We the Children, Page 2

  That talk with the janitor hadn’t been some ordinary little chat. Ben had looked into the man’s eyes while he swore to keep a secret. Then he had accepted a token, a gold coin. From a dead man.

  And on that coin, there was a direct command from Captain Oakes—another dead man.

  Then there had been talk of the attack on the school. And talk about fighting to defend the place.

  He could still feel Mr. Keane’s grip on his wrist.

  During the past eleven and a half years, nothing had prepared Ben for something like this. So he tapped his tongue against his capped front teeth and kept looking out to sea.

  He heard someone climbing the rock from behind, and a few seconds later Jill sat beside him.

  She was quiet for a minute, then said, “Is this about your parents?”

  Ben shook his head. “Nope.” No way did he want to think about that, not today.

  His mom and dad were going through some problems, and Jill was the only other kid at school who knew about it. Ben sort of wished he hadn’t told her. He understood that she wanted to help, but if he ever got the least bit quiet or thoughtful, she always assumed he was worried about his parents’ separation.

  And he was worried about it. But not constantly.

  “So what’s bugging you?” she said. “Is this about old man Keane? I mean, I’m sorry when anybody kicks the bucket—it’s a lousy thing. But sad stuff happens all the time, so why stress out about it? That’s what I say.”

  Ben had to smile a little at the way she put it. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense.”

  After a few seconds, Jill said, “So . . . this must be something else then—I know. You’re all scared about the big social studies test this afternoon, right?”

  That made them both laugh, because Ben was a total brain in that class.

  He jumped down off the gravestone and looked up at her. “Listen, I’m fine. Really. But thanks for asking. And now I’m going to the library to review some more for that big test . . . because I’m so scared about it. Later.”

  Walking away, Ben felt a little better, and he was glad Jill had come looking for him. But he needed more time alone. He had a lot to think about.

  CHAPTER 3

  Attack

  Fifth period still had ten minutes to go, and Ben was the first to finish the test, which happened a lot in social studies. Kings and queens, generals and presidents, wars and battles and maps and time lines—he loved seeing how all the people and events fit together. It was like a huge jigsaw puzzle.

  He turned the test over, folded his arms on top of it, and put his head down. He tried to let his mind go blank, tried to let all the tangled events of the day drift away.

  But as he stared at the far wall, the portrait of George Washington caught his attention. And then he saw that the man had blue eyes. And that made him start thinking about Mr. Keane again. And he didn’t want to.

  So he closed his eyes. Then he yawned and started feeling like he might fall asleep. And he didn’t want to do that, either.

  So he made himself sit up, and he turned his head to look out the window awhile.

  As always, the view was fantastic—even better than the view from the captain’s tombstone. Mrs. Hinman’s room was on the third floor of the original Oakes School, and the big windows faced due east. Because the building was exactly fifty feet from the water’s edge, Ben could see three distant sailboats and a fishing trawler cutting across Barclay Bay. Seagulls hovered above the shoreline, wings almost motionless, beaks aimed downward as they scanned for food. And a few hundred yards out, two kayakers made their way south, paddles flashing in the sunlight, both boats bright yellow against the blue waves.

  This building had been a school since 1783, and Ben thought of all the other kids like him—thousands and thousands of them—who had sat staring out to sea through these very same windows, wishing they were onboard some ship, sailing away from Massachusetts, headed for distant lands.

  Ben had lived all his life a few blocks from this place. His mom and dad had pushed him on the playground swings back when he was little. Ben had climbed most of the trees and had played twilight games of kick-the-can on the wide lawns. He had spent hot afternoons sitting on the harborside wall with a fishing pole.

  And in just four weeks, the old school would be completely gone, torn down and hauled away.

  Because it was like Mr. Keane had said: The Edgeport Town Council had voted, and the school and the twenty acres around it had been sold to a big company that wanted to build a theme park. But the sale hadn’t happened overnight or anything. For the past several years it seemed like every time he flipped past the local cable TV channel, there was some noisy public hearing about it. And Ben knew he had mostly tuned it all out. Because why try to fight against the inevitable? The town council had called the final deal a great step forward, “a leap of progress for Edgeport.” But to Ben it looked like the past had done battle with the future, and, as usual, the future had won. The whole town was changing faster and faster, and Ben hated it.

  As he stared out to sea, a sarcastic smile formed on his lips, almost a sneer. Welcome to the exciting new theme of Benjamin Pratt’s life—change.

  When his parents separated two months ago, it had come as a complete surprise. One morning it was, “Ben, your mom and I have something we all need to discuss,” and the next day his dad had moved out.

  His dad still lived close by—actually, very close. He was staying on their sailboat, which was docked at Parson’s Marina, less than half a mile south of the school along the waterfront. So he got to see his dad all the time.

  But the separation was a huge, unwelcome change.

  A sudden motion in the air off to the right caught Ben’s eye. It wasn’t a gull or some other seabird out there. No, this thing was big—as big as a mailbox on a street corner, except it was reddish brown, and wider at the bottom than it was at the top. The thing was gliding away in a low, lazy arc out over the water of the bay. But then it slowed until it hung in midair about three hundred feet away from the old school building.

