Night School by Caroline B. Cooney Page B

teenagers were forced to sit at the long library table where Mr. Phillips had tried to correct papers. He had left fear behind like a scent, and they choked on it.
    Ned stared at the floor. Mr. Phillips wasn’t actually hurt, so it doesn’t count, he told himself. He probably got to his car. He’ll be fine. He’ll drive home and calm down and he can think up a good excuse for losing the tests.
    The instructor was no longer shadow, but thick, sucking mud that held them by the ankles. They tried not to breathe, lest they catch whatever he was. But they were already caught, of course. “Andrew, the video, please. Such a nice touch, and so thoughtful of you.”
    Andrew did not want to show it, not now. He no longer knew what had seemed so brilliant, so cinematic. Now that the subject was no longer an SC, but pathetic terrified Mr. Phillips, Andrew wanted the film not to exist. Only minutes ago he had thought watching was a useful profession. Now he wanted to be rid of the evidence.
    “Why, Andrew, you were so proud of your work. And I’m sure it is excellent work. You are always brilliant, are you not? You always excel, do you not? Show the film.”
    It was not the dark that was under control, but the class.
    Andrew felt obedient, and he was unaccustomed to this. His parents did not give orders; they had family conferences and came to decisions. But here, orders were proper, and following orders was more proper. Andrew showed the film.
    It was brilliant. How vividly it displayed cringing and creeping and crying out—the change from man to animal.
    “At the end of the semester,” said the instructor, “we will have a party. We will invite our Scare Choices. It is amusing to preserve this sort of thing on tape. People are ashamed to see how they behaved under stress. We will laugh at them. There is nothing quite so destructive as being laughed at.”
    Ned knew the truth of that. He’d spent years being laughed at. People remembered you that way, too. They remembered your shame and helplessness and failure, and they remembered the pleasure they felt laughing, proving that you were crumby and they were worthy.
    He looked at Andrew’s camcorder; the power of that horrible little machine. What kind of party did they have in mind? What other Scare Choices were they going to make? What if they chose Ned himself, who had been a Choice, a butt to be scorned, for so many years?
    Andrew could capture Ned forever on film. Ned would be laughed at year in, year out, by each successive class.
    “Stand up, Class,” said the instructor. His blue smile was so cold, so thin, so luminous.
    How quickly and completely they obeyed.
    “Was this good entertainment?” asked the instructor.
    It was a club. Autumn had been correct. And this was the initiation. Admitting that the Scare Choice had been good entertainment.
    Nobody wanted to say that. Nobody did.
    “Look at Mariah,” the instructor said to the other three. How quickly they obeyed, looking seriously and carefully at Mariah.
    Mariah didn’t look back. Her heart was pounding hideously; she was going to have a heart attack. She knew why she had been chosen. She had the most to lose. Bevin and her secrets.
    “Mariah, was this good entertainment?” His smile lengthened beyond the edges of his face, extending out into the room to cut her. He was no hologram. He was a demon, and a demon wins by possession. He had her secrets. She could not let him possess Bevin.
    It’s only a sentence, Mariah told herself. Just because I say it doesn’t mean I agree with it. It’s okay to say something if you’re in danger, or your brother is in danger. “It was good entertainment.”
    “Thank you, Mariah.” The instructor exhaled like car exhaust. Mariah was breathing in poison; she might as well have been hooking her lungs to the exhaust pipe of a ruined car. “Tell us again, Mariah.”
    Exhaust poison you could see only in certain weather, at certain temperatures. And the temperature here