Aqua de Joia Academy—Aqua for short—is technically a school for socially impaired geniuses, but it’s built more like an indoor water park with an obstacle course tacked on for good measure. The school is circular, kind of like a big donut, with walkways in the center around the dorm rooms and club offices and another ring of walkways around the outside for visiting families and students coming back from field trips. On that ring there are a few kiosks for the school paper, The Orb, and some of the most popular clubs, like the Water Polo club. That one’s a big pull for the really wealthy families, since the word ‘polo’ automatically means higher-echelon, elite society.
We’ll discuss those guys later.
Between the two rings is a huge obstacle course over an enormous pool—ten feet deep all the way around. Every thirty feet there’s an ‘island’ that connects to the inner ring, complete with life guards and those annoying rope separators that keep everyone in an orderly line as they head onto the course for the day’s classes.
My mom and dad had just dropped me off, and I was standing on the outer ring, my duffle bag hoisted over my shoulder, when a class started running the course just in front of me. Their teacher, an athletic, pretty young woman in a wetsuit, waved them through the rope divider one at a time. The first obstacle was a big inflatable thing like a climbing wall and inclined like a slide, but there were no hand-or-foot-holds, just two straps that ran to the top. One of the students grabbed one in each hand and started walking up, pulling himself as he went. From his red cheeks, I could tell this was not even remotely easy, but he was making good progress, and another student started before he was even halfway up.
“Miss Gertrude Agnes Steinmetz?” A tap on my shoulder and a voice at my ear woke me out of my slack-jawed gawking. There was no way I was going to survive even one obstacle on that course.
“Huh? You can call me Gerty,” I stuck a hand out to the woman who’d said my name. She looked at my hand, her own occupied with a clipboard clasped lovingly to her chest. I took my hand back.
“I am Mrs. Pattinson, the school liaison. Everything is in order… However,” she paused and sniffed delicately. “Your assigned roommate is at the moment difficult to locate. Follow me, please.”
I scurried to keep up as the harpy in high heels clacked along ahead of me, still cradling my enrollment information. “Where are we going? Hey, slow down!” I huffed and puffed to keep up, my duffle bag slapping the fronts of my thighs. I’ll admit to being chubby and asthmatic, but this woman was just plain evil, walking so fast. I mean, I was carrying most of my life in my bag, while she just had a piece of particle board and a few sheets of paper.
Ignoring me in the time-honored manner of wicked boarding-school mistresses everywhere, Mrs. Pattinson strode across a bridge to the central part of the building. My braid was still slapping against my back as I struggled to keep up with her. I wasn’t used to any form of physical exertion, since I’d spent most of my life in front of a computer, but not everyone is athletic and I’m certainly not.
Just then, with an exaggerated shriek, a guy on the course above us fell off, arms flapping, and landed with a sploosh in the water. A tidal wave lapped over the side of the bridge and onto my shins, soaking through my sneakers and socks. The guy, buoyed by a bright yellow life vest, swam for the side, spitting chlorinated water like a broken fountain while I stared miserably down at my brand-new Reeboks, bought specially for my first day. They weren’t ruined, but the chlorine would probably bleach the red linings and dye the whole shoe pink.
Mrs. Pattinson hadn’t stopped, so I had to run double-time to meet her at the elevator door. She gave me the obligatory glower for being so remiss as to get wet, even if it wasn’t my fault, and stepped inside as the silver doors slid open.
As the door closed, another kid fell off the obstacle course and landed on the bridge. Amazingly, he bounced up and sprinted towards us. “Hey, hold the elevator!”
I stuck my arm out and the doors jumped back open as the guy got in, his dark hair plastered to his forehead—he must have fallen earlier; it still looked wet. I checked his legs to make sure they were both bending in the right places, which they were, so he was apparently unhurt after falling ten feet onto concrete. He was wearing elbow and knee pads, as well as the life vest everyone seemed to have except me and Mrs. Pattinson.
“Mr. Reese, how did you manage to fail a checkpoint? I’m surprised one of the graduates didn’t grab you.”
“Ha, nah, Judy Trenor threw me over for holding up the line.”
“The new student is confused,” I said aloud, looking to the boy, because I was certain Mrs. Pattinson would just ignore me.
He grinned. He was a thick-set, big guy, probably a few years younger than I was, judging by the pimples and disproportionate limbs. I doubted he had his driver’s license, despite his height. Built like a wrestler, his torso was as wide as a house, with the enormous tree trunk-legs and head-sized biceps to match. He was pudgy though, and he kept squinting, so I guessed he wore glasses when he wasn’t running the course.
“Ms. Trenor will be dealt with. Professor Zenma will not tolerate bullying, even from the captain of the freestyle team.”
