“Aren’t they a sad lot?” said Kate. “No talking, no eye contact. No way I could work a job like that — I’d have to be sedated.”
“Hey, maybe they are being sedated,” Sticky suggested. “Maybe there’s something in their food!”
Kate shook her head. “I’ve seen them eating the same food they serve us, and we’re just fine, aren’t we?”
They all looked uncomfortably at Constance, who had finished gulping her ice cream and let her sticky chin drop to her chest. Her eyelids were fluttering, and her breathing had deepened into a snore.
“Well, but she was that way before we got here,” said Reynie.
It was a long and wearisome day. The afternoon classes went much the same as the morning ones: First Reynie would feel heartened by how well he and Sticky had done on the quiz, then dismayed by the hateful looks their successes brought them — from other students and Messengers in general, but especially from Martina. And if Kate and Constance were drawing no such unpleasant attention themselves, it was only because they were having a terrible time with the quizzes, which was even more discouraging.
When the last class was dismissed, the four of them went out onto the plaza and sat on a stone bench. (All but Kate, who bounced in place, burning off energy.) Most of the Institute students spent the hour before supper playing in the gym, or else watching television in their rooms, but the Mysterious Benedict Society had wanted a little time to themselves. As it turned out, they spent their whole time on the plaza undisturbed by Martina or anyone at all, and yet they spoke hardly a word. The reason was that they could not stop staring — with a curious mixture of fascination, fear, and uneasiness — at Mr. Curtain in his green-plaid suit, silvery glasses, and demonic wheelchair.
The plaza was a favorite spot of his. The children had seen him there the day before, too, and also at night. It was well known that Mr. Curtain often sat there for an hour or so in the afternoons, during which time no one ever disturbed him but Executives — and they came to him only with urgent matters. This afternoon was no different. Everyone who crossed the plaza gave Mr. Curtain a wide berth, and no one ever passed in front of him, as he seemed to delight in gazing off toward the bridge in the distance, and no one wished to disrupt his view.
Gazing aside, Mr. Curtain was hardly idle. He had a stack of newspapers with him and was going through them meticulously, occasionally marking things, and smiling mysteriously. From time to time he opened a large book, which he carried in his lap, and made a note inside it. Then he would gaze off into the distance again. Eventually Mr. Curtain spun around and shot across the plaza, disappearing inside the Institute Control Building and snapping the children out of their trance.
Having spent so much time staring, and since at supper they were unable to get a table to themselves, the children would have to wait until after lights out for any secret discussions, for the evenings were devoted to studytime. It was essential that Reynie and Sticky continue to do well on their quizzes — especially if Kate and Constance didn’t start doing well. And, at any rate, one of the few rules the Executives seemed willing to admit to was that students were not allowed in one another’s rooms. Private meetings among regular students were the sort of thing strictly frowned upon at the Institute, where all secrets were reserved for Messengers and Executives.
There was no prohibition regarding the dormitory corridors during studytime, however, and before the children holed up in their rooms to labor over their notes, they lingered a few minutes outside the door to Reynie and Sticky’s room. If they didn’t talk to each other now, it was only because they were eavesdropping. They had discovered that, at this time of day, there was a considerable amount of activity and conversation in the corridor, which always provided an opportunity to learn something. Here and there along the corridor, little clusters of students stood talking, reluctant to knuckle down and study yet, and a steady stream of children toting toothbrushes and toiletries passed in and out of the bathrooms.
This evening the most obvious eavesdroppees were Reynie and Sticky’s neighbors, a couple of thick-headed, thick-middled older boys who had made a point of never speaking to Reynie and Sticky. The boys stood in their doorway playing a game that involved kicking each other in the shins without crying out, and as they kicked and grimaced back and forth, they speculated endlessly about the Messengers’ secret privileges. This was a favorite conversation among non-Messengers, but never a productive one, and it was no different with these boys. It soon became clear neither had any idea what the privileges were, only that they were much to be coveted.
