Journal day three
This is the last of the journal entries
for now. They are telling me that I can’t write anymore, so I guess this is
goodbye for now. But don’t worry, I’ll write about my experiences later. If I’m
still alive, that is.
I awoke to the sound of someone
entering my prison cell. It was the woman from earlier. I had no idea what time
it was. When all you can see is darkness, you begin to lose track of time.
“Are
you ready to have a tour of the place?” she asked me.
“Well, my schedule is pretty full, but
I think I can manage to fit you in.” It never hurts to have a sense of humor;
especially when you have nothing else.
“Well,
I'm glad to know you can spare some time. I'm so lucky you put time in your
schedule for little old me.”
It seems that this lady also has a
sense of humor. She pulled a knife from her pocket, which startled me for a
moment. She chuckled and cut the rope bounding my hands. For a brief moment, I
thought about trying to overpower her and running, but it would be futile.
There were too many guards around and she had a knife in her hand. We walked
down a hallway until we reached a door. She opened the door and stepped inside
for a minute. When she returned, she had Paul with her.
“Hello
Paul” I greeted him.
“Hello
Jake. This is a really nice place.” He said sarcastically
We continued to another door and, you
guessed it, Kelly came out. We walked until we reached a sign that said ‘Cafeteria
left and Rec Room right.’
“Maybe
this is just a boarding school or something.” Kelly said.
None of us believed that, but we all
wanted to pretend that maybe this was some kind of misunderstanding.
As we continued walking, Paul said:
“I
don’t think so.”
We had just seen another sign saying
‘Weapons testing’. What kind of boarding school has a room for weapons testing?
We continued following the signs to the cafeteria and we sat down at a table.
“You can order whatever you like from
the menu.” The woman told us. “We have contacted your parents and told them that you have been
enrolled into a private school. We will allow to you contact them every month,
but we will monitor what you say. If you try to speak about being held here, we
will have to speak with your parents ‘personally’. You have all been chosen to
do something special with your lives. You may not realize it now, but you all
have individual qualities that make you very special. Most people do not
capitalize on these qualities. But in time, you will learn to use those
qualities, and we will teach you. Does anyone have any questions?”
We all remained silent for a second.
“So
we don’t have to file papers?” Paul asked.
The lady laughed and then she said:
“No you don’t your job is simply to be
a student in our academy.”
Then Kelly said, “Why didn’t you just
talk to our parents about bringing us here?”
“Well, first of all, we weren't sure
that we wanted to invite you. But after your little incident with our warehouse
we didn’t have a choice. And we couldn’t be certain that your parents would
allow you to come. This is a secret academy, so we can’t spread the word about
it. Most kids choose to join our different academies but only after they go
through a minor recruitment process, but sometimes, in cases like yours, you
are forced to be enrolled in it. However, you shouldn’t worry, soon you will
begin to enjoy being at this academy.”
Somehow I doubted that we were going to
like being here. We were uprooted from our families without any notice. I didn’t
know about Paul and Kelly but I wasn’t too happy about being here. As soon as
the opportunity presented itself I would be on my way out.
“So
you said something about us having classes?” I asked her.
The woman replied: “Classes go from 9:30 until lunch. Lunch will be served around 1:30.
Then, you will have classes until 5:30. The time from 5:30 to 8:00 is your
studying time. You can do whatever you wish with this time, but it is
recommended for you to use it doing your homework and studying for tests.
Dinner will be provided at around 8 o'clock. The rest of the time is yours. We
have provided rooms for each of you. There are TV’s and an Xbox 360 with most
of the latest games. The Xbox is set to turn off at 11:30 with gives you thirty
minutes to get ready for bed. At 11:45, most of the electricity is turned off.
And at midnight, guards will check that you all are in your room. You will be
sharing your room with other students, so remember to be kind and courteous. I
have some business to take care of, so I’ll leave you with your lunch.”
“Wait we just finished our school year?
Why does your academy start in the summer?” I asked her a bit confused
“First of all it’s not my
academy. It starts in the summer because we wait for regular schools to finish.”
“But why would you…”
She
walked off. Her answers left us even more confused then when we first arrive at
the lunch table.
Paul:
After
a filling lunch of smoked salmon, mashed potatoes, and Caesar salad, the guard
escorted us to our rooms.
Kelly’s room was first.
“When their guard is down, we have to
try and escape.” She said to Jake and I in a low enough voice not to be heard
by the guards.
We continued down the hall until we
reached my room. It was a medium sized room with two bunk beds. There were
already two people inside of the room. I said goodbye to Jake and I went inside
my room. My other two roommates stared at me.
One
of them said: “Hello, my name is Casey. What is your name?”
I told him that my name was Paul. He
then went off to tell me that the other roommate’s name was Richard and that
Richard was very shy and did not talk a lot. A fourth roommate named Laurence
was in the bathroom. We spent the good part of an hour talking about ourselves.
After about thirty minutes, Richard began to open up to me. I found out that
Richard and Laurence were also taken here against their will. Casey said he was
kicked out of one of the main academies. He also said that this was a spy
academy, but to be honest, none of us believed him. After he left the room
Richard and Laurence said that when Casey first got here he was really crazy.