I’d been distracted by studying Mr. Reese, so I was surprised when Mrs. Pattinson said something, and jumped accordingly. The guy laid a big paw on my shoulder and smiled down at me. “I’m Ulrich Reese. I’m in the second class.”
“I’m in the fourth.” I was right; he was younger than I was. The second class was mainly sixteen-year-olds, sophomores in a regular high school. I was in the equivalent of a high school senior in age, but my class was made up of students who had their Bachelor’s Degree in whatever field they’d chosen. For me, it was a BA in investigative journalism on top of a doctorate in creative writing. “What’s your field? I’m a writer.”
“I was working on my Bachelor’s degree in business management when I took a leave of absence to come here. I figure my job will still be there when I get back.”
My eyebrows scrunched together. “Where do you work?”
“There’s a little company in Silicon Valley that’s really eager to have me. I figured some time in a place like this would make the difference—I mean, we’re all young here, but there I’ll be a little kid compared to all the other office managers. Having people skills will be a huge asset.”
“I thought my reason was big,” I said. “My parents just wanted me to be less introverted.”
“You don’t seem that way,” Ulrich said with another smile. “You’ve been talking to me for a few minutes already.”
“I mean with regular people, people my own age. They make me nervous. My name’s Gerty.” I shook his hand, taking it off my shoulder as I did so. Whatever Ulrich had been like before, he was really nice now, and seemed in control of the situation, like just being with all these other geniuses had made him better, more able to deal with normal people. I needed that ease, that kind of self-assured way of speaking and thinking that made my I.Q. invalid. Brains are useless if you can’t figure out how to share your knowledge with someone else.
“I’m heading back to the beginning of the course to try again. I think I can beat Judy’s time, if I just start off with enough momentum.” He started out of the elevator and waved goodbye over his shoulder. I waited to see if this was our floor; Mrs. Pattinson hit another button and we began to go down.
“Wait, did we go past our floor?”
“Yes, but I decided a short conversation with Mr. Reese would put you more at ease. He’s doing well in our program, even if he isn’t the best swimmer. His times on the obstacle course are reasonably high, and he has a few good friends—Dennis Lo, Keith Decker, and Robert Schwinn, one of your classmates.”
“Who’s Robert Schwinn?”
“I doubt you’ve seen him. His classes don’t start until noon; he spends mornings in his room. He’s a robotics savant if I’ve ever seen one, perhaps even on par with Professor Zenma himself. A number of very powerful electronics companies want him, but he hasn’t signed on with anyone yet. He’s been here for three years.”
My eyebrows leapt up. “He’s been here that long?”
“Robert—“ I noticed she didn’t call him ‘Mr. Schwinn’—“stays on to hone his social skills and practice his art. We have a lot of successful students who stay simply because they dislike standard curriculums and prefer our methods.”
We stopped in front of one of the many doors in the middle of the central column. Mrs. Pattinson knocked with one knuckle. “Bellisima?”
“Yes, who is it?”
Mrs. Pattinson opened the door without answering. Inside, a girl was sprawled over an old-time fainting couch, mascara smudged dramatically over her high cheekbones, a handkerchief raised to one eye. “Bellisima, these hysterics are terrible for your complexion and your class scores. Please pull yourself together and say hello to your new roommate.”
“I don’t want her! I miss Stacy!”
“Anastacia Lombardo.” Mrs. Pattinson said over her shoulder to me. “A reasonably good singer, but as a costume designer, incomparable.” A wet handkerchief struck her on the cheek. Bellisima sniffed loudly.
“She was an amazing singer! Better than that hack Mary Sable!”
“Mary Sable has several CDs in production and has starred in two off-Broadway musicals. Miss Lombardo had trouble securing one self-produced single.” Mrs. Pattinson’s sigh-riddled voice sent Bellisima into another tirade of weeping. Mrs. Pattinson rubbed her forehead. “I’ll leave you two to become acquainted. I have a migraine.” She swept from the room in a fairly theatrical way herself, and the door shut with a sense of finality behind her.
I put my duffle bag down soundlessly, as any noise could send Bellisima into another crying fit. “I’m Gerty Steinmetz. Did your friend graduate?”
Raising tear-stained eyes to mine, Bellisima flung a hand to her brow. “She did, but she wanted to stay longer! She wouldn’t leave me so easily! Her parents must have forced her!”
“Uhm, maybe she got a job making costumes? Mrs. Pattinson said—“
“That witch doesn’t know anything! Waaaaaaaaaaah…” Off she went again, wailing and sobbing.
Nobody I’d ever known had cried so much or so loudly. “Can’t you email each other? Don’t you have a phone?”
“It’s not the same!”
