Will was already halfway dressed for class when the Rangers staggered into the locker room almost two minutes later. Gasping, a few threw strange looks his way.
“What the hell, West,” whispered Schaeffer.
“Sorry,” mumbled Will. “Don’t know what got into me.”
Will hurried out before anyone could ask more questions. If nobody else on the team had kept time, maybe by this afternoon they’d forget how fast he’d run. He would hang back in practice, in line with his mediocre standards, and they wouldn’t give the torching he’d just laid down another thought.
But he still couldn’t explain it to himself.
Will hustled through the halls and slipped into his seat a minute before the start of history class. He checked his messages one last time. Nothing. Dad had either gone into a breakfast meeting or headed out for his morning run.
Will switched the ringer to vibrate as the bell sounded. Classmates trudged in looking cranky and sleep deprived, fumbling with their phones as they digitally wrangled their frantic social lives. No one paid any attention to him. They never did. Will made sure of that. The perpetual “new kid,” Will had long ago learned how to cork his emotions deep inside, showing nothing but a bland mask to his peers.
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#46: IF STRANGERS KNOW WHAT YOU’RE FEELING, YOU GIVE THEM THE ADVANTAGE.
Will was the tall rangy kid who always sat near the back, slumping to minimize his height, never making waves. The way he dressed, the way he spoke, the way he moved through life: quiet, contained, invisible. Exactly the way his parents had taught him.
OceanofPDF.com
#3: DON’T DRAW ATTENTION TO YOURSELF.
But a pounding bass line of worry still pulsed in his chest: RUN, WILL. DON’T STOP. Could the timing of Dad’s texts—at the moment the black car spotted him—be a coincidence?
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#27: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS COINCIDENCE.
Mrs. Filopovich launched into her daily drone. Today’s subject: the Napoleonic Wars. The annoying buzz that leaked from the intercom on the wall above her desk sounded more interesting. Half the class struggled to stay conscious; he saw two wake-up jolts as chins slipped off propped-up hands. The air in the room curdled, like even the oxygen had given up hope.
Will’s mind drifted to the last thing Dad had said before leaving two days ago: “Pay attention to your dreams.” Suddenly he flashed onto the dream that had eluded him earlier. He closed his eyes to reel it back in and caught a single, fleeting image:
Snow falling. Stillness in an immense forest, large trees laden white.
For all their moving around, he’d never once seen snow in real life until that frosting on the mountains this morning. But this felt more real than a dream. Like a place he’d actually been before.
The door opened. The school psychologist slipped in, making an exaggerated effort to not be noticed, like a mime overacting a burglary. Will knew the man vaguely. He’d conducted Will’s new-student orientation tour three months ago, in August. Mr. Rasche. Midthirties. Pear-shaped in corduroy and loud plaid, a prickly academic’s beard fringing a cascade of chins.
Rasche whispered to Mrs. Filopovich. The class stirred to life, grateful for anything that spared them from Death by Bonaparte. The adults scanned the class.
Mr. Rasche’s eyes settled on Will. “Will West?” he asked with a weird lopsided smile. “Would you come with me, please?”
Alarms tripped through Will’s nervous system. He stood up, wishing he could disappear, as a gossipy ripple of intrigue ran through the class.
“Bring your things,” said Mr. Rasche, as bland as milk.
Rasche waited at the door and then led the way, springing up on his toes with every step.
“What kind of trouble is this?” asked Will.
“Trouble? Oh, no, no, no,” said Rasche, forcing a canine grin. “It’s ‘all good.’ ” Rasche hooked his fingers around his words with air quotes.
Yikes.
“But I feel you, dawg,” said Rasche. He offered a fist bump to show he was on Will’s side. “It’s all pret-ty awesome and amazing. As you will see.”
As they walked past the long counter outside the principal’s office, the staff behind the counter beamed at Will. One even gave him a thumbs-up.
Something’s totally messed up.
Principal Ed Barton bounded out of his office. The hearty, pie-faced man pumped Will’s hand, as breathless and buoyant as if Will had just won the state science fair.
“Mr. West, come in, come in. Good to see you again. How are you today?”
Even weirder. On any other day, armed with Will’s class photo and a bloodhound, Barton wouldn’t have been able to pick him out of a three-kid lineup that included Siamese twins.
But then Will always made a point of missing school photo day.
“To be honest, I’m kind of worried,” said Will as he and Mr. Rasche followed Barton into his office.
“About what, Will?”
“That everyone’s being so nice because you’re about to lay some tragic news on me.”
Barton chuckled and steered him inside. “Oh, no. Not at all.”
Rasche closed the door behind them. A woman stood up from a chair in front of Barton’s desk and extended her hand. She was as tall as Will, athletic and lithe, wearing a dark tailored suit. Her straight blond hair was pulled back in a crisp ponytail. A pricey leather briefcase rested at her flashy spiked heels.
“Will, this is Dr. Robbins,” said Barton.
“Really nice to meet you, Will,” she said. Her grip was strong, and her violet eyes sharp.
Whoever she is, Will thought, the doctor is smoking hot.
“Dr. Robbins is here with some incredibly exciting news,” said Barton.
“You’re a hard-core facts and numbers guy, aren’t you, Will?” asked Robbins.
“As opposed to …”
“A sucker for marketing slogans and subliminal advertising designed to paralyze your conscious mind and shut down rational impulse control by stimulating your lower brain?”
Will hesitated. “That depends on what you’re trying to sell me.”
Dr. Robbins smiled. She leaned down, picked up her briefcase, and slipped out a sleek black metallic laptop. She set it on Barton’s desk and opened it. The screen lit up with a waterfall of data that arranged artfully into animated graphs.
Principal Barton sat down behind his desk. “Will, do you remember the standardized test you and your classmates took in September?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Will.
Dr. Robbins said, “That test is conducted by the National Scholastic Evaluation Agency. On every tenth grader at every public school in the country.” She pointed to a large cluster of squiggling lines in the middle of the chart on her laptop’s screen. “These are the nationwide average scores they’ve collected over the last five years.”
Robbins punched a key; the image zoomed in on the top of the chart, which blossomed into a smaller group of what looked like dancing sixteenth notes. “These are the scores of National Merit Scholars,” she said. “The top two percent of the database.”
Dr. Robbins punched another key, and the image moved again, zooming in on a single red dot above the highest cluster. Alone.
Tendrils of fear wrapped around Will’s gut. Uh-oh, he thought.
“This,” she said, “is you. One in, to be precise, 2.3567 million.” She cocked her head to the side and smiled again, dazzling and sympathetic.