WSB Academy, Location Classified, 1976
Sunday. September 18, 1976
I have been instructed to keep a journal during my time here. How this will be helpful to me, I can't fathom, but as there is little else besides studying to pass the non-classroom hours, I suppose there is no harm in writing down my daily happenings, which are few, or my thoughts, which are unimportant. So, where shall I begin? The writing prompt was to explain what I want to get out of my experience at the WSB Academy. The same thing I wanted out of Oxford. The same thing that propelled me through my accelerated course of study making me one of the youngest graduates. I want to distinguish myself. I want to leave a mark on the world with my mind if I have nothing else to give. I want the family who was embarrassed by my existence and abandoned me to know they were wrong to underestimate me. Wrong to withhold my real name and birthright from me.
I decided to join the WSB for another reason as well. Connections. Here I will be taught how to interact with people so I can pretend to have experienced what it's like to have a friend. Being friendless and familyless is a burden of a unique kind. It's difficult enough to feel insignificant, but it's almost unbearable to have engraved into your soul that you will never be, can never be, anything but insignificant. Someone to be ignored by the world and pass unseen through life until I end up unmourned, unhonored, and unsung in the grave. Perhaps it was too much to expect that the WSB Academy would demonstratively change my circumstances in that regard. High marks on an entrance exam do not companions make. I remind myself that this isn't a fairytale, and important people don't show up suddenly into your life in the dead of night-
Crunch crunch
An unexpected sound drew Ivan Theodore's attention from his journal page to his open window. The warm fall air breathed in and out, pushing the stuffiness out of his small spartan dorm room. He listened for a moment more and then turned back to his journal.
CRUNCH CRUNCH
There was no mistaking the sound this time. It was the sound of leaves crunching underfoot and foliage rustling. Now this sort of sound on an autumn night would hardly be unusual if his room wasn't three floors up. At that moment, he saw a hand on his window sill, and the rustle of leaves was mixed with the sound of out-of-breath curses. A black bag was thrown unceremoniously into the room, where it landed with a muted thud on the floor. Then a bare leg appeared and hooked itself over the rim of the casement. Most surprising of all, a red high heel was dangling precariously from the toes of the foot at the end of that leg. With a final great heaving sound, Ivan was soon faced with the owner of the red shoe, who was suddenly sitting on the window sill. It was a girl, well, a woman, staring at him with dark brown eyes with as shocked an expression on her face as his.
"What are you doing here?" An English accent demanded.
Ivan blinked at her in confusion. "Th-this is my room. Wh-what are you doing here?"
"Your room?" her brow furrowed with a frown. "Wait a minute…" she turned and poked her head out the window and leaned out as far as she could without plummeting to her death. "One, two, three...then up two and over four…" she counted to herself. She stood up and faced him again with a blush on her cheeks. "I'm sorry, I must have counted wrong. I thought I would come up in the women's dorm. I think following that trellis threw me off, but it was faster than trying to shimmy up the drain pipes. I'm so sorry to intrude, I hope you don't mind," she said as politely and elegantly as if she was apologizing for bumping into him on the street rather than climbing through his open window in the dead of night.
All he could do was stare, and then he broke out in unrestrained laughter at the ludicrousness of the situation. The brown-eyed girl laughed, too. After a moment, she tapped herself on the forehead and looked apologetically at him. "Oh, I'm sorry, where are my manners? I'm Anna Devane. I don't believe we've met." Instantly she sprang up and came forward with an outstretched hand and gave a wide, friendly smile in which there seemed not a shadow of either shyness or overly- burdened conscience.
He didn't have the courage to tell her that they had met before; in fact, they were in at least two classes together. He wasn't surprised or even disappointed that she hadn't noticed him, but there was no way that anyone couldn't notice her. She was one of the most singularly beautiful women he had ever seen up close. There was a gloss of chestnut on her satin-smooth hair that hung down her back in waves and a soft ripe glow of pink in her cheeks from the unconventional exercise. Her eyes were big and brown and velvety under sharp pointed black brows, and her smiling mouth was rose-red. He tried his best to keep his eyes focused on her face and not the plunging neckline of the silver dress that was artfully draped about the curves of her body.
