Variant

“I don’t plan to stick around very long,” I said, which caused her to laugh again.

“You can’t say stuff like that,” she said, pretending to be scandalized. “What if the Society hears you?”

Maybe I needed to revise my assessment of the school. Jane seemed happy—truly happy. For some reason, until sitting here in class, I hadn’t really contemplated getting to know any girls in this weird prison of a school.

“Where are you from, Jane?”

“Baltimore. Hang on—time for class. Did they tell you about class?”

I shook my head. “Not really.”

“They don’t teach us reading and writing.” She smirked, and then turned back to face forward.

The students quieted down very quickly, much more so than in my schools back home. A girl stood up at the front of the class—she’d been sitting in the desk next to Becky. Her blond hair was pulled into a tight bun and her severe makeup made her skin almost as white as her teeth.

“Welcome to class,” she said, a little overly enthusiastic. “We’re very pleased to have a new student this morning. Benson, could you stand up and introduce yourself?”

I glanced over at Mason, who smiled and shrugged.

“I’m Benson Fisher,” I said. “From Pittsburgh. I’m seventeen. And I think it’s absolute bullcrap that you guys are all sitting here, pretending like nothing’s wrong.”

There were murmurs in the class as I sat back down, followed by a few giggles. Jane turned back and gave me an approving nod. The girl at the front of the class didn’t seem fazed at all. Becky faced straight ahead, motionless.

“Welcome, Benson,” she said. “I know you’ll fit right in.” She opened her minicomputer. “My name is Laura, and I’m the teaching assistant in this class. Mason, could you please help Benson out today?”

Mason gave a sarcastic salute.

“Thank you. Before we begin, I just need to announce today’s punishments.” Laura scanned the classroom, glancing slowly back and forth between her computer screen and the students in the desks. “Ah. Skiver. Fighting. No food today.”

Skiver, sitting against the back wall, swore and punched his desk. I looked back at Laura just in time to miss what Skiver did next, but her white face went red, and she stumbled over her next few words.

“It, uh, it looks . . . No one else in here is on the punishment list. Well done. Our lesson today is a little departure from what we’ve been studying, but you were all doing so well with Materials Science that I guess they’ve decided we’re ready to move on. Today we’ll be talking about aesthetics.”

Jane and Lily exchanged a look. Lily rolled her eyes.

“Aesthetics,” Laura said, reading from her computer, “is the philosophy that deals with the study of beauty. In this course we will be addressing such questions as ‘What is art?’ and ‘What is beauty?’”

Mason leaned over to me and whispered, “It’s something new every couple of weeks. Weird junk, like this. At least Materials Science had explosions.”

Class seemed to last forever. Laura only spoke for a few minutes, and then she handed out a test that was supposed to gauge our knowledge on the subject. I didn’t know a single answer. After the test we watched a video that was nothing but an endless slideshow of statues, vases, and paintings, all with a monotone British guy speaking in the background. A handful of the students seemed to be listening very attentively, but most were just trying to stay awake. Even Laura, who had sat down in the desk next to Becky, seemed bored.

I spent most of the class staring at the back of Jane’s head, at her red hair that hung down past her shoulders and touched my desk.

This school wasn’t what I wanted or expected, but I had to admit that parts of it were better than back home. I’d sat through a lot of boring classes before, in filthy classrooms that were either blazing hot or freezing cold. I’d watched kids pass drugs around while the teacher’s back was turned. And I’d spent many days wishing I could afford to eat at the cafeteria.

I adjusted the notebook on my desk, purposely sliding it so that I could “accidentally” touch Jane’s hair with the tips of my fingers.

No. I couldn’t get comfortable here. I wouldn’t be like the others. Becky had said we were stuck here so we might as well make the most of it. But I wasn’t going to be stuck here.

Chapter Six

Stepping out into the hall, I found Jane walking at my side instead of Mason. He and Lily were behind us, chatting.

“That girl, Laura, acts like she’s an expert on this stuff,” I said, gesturing back to the classroom. “Like she’s actually a teacher.”

“That’s the Society for you,” Jane said. “They’re the future leaders of America—trapped inside a freak show of a school.”

“Has anyone tried to get out of here?” I said, covering my mouth with my hand. “I mean, really tried?”

Jane smiled. “There are microphones as well as the cameras.”

I nodded, wondering whether that meant she actually had something to tell me or whether she just didn’t want me to get in trouble. I doubted anything I said here could be worse than what I’d said in my introduction in class.

Jane led me to the cafeteria, which was down on the first floor, at the back of the school. I watched the ceilings while we walked and counted at least thirty-two cameras in the four minutes it took to get there. I didn’t see the microphones she was talking about, but I didn’t doubt her.

The others that we saw in the hall had lost any of the anger I’d seen in them when I arrived. No one was protesting conditions. No one was trying to escape. It looked almost the same as any other school I’d ever been in—some talking, some laughing, some flirting. I wondered how long it took before they’d given up. A month? A year?

The line for lunch was backed all the way out into the hall. Jane and I took our place at the end.

“The food here isn’t bad,” she said. “Havoc has the contract because food duty offers a ton of points. But part of their points is based on how we rate them. So, they have to make it good.”

“How long have you been here?” I said, leaning back against the wall and watching her. Jane had a very light sprinkling of faded freckles on her nose and cheeks.

“Oh, I was one of the first,” she said. She folded her arms across her chest.

“How long was that?”

“Two and a half years, I think. I don’t keep track anymore.”

“How many people were here then?”

She shook her head, her smile disappearing. “Not many. Fifteen. They’re all gone now.”

The line moved forward a few feet.

“Gone where?”

Her voice hushed, and she absently ran her finger along the wood panels on the wall. “Detention, most of them. No one got out, if that’s what you mean. People used to try harder to escape back then.”

A girl with black hair and a round face ran up next to Jane, giving me a quick glance before speaking rapidly in hushed tones. “Did you hear about the punishments?”

Before Jane had a chance to reply, the girl continued, “Curtis and Carrie got no food all day and hard labor.”