The School For Gifted Kids

Chapter 16: Arson

Drew. I can't even explain all the feelings that name brought up. Confusion... pain... sadness. Drew.. my brother? Who knows where he was. He'd disappeared right before Anastasia had taken me and Caddy. Or Cadenza was her full name. I'd always hated the names mom and dad had given us. We got ridiculed like crazy at school. Except for Drew. He was normal. I adopted my nickname through my pyromaniac tendencies. I much preferred it to my real name. I remembered the day we were taken like it was yesterday. Anastasia herself didn't take us, Anika did. She had been in our class and taken us down like she took Ben and his two friends. No one knew who she was. Anika shot us with darts, and when we awoke, we were, strangely, back at the house. Anastasia came in, and right in front of us, shot our dad. I didn't mind that much. He drank and used to beat Drew. Caddy couldn't handle it, though, and she threw up and broke down crying. Drew was there too, but his reaction was barely noticeable, and you had to be looking for it. A small smile.

The next time we woke up, we were... somewhere else. A house, larger than our old apartment. Caddy was holding my hand, but Drew was gone. I never asked where he went. I didn't want to know. But now, I remembered all those stupid letters we wrote. We wrote them to mom after she died. Of what, I don't know. Drew told me that she had gone to "WonderLand" because I was only 5 or 6, and he thought I couldn't cope with grief. I knew almost immediately that she was never coming back. But it taught me to set the bar low, and never hope for anything other than what you have. At first, I was scared. I didn't know who Anastasia was, or why she had taken us. I was young. And I had that stupid journal. I wrote in it every day, hoping that someday, someone would find it, and save me. Eventually, when I stopped screaming and pounding my fists on the walls, Anastasia actually came to visit us in our cell. She said not to worry, and that she's adopted us. Caddy didn't accept it, and Anastasia gave me a room to share with Anika, while she kept Caddy in the cell. I didn't know what was going on, and I accepted it as the truth. I forced myself to forget my real mom because Anastasia was our mom now. She clothed and fed us, and finally, let Caddy come share the room with us. I climbed through the vents, making a mental map of the place. It was a huge science facility, with rooms chock full of weird experiments. I saw many things. Disturbing things, done to kids my age and younger. Yes, I may have accepted that she was my mom, but I still didn't like her. I planned and plotted my escape, trying to find exits. I was going to try to break me and my sister out, then find Drew, who would give us lots of money, and we could be a family again! I'm ten now, and all those ideas were the delusions of childhood. There was no way to break out of this insane prison. But now, I had help. My blurry delusions became clear and took the form of plans. If Ben had continued reading, he would have found piles of plans, all failures. Except for one. The one I was trying to use. The garbage exit, where the waste was dumped. The hallway that led to it was empty whenever I checked, and the people around here knew me. I could be seen walking the halls at any time of day, but a lot of areas were restricted. Like this one. The door was locked, but I had stolen the key a while ago. I probably could've left whenever I wanted, but something held me back. The people around me. I wouldn't go without Caddy, and Caddy wouldn't come. She insisted that this was the only place to be safe. She was most likely right, but I still refused that reality. Now I had a chance. I had friends, I had my sister... I was ready to go. But the stupid cleaners got in the way. The cleaners always wandered the halls, no apparent destination. If it was dirty, they'll clean it. Unfortunately, the trash hallway was always dirty, and a favorite spot for the cleaners. And now they were here.

"Well, Caddy, here I am again. Back in the vents. Claustrophobic."

"Oh shush. You asked for help, and I gave it to you."

We'd been in the vents for an hour and were getting nowhere. I could tell from my watch that it was late, and Anastasia would call us for dinner soon. But we wouldn't be there. 

"Time?"

"7:58."

Adrenaline coursed through my veins, my body racked with anxiety. I heard voices beside me, Clark and Smith. Those airheads. 

"Anastasia's going to kill us! I can't believe you lost them, Clark."

"It wasn't all my fault! That doctor shouldn't have left the room."

I held my breath. They passed by. 

Diiiiing.....dooooong......diiiiiiing.....dooooong.

Dinner bells! I pulled at Caddy's pant legs. 

"Yeah, I heard. We just gotta move." 

The bells sounded again and again.... they rang through my ears, my heart beating faster every time. Time passed slowly. So slowly... finally we stopped. Well, Caddy stopped. I ran into her.

"Are we here?" 

"No, it's late. We have to rest."

"Are you kidding?! The night is the best time to sneak around!"

"Not if there are search teams out and about. We'll be in here for a while. Maybe even a month, until the search for us is over."

"What!? No! What are we going to eat?!"

"We can sponge off the kitchen. Listen, I need to know that you're committed to this. We can go back now and create an excuse. But Arson, if we keep going, we keep going. Anastasia will miss The Buyer, and there'll be no point to us. We let out the prisoners, so we'll be punished. The hard truth is that if we keep going and get caught, she will kill us, and Ben."

Ben cleared his throat. He and the girls were so quiet, like small children in shock after seeing something horrifying. 

"Excuse me? Why are we not being included in this conversation?"

"You haven't said anything. Unless you want to discuss your almost certain death."

Ben gulped, and neither of the girls said anything either. We all lay down where we were, and slept. 

Sadly, I dreamed that night. I hadn't dreamed since mom died. My dreams horrified me. I saw such painful things and felt them too. I saw my mother, lying in a hospital bed. The monotone, steady beeping of the monitors gave off an eerily calming feeling. I ran to her bedside and held her hand. 

"Mom... please..."

I said please. That's all I wanted, I wanted her to stay.

"Please, stay mom! You can't go! You have to stay!"

She smiled slightly at me, but she was fading. Her hand slipped from my grasp. I grabbed it again, but it disapeared like mist when I touched it. Soon, I was whirling away from the whole scene. And woke up, bonking my head.