Ivan slowly extended his hand, and she grasped it firmly and shook it with enthusiasm.
"Wait, I do know you," she exclaimed, and her eyes widened. "You are in my Global Logistics class, right? You gave that brilliant paper on using supply chain analytics to determine the correct placement of field agents. Genius! Truly. Sorry, I'm new here, and I'm still getting my bearings. I just hope I don't LOOK as lonely and friendless as I FEEL. I must get better at learning names...which reminds me you haven't told me yours yet."
"I-Ivan Th-theodore." he blushed as his tongue had trouble with the words. His stutter began as many do, around age six, when most children's language abilities are rapidly expanding. In his case, it was his expansive reading and desire to produce longer and more complex sentences that caused his brain to experience higher demand than it could process, affecting the motor control necessary to produce speech. Through a variety of therapies, he was able to master his tongue, but when faced with environmental factors like surprise or embarrassment, this caused his disfluency to reoccur, and this troublesome trait persisted into adulthood. However, If she noticed the halting nature of his speech, she didn't show it.
"A pleasure to meet you, Ivan. My apologies for being so forward. Shyness isn't among my many failings- or my virtues. Come let's just sit and get acquainted. It won't be hard. I know we are going to be good friends. I just have a feeling about it. I'd leave, but Mrs. Johnson- she's the housemother to all us girls, stays up late. I just know that if I attempt to sneak in, she will hear me, and I don't need a demerit right now. I swear the lion's share of the rules in this place are fixated on keeping track of the whereabouts of female recruits. Do you have to sign in and out of your dorm? Of course not. I shouldn't have to sneak out as I do."
"Why were you out of the dorm past curfew?"
"Homework," She said primly. "There is a pub in town that I like to go to and practice. I mean, classwork only takes us so far. How will I know if this training will work if I don't try it out firsthand? So tonight, I was working on my information gathering, seeing how much I could learn from each mark without them knowing that was my goal. Practice is the only thing that will make me perfect, and I intend to be perfect. I'm not leaving any room for error."
"What good will all that practice be if you get dismissed for breaking the rules?"
"You're breaking the rules too by having me here in your room," she observed slyly. "Are you going to turn me in? Somehow I get the feeling that you might not mind being a rule breaker. And I like that because when I tell you secrets, it won't be like I'm telling them a stranger. I think it's important in this place to know who you can trust. Especially when we are all being taught to be untrustworthy. Now tell me what you think of my looks."
This naive demand was made in a perfectly serious tone and came with a very serious and worried expression. Ivan was surprised but answered honestly, if in a restrained manner.
"I-I th-think you are very pp-pretty."
Anna's mouth flashed into a bewitching smile over perfect white teeth.
"Oh, good. I thought that myself, but then Agent Laurent made me feel as if I was all wrong to think so. She told me I'm all complexion and hair. And it didn't sound like a compliment. She likes the prettiest girls the best, and I definitely felt off the mark today. I can't make up my mind about my own appearance. Just when I decide that I'm pretty enough, I begin to worry that I'm not. And being plain means you can only go so far in fieldwork."
"I w-wouldn't know. The WSB, or any institution for that m-matter, has ever chosen me for my appearance."Ivan felt his face grow warm, and he was keenly aware of his own looks at that moment and of the back and leg braces that were sitting on the floor beside him. He wondered what she really thought of his long-limbed loose-jointed frame that didn't fit in a world that counted symmetry as a cardinal virtue.
Anna's eyes grew wide in apology.
"You must think I'm awfully vain, but I'm not. You're a man; you don't know the pressure that is on us female recruits to be physically pleasing in every way. Your hip, waist, and bust measurements aren't a part of your dossier, are they? Be glad. I actually am smart, but no one cares a jot what my brain looks like in a miniskirt."
Anna sighed as if the weight of the world rested on her shapely shoulders. From somewhere within the folds of her gown, she pulled out a cigarette. She crossed her legs, and the long skirt of her dress parted to display her bare, shapely leg up to her thigh.
"Do you have a light?" she asked.
"Ignoring the fact that smoking isn't allowed indoors, isn't that a bad habit to start?"