The boys’ talk quickly wore thin, and Reynie was just about to give up and go study when Jackson’s voice boomed down the corridor: “Corliss Danton! There you are!”
A few doors down, Corliss Danton jumped. (Everyone jumped, but Corliss jumped the highest.) He turned to look with strangely guilty eyes at Jackson, who came marching toward him through the little clusters of students, all of whom flattened themselves against the walls to let him pass. The corridor, just moments ago all gossip and hubbub, fell silent as a graveyard. Corliss straightened his Messenger sash as Jackson came up. “What — what’s the matter, Jackson?”
“You know what the matter is, Corliss,” said Jackson. “Mr. Curtain needs to speak with you. I’ve come to show you to the Waiting Room.”
At the mention of the Waiting Room, Corliss — who was fair-skinned to begin with — turned positively white. The boys from the neighboring room flinched and took a quick step backward, trying to disassociate themselves. A murmur spread down the corridor.
“But . . . but . . .” Corliss cleared his throat. He tugged at the bottom of his tunic. “But come on, Jackson. Why would I be punished? What —?”
“You aren’t being punished. Mr. Curtain only wants to speak with you. But he’s busy at the moment, so you’ll have to wait. Come with me right now.”
Corliss shook his head and stepped back. “I . . . you know what? I don’t think so. I think I’ll just . . . just . . .” He glanced left and right, contemplating the corridor exits.
Jackson’s tone was casual but firm. “I understand you don’t like to wait, Corliss. Nobody likes waiting. But if you don’t want to go to the Waiting Room and lose your special privileges, then you’d better come along right now.”
Corliss cringed. “N-no, that won’t . . . won’t be necessary. I’ll go with you, Jackson. I suppose one way or another I’m going to have to wait, is that right?”
“One way or another.”
Corliss took a deep breath to steady himself. “Okay, you bet. Whatever Mr. Curtain wants. You’ll get no complaints from me.”
Jackson winked. “That a boy. Let’s get moving.” He put his hand on Corliss’s shoulder and walked him out the far exit.
The moment Corliss had gone, the corridor erupted into a cacophony of excited conversation. One girl even burst into tears; she’d once been to the Waiting Room herself, apparently, and was distraught at the mere mention of the place. As the girl’s friends tried to console her, Reynie and Sticky’s thick-headed neighbors were still staring at the exit through which Jackson had led Corliss as if to his doom.
“The Waiting Room,” one boy said. “I didn’t know Messengers ever got sent to the Waiting Room.”
“Let’s not talk about it,” said the other, shaking his head. “I think it’s bad luck to talk about it. I don’t need that kind of luck.” The boys went into the room and closed the door behind them.
Reynie and the others looked anxiously at one another.
“I think perhaps we ought to avoid being sent to the Waiting Room,” said Constance.
“You think?” said Kate.
Sticky took out his polishing cloth.
Logical Conclusions and Miscalculations
When the ceiling panel slid aside that night, Kate’s was the only face that appeared.
“Where’s Constance?” Reynie whispered.
“Down for the count,” Kate replied. “Drowsi
est kid I’ve ever met. Fell sound asleep at her desk. I couldn’t wake her.”
“I guess you can fill her in later,” Reynie said doubtfully, and Sticky shook his head with a look of disapproval.
“I’m so glad to see you boys,” Kate said, sitting on the floor. She crossed her legs in an elaborate, pretzel-like formation the boys would have thought impossible. “I’m sick of studying. I must have gone over my notes a hundred times, but none of it sticks in my head. It makes no sense! ‘You must work longer hours to have more time to relax’? ‘You must have war to have peace’? How are these ‘logical conclusions’? Please tell me!”
Reynie gave a weary laugh. “What about ‘It’s important to protect yourself because it’s impossible to protect yourself’?”
“Oh, yes, the hygiene lesson,” Kate said disgustedly. “That one’s the best. I would never have thought brushing my teeth could make me feel so hopeless.”
Reynie cocked his head. Something about what Kate said seemed familiar. But what was it?