Now he was better but he still wasn’t completely sane. Richard and Laurence
didn’t know much about why they were here except that there were adults in a
dormitory upstairs. I asked them to describe the place we were in because,
while the tour was being given, I didn’t get to see that much of it.
They said: “It is a large place. There
are football fields and basketball courts, outdoor and indoor. There is an
indoor swimming pool and a track field.”
It seemed almost like a regular high
school until they said:
“There
are weapon storages on the second and third floors.”
They went on to say that martial arts
and how to move without being seen were taught in the classes that they have
here. I began to think that this was a school for teaching people how to become
spies. I guess they wouldn’t be able to recruit people in a normal way; they
can’t go up to parents and ask “Can we enroll your child into a spy academy?”
I use to think that spy academies only
existed in movies, but it seemed as if this was the real deal. If I didn’t
follow that ice cream truck to the warehouse, I would have never been taken
here. However, one question continued to repeat itself in my mind: is this
place good or bad? The other ‘students’ seem fine, but how are the professors
and the other staff? The unknown is a frightening thing. If I only knew what
was going to happen, I wouldn’t be as scared as I am right now. As we prepared
to go to dinner, I passed the other dormitory and saw Kelly come out of her
dormitory…
Well,
maybe this won’t be so bad. My two roommates are rather nice. Not the
friendliest people in the world, but they are sufficient. After about thirty
minutes of conversation and getting acquainted I asked my roommates what this
place was. They told me that it is kind of like a spy academy, and that they
have some strange classes, including how to defuse bombs and how to hotwire
cars.
They started to tell me about all the
different school teams. It sounded just like a regular high school; they had
basketball and soccer teams for boys and girls, as well as a football team.
There was also a team for capture the flag. That sounded kind of childish
however, so I didn’t ask them about it.
We heard a bell and Jackie, one of my
roommates, told me that we were going down to dinner in the cafeteria. The
moment we stepped outside of the room, I saw Paul walking down the hall with a
few other boys. I quickly sped up to match his pace.
“Hey
Paul, how do you like it here? I asked him.
“It is not bad, but I don’t like how so
much of it is shrouded in mystery.” He replied to me.
After
talking to him for a while, it seemed that he had come to the same conclusion
as me about the school: the school seemed kind of fun, but no doubt, it was
weird. We sat down at one of the middle tables in the cafeteria. Our table was
surrounded by many people, most of whom were asking us questions about whom we
were and where we came from. Seeing as they were strangers, we didn’t want to
tell them much; just that we lived in New Mexico. After we had finished our
meals we sat back and chatted. A guard shouted in a bull horn that it was time
to go back to our dorms. A few of the boys who were not quite done eating told
him to shut up. The guard said something in his walkie-talkie, and in a few
minutes, more guards came and took the boys away.
Before I could ask a question, we were
ushered out of the lunch room, and back to our dorms. On the way back, I asked
Paul if he had seen Jake anywhere, but he hadn't seen him. I began to get
worried because this was a foreign place, and anything could have happened to
him. If Jake disappeared, I would be devastated. Jake was the glue that held
Paul and me together. As I lay in bed, right before lights out, I began to
wonder how my life would be like if I had never met Jake. I would have been
much quieter and my life would have been quite monotonous. It seemed that Jake
was the combination of Paul and me, taking the good from both of us. He knew
when to be cautious and when to be reckless. I'm being overly dramatic, I
thought. So Jake missed dinner. Maybe he
was busy doing something else. I'm probably going to see him in one of my
classes tomorrow. But what if something bad did happen to him? With that
thought off my mind, I closed my eyes and slowly drifted into a deep sleep…
While
I was on my way to dinner, a professor approached me and asked me if I wanted
to join the capture the flag team. I tried not to laugh because capture the flag
is a game I played as a little kid. The professor saw me stifling my laughter,
so he explained to me that this kind of capture the flag is more in depth and
is the number one sport of the school.
“You have to rely on your quickness,
perception, and your ability to move silently, or you will get caught while
going after the flag. I’ll make it simple for you” he said. “There are teams of
14 that consist of defenders and attackers. It’s very simple, except you cannot
be within 15 yards of your own flag. This makes stopping the other team from
getting your flag more challenging.”
“It
sounds interesting” I said. “I will think about it”
I would actually think about it. The
way he described it made it appeal to me much more than before. It sounded more
fun than I thought.
After that talk, it was too late for
dinner, so I just went back to my dorm room. My only roommate, Josh, was
shocked to hear that I was invited to play for the capture the flag team.
“Only the best out of all of the
students get asked to join the CF team. The rest of the students have to go
through a rigorous tryout.” He said.
“CF
team, what’s that?” I asked him.
“CF
stands for capture the flag.” he told me.
I guess being asked to take part in the
CF team was a bit prestigious.
In my psychology class the next day, I
noticed that I was in the same class as Kelly. She waved to me as I entered,
and I returned the wave. The professor had still not come into the classroom,
so the students were noisy. We heard the door open, and the professor walked in.
It was the same professor that asked me to join the CF team. His name was Dr.
