The Institute Read online

  Luke had put the button in the cup of his Little League trophy. He fished for it now and came up with nothing.

  Next, he went to the poster showing Tony Hawk on his Birdhouse deck. It looked right, but it wasn’t. The small rip on the lefthand side was gone.

  Not his sneakers, not his poster, Willkie button gone.

  Not his room.

  Something began to flutter in his chest, and he took several deep breaths to try and quiet it. He went to the door and grasped the knob, sure he would find himself locked in.

  He wasn’t, but the hallway beyond the door was nothing like the upstairs hallway in the house where he had lived his twelve-plus years. It was cinderblock instead of wood paneling, the blocks painted a pale industrial green. Opposite the door was a poster showing three kids about Luke’s age, running through a meadow of high grass. One was frozen in mid-leap. They were either lunatics or deliriously happy. The message at the bottom seemed to suggest the latter. JUST ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE, it read.

  Luke stepped out. To his right, the corridor ended in institutional double doors, the kind with push-bars. To his left, about ten feet in front of another set of those institutional doors, a girl was sitting on the floor. She was wearing bellbottoms and a shirt with puffy sleeves. She was black. And although she looked to be Luke’s own age, give or take, she seemed to be smoking a cigarette.

  8

  Mrs. Sigsby sat behind her desk, looking at her computer. She was wearing a tailored DVF business suit that did not disguise her beyond-lean build. Her gray hair was perfectly groomed. Dr. Hendricks stood at her shoulder. Good morning, Scarecrow, he thought, but would never say.

  “Well,” Mrs. Sigsby said, “there he is. Our newest arrival. Lucas Ellis. Got a ride on a Gulfstream for the first and only time and doesn’t even know it. By all accounts, he’s quite the prodigy.”

  “He won’t be for long,” Dr. Hendricks said, and laughed his trademark laugh, first exhaled, then inhaled, a kind of hee-haw. Along with his protruding front teeth and extreme height—he was six-seven—it accounted for the techs’ nickname for him: Donkey Kong.

  She turned and gave him a hard look. “These are our charges. Cheap jokes are not appreciated, Dan.”

  “Sorry.” He felt like adding, But who are you kidding, Siggers?

  To say such a thing would be impolitic, and really, the question was rhetorical at best. He knew she wasn’t kidding anyone, least of all herself. Siggers was like that unknown Nazi buffoon who thought it would be a terrific idea to put Arbeit macht frei, work sets you free, over the entrance to Auschwitz.

  Mrs. Sigsby held up the new boy’s intake form. Hendricks had placed a circular pink sticky in the upper righthand corner. “Are you learning anything from your pinks, Dan? Anything at all?”

  “You know we are. You’ve seen the results.”

  “Yes, but anything of proven value?”

  Before the good doctor could reply, Rosalind popped her head in. “I’ve got paperwork for you, Mrs. Sigsby. We’ve got five more coming in. I know they were on your spreadsheet, but they’re ahead of schedule.”

  Mrs. Sigsby looked pleased. “All five today? I must be living correctly.”

  Hendricks (aka Donkey Kong) thought, You couldn’t bear to say living right, could you? You might split a seam somewhere.

  “Only two today,” Rosalind said. “Tonight, actually. From Emerald team. Three tomorrow, from Opal. Four are TK. One is TP, and he’s a catch. Ninety-three nanograms BDNF.”

  “Avery Dixon, correct?” Mrs. Sigsby said. “From Salt Lake City.”

  “Orem,” Rosalind corrected.

  “A Mormon from Orem,” Dr. Hendricks said, and gave his hee-haw laugh.

  He’s a catch, all right, Mrs. Sigsby thought. There will be no pink sticker on Dixon’s form. He’s too valuable for that. Minimal injections, no risking seizures, no near-drowning experiences. Not with a BDNF over 90.

  “Excellent news. Really excellent. Bring in the files and put them on my desk. You also emailed them?”

  “Of course.” Rosalind smiled. Email was the way the world wagged, but they both knew Mrs. Sigsby preferred paper to pixels; she was old-school that way. “I’ll bring them ASAP.”

  “Coffee, please, and also ASAP.”

