Con Academy Read Free Page B

The bare wooden floorboards are ice-cold beneath my feet. By the time I’m standing up, shoving my toes into my slippers, whoever’s knocking has already got a key rattling the lock, and the lights suddenly blaze on, making me squint at the blue-uniformed figure barging toward me.
    Things go from bad to horrible without so much as a detour in the direction of worse. The tall bald guy in front looks like a cop, but then I realize he’s campus security, followed by a distinguished man with a trimmed beard and a rich burgundy bathrobe with the Connaughton insignia emblazoned on the breast. Something about his pinched, sophisticated face makes him look more infuriated than the security guard, if that’s even possible.
    â€œGet up, Mr. Humbert,” the distinguished man snaps. “Pack your things. You’re leaving Connaughton. Tonight.”
    â€œHold on,” I say. “What’s going on?” Maybe if I blink my eyes fast enough, I can blame this whole thing on a misdiagnosed seizure disorder. “Who’s Mr. Humbert, and who are you?”
    â€œI’m Dr. Melville,” he says. “I’m the head of the school here, which I thought you might have realized by now. And
this
is what’s going on.”
    He thrusts in my face a folder with a profile sheet clipped to the top, and I see just enough of it to recognize my own photograph staring back at me. The picture is two years old, the most recent one that the New Jersey Department of Human Services has access to—not my best angle. The backwards Yankees cap and surly you’re-not-the-boss-of-me smirk don’t help. “I assume this looks familiar?” Dr. Melville sneers.
    â€œWhere did you get this?”
    â€œI got an angry call from a headmaster down in New York, at the institution that you listed as your last school. Your transcript papers came back. Nobody has ever heard of Will Shea. But the State of New Jersey knows all about Billy Humbert.” Dr. Melville points beyond the window. “There’s a car waiting for you outside.”
    â€œGet packing,” the security guard orders. It’s his one line in this poor excuse for a crisis, and he delivers it with disgruntled gusto.
    â€œOkay. Just”—I glance around the room—“give me a second to get dressed, okay?”
    â€œYou’ve got two minutes.”
    I nod and shut the door after them, turning back to the window.
    This is why I always get a room on the first floor.
    Â 
    Ninety seconds later, I’m sprinting across campus in my bedroom slippers, making for the main gate at a dead run with all my earthly belongings in a backpack flapping against my shoulders. At least there’s a full moon to keep me from crashing into the trees.
    I don’t recommend running cross-country in slippers, especially not in the freezing cold of late October, when your toes go numb first. Twice I trip over tree roots and once almost collide with a giant statue of the founder of the school, Lancelot Connaughton himself, one hand extended boldly toward the future. By the time I get across the lacrosse field, reach the gate, and toss my backpack over, I’ve got so many twigs and branches stuck to my legs that I’m wearing my own forest camouflage, which actually proves handy when the sidelight of the campus security SUV waiting outside the gate swings around and hits the ground just in front of me.
    I lie there on my stomach with my heart pounding in my chest. My lungs feel as if a pair of cackling pyromaniac twins are setting off Roman candles inside them. Time has now officially stopped. Then, approximately one eternity later, the headlights finally drift away, and I pick myself up and brush myself off, slipping into the woods alongside the road that runs toward town.
    After I’m sure the coast is clear, I stumble out of the trees and onto the pavement, where the walking is easier, or at least doable. It’s a