Alex turned his face forward so he could swear.

Hard heels came marching up the aisle as Elisha looked to see- "Eyes forward, young lady!"

She turned forward and froze there.

Mr. Booker, in burgundy suit, a thick novel under his arm, strode mightily to the front of the cla.s.s. He was middle-aged and professorial in appearance, right down to the little black reading gla.s.ses and receding hairline, but there was nothing weak about him. The way he walked, stood, and glared, this guy was scary, and now he was directing his full attention on Alex, who had the gall to glare right back at him. "You will return to your own desk. Now"

"This is my desk, Mr. Booker, sir." Alex had a mocking tone.

The direct challenge made Booker pause, then tilt his head slightly, amused as if by a game. "How? By right of conquest?"

Alex looked around at the other students. "I'm sharing it."

That brought a timid laugh from the others that Booker's glare cut short as if he'd used a pair of scissors.

"So that's your truth for today, is it?" Booker asked.

"Hey," said Alex with a haughty grin, "that's how things work around here." He looked at the rest of the cla.s.s. "Huh? How about it, group? Agreed?"

He saw a whole cla.s.s, some twenty kids, afraid to express the slightest opinion.

"Well," said Booker, "this does present a problem, doesn't it? You have your truth, and I have mine. Just what are we going to do about that?"

Alex gave an arrogant shrug. "Play 'both/and,' I guess."

"You've been listening to Easley."

Alex just smirked, gave his head a playful, confident little wiggle- Until Mr. Booker grabbed a fistful of Alex's perfectly combed hair and slammed his head down on the desk. The sound of Alex's skull smacking into the wood made everyone jump.

"Mr. Easley failed to include a vital part of the equation," Mr. Booker growled in Alex's ear as Alex struggled and winced, his face beet red. "Power, Alex. Power. Something I have, and you don't."

As everyone watched, their hearts pounding, some trembling, Mr. Booker yanked Alex out of his desk-Alex's books and papers went flying-and propelled him down the aisle to a desk halfway back. He didn't wait for Alex to sit there; he put him there, and then barked at Tom Cruise, who'd found an empty desk near the back, "Mr. Cruise, you will take your a.s.signed seat, please."

Mr. Cruise leaped, ran, planted his hindquarters in that desk, then sat at attention.

Booker put out his palm toward Alex. "Your tokens. All of them."

Alex, his face red, his eye tearing from being smacked on the desk, his hair still disheveled, dug into his blazer pocket and produced a handful of KM dollars. With obvious resentment, he dropped them into Booker's palm.

Mr. Booker confined Alex to his desk with only a look, then returned to the front of the cla.s.sroom, his dignity unruffled. "Mr. Cruise, I believe these belong to you." He gave the tokens to Mr. Cruise, then turned, rested against his desk, and surveyed the cla.s.s, meeting every eye. "Surely there are questions?" There was only silence. He shrugged it off, lightly throwing up his hands. "Of course. If there is no truth, how can there be questions?"

His fiery eye fell upon Elisha, who looked back only when she felt him looking at her. "And this is the new student, I presume? Answer me."

"Yes, sir. I'm calling myself Sally"

He took a moment to chuckle at that. "Sally. A nice choice. Are you a movie star? A rock star?"

"No. I'm just Sally"

"Well. First of all, thank you for wearing proper attire. There are those in this cla.s.s who have had to be reminded-Mr. Jackson! Your collar is up! Thank you, that's better!-who have had to be reminded what ties and blazers are for." He dug a KM dollar from his pocket and set it on her desk. "Now. Sally, since you seem to be such a center of attention, would you please stand and recite."

Elisha hesitated. "Uh, excuse me?"

His eyes narrowed. He repeated slowly, "Stand and recite."

She laughed nervously. "Sir, with all due respect, I just got here. This is my very first day"

His eyes could melt an iceberg. "Sally, I'm hearing an excuse. You know my policy regarding excuses!"

"No sir, I'm sorry. I don't know any of your policies because I've never been here before."

He crossed his arms. "And how would I know that?"

She could come up with only one answer. "Have you ever seen me before?"

He nodded confidently. "Every day"

I'm in fantasyland again, she thought, then said, "That's impossible."

Elisha could sense the silent gasp from the rest of the cla.s.s.

Booker approached her desk, his eyes threatening. He took back the KM dollar. "You have contradicted me. You do realize that?"

She didn't want a debate. She was just trying to find some sense in all this. "Mr. Booker, it would be contradictory for me to say that I've always been here when I've been somewhere else."