  That’s strange.

  And as he watched, this odd-shaped lump began moving again, heading straight back toward the school, picking up speed, coming faster and faster.

  Ben tried to shout a warning, tried to scream, Hey! That thing! It’s coming, it’s almost here! But fear clamped his throat shut.

  He blinked his eyes wider as the thing neared, and when it was just feet away from the windows of his third-floor classroom, he suddenly knew what it was—a wrecking ball, three tons of scarred, rusty steel, hissing through the salty air at forty miles an hour.

  It hit the building like a locomotive, splintering the glass and wood of the window frames. Bricks and chunks of granite from the outer wall flew past Ben’s head, shattering the slate blackboards. The rounded blob of metal tore upward through the old wooden floorboards, breaching like an angry whale, rising toward the ceiling. Electric wires snapped and sparked and crackled through a fog of plaster dust. Desks and chairs, books and computers, maps and papers flew upward and seemed to hang in midair. Kids screamed and rushed for the door, only to see that door smashed to bits.

  And Ben still couldn’t move, couldn’t make a sound.

  Finally he found his voice and shouted, “Stop! Stop it! Stop it now!”

  A distant engine growled, and then came a squealing sound. The thick cable at the top of the wrecking ball snapped taut, and the thing slithered away through the huge hole it had ripped in the front of the school.

  But the ball swung out over the harbor, and then started to rush back toward the building.

  Ben screamed again, “No! No!”

  “Ben!”

  Someone grabbed him by the shoulder, tried to pull him to safety as the ball rushed closer.

  “Ben!”

  “No!” he yelled, and he tried to pull the hand off his shoulder.

  He turned—and saw his father.

  Terrified, he yelled, “Dad!
You’ve got to get out of here!”

  “Come on, Ben, wake up. Wake all the way up.”

  Ben sat up straight and looked around, his eyes wild, his brown hair stuck to his forehead. It was Mrs. Hinman who’d been shaking him, and all the kids in the class stared, a few looking concerned, but most of them laughing and whispering to one another.

  Mrs. Hinman clapped her hands twice. “Hush, everyone—quiet. You’ve got five more minutes to finish the test.” The room went silent again.

  Ben heard a snort from his right, and turned to see Robert Gerritt with a big grin on his face—which was just like him. He loved it whenever Ben messed up.

  Mrs. Hinman could see Ben was all right, so she walked back to the front of the class.

  And Ben was all right, sort of.

  He sat there, his face bright red, his palms pressed flat against the test papers on his desk. His heart was still pounding, partly from embarrassment, but mostly because that dream had been so awful.

  He turned to sneak a quick peek out the windows, just to be sure things really were okay.

  No wrecking ball, not today.

  But like his mom’s and dad’s separation, that part wasn’t a dream. The wrecking ball was coming for real. And soon.

  Because Mr. Keane was right: The school was definitely under attack.

  CHAPTER 4

  Whiff

  Ben knew that Ms. Wilton would have excused his tardiness for homeroom if he had explained about stopping to help Mr. Keane. But he didn’t want to talk to anybody about that, especially now that the man was dead. And he also hoped the school secretary didn’t tell anyone he was there in the workroom. Because back when he was in first grade, a kindergarten teacher had died in a car crash, and someone had made him spend half an hour with a grief counselor. And he didn’t want to have to do that again. Ever.

  So Ben walked into the art room exactly five minutes after the dismissal bell—because being late for detention meant staying two days after school.

  He set his book bag on a table near the back of the room. Ms. Wilton was standing at the big paint-spattered sink in the front corner, a bucket in one hand and a large sponge in the other. There was a puddle of water around her feet. When she heard him pull out his chair, she jerked her head around.

  “Oh, good, it’s you. Go get the janitor and tell him I’ve got a flood here—the drain is clogged and the faucet is broken. Hurry!”

  Ben ducked back into the hallway and trotted toward the front of the building. In less than thirty seconds he was at the door of the custodian’s workroom—for the second time today. He didn’t want to be anywhere near that place, but he had no choice, so he knocked.

  Nothing.

  He knocked a second time, then called, “Mr. Lyman?”

  From far down the hall, a deep voice boomed out, “Somebody looking for me?”

  Ben jogged all the way to the front hall, and when he turned the corner, the custodian was coming out of the nurse’s office. He was pushing a wheeled metal bucket with a mop handle sticking up out of the yellow wringer. The sharp smell of vomit brought Ben to a sudden stop.

  “Ms. Wilton sent me from the art room. She says there’s a broken faucet and a clogged sink. It’s leaking on the floor.”

  Mr. Lyman, his dark brown eyes set deep in his skull, scowled and looked down at Ben. “Third time since February,” he said, and began pushing the bucket forward again.

  As they headed toward the rear of the building, the janitor’s longer stride put him out ahead right away, and Ben didn’t try to keep up. He hated that smell, plus he was in no great rush to get back to detention.

  So he took a long drink at the water fountain, then dawdled along and looked at a big bulletin board about dinosaurs.

  When he came to the custodian’s room again, he tiptoed to the doorway and looked in. Lyman was in front of the workbench, rummaging through some metal bins and muttering to himself.