  Mrs. Sigsby turned to Dr. Hendricks. All that height, and he’s still carrying a front porch, she thought. As a doctor he should know how dangerous that is, especially for a man that tall, where the vascular system has to work harder to begin with. But no one is quite as good at ignoring the medical realities as a medical man.

  Neither Mrs. Sigsby nor Hendricks was TP, but at that moment they were sharing a single thought: how much easier all this would be if there was liking instead of mutual detestation.

  Once they had the room to themselves again, Mrs. Sigsby leaned back to look at the doctor looming over her. “I agree that young Master Ellis’s intelligence doesn’t matter to our work at the Institute. He could just as well have an IQ of 75. It is, however, why we took him a bit early. He had been accepted at not one but two class-A schools—MIT and Emerson.”

  Hendricks blinked. “At twelve?”

  “Indeed. The murder of his parents and his subsequent disappearance is going to be news, but not big news outside the Twin Cities, although it may ripple the Internet for a week or so. It would have been much bigger news if he’d made an academic splash in Boston before he dropped from sight. Kids like him have a way of getting on the TV news, usually the golly-gosh segments. And what do I always say, Doctor?”

  “That in our business, no news is good news.”

  “Right. In a perfect world, we would have let this one go. We still get our fair share of TKs.” She tapped the pink circle on the intake form. “As this indicates, his BDNF isn’t even all that high. Only . . .”

  She didn’t have to finish. Certain commodities were getting rarer. Elephant tusks. Tiger pelts. Rhino horns. Rare metals. Even oil. Now you could add these special children, whose extraordinary qualities had nothing to do with their IQs. Five more coming in this week, including the Dixon boy. A very good haul, but two years ago they might have had thirty.

  “Oh, look,” Mrs. Sigsby said. On the screen of her computer, their new arrival was approaching the most senior resident of Front Half. “He’s about to meet the too-smart-for-her-own-good Benson. She’ll give him the scoop, or some version of it.”

  “Still in Front Half,” Hendricks said. “We ought to make her the goddam official greeter.”

  Mrs. Sigsby offered her most glacial smile. “Better her than you, Doc.”

  Hendricks looked down and thought of saying, From this vantage point, I can see how fast your hair is thinning, Siggers. It’s all part of your low-level but long-running anorexia. Your scalp is as pink as an albino rabbit’s eye.

  There were lots of things he thought of saying to her, the grammar-perfect no-tits chief administrator of the Institute, but he never did. It would have been unwise.

  9

  The cinderblock hallway was lined with doors and more posters. The girl was sitting under one showing a black boy and a white girl with their foreheads together, grinning like fools. The caption beneath said I CHOOSE TO BE HAPPY!

  “You like that one?” the black girl said. On closer inspection, the cigarette dangling from her mouth turned out to be of the candy variety. “I’d change it to I CHOOSE TO BE CRAPPY, but they might take away my pen. Sometimes they let shit slide, but sometimes they don’t. The problem is that you can never tell which way things are going to tip.”

  “Where am I?” Luke asked. “What is this place?” He felt like crying. He guessed it was mostly the disorientation.

  “Welcome to the Institute,” she said.

  “Are we still in Minneapolis?”

  She laughed. “Not hardly. And not in Kansas anymore, Toto. We’re in Maine. Way up in the williwags. At least according to Maureen, we are.”

  “In Maine?” He shook his head, as if he had taken a blow to th
e temple. “Are you sure?”

  “Yup. You’re looking mighty white, white boy. I think you should sit down before you fall down.”

  He sat, bracing himself with one hand as he did so, because his legs didn’t exactly flex. It was more like a collapse.

  “I was home,” he said. “I was home, and then I woke up here. In a room that looks like my room, but isn’t.”

  “I know,” she said. “Shock, innit?” She wriggled her hand into the pocket of her pants and brought out a box. On it was a picture of a cowboy spinning a lariat. ROUND-UP CANDY CIGARETTES, it said. SMOKE JUST LIKE DADDY! “Want one? A little sugar might help your state of mind. It always helps mine.”

  Luke took the box and flipped up the lid. There were six cigarettes left inside, each one with a red tip that he guessed was supposed to be the coal. He took one, stuck it between his lips, then bit it in half. Sweetness flooded his mouth.