"And now you're telling me what to think!"

"I'm just telling you the truth."

"Your idea of truth, you mean! But you forget, child, that I might see things another way" His hand went to his desk. His fingers curled around a yardstick. "I might prefer to believe that you have always been here, that you knew good and well what the a.s.signment was, and that you are trying to challenge my authority!" He brought the yardstick around. "You will stand and you will recite." He raised the yardstick, ready to bring it down on her shoulders. "You will stand, or-"

Elijah jumped to his feet so fast his desk dumped over with a horrible clatter. "I'LL RECITE!"

Heads spun around. Eyes-wide, intense eyes-locked on him. Over on the right side of the cla.s.s, a girl broke into tears.

Time froze. Still holding the yardstick, Booker stood motionless like a still photograph from a scary movie and glared at Elijah. He shot a corrective look and a pointing finger at the girl who was whimpering, and she immediately stifled herself. Finally, he turned and walked down the aisle, his heels loudly marking each step on the hard maple floor. "I did not call on you."

Elijah could look past Booker and see the frightened face of his sister. Nothing would turn him back. "I'll recite, anything you want if I know it, and if I don't know it, you can go ahead and hit me."

Booker raised an eyebrow, impressed. He stole a glance at Elisha. "You have quite the power to charm, young lady" Then he looked at Elijah and cradled the yardstick in both hands, clearly relishing the thought. "Very well. Recite. But I warn you: Try your very best to please me."

Elijah didn't think he'd be able to look Booker in the eye, but there was something about the words he began to recite that gave him the nerve. "Exodus, chapter twenty: 'You shall have no other G.o.ds before me. You shall not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth. You shall not-"'

"The audacity!" Booker growled and raised the yardstick- A loud sc.r.a.ping of a desk across the floor! Elisha was on her feet, calling out, "'You shall not take the name of the Lord thy G.o.d in vain! Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy!"'

Now, in front and behind Booker, they spoke in chorus: "'Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged. You shall not steal. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery- "RUBBISH!" Booker roared, looking from one to the other.

There was silence.

"Do you want us to keep going?" Elijah asked.

"NO!" Booker studied both of them, looking back and forth, and finally, he lowered the yardstick to his side, tapping it absentmindedly on the floor as he returned to the front of the room. "That will be quite enough. Please be seated, and I commend you for a remarkable demonstration."

"Thank you-"

"Of rubbish. Pure rubbish." Booker tossed the yardstick on his desk and addressed the cla.s.s. "Did you notice? Once again, we find ourselves having to confront the same old idea, that somehow, as if from the heavens above, there is Truth, there is Right, there is Wrong." He looked angrily at Elijah and Elisha. "Once again, we have to endure someone putting forth definitive statements of truth!"

"As you have just done, sir," Elijah replied, righting his desk.

He simply laughed that aside. "Oh, yes. You're one of those 'either/or' thinkers, aren't you? Either my truth or yours. Well, I say your Truth is rubbish!" He spread his arms toward the cla.s.s. "I'm even willing to put it to the group! We are a group, are we not, with the power to agree on what is true? Let me ask you, group: Would any disagree with me?"

No one disagreed. Hardly anyone even looked his direction.

He laughed, basking in victory. "Rubbish!"

The cla.s.s took turns reading aloud from Hemingway for the rest of the hour. Some read well, were commended, and given KM dollars; some could hardly read at all, were humiliated, and had their dollars taken away. Booker certainly made no friends, but like it or not, it was his hour, his cla.s.s, his kingdom. He ran things the way he pleased, and though he invited questionsonce-no one dared ask any.

When cla.s.s was finally dismissed and the students were a safe distance away, there were plenty of questions. "Who does he think he is?" "That guy's a psycho!" "I thought cla.s.ses here were optional! What's this mandatory stuff?" "Man, this place is no fun. It's just like school again!"

Elisha's nerves were frazzled. "Do you think he really would have hit me?"

"He wouldn't have had the chance," Elijah told her.

Elisha just sighed, calming herself. "Well, better day tomorrow"

Warren, a quiet but strong young man with reddish hair and freckles, approached Elisha and Elijah on the sidewalk. "I just want to tell you, you've got nerve, man. I couldn't have faced down Booker like that."

Ramon agreed. "You're one bad dude, Jerry-but I wouldn't let him hit me. I'd cut him up first."

Marcy was crying a little, and touched her forehead to Elisha's shoulder. "I felt so awful for you."