  To the right of the bench Ben saw a red door with the words BOILER ROOM painted in black letters, and in yellow and black letters above the doorknob, a warning: CAUTION: STEPS DOWN.

  A basement? That seemed odd for a building this close to the water. But he quickly forgot about that as his eye drifted along to the next wall.

  Several sheets of thick plastic had been joined together to make a protective cover, and behind it there was an assortment of tools—block planes, squares and rules, handsaws, augers and braces, chisels, spokeshaves, several hatchets, wooden mallets, iron pliers and wrenches, and at least a dozen hammers of all sorts and shapes and sizes. There were close to a hundred different tools, all looking well used, but each in excellent condition. And they were old—very, very old. He and his dad both loved old tools, so Ben pulled out his cell phone, activated the camera, and took three overlapping pictures. What a collection!

  Without turning, Lyman suddenly said, “Want to make yourself useful?”

  Ben jumped a little. “Um . . . okay.”

  “Dump the bucket into the sink there and then rinse out the mop. Think you can handle that?” There was a challenge in his voice.

  “Sure,” said Ben, and he rolled the bucket over to the wide porcelain sink.

  He was big for his age and plenty strong, so lifting the bucket wasn’t a problem. The problem was the smell—he almost gagged as he dumped the filthy water. Little bits that looked like orange cottage cheese swirled around and around before disappearing down the drain.

  He turned on a blast of hot water, which made a cloud of foul steam rise up around him. Ben fought back another urge to throw up, and stepped away. He sucked in a deep breath and held it as he moved forward and quickly rinsed out the bucket and set it on the floor. Then he picked up the mop by its long handle and stuck the tangled mass of cotton strings into the hot water.

  He exhaled loudly, then took another cautious breath . . . Gross! The smell was everywhere. He turned from the sink to see Lyman watching him.

  “Pretty sure it was you I saw this morning—leaving the room here. After they hauled the old man away.”

  Startled, Ben quickly turned back to the sink and grabbed the mop handle, holding the strings under the water. His heart began thumping, and he felt his face start to heat up. But he pretended to be busy with the cleanup.

  When he glanced over at the bench again, the janitor was dropping nuts and bolts and washers into a small plastic bag. As if he knew Ben was watching, he began talking again.

  “Strange bird, that one. But he sure knew this building. Loved the place. Hated how it’s gonna get torn down. And he was half crazy, too—said he had a way to stop it. Said he took his orders straight from Captain Oakes himself.” Lyman paused. “You two probably talked a little, eh? Or maybe he gave you something?”

  Ben squeezed the mop handle so hard that his knuckles went white. Did Lyman know about the coin? Had Mr. Keane told him about it . . . or maybe even shown it to him? He took a quick breath, and this time the sharp smell hit him like a kick in the stomach.

  He lunged forward and bent over the big bucket, grabbing it with both hands. He didn’t quite throw up, but he did get a taste of that second piece of chocolate cake from lunch.

  Ben backed away from the sink again, gasping for air, furious at himself for seeming so weak. Still, he was glad to have an excuse for not talking. Because he wasn’t going to tell Lyman a thing. Ever. He had sworn not to.

  Lyman smiled. “Throw a cup of that powder from the white pail onto the mop head—helps cut the stink. And do the same for the bucket.”

  Ben did as he was told, but he didn’t like the look of the man’s smile. Lyman wasn’t just fishing for information. He was also having a little fun. The guy thought he was being clever, getting some dumb kid to do a nasty job for him.

  And Ben remembered the old janitor’s warning: Lyman’s a snake!

  As the custodian began tossing tools into a canvas bag, he said, “How about you roll that bucket and mop over to the art room for me? I’ll be along in a min
ute.”

  “No thanks,” said Ben. “I’m going to go wash my hands.”

  Turning around to face him, Lyman frowned. “You can wash up right there at the sink. And then push that bucket for me.”

  Ben looked him in the eye and shook his head. Speaking politely, he said, “Thanks, but I’d rather not.” Then he turned around and walked out.

  He wanted to shout, You are not my boss, and I will tell you nothing! But shouting hadn’t been necessary. The message got through anyway, loud and clear.

  And politely.

  When Ben slipped into the back of the art room five minutes later, his hands were very clean. He sat at the table, opened his book bag, and took out some index cards and a biography of Lincoln. But he couldn’t really read—too much to think about. So he mostly sketched and doodled on the index cards.

  Ms. Wilton was bustling around, hanging artwork and preparing materials for the next day. She kept trying to make small talk with Lyman, but he was busy, bent over the sink up front. He replied with an occasional nod or grunt.

  Ben glanced up from his doodling now and then—carefully. He didn’t want any eye contact, but the way the janitor had acted in the workroom made him curious, especially since Mr. Keane had warned him about Lyman. And the repair work was interesting, too. He had helped his dad do a lot of fix-up projects on their old house—the house where his mom lived now. And on the boat, too.

  As he made little drawings and designs, a fragment of Mr. Keane’s warning about Lyman popped into Ben’s mind: I told him too much already. So maybe that was why he had asked all those questions back in the workroom.