Crazy

UN

The dense forest was quiet as I crept from the outer edge to the center, a figure coming into my line of sight. Usually, I would be calm, my heart rate at a steady low beat, but usually I would have someone at my side as I did something like this. That day however, I was utterly alone.

I didn't know the boy as anything other than Subject B, but I was observant enough in the few moments I had been standing there to ascertain that he was probably an introvert, had a younger sibling under the age of two, and kept his room fairly messy. The last thing really just being true for all boys his age. Technically, it's called stalking, doing what I was doing, and if the roles were flipped everyone would be freaked out. They should have been freaked out by me too, I thought as I inched closer to where he was. I could be dangerous too.

He sat on a flat rock near the edge of a stream that ran through the forest, his Oxford clad feet hovering just above the still water. He was exposed on all sides, hunched over his journal, looking like he was in no danger. I wondered, passingly, why I had been given such a seemingly easy subject. 

A fallen tree branch snapped under my foot and I immediately dodged under the cover of a nearby tree. From my crouched position, I watched as his head whipped around around, cobalt eyes peering in a direction too far to the left of where I was hidden. He wouldn't spot me, he wasn't as good as I was at catching lingering eyes. He too must have known that if someone was watching he would never make them out or had perhaps convinced himself that the snapping of the branch was nothing but the sounds of forest animals going about their business because he soon turned back towards his notebook allowing me to escape without being noticed.

My leather boots were covered in caked dirt and leaves as I made my way to the edge of the forest where my worn school issued backpack was hidden under a pile of leaves. I checked over my shoulders before quickly slipping off my boots, exchanging them for running shoes, taking off down the road at a steady jog the moment my laces were tied. The farther I got away from the forest, the louder the sounds coming from the comms unit in my ear became until they were finally recognizable as voices, the voices of my classmates and professors.

"Well? Did you get it, Joseph?" I simply huffed in response.

I should probably mention that I'm a spy, not a very good one, but a spy, nonetheless. I suppose I should give myself some slack, I'm only a sophomore in high school with two more years of training ahead of me, but in the real world, on real missions, no one is going to give me a break and not slit my throat because I'm a newbie or because I'm a first generation spy. No, they really wouldn't care.

My professor asked the same question again, this time with more hostility in her voice and I wondered, not for the first time, if Tamar Keltler thought I was good enough to be a field agent. "No," I huffed out, pushing my legs to pound harder on the winding path. I looked over my shoulder at the last stretch of asphalt I had just left behind then back in front of me to where my school lay hidden in the forest, only accessible by three winding unpaved paths.

"What do you mean no, Joseph? Your mission was to retrieve the journal from the subject in the forest and you're coming back empty handed? It's a simple grab and go!" She laughed and I could imagine her sitting at her desk shaking her head, peering at the rest of my classmates with a look of disgust on her face. "We'll see you when you arrive, Joseph," then the comms went silent and I was left with only the sound of my own breathing as I climbed the hill to the entrance of my school.

Nobody really visits the Blair Wood Academy and Rehabilitation Center. They're afraid of us, they think that this is a mental hospital and that every single person in here has a death wish, and well, I guess they've got that part almost right, being a spy these days is almost like having a death wish. It's almost enough to make you crazy, but I'm not crazy, not yet at least. There's a school in Europe somewhere apparently that's just like ours, training girls and boys alike to be the next best generation of government operatives, but I don't know where and I can't be sure if it's one hundred percent accurate because well, of course, it's classified like everything in this line of work is.

As always, a chill ran down my spine as I approached the entrance to the school. We had successfully mastered our cover story, from everything to the sleek whites edges of the boxy building and the bars over the bedroom windows to the students in the yard dressed in all white jumpsuits doing yoga. I almost passed by my classmates stretching their bodies on mats in the grass with glazed over looks in their eyes without a second thought until I caught sight of my roommate, Emery, giving me a warning look. I glanced from her features to the scene playing out before the reality of the situation dawned on me. The only time we ever did yoga outside in those stupid white jumpsuits was when a visitor was coming.

I cursed under my breath as the sound of tires rumbling up the front drive made it to my ears. I took off running again, rounding the building, my backpack thumping on my back in beat with my footsteps. I ditched the bag just under the Resting Tree, scaling its branches until I was right outside my fourth story suite, my heart beating rapidly in my chest. Sure, there were bars on the window, but the Blair Wood Academy was a spy school not a prison, the bars could be removed and screwed into place if need be.

I slipped in through the window, slamming it shut behind me, exchanging my street clothes for the oversized jumpsuit and slip on shoes. My reflection in the mirror made me jump, pieces of leaves were visible in my tangled hair, dark circles emphasizing the dull color of my eyes and I realized that I actually did look insane. I realized that maybe, just maybe, crazy had become more than just a cover story for me.

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