Anna exhaled, sighed, and then waved her hand dismissively. "I don't like it even one bit, but I was told by Agent Tamison that I needed to learn because smoking would help make me seem older than I am. And besides, asking for a light is an easy way to make contact with a mark. And she said it draws attention to the mouth which men find, and I quote, sensual," she gestured with her fingers for emphasis. "I don't quite understand it; it seems a little silly to me. But what do you think? Do you find it attractive?"
She took a long drag from the cigarette and smiled, and let a long slow stream of smoke from her parted lips while never taking her eyes off of him. Then she tilted her chin with a wink and a smile.
"It's attractive, b-but I just read in a science journal that smoking leads to premature aging and gives you w-wrinkles. How old do you want to look and how soon?" he asked coolly.
Anna looked for a moment at the cigarette, held delicately in her long tapered fingers, then quickly flicked it out the window.
"I'm hungry. Do you have anything to eat?"
"No. Dinner was hours ago."
"I know! That's why I'm hungry. The men in the bar only offered to buy me drinks. It gave me an opportunity to pretend to be wellied but not much else," she shrugged. "I suppose I'd better get out of these borrowed feathers. I convinced a shop-girl in town to let me borrow this dress, and I have to return it tomorrow. And I can't walk through these hallowed halls like this. Now tell me your life story, I feel like there is an interesting tale to be told, and in return, I'll tell you mine. Or let's make it interesting. You tell me three things about your life, two true and one a lie. Then I will do the same, and let's see if we can guess each other's truth. I'll even let you go first."
"Um...alright. Number one, I was the youngest person in forty years to read Classics at Oxford."
"Interesting. Go on." She stood up and grabbed her black rucksack. She pulled out what he recognized as a pair of blue and white striped pajamas. Then she looked at the watch on her wrist and kicked off her heels. She pulled on the sash of her dress and quickly turned around before it fell open completely. Ivan's mouth went dry as he watched her shimmy into the pajama bottoms under her long skirt and then threw off the dress altogether so he could see the smooth naked skin of her back before she pulled her arms through the pajama shirt and began to button it up rapidly. She turned around just as her fingers closed the gap over her decolletage. He dropped his eye immediately, but he was certain she noticed him watching her. However, she was unphased as she pulled her long dark hair from her collar and shook the strands loose. Then she looked at her watch and smiled to herself.
"Thirty-two seconds," she said triumphantly. "Five seconds better than what the WSB's standard is for quick changes. Not bad if I do say so. But don't mind me, keep going. What's the next one?"
"Uh...um...I'm Greek Royalty. You said we both were playing this game. Your turn."
"Alright. One, I speak five languages, and two, I was recruited at a ballet studio. Now I'm caught up to you. So your last one?"
"I'm my mother's favorite child." He said grimly.
"And I'm an orphan," she countered back. "So let me try and guess..." She began to wander about his room. Picking up and turning over in her hands the few items that he possessed. He wanted to protest at her moving his things, it was a new experience for him to have someone in his own personal space, but he held his tongue. She pulled a scarf from his coat rack and wrapped it around her slim throat, and then slipped it off and tossed it back into its place. She picked up some pages from his desk and leafed through them, and then stopped abruptly.
"I think I can deduce that you did read Classics at Oxford. Did you do all these translations?"
"Yes. It's not very complicated," he said modestly, but he was secretly pleased by the impressed tone in her voice.
"For you, perhaps. I'm used to being good at things right away. Like lockpicking? I'd mastered it in a week. Safe-cracking was even easier. But I feel like a perfect idiot when it comes to Latin and languages in general. If anything keeps me from being a field agent, it will be that. How nonsensical is that my career is hampered by a dead language. It's driving me crazy," she mourned.
"Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat," He quoted solemnly and then couldn't help but laugh at her confused expression. "'Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.' Perhaps you are in good company. Actually, that phrase was originally Greek, and it goes, 'evil appears as good in the minds of those whom gods lead to destruction.' "
"I don't have any intention to tangle with the gods," she said witheringly. "I just don't want a language that hasn't been spoken for six hundred years to hold me back from joining the Bureau. Why can't the WSB modernize?"