“The stuff doesn’t make a bit of sense to me, either,” said Sticky, “but I don’t have trouble remembering it. I can help you study, Kate.”
“When?” Kate said, exasperated. “There’s never any time! No, I need to just do it myself.”
“Oh . . . oh, okay,” said Sticky meekly, his feelings obviously hurt.
Kate was too preoccupied to notice. She was absently braiding her hair into complicated knots, then unbraiding it again. “I really don’t get it, boys. What’s the point of learning this mush?”
It suddenly occurred to Reynie what had struck him as familiar. “I think it’s connected to the hidden messages! Remember that phrase we heard on the Receiver? ‘Brush your teeth and kill the germs’? That has to be related to the hygiene lesson, don’t you think?”
“Hey, you’re right!” Kate said, brightening.
“And now that I think of it, on our first day here we overheard the kids in S.Q.’s class going on and on about the market this, the market that —”
“The Free Market Drill,” said Sticky.
“Exactly! And ‘market’ was the very first word we heard come through Mr. Benedict’s Receiver, remember?”
Sticky nodded — of course he remembered — but Kate only shrugged.
“I’ll have to take your word for it,” she said. “Anyway, the classes are obviously linked to the hidden messages. So the question is how it all fits together.”
“The sooner we become Messengers, the sooner we find out!” said Reynie excitedly.
“We aren’t Messengers yet, so hold your horses,” said Sticky, who was still trying to recover from his wounded feelings and felt a bit testy. “We’ve only been here a few days.”
“It’s true,” Reynie sighed. “All right, let’s report this to Mr. Benedict.”
They prepared to send a report to the mainland, only to be thwarted by the presence of Mr. Curtain on the plaza. And then, just as Mr. Curtain was finally going inside, a couple of Executives came out for a leisurely stroll over the Institute grounds. They seemed intent on strolling every walkway and path in sight. The night was growing late, and the children, exhausted, decided to adjourn. They couldn’t very well succeed in their classes if they couldn’t stay awake in them.
“The report will keep,” Kate said with a yawn, “and in the meantime we’ll sleep. You boys have a good night.”
She scurried up her rope, drew it into the ceiling after her, and disappeared. With a mixture of amusement and admiration, Reynie and Sticky watched her go. Kate’s method of coming and going still took some getting used to.
“What must it be like, getting around the way she does?” Sticky wondered.
Reynie shrugged. “Dusty, I imagine.”
Long after Kate had gone her dusty way and the boys had gone to bed, Reynie lay awake, calming his nerves by composing a mental letter to Miss Perumal. He could never actually write the letter, of course — he could never send it — but it soothed Reynie to think of Miss Perumal, in a setting far from this responsibility and danger, sipping her tea and correcting his Tamil grammar. He reflected upon the pleasant afternoons they’d spent walking in Oldwood Park, discussing this thing or that — her mother, or the aged trees in the park, or baseball, or dogs. And the times, too, when he’d told her about some savage teasing he’d got from other children, upon which Miss Perumal never offered advice — which would have been useless — but only nodded and clucked her tongue, smiling sadly at Reynie as if his memory were her memory, too, as if they shared it. Well, he supposed they did share it, now that he’d told her of it. And somehow this had always lightened its effect on him — even, on occasion, cheered him right up.
Reynie had just ended the letter when he heard Sticky rise and move about the room, and then, after a pause, whisper, “Reynie, are you awake?”
It would have been a nice way to go to sleep; Reynie was feeling calm for the first time all day. But he couldn’t very well thank Miss Perumal in his letter for always being there to listen, then turn around and not be there for Sticky. “Yes, I’m awake,” he replied.
“The coast is clear now.”
Reynie looked down from his bunk.
Sticky had put on his spectacles and was peering out the window. “If Kate hadn’t taken her flashlight, we could send the report. We should remember that next time. We might as well get something out of a bad night’s sleep.”
“We could flip the light switch,” Reynie suggested.
