The Academy by Bentley Little

announcements, and each teacher read a statement to his or her classroom from Van’s parents and the police. The boy disappeared about a month ago after playing basketball at the school with his friend Kurt Jensen. They were going on the assumption that he was abducted, and everyone was warned to watch out for strangers, suspiciously parked vehicles or anything out of the ordinary.
     
     
    Brad was surprised he hadn’t learned of this until now. It had to have been on the news or in the newspaper.
     
     
    He must have just spaced it out.
     
     
    Kurt was in the same second-period Algebra II class as he and Ed, and Brad wanted to ask him the details of what had happened. So, apparently, did everyone else. A huge crowd gathered around him as Kurt entered the room, but he made it clear that he wasn’t talking. He seemed genuinely freaked by what had occurred—even now, a month later—and he kept repeating that the police had told him not to talk about the case, although Brad knew that had to be a lie. There was something in the boy’s refusal to speak that made him uneasy, and he had the feeling that there was more to the disappearance than either Kurt, the police or Van’s parents were telling.
     
     
    His friend Brian Brown was on the student newspaper, and Brad decided that when he saw him, he would suggest to the reporter that he interview Kurt for a story on the kidnapping.
     
     
    “You think he’s dead?” Ed whispered when Mr. Connor turned his back and started to write on the blackboard. “Seems like something would’ve turned up by now if he wasn’t.”
     
     
    “I don’t know,” Brad said. He looked out the window of the classroom and saw a PE class shooting baskets on the outdoor courts at the edge of the field. From this angle, the gray metal backboards resembled nothing so much as tombstones on poles.
     
     
    He didn’t like those basketball courts, he decided.
     
     
    And he wished he’d signed up for tennis.
     
     
    *
    At lunch, Brad and Myla met up with Ed by the lockers before heading over to Senior Corner. Since they were all seniors now, they thought it would be fun to eat at the small grassy area that they’d been barred from entering since freshman year. But the jocks and the cheerleaders had taken over the picnic table in the center as well as every available inch of space on the three-foot-high wall surrounding the spot, and they were unable to find a place to sit.
     
     
    They ended up eating in their usual place, on one of the tables outside the cafeteria. Myla’s friends Cindy, Reba and Cheryl were also there, and though neither Brad nor Ed was a big fan of the student-council girls, at least they were girls, and it was cooler hanging with them than with the dateless losers who would otherwise have been their lunchtime companions.
     
     
    Brad ate his turkey sandwich and thought about the day so far. Math sucked, biology was okay and Spanish was Spanish, but he was excited about English. Besides having Myla in the class and being able to sit next to her, he’d been inspired by Mrs. Webster’s choice of reading material. They were going to be tackling Günter Grass, Kurt Vonnegut and John Fowles this semester, and something about those choices made him feel smart and adult, as though he was really being prepared for college.
     
     
    Ed was eating his lunch: Nacho Doritos and a Dr Pepper. “So,” he asked, “how do all of you on the student council feel about this charter thing?”
     
     
    When no one answered and it became obvious from the expressions on their faces that they were afraid to express an opinion, he added, “Because I think it sucks.”
     
     
    “Is your mom going to volunteer?” Brad asked. “They’re supposed to volunteer forty hours.”
     
     
    Ed snorted. “My mom? Shit no. She’s planning to blow it off. Although my guess is she’ll have to pay the fine. She’s pissed off about the whole thing.” He did a dead-on impression of her. “ ‘I pay taxes to support public schools