"Latin provides the key to the Romance languages, Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese. If you want to be a field agent so badly, you need to be familiar with all of them. What use would you be if you can't converse with the enemy."
"Mock me if you must, but I'm frustrated, fatigued, and fed up with Latin."
"At least your agony is alliterative, so you know your English well enough," Ivan said dryly. ``You don't seem like a person who gives up. So what will you do then?"
Anna clapped her hands together as a marvelous scheme formed in her head.
"I have an idea. You'll be my tutor."
Ivan coughed. "Mm-me?"
"Yes! Isn't it a killing idea? You must. If you don't let me cast in my lot with you, I'll get kicked out of the Academy, die of disappointment, and then I'll come back and haunt you. Don't think I won't!"
"I don't need any more ghost haunting me than I've already attracted in life," Ivan said soberly. "I could meet you in the library after our courses are done…"
"No," she said firmly, "We need to keep it a secret! Please! I can't have anyone knowing I need help. It will just make me look weak, and I can't have that. I can't have anyone thinking I don't absolutely belong here. They already- " she stopped herself from saying anything further and turned away.
He was going to push back, but the look on her face made him change his mind. There was a look in her eyes that he recognized. A self-consciousness and pride mixed together into a look of pleading desperation in her dark eyes. There was clearly more to her than just beauty and ambition alone. He could not connect the idea of fear with the vivid, joyous creature in front of him, but he knew all too well that those who can soar to the highest heights can also plunge to the deepest depths.
"Alright. We can meet here. You got in here once without detection, and you can use the practice, right? How about every Tuesday and Thursday after lights out?"
"Thank you! That will be perfect. I'll even see if I can stop by the kitchens to see if I can nick some snacks for us. I really can't believe you have nothing here. I'm still hungry." Anna rubbed her hand over her complaining stomach. She laughed again and placed her hand over her mouth to keep her voice from betraying her presence on the men's floor.
By this point, they were both in such good spirits that the flow of their conversation naturally moved from topic to topic: Instructors, classes, training techniques, and fellow recruits; nothing was sacred. Anna proved to be a skilled mimic and had him beside himself with her send-ups of various WSB dignitaries, and he held his own in the jests and repartee that flew about furiously between them. Ivan felt so at ease that even his stammer receded, floating just around the edges of his discourse but never intruding. Eventually, Anna looked at her watch again.
"Well, it's past midnight. I'm exhausted. Soon I'll barely be able to keep my eyelids propped open, and I'm supposed to lead calisthenics tomorrow. Must be ready for H-hour. I'd better be getting upstairs…" she yawned.
"Wait!" he interjected. "We got so sidetracked that you haven't guessed which fact about me is a lie and which ones are truths. And I haven't guessed yours."
"That's alright," she said with a wink. "We will be seeing each other regularly now, so you can guess next Tuesday."
Anna sprang up, and took both his hands in hers and shook them jubilantly, and then picked up her bag and slung her bag over her back.
"I'm glad you will let me come see you again. I want to be chummy with you if I haven't scared you away. I may not sound it tonight, but I am quite a serious person who can have serious, sensible conversations about many topics. As many topics as are in that pile of books, you have on that shelf there. I'll prove it next time."
She waved as she climbed out the window, and he watched her until she was out of sight. Ivan let out a breath he didn't know he was holding but was startled when her face poked above the sill one more time.
"Promise me we will look out for each other, ok? It's cutthroat here, but no matter what happens, we will be friends, yeah?"
Ivan nodded enthusiastically. And then she was gone. He was actually chuckling to himself by this time, something he couldn't remember doing this often since...well, to be honest, ever. Anna's enthusiastic chatter had the unexpected effect of cheering him up; his loneliness vanished for the time being and did not return even after she waved goodbye and climbed back out his window into the night, and he found himself alone again in his small dorm room.
He picked up his pen to finish his journal entry. He sat for a long time, marveling that it had only been an hour that she stayed. He had the sense of a long passage of time that a day of unexpected acquaintance with a sympathetic spirit can bring. After a minute more, he set his pen to paper.
To quote Henry Thoreau, "The language of Friendship is not words, but meanings." And thus, today, I might have made a friend.