“You should be happy for her, though. We’re not supposed to stay at this school forever.” Use your logic, I thought, flopping down in a beanbag chair.
“That’s Stacy’s!”
“Aaah!” I leapt up at her screech, startled, and my braid whacked my butt hard enough to sting. “Oh, for the love of Pete, will you quit it? She graduated! She’s not dead! You scared me half to death!” I don’t remember ever being angry before, since I was so secure in my intellectual superiority in regular school, but this girl was getting on my nerves like nobody ever had before. If I had to listen to her gripe one more minute, I would throw her over the railing outside. “Are you done?”
“Well, I figured out how to make you mad.” She smiled up at me and swept the mascara off her face with a spectacular flourish. “I’m Bellisima. Can you guess what I’m here for?”
I glared at her from under my bangs. “That was all an act?”
“Bingo, bingo, bingo! I’m an actor!” Bellisima bounced up and winked at me, before she hopped the low couch and pranced to the dresser to reapply her makeup. “I only use waterproof mascara, which should have been your first clue… If a girl wears normal stuff around here, she looks like she’s the Wicked Witch of the West in five minutes—all melty and junk. You get dunked at least once a day, if not by falling off than from somebody deciding you’re too slow and giving you the big chuck.”
“Some girl named Judy Trenor threw a guy off the course as we were coming up here. Ulrich Reese?”
“Second year student. Nice guy, but he has trouble keeping up on the speed course. He does better on the rhythm trials.”
“New student is still confused.”
“We have several different types of courses. The big course outside is the master course—we run it at least every day, and your times decide where your grades are. Outside there are other courses with different guidelines and different tasks to accomplish. Timed trials are speed courses where you compete for the best time. The lowest times get A’s, the middle times get B’s, so on and so forth. The rhythm courses test your ability to problem solve and guess the pattern that helps you get across the course. For instance, an obstacle may involve jumping at a certain time to get through.”
I grabbed my bag. “I’m here to learn to get along better with other people, not fall to my death running through a maze like a giant hamster.”
“We learn teamwork and how to push ourselves. We’re also allowed to decide when we’d like to take our regular classes and when we’d like ‘studio time’—basically just a time of day when we work on what we’re good at, in my case acting. You and Mrs. Pattinson walked in on the best sob scene I’ve ever put together on short notice. I thought Mrs. Pattinson was going to take you away again to let me calm down.” Bellisima grinned and applied a last dab of pink lip-gloss. “If you want to go, you can, but regular school isn’t half as much fun is Aqua. I mean, at other schools getting mono is big, but here it’s being bitten by a snapping turtle.”
“Wait, there are snapping turtles?”
“Oh, not here, they’re in one of the field zones. Uhm, we’re going there tomorrow, so you might want to wear hand guards… Snapping turtles apparently like the taste of appendages.”
I clapped a hand to my forehead. “It didn’t say anything about that in the brochure. It mentioned light exercise and an obstacle course. There were no serial killer reptiles mentioned.”
Bellisima laughed. “As a rule, really intelligent kids don’t much appreciate exercise. We’re used to getting what we want using our brains. Professor Zenma believes that the key to achieving a healthy social life and a healthy mental life lies in balancing the two. So we need to work on our bodies, basically.”
“What about the kids who come here for sports?”
“Generally the courses are just as hard for them. It’s just the academic courses that give them trouble, not the physical ones, although the obstacle runs are challenging for even the most conditioned athlete. Judy Trenor, the girl who chucked Ulrich off the course, is being groomed for a career in lacross, so she has an easier time on the obstacle course than he does. Ulrich, however, has better grades in the regular classes. Oh, another thing? You usually don’t have to be in the classroom—only on days when the teachers ask specifically for you to attend, like if an essay is due. That stuff’s announced over the loud speaker every morning.”
I felt my own migraine coming on and sat on what I guessed was my bed, since the top bunk was covered in printed pillows and stuffed animals. I pulled my own stuffed giraffe out of my bag and tucked her into the blankets. “I think I need a nap.”
“Everybody says that when they first get the 411,” Bellisima continued, tossing a fluffy purple quilt over the couch. “It’s a lot to take in, and your first run on the obstacle course will be really hard. A nap would be a good idea—I’ll wake you up when it’s time for the afternoon run. I’ll walk you through it, and if somebody tries to throw you off, I’ll throw them off!”
“Uh, thanks.”
“What are roommates for? Stacy used to do that stuff for me all the time when I first got here. I figure as the senior dormie it’s my job to keep you out of the nurse’s office as much as possible. Anyway, I’ll turn my laptop speakers off so I can IM Stacy without disturbing you.” Hopping over the couch again, the apparently part-rabbit Bellisima sat down and began typing.