  “Don’t ever do that with a real cigarette,” she said. “You wouldn’t like the taste half so well.”

  “I didn’t know they still sold stuff like this,” he said.

  “They don’t sell this kind, for sure,” she said. “Smoke just like Daddy? Are you kiddin me? Got to be an antique. But they got some weird shit in the canteen. Including real cigarettes, if you can believe that. All straights, Luckies and Chesterfields and Camels, like in those old flicks on Turner Classic Movies. I’m tempted to try, but man, they take a lot of tokens.”

  “Real cigarettes? You don’t mean for kids?”

  “Kids be the whole population here. Not that there are many in Front Half just now. Maureen says we may have more coming. I don’t know where she gets her info, but it’s usually good.”

  “Cigarettes for kids? What is this? Pleasure Island?” Not that he felt very pleasurable just now.

  That cracked her up. “Like in Pinocchio! Good one!” She held up her hand. Luke slapped her five and felt a little better. Hard telling why.

  “What’s your name? I can’t just keep calling you white boy. It’s, like, racial profiling.”

  “Luke Ellis. What’s yours?”

  “Kalisha Benson.” She raised a finger. “Now pay attention, Luke. You can call me Kalisha, or you can call me Sha. Just don’t call me Sport.”

  “Why not?” Still trying to get his bearings, still not succeeding. Not even close. He ate the other half of his cigarette, the one with the fake ember on the tip.

  “Cause that’s what Hendricks and his fellow dipsticks say when they give you the shots or do their tests. ‘I’m gonna stick a needle in your arm and it’ll hurt, but be a good sport. I’m gonna take a throat culture, which will make you gag like a fuckin maggot, but be a good sport. We’re gonna dip you in the tank, but just hold your breath and be a good sport.’ That’s why you can’t call me Sport.”

  Luke hardly paid attention to the stuff about the tests, although he would consider it later. He was back on fuckin. He had heard it from plenty of boys (he and Rolf said it a lot when they were out), and he had heard it from the pretty redhead who might have bricked the SATs, but never from a girl his own age. He supposed that meant he had led a sheltered life.

  She put her hand on his knee, which gave him a bit of a tingle, and looked at him earnestly. “But my advice is go on and be a good sport no matter how much it sucks, no matter what they stick down your throat or up your butt. The tank I don’t really know about, I never had that one myself, only heard about it, but I know as long as they’re testing you, you stay in Front Half. I don’t know what goes on in Back Half, and I don’t want to know. All I do know is that Back Half’s like the Roach Motel—kids check in, but they don’t check out. Not back to here, anyway.”

  He looked back the way he had come. There were lots of motivational posters, and there were also lots of doors, eight or so on either side. “How many kids are here?”

  “Five, counting you and me. Front Half’s never jammed, but right now it’s like a ghost town. Kids come and go.”

  “Talking of Michelangelo,” Luke muttered.

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing. What—”

  One of the double doors at the near end of the corridor opened, and a woman in a brown dress appeared, her back to them. She was holding the door with her butt while she struggled with something. Kalisha was up in a flash. “Hey, Maureen, hey, girl, hold on, let us help.”

  Since it was us instead of me, Luke got up and went after Kalisha. When he got closer, he saw the brown dress was actually a kind of uniform, like a maid might wear in a swanky hotel—medium swanky, anyway, it wasn’t gussied up with ruffles or anything. She was trying to drag a laundry basket over the metal strip between this hallway and the big room beyond, which looked like a lounge—there were tables and chairs and windows letting in bright sunlight. There was also a TV that looked the size of a movie screen. Kalisha opened the other door to make more room. Luke took hold of the laundry basket (DANDUX printed on the side) and helped the woman pull it into what he was starting to think of as the dormitory corridor. There were sheets and towels inside.

  “Thank you, son,” she said. She was pretty old, with a fair amount of gray in her hair, and she looked tired. The tag over her sloping left breast said MAUREEN. She looked him over. “You’re new. Luke, right?”

  “Luke Ellis. How did you know?”