Elisha held Marcy close to comfort her. "It's all right. We just need to learn the ropes, that's all. Tomorrow will go more smoothly"

"What was that?" asked Ramon. "The Ten Commandments?"

"How come you both know the same thing?" asked Warren.

Elijah shrugged. "Doesn't everybody?"

"I've seen the movie," Warren offered.

"Hey," said Ramon, "there goes Booker now."

They all followed his gaze. Mr. Booker, with several teachers and staff, was walking toward the big iron gate that separated the campus from the mansion up in the trees. When he and the others reached the gate, Booker entered a code in the lock and the big gate swung open automatically. As soon as they had all pa.s.sed through, it swung shut again, and the final, metallic clank could be heard clear across the field.

'Just like prison bars," said Elisha.

"I wouldn't mind a closer look at that place," said Elijah.

"Don't even think about it," said Warren. "Somebody already tried sneaking in there and we haven't seen him since."

Elijah and Elisha each made a point to look normal.

"You mean, one of the guests? One of the kids, like us?" Elisha asked.

"Yeah. He was ..." He fumbled a bit as if he didn't want to go into it. "Well, just stay away from there and don't worry about it."

"But what do they do in there?" Elijah asked.

"It's academy headquarters. Offices and stuff. I think Mr. Bingham lives up there, and maybe Booker and Mrs. Wendell, the librarian. It's private, that's all. Come on. Let's grab something to eat and then rock out."

The Rec Center was a huge pavilion wholly devoted to games, amus.e.m.e.nt, distraction, and sensory overload, and the doors opened at six o'clock every morning. The video arcade rivaled anything the kids might find in the big city, with row upon row of roaring, thumping, off-road-racing, downhill-skiing, s...o...b..arding, bad-guy-shooting, alien-blasting, fighter-jet-flying, body-bashing machines, flashing, beeping, blurping, exploding, a hot-b.u.t.tered carnival of glittering lights in the semidarkness, a riotous rumble accented with the loud clack of pool b.a.l.l.s striking each other and the bock, bock bobock of air hockey. Above all this was the pounding, ba.s.s-driven throb of rock music from the house sound system-and just below it, the roar of the youthful crowd, all yell-talking to each other in bellows, hollers, and shrieks. Everything that met the eye was overstated, from the comic art and blaring movie posters on the walls to the green, purple, red, and blue neon logos, to the bigger-than-life pictures of television, movie, and rock stars in the halls and restrooms. And all the bodies were in constant motion, silhouettes against the lights, rushing, ambling, b.u.mping, drifting from game to game, machine to machine, group to group, like bees between blossoms.

The kids were in their own clothes now, the clothes they'd brought on their backs, although there were plenty of KnightMoore tee shirts, jogging shorts, sweat pants, and other cool sports clothing walking around, available at the Campus Exchange for the right amount of KMs. Now, with different wardrobe choices, the kids could talk with their clothes: Don't mess with me. Don't notice me. I don't care. I'm not different. I'm really different. I'm tough. I'm cool. I don't need anybody. I'm available. I'm fat but don't know it. Hey, I don't worry.

Elijah and Elisha decided to split up and mingle, carrying on semi-shouted conversations with anyone who was talkative.

Elijah became the fourth player in a pool game, and managed to jaw with his opponents while they waited for their turn.

"The mansion? That's where all the bigwigs live," a lanky pool shark named Andy told him, chalking his cue. "We got some kids saying weird stuff about it, but ehhh, you don't have to believe everything you hear."

"I heard somebody tried to sneak in there and he never came back," Elijah prompted.

"Yeah, I've heard that."

"No, you didn't," said Roberto, watching his shot drop into the corner pocket. "It's just a bunch of talk."

"A bunch of talk that he didn't hear?" Elijah asked.

"That's right."

"Yeah, he's right, I didn't hear it," said Andy.

Marcy introduced Elisha to some of her friends near the vending machines. Britney and Madonna had heard about Elisha's first day in Booker's cla.s.s, which immediately gave them a common bond.

"You ask me, that mansion's haunted," said Madonna, leaning on the pop machine as she checked out the boys in the room. "I mean, like, Booker lives up there, so I mean, come on!"

"I wouldn't go up there," said Britney. "One night we heard somebody screaming-I'm not joking! You don't know what Booker and Bingham and all those people might be doing up there."

"Did one kid really go up there?" Elisha asked.

"Yeah, first night we were all here. It was some kind of dare, I think."

"What happened to him?"

"He tried to climb over the wall and he fell inside, and then he screamed, and ..." She shrugged. "And now he's gone, that's all I know."

"Madonna?"