Edwards. He began the class by explaining to us all that if you can get
penetrate into the thoughts of your opponent, then he/she is as good as beaten.
He then went on to say what most of us had already surmised: that this school
was in fact training people to become spies. There were a few gasps and a few
exchanged glances in the room.
“Wow!
When we see Paul, we have to thank him.” I told Kelly.
“Thank
him? What for?” She asked me.
“If it were not for him convincing us
to go after the ice cream truck, we would have never been brought to this
place.”
“Jake, think for a minute about our
parents and what they think.”
“Listen Kells” I told her. “There is no
point in worrying about something we cannot fix. If they won’t let us tell our
parents about what’s going on, that’s too bad. We can’t keep dwelling on it.”
After a fast, interesting, start, the
class began to get boring, and it soon began to feel like regular school. Right
when I was about to fall asleep, Dr. Edwards started to talk about hypnosis.
Ever since I was a little child, I was
always fascinated with hypnosis. Dr. Edwards now had my full attention. He went
on to talk about how in wars, some governments tried to use hypnosis to get
spies to tell secrets. He taught us ways to escape hypnosis and ways to
hypnotize people.
If you are interrogating a person who
will not share a secret no matter what you do, it is best to go beyond his conscious
into his subconscious. Upon finishing his statement, the bell rang.
Before we could get up, he gave us all
a book on how to practice hypnosis, and we had to learn at least one way before
the next class in two days. While people were leaving the class, I stayed
behind. I approached Dr. Edwards’s desk and asked him if he had a moment. After
he said yes, I explained to him that I wanted to try out for the CF team. He
said that tryouts were in a month and that I would have to prepare a lot before
I was ready to make the team. Even though I didn’t have to go to the
preliminary tryouts I still have to be ready. I then proceeded to ask him if
hypnosis played a part in CF.
“Jake, every class you take here
prepares you for later on in life. But no hypnosis does not play a part in CF.”
I must have looked disappointed so he said to me, “You will reach a point in
time where you will think back to your time in this school and you will
remember what you have learned. It will do you well to try and remember as much
as possible.”
I
then exited the room and made my way to the cafeteria…
Paul:
As I was walking to the cafeteria, I
thought about all my classes. Most of them were interesting. I wish all schools
were like this. The professors here are a little weird though. Anyways, I got
to see the outside of the academy for the first time today. It was a set of
brick buildings with rolling fields surrounding it. It would be difficult to
escape, even if I could get past the barbed wires and the guard towers it was
probably miles till the next city, I thought to myself. I really wish I had
known that all of this would have happened as we went after the ice cream
truck. It just goes to show that everything in life is chained together. In a
few years, I am going to look back and think: what if I didn’t meet Jake and
Kelly? What if I didn’t go after the ice cream truck? What if I didn’t go in
the wrong warehouse? I'm starting to think that life is like a road. There are
many ways you can go, many different paths. But only one path takes you where
you really want to go.
As I walked into the cafeteria, I saw a
bunch of familiar faces. At least I was making friends easily. I sat down on a
chair across from Jake and some of his friends. He was busy talking to them and
didn’t realize I was there. He stopped and looked up for a moment.
“Hey
Paul, are you enjoying this place yet?”
“I
wouldn’t say enjoying, but it’s getting better.”
Jake then introduced me to his friends
and they continued talking about something called CF. I kind of felt left out.
When we were at lunch in public school, me and Jake would always sit together
and talk. Now I was the odd one out. But it would look bad if I left his table
to go sit with my friends, so I remained.
“I
heard they get special privileges.” One of the boys was saying.
“Really,
like what?” Jake asked him.
Then the boy went on to talk about how
the people on CF got to skip classes sometimes and got to stay up later than
the curfew allowed. They also got to choose what classes they wanted to take.
Whatever this CF thing is, I need to try and get into it, I thought to myself.
“Hey Josh, if CF has so many benefits,
how come you guys don’t try out for it?” Jake asked the boy.
“Because,” Josh replied, “It requires a
lot of running and thinking and the ability to sit still for long periods of
time and it is hard to find people with all three of these qualities. I'm
joking about the sitting still part but seriously it’s hard to make the CF
team.”
Hmm.
I have those qualities, I thought to myself. Maybe I should find out how to try
out for CF. After lunch, I followed Jake out and asked him what CF was. He
explained it stood for capture the flag, which left me skeptical.
There was no way that just playing
capture the flag would get you out of taking classes you didn’t want and give
you extra playing time. He went on to tell me that playing a team sport was a
requirement and that each had its own advantages and disadvantages. Jake told
me that the school favored people who were on the CF team. We were approaching
his dorm room, so I asked him:
“Are
you going to ask to tryout?”
“I was invited to tryout, so I don’t
have to worry about getting rejected.” He told me. He paused for a moment, and
then said, “I think you should tryout for the team too. It would be more fun
with you there Paul.”
I
told him I would think about it and he went into his room. When I got back to
my room, I asked my roommates if it was allowed to visit other people’s dorms.
They said it was allowed as long as you were back before 10:30. So I decided to
go visit Jake and ask him to put in a good word for me with Dr. Edwards, who
was the coach for the CF team…
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