  “Got it on my day sheet.” She pulled a folded piece of paper halfway out of her skirt pocket, then pushed it back in.

  Luke offered his hand, as he had been taught. “Pleased to meet you.”

  Maureen shook it. She seemed nice enough, so he guessed he was pleased to meet her. But he wasn’t pleased to be here; he was scared and worried about his parents as well as himself. They’d have missed him by now. He didn’t think they’d want to believe he’d run away, but when they found his bedroom empty, what other conclusion could they draw? The police would be looking for him soon, if they weren’t already, but if Kalisha was right, they’d be looking a long way from here.

  Maureen’s palm was warm and dry. “I’m Maureen Alvorson. Housekeeping and all-around handy gal. I’ll be keeping your room nice for you.”

  “And don’t make a lot of extra work for her,” Kalisha said, giving him a forbidding look.

  Maureen smiled. “You’re a peach, Kalisha. This one don’t look like he’s gonna be messy, not like that Nicky. He’s like Pigpen in the Peanuts comics. Is he in his room now? I don’t see him out in the playground with George and Iris.”

  “You know Nicky,” Kalisha said. “If he’s up before one in the afternoon, he calls it an early day.”

  “Then I’ll just do the others, but the docs want him at one. If he’s not up, they’ll get him up. Pleased to meet you, Luke.” And she went on her way, now pushing her basket instead of tugging it.

  “Come on,” Kalisha said, taking Luke’s hand. Worried about his parents or not, he got another of those tingles.

  She tugged him into the lounge area. He wanted to scope the place out, especially the vending machines (real cigarettes, was that possible?), but as soon as the door was closed behind them, Kalisha was up in his face. She looked serious, almost fierce.

  “I don’t know how long you’ll be here—don’t know how much longer I will be, for that matter—but while you are, be cool to Maureen, hear? This place is staffed with some mean-ass shitheads, but she’s not one of them. She’s nice. And she’s got problems.”

  “What kind of problems?” He asked mostly to be polite. He was looking out the window, at what had to be the playground. There were two kids there, a boy and a girl, maybe his own age, maybe a little older.

  “She thinks she might be sick for one, but she doesn’t want to go to the doctor because she can’t afford to be sick. She only makes about forty grand a year, and she’s got, like, twice that much in bills. Maybe more. Her husband ran them up, then ran out. And it keeps piling up, okay? The interest.”

  “The vig,” Luke said. “That’s what my dad calls it. Short for vigorish. F
rom the Ukrainian word for profits or winnings. It’s a hoodlum term, and Dad says the credit card companies are basically hoods. Based on the compounding interest they charge, he’s got a . . .”

  “Got what? A point?”

  “Yeah.” He stopped looking at the kids outside—George and Iris, presumably—and turned to Kalisha. “She told you all that? To a kid? You must be an ace at intrapersonal relationships.”

  Kalisha looked surprised, then laughed. It was a big one, which she delivered with her hands on her hips and her head thrown back. It made her look like a woman instead of a kid. “Interpersonal relationships! You got some mouth on you, Lukey!”

  “Intra, not inter,” he said. “Unless you’re, like, meeting with a whole group. Giving them credit counseling, or something.” He paused. “That’s, um, a joke.” And a lame one at that. A nerd joke.

  She regarded him appraisingly, up and down and then up again, producing another of those not unpleasant tingles. “Just how smart are you?”

  He shrugged, a bit embarrassed. He ordinarily didn’t show off—it was the worst way in the world to win friends and influence people—but he was upset, confused, worried, and (might as well admit it) scared shitless. It was getting harder and harder not to label this experience with the word kidnapping. He was a kid, after all, he had been napping, and if Kalisha was telling the truth, he had awakened thousands of miles from his home. Would his parents have let him go without an argument, or an actual fight? Unlikely. Whatever had happened to him, he hoped they had stayed asleep while it was going on.

  “Pretty goddam smart, would be my guess. Are you TP or TK? I’m thinking TK.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Except maybe he did. He thought of the way the plates sometimes rattled in the cupboards, how his bedroom door would sometimes open or close on its own, and how the pan had jittered at Rocket Pizza. Also the way the trashcan had moved by itself the day of the SAT test.