No Name Trilogy, Book I: No Name

Chapter 3 - Henry

More days passed. I remained as uncommunicative as ever. Roxie didn't try to tell me anything else at night, and I was glad of it. I couldn't figure out what she'd been trying to tell me the first time, anyway. It mustn't have been too important, though, because she didn't seem to act any differently.

I started to get used to my routine. The only class I absolutely loathed was Basic Character Building. The reason I couldn't stand it was because the teacher was constantly asking me his unanswerable questions. I never knew the answers, and even if I did, I wouldn't have wanted to give them. I hated talking. Not just because it put me in the spotlight in front of everybody else, but also because the sound of my own voice bothered me. Sometimes when I talked I thought, Is that really how I sound? Am I just stuck in somebody else's body? Because that was how I felt most of the time. Everyone probably thought I was weird. They didn't know that I couldn't even remember the name of the person I was sitting inside, the one whose voice I answered questions with.

Dr. Scarpoli was the teacher in Basic Character Building. I couldn't stand him. He was a middle-aged man about five-foot-four with a nose like a witch's. There was a ring of pepperish hair circling the large bald spot on the top of his head, so he sort of looked like one of those old religious men from the Middle Ages, and liver spots were appearing on his exposed skin like cancerous freckles. He dressed in suits. A different shade of brown every day. He wore steely little glasses that always reflected the glaring fluorescent lights overhead. We could never see his actual eyes unless he turned a certain way; maybe he did that on purpose so he could sort of spy on us when we didn't think he was watching. Of course, I could tell he was always watching. Something about him made me kind of anxious when I sat in his classroom. I never felt comfortable there. Always had to keep guard over my mind so it wouldn't wander and give him the chance to get the better of me. And he was a doctor, apparently, although I had some doubts. He was teaching a basic class to a bunch of juvenile delinquents; how could he not want to be doing more with his life if he were a doctor?

Yes, it was his class that I hated most. Even my therapy sessions were better. Easier. Less nerve-wracking. Of course, it was also in Dr. Scarpoli's torture chamber that I first heard about Henry. From the people whispering behind me, I mean—not from him. I didn't know their names, and I didn't care about them either. They were just a couple more numbers I couldn't retain in a sea of empty faces. One was a girl, one was a boy. Both looked fairly young, I thought. Neither ever spoke to me at all.

We weren't allowed to talk during Dr. Scarpoli's lectures, of course, and he lectured ninety-nine percent of the time (the other one percent was reserved for his torturous questions). Being caught whispering to a classmate could mean isolation for a day, or missing a meal, or who knew what else, but none of those repercussions seemed to bother the two sitting behind me. They were very quiet. I had to strain, to lean back as inconspicuously as possible, to hear what they said. It was a full class, so all students sat a little bit closer than we normally did in other rooms. There were twenty-one of us in all, and that was considered a packed room. Almost ridiculously packed. But that was the only reason I heard what the two were saying: we were closer than normal.

"Did you hear about Mara?" asked the boy.

I had no idea who Mara was. When people talked about each other, they used real names. Not letters and numbers. Those titles were for the teachers and other adults. So "Mara" meant nothing to me. I might've known who it was if the boy had said P-49 or K-33, but he hadn't. I was clueless.

"No," whispered the girl.

"Henry got to her," said the boy.

The girl gasped. "Did she make it?"