Innocence and Fear 4.5
Chapter 4 part 2 of Substack Novel
CHAPTER 4.5! This is a series and if you need to catch up read previous posts.
Fabian was exhausted. He had met Kelvin in a hallway that had a dead spot in the cameras. He had thought telling the others was still a bad idea, but Miette had pushed the issue. But now, after everything he had seen and found out in the past few weeks, he had thought that having more people helping him and Miette and Cora find answers might be what they needed. As it stood, each of them would attend classes all morning and afternoon, spend the late afternoon keeping up on schoolwork to hold up all appearances, then they would meet around 7:30 for as long as he and Miette could buy time for them. Then after that, it would be hacking, watching, or reading everything they could to figure out more about what they had been unwillingly brought into until the early morning hours. He still couldn’t believe the things he had been privy to since he and Miette had met up and first discussed the strange things they were finding on one of the mail servers.
He felt glad that he had at least convinced Miette to not involve the god-freaks. He was certain they couldn’t help, and would just hold them back in more. He whispered to Kelvin about the meeting he and Miette were having for the “blessed” kids they had involved. So far, only Jamie had agreed to come to hear what they had to say, and Fabian had hoped he too would say no as others had, but Jamie had seemed quite excited.
“Secrets…I love it!” Jamie had said, slapping his large brown hands together with glee. Fabian had motioned for him to be more quiet. This display worried Fabian. How could they ever trust someone with Jamie’s personality to stay quiet? But Miette had explained Jamie’s worth to them.
“He’s got a foot in both camps. He’s ‘Chosen’ and ‘Blessed’,” Fabian saw her point. He might help them get more information about The God’s Chosen inner workings and maybe the connection between the Chosen and the school. He knew it was risky, but they needed all the help they could get. He explained this now to Kelvin, that they needed help, and Kelvin, to his surprise, nodded and his thin face seemed filled with a little worry.
“We are meeting in the chapel at Seven thirty. No one should be there and we can talk more there.” He knew Miette had only disabled this camera for five minutes, so he didn’t have much time to explain. He had to be concise.
“This sounds serious,” Kelvin said, pulling the sleeves of his uniform sweater over his hands and stretching his arms in a nervous way. “Should I be worried?” At this point, Kelvin’s thin face looked a little flushed.
“Just don’t tell anyone and come to the chapel at 7:30. We’ll explain more there,” Fabian said. “We’ve got to go now. They will be able to hear us soon. I’ll walk the opposite way as you pretend we are just saying goodbye in a cheerful way.” Kelvin nodded again. The tall thin boy waved goodbye, smiled, and walked away. Fabian waved back before he left and then headed the opposite way Kelvin had headed.
Kelvin had already been helping them, he just didn’t know it. Fabian had gone to Kelvin a few times to “borrow” parts for his computer rig from the expansive tech closet at the school that Kelvin had unlimited access to. Kelvin like Miette, Carina, and himself was a “blessed” student at Patton Academy, which led to certain benefits, and one benefit Kelvin had for being so gifted with building machines was he was given free rein of the tech closet and the workshop rooms on campus. Kelvin could even visit the horse stables which had been converted into a garage for the top-tier teachers at the school and higher-ups of the God’s Chosen who visited the school from time to time. Kelvin had been rebuilding an engine of a 1930 Duesenberg Torpedo, which Fabian had found out was to be a gift to Trimberg when completed. Of course, Kelvin didn’t know this. Kelvin had been told the car would have a place in a car museum in New York. As time passed, Fabian became accustomed to the school telling many lies, and that no longer amazed him.
So Kelvin was important to them. They did not have full permission to visit the machine rooms. Kelvin did, though. And once they found out that they had top-of-the-line parts that could make their computers almost literally fly in said rooms; Miette and Fabian had asked for little favors from Kelvin. Kelvin had just accepted that the little things they “borrowed” didn’t need to be known about by anyone except the three of them. It had surprised Fabian that Kelvin had helped them with no explanation of why they needed these things. But Kelvin was a friendly kid and most likely was just happy people were treating him as more than “that transvestite” or “that freak” or any of the other nasty things people said about him. Fabian didn’t mind letting Kelvin in on things. He felt he could trust him. Fabian felt he could trust him more than Carina. Fabian was convinced that Carina didn’t give a shit about any of it, other than wanting to help her best friend. Fabian and Carina had an uneasy alignment that only overlapped because of Miette. But he had to admit Carina had proven more useful than he had thought she would be. It was eerie the way Carina just knew things. It seemed almost as if she had ears and eyes everywhere. She had brought them information about teachers’ schedules that had allowed them to retrieve things from spaces that might be difficult to get into, like the teachers’ file room. He still didn’t know how Carina had gotten the entry code to that room.
Fabian headed to the cafeteria. In a few hours, they were going to reveal everything to Kelvin, Jamie, and Sachiko if Miette decided she could be of help. Fabian knew Sachiko was brilliant and also got along with a lot of the “chosen” kids, but she was also semi-religious and she might tell Agnes or Sean, the two people he had convinced Miette to definitely leave out of their plans. He walked into the cafeteria, which was decorated for Christmas, and smelled of fresh pine and cinnamon. He saw Miette sitting alone at a table staring in deep concentration at a book, her IBM laptop open next to her. He walked up and took a seat across from her. She looked up, her deep eyes rimmed in black makeup. She was quite beautiful, but the late nights were taking a toll on her, too. She looked almost haunted. Her eyes had deep violet and black rings around them clashing with her light gold skin. He felt for a moment the school had somehow begun to leave physical marks on each of them.
“Kelvin?”
“He’s in. Hopefully, it’s not all too much.” Fabian said to her. She typed on the laptop for a moment, then closed it with a snap. The air smelled so rich it was making him a little nauseous. She took a sip of a can of Diet Coke in front of her.
“You should eat something.” He said when he noticed there was no food around her. She nodded.
“I can’t I’m too nervous and I have a headache. I would throw up anything I ate.”
“OK then, after we talk to everyone, can I get you something?”
“Ok, I guess I could eat then.”
He squinted at the whiteboard near the kitchen window that listed the food being served that day. He read, “tomato soup and crackers” as the after-hours food that would be available until eleven pm.
“Soup?”
“Ok.” Her eyes looked heavy and bruised. He wished he could touch the marks of exhaustion on her and blend them away like magic. There were so many things between them, so many weird secrets, but he still held one close to his heart. He had started to love her in a very strange way amidst all the learning, hiding, and other activities. He felt uncertain it was the correct time to tell her. There were bigger things going on. He lightened the mood then and talked to her about a strange website about aliens he had found online. She chuckled. In a few hours, he knew things were going to change. He could feel it in his gut. He told himself that although things were strange, they wouldn’t get worse.
“Are you sure?” A voice said in his head. He didn’t like when the voices came. It was usually a bad omen.
STAY TUNED FOR THE NEXT PART COMING SOON!