be done around here. There are no adults, which means there are no janitors or gardeners or even teachers. So, every week, hobs are posted and we bid to see who does what."
"We bid with what? Money?"
"Points," She says, sitting on the couch and gesturing for me to sit as well. "We bid how many points we're willing to do the job for, and then they give the contract to the lowest bidder. When you get paid, you can use the points to get clothes or food or whatever. I think that some of the guys in the dorms even bought some video games."
"Does everyone have to have a job?" I had no intention of doing any more work than I had to at this school.
"Sort of," She gives a fake smile. "Things are different than they used to be. Better – way better. For a while, it was every man for himself. But everyone got angry, and no one was satisfied because the good jobs would get down to one point, and you can't come close to buying anything with one point. So, people started getting together and bidding as a group. For example, all of my friends and I bid on the administration jobs. That worked a little better, because I wasn't competing with my friends, but we were still competing with everyone else."
"People want the jobs that bad?"
"Sure," she laughs. "You can get some fun things, and we're kinda stuck here, so every bit of fun helps. Anyway, my group got bigger and we started making deals with others – we won't bid on janitorial jobs if you don't bid on administration jobs. That kind of thing."
"So, like a union."
"I guess," Elsa says. "I don't know much about unions. But in the last five months or so we've been pretty formalized. All the jobs are split up between three groups now. We don't bid on each other's stuff, and that means we get lots of points."
"I'll probably have to join one of those three groups, right?"
"Yep," She says. "Unfortunately, there's a new rule and I'm not allowed to tell you which group I'm in. But, like I said, my group has the administration contracts. You can ask around. It'd be great if you joined up." She's smiling warmly, and I can't tell what her motives are.
I lean back on the couch, my legs sore from traveling all day. I begin thinking of an escape, but push the thoughts away. There's a reason Grandpa Nick sent me here, and I've already promised myself to try and make the most of it.
"Any more rules?" I finally ask.
She shrugs. "Don't be tardy. Wear your uniform during class and meals. No drugs or alcohol, not that you could get them in here. Don't destroy property. You know – common sense stuff. There's a full list in your manual."
Elsa stands up, and there's a mixture of disappointment, worry, and sadness in her eyes. Did I do something wrong?
"Do you want to see your dorm?" She asks, already walking towards the door, which opens with a buzz. She holds the door open, giving me little options.
"Sure." I shrug, and we both leave the room. She checks to make sure the door is closed before she faces me.
"If you need anything, you can always talk to me." She points at a small call button next to her door. "If I'm not here, this will page me. It's part of my contract."
I nod, and we're on our way.
We pass a few abstract, black-and-white paintings on the walls, with splashes of brightly coloured paint splattered at random. There are small, white tables placed here and there with the exact same steel blue sculpture. It seems someone has gotten creative and used the sculptures as vases, each flower well taken care of. One table is missing the sculpture, and instead there is an old boot filled with dirt and the beginnings of a plant, it seems to have been tossed around many times. Whoever this person is, they're hell-bent on brightening up this place.
We climb the stairs, and quickly pass through several more corridors. The school is much larger than I originally thought. It wouldn't have a problem with students from grade six to grade twelve.
I suddenly realize that there are no students in the halls.
"Where-" Elsa seems to read my mind and interrupts.
"We don't want them to overwhelm new students, so they have to stay in their dorms." She says, her eyes forward, and it seems as though she's rehearsed this.
"So they're locked in their dorms, locked in the building, locked in the wall, locked in the fence."
She laughs. "Jack, I get the feeling you're not happy." She says.
"Well, no. Is anyone here happy about this? We're trapped. But I'm going to try to make the most of this." I answer.
"I'm happy to hear that then. But, yes, they're all in the dorms. Well, most of them. The group that has the cafeteria jobs will be down there making dinner. You can thank your lucky stars for that."
"Why?"
"When you get into the dorms, everyone is going to ask you to join their group. You don't want to join that one."
I laugh. "I assume that's not yours, then?"
"Ugh, no."
We turn a corner and are met with two large, white double doors.
"Here we are," Elsa says, gesturing to the doors on the right. I hear a buzz. Elsa points to the ceiling, and I see a round black device. "It sensed your chip. These doors will only open for the boys after curfew. Anyone can go in either dorm before then, unless you've been banned. The buzz means it's unlocked. You'll be in room two twenty-one."
I reach for the knob, but she grabs my wrist with her gloved hand.
"Jack," she says, her voice low. She looks up into my eyes. "I'm serious. Follow the rules."
Elsa pauses like she wants to say more, but turns on her heel and hurries into the girls' dorm.
I open the door and go inside.
A/N: Hello there! As usual, thanks for reading! I meant to post this hours ago, but I kinda got distracted and eventually ended up writing a little bit of the next chapter. Which is a good thing, sort of. Anyways, the point is that it's past midnight, I got little sleep last night, and so I'm half-asleep, which means I want to get this over with but I'll probably add another thousand to the word count. I'm sorry if Jack and Elsa's behaviour seems weird, the characters in the book are a little different and I tried to change things around to match but still have certain things said and done, so they may seem a little this, a little that.
So, next chapter Jack meets the rest of the school and things get... interesting. I'll leave it up to you to interpret that.
Hiccstrid VS Merricup
Merricup is in the lead!
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A reviewer has mentioned how swearing makes them uncomfortable. I'd like to note that this will have some mild swearing, and sometimes I can't control my typing. If it gets really bad in a chapter, I'll post a warning at the top, though I doubt I'll need to do that. This writer doesn't actually swear in real life! My mind is another matter.
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Hehe... I seem to like saying 'I'd like to note',
Okay, I'll sleep now.
Good night/morning/whatever time it is where you are!