THE YOUNGEST GRADUATES
Summerville had streaks of purple and pink clouds across the eastern sky. The temperature had dropped. A hard frost covered part of the road and crusted blades of grass. It made walking across Bob’s Diner’s parking lot hazardous.
A semi had pulled into the lot and parked in the grass near the tree line next to the ambulance.
There were few other cars. The neon lights from the diner’s sign cast various glowing colors across windshields.
Sean parked closer to the semi and turned off the car. He stared out the windshield, waiting to see if anyone would notice him. When it seemed the coast was clear, he got out of his car and headed toward the security trailer.
The trailer blended in with the diner. It was easy to picture it as an add-on annex for storage or security and not think twice.
The door was unlocked. He went inside.
The carpet was dull, utilitarian. The walls were wood panels. He’d barely noticed it all last night, but it certainly looked like a security trailer.
The desks had been pushed up against the walls better to create more space. A couple of cots were against the far side of the room.
Gabriel slept in one of them, with an arm over his eyes in the dim light. His hair was wild, strands all over the place. He had a thick blanket over his body. His chest rose and fell steadily.
Three floor heaters were turned on, making the room almost warm enough to take off a coat.
Owen stood near a folding table. He wore the same clothes as last night, with the sleeves rolled up. He was bent over another laptop, focused on a video feed of Sang’s bedroom.
On the feed, Sang was curled up with her cheek against the pillow.
A smaller window showed Carol, awake and sweeping the floor in the laundry room.
Sean stood by the door, waiting for Owen to look up and acknowledged him. When he didn’t, Sean edged closer to look closer at the feed.
Sang turned in the bed, flopping over.
Restless.
She stared at the ceiling, frowning. It was easy to think she was asleep until she moved.
Had she gotten much sleep at all last night? She’d seemed so tired, but the news of being held at the house and getting pulled out of school probably wouldn’t allow her brain to rest.
Like them. They were running on fumes trying to work around this.
Suddenly Owen’s shoulders rose and fell rapidly. He swiped violently at the laptop, causing it and several other devices to fall to the floor in a heap.
Gabriel bolted upright, scrubbing his face. “What happened?”
Owen said nothing, leaning over the tables with his palms flat on the surface. His face was all hard planes, his lips tight.
Sean grimaced for Gabriel’s sake. He rarely saw Owen lose control, and it wasn’t great for the others to see him like this. Not right now.
“Gabriel,” Sean said quietly. “Run over to Nathan’s. Wake the others up. Bring them here.”
Gabriel cocked his head, but only hesitated for a moment. “On it,” he said and jumped up. He yanked on a coat on a rack, shoved his feet into boots and was out the door.
Owen waited until Gabriel was gone to speak slowly, his tone low. “I can’t get her out,” he said. “And we can’t let her stay.”
Sean had told him she couldn’t stay, and at least now, he knew it. Still, this wasn’t him. He was behaving more like…Sean. Irrational. Feeling.
At first, Sean wasn’t sure what to say. What could he tell him? He didn’t know what the solution was, but he knew Owen would if he got him on the right path.
“When we were ten,” Sean said slowly, “we argued like this. We argued about how to win favors and money to graduate from the Academy.”
“That has nothing to do with her,” he said.
Sean continued anyway. “I had some stupid plan to develop another Academy neighborhood, bigger than the others. Clean it up ourselves and make it suitable for people to live in. You kept telling we couldn’t do that alone.”
Silence filled the trailer. Sean glanced at the equipment, the cots, particularly the untouched one that was most likely meant for Owen.
Owen slowly picked himself up until he was standing straight, shoulders back, but still looking at the wall. “We had ideas where we would do the work. Doing it ourselves gave us the advantage of getting more favors. Only we didn’t know plumbing. We didn’t know how to run electricity. We could barely hammer nails.”
“We couldn’t do the things we wanted because we were ten,” Sean said. He approached Owen slowly. When he didn’t speak, Sean kept going. “You came to me later. I don’t remember what you said exactly…”
Owen nodded, turning his head just enough that he peered at Sean over his shoulder. “Why do we need to do it? What if we simply got other people to do what we wanted?”
“No limits,” Sean said with a grin. “We let go of the idea of what ten-year-olds could do and instead thought of what we could get others to do.”
“Suddenly we could do anything,” Owen said.
“We decided to work in secret. Make other people do what we couldn’t. We wrote letters. We put the right people in contact with who we wanted and fed them ideas and where to get the money. We told no one what we were up to.”
Owen nodded. “An abandoned building in the middle of Charleston. No one wanted to tackle the maintenance to get it up and running, but the city had funds set aside for repurposing that area.”
“We found the right people,” Sean said. “People willing to put in the hours and experience.”
“And got additional funding. Millions filtered into a project they thought was coordinated by various nonprofits.”
“Before that time, the Academy worked in small offices and facilities broken up around the city,” Sean said, coming closer to the table. He scooped up one of the tablets that had fallen, holding it in his hands. “They thought it was better to work in secret that way. We found something better for them.”
“A hospital,” Owen said. He finally turned around to face him. His expression calm. “Privately owned.”
Sean nodded, showing him the tablet with the darkened screen. “We became the two ten-year-old boys who coordinated the team to create a central Academy hospital. We were only discovered when we told them what we’d done.”
Owen’s lips twitched. “When everything was in place, they sought out the benefactors and found us. Wouldn’t even believe us at first.”
Sean held the tablet tighter. “When they did, they had to give us the favors. We gave them all what they didn’t even know they needed.”
Owen blinked rapidly, his eyes passing from the table, to Sean, to the door and then back to Sean. “I don’t understand. You want to use those favors?”
“I’m saying we were the youngest to graduate in the history of the Academy. Us. You and me. We did it together.” He used the tablet to point to Owen’s face. “Tell me we can’t get Sang out. Now. When we want her. When she wants it. And still keep her ghost bird status. We can do anything, Owen. We’ve done it before.”
Owen frowned but took the tablet from Sean’s hands. “We can’t convince Carol to send her to a school.”
Sean smiled and shook his head. “Change the result we want.”
Owen raised an eyebrow. “Why…try to convince her to send her to a school?”
“Why even ask her permission?” Sean said.
Owen paused, holding the tablet.
Slowly, he drew it closer, those eyes staring at the dark surface. The air seemed to still in the trailer.
His fingers glided over the glass.
He touched the power button.
The glow illuminated his eyes, reflecting on his glasses.
“We won’t ask,” Owen said, the edge of his mouth curling into the tiniest smile. “They’ll have no choice.”