“I suppose so,” Sticky said doubtfully, with a twinge of worry in his voice, “but what if there’s someone outside? I can’t keep an eye out from over by the light switch.”
“There are two of us, remember. I’ll watch out the window.”
Sticky was casting about for his polishing cloth. “Makes me nervous,” he said, finding the cloth on his desk and giving his glasses a brisk rub. “I keep thinking about that Messenger’s face when Jackson told him about the Waiting Room. The last thing we want is to be suspected of something.” He put his glasses on and sighed. “Now I wish I hadn’t mentioned it. But I suppose we ought to?”
“We’ll do it quickly and get it over with,” Reynie said.
The light switch, unfortunately, made a sharp clicking sound when it was thrown. Sticky cringed with every click, as if he were being shocked, and by the end of the message his trembling, sweaty fingers were slipping off the switch. At last the message was sent, however, and no one had discovered them.
Peering toward the mainland shore, Reynie chuckled. “They want to know what we’re still doing up.”
Sticky felt too anxious to smile. “Anything else?”
“We’re doing excellent work, we must continue to be careful, and now we should really get some sleep.”
“They said all that?”
Reynie climbed down from the television. “Well, they said, ‘Excellent. Careful. Sleep.’”
“They don’t have to tell me twice,” Sticky said, slipping into bed. “Especially not the careful part. My stomach’s all in knots, Reynie. It feels that way all the time.”
“I know,” Reynie said, climbing up to his bunk. “Same with me. But at least we know Mr. Benedict and his crew are out there watching. We’re not alone, right?”
“I suppose that should be encouraging,” Sticky said uncertainly.
“I take it you don’t find it very encouraging.”
“No,” Sticky replied, pulling his sheet up tightly under his chin. “No, ever since I first saw him, I keep imagining Mr. Curtain chasing me down, getting closer and closer. He seems a lot closer than Mr. Benedict and the others do, way off on that shore.”
This time Reynie said nothing. He understood too well how Sticky felt. If only he knew of something comforting to say, something to ease Sticky’s anxiety — and, yes, something to ease his own. He thought and thought. He lay awake a long while, thinking. Surely there was something.
But if there was, he could not think of it.
Sticky
’s anxiety took its toll on him; he slept quite poorly, and all the next morning he had trouble staying awake. By the time Jackson’s class started, his eyelids felt heavy as anvils. It required a heroic effort — including a lot of painful pinches on the leg — to keep his eyes open and pay attention to Jackson’s long, droning lecture. At last Jackson finished, however, and despite his drowsiness, Sticky had managed to lock all the information securely in his head. The end-of-lecture review would not require his attention, which meant it would require willpower instead — it would be all he could do to stay awake. He needed to occupy his mind with something.
And so Sticky focused on Corliss Danton, who was back in class this morning, looking no worse for wear. On the contrary, he seemed the exemplary student: He sat ramrod straight in his desk, listening with attention, and his Messenger uniform was impeccable. In fact his entire person fairly shone. From finger to foot, his fair skin was rosy from scrubbing; even his fingernails seemed meticulously groomed. He looked as though he would smell like a bar of soap. Corliss obviously meant to make a good impression, Sticky thought. He wanted to appear cleansed of any past wrongdoings.
Only after Corliss had glanced past him toward the door a few times did Sticky realize he was not entirely recovered from his visit to the Waiting Room. His face was weary, even dazed, as if he hadn’t slept a wink, and an unmistakeable remnant of misery showed in his eyes. Not for the first time, Sticky found himself wondering what sort of ordeal Corliss had gone through. Then he found that he didn’t want to think about it, as it made his stomach hurt. And then he found that he was asleep.
Sticky wouldn’t have known he was asleep, though, had Martina Crowe not hissed, “You! Skinny bald-headed four-eyes! What are you doing sleeping? Aren’t you supposed to be the super student?”
Sticky’s eyes snapped open. On all sides of him students were tittering, and the Messengers (including Corliss) were sneering disdainfully. In a flush of embarrassment, Sticky reached for his spectacles.