Deviant by Adrian McKinty Read Free Book Online

this was the sort of confused thinking she was expecting to see when a girl he liked appeared on the scene.
    She smiled and said nothing and left.
    Danny lay for a while and turned off the light.
    That night his dreams were vivid.
    He thought of the men in the prison. He thought of the girl next door. He thought of the spirit men of the mountains.
    He woke shivering. Freezing. He had left his window open and snow was coming in. “Jeff?” he said, half expecting to see him, hackles up, backed into a corner, terrified at some unseen creature.
    But Jeff was still sleeping peacefully at the bottom of his bed, untroubled by coyotes or bears or snow or anything else.
    The house was quiet.
    Danny looked out at the blackness of the woods. Not a single light anywhere. A dark world, strange, unknown, almost unknowable.
    The hairs on his neck were pricking up. “Calm down,” he whispered to himself. “There’s nothing out there.”
    He closed the window and pulled across the heavy blue curtains. Everything was normal, everything was as it should be. And yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that something
was
there, something—or someone—was watching, waiting …

The windows of Mr. Lebkuchen’s office were tinted so that it was difficult to see through them to what would have been a spectacular view of Pikes Peak beyond. The room was bare but for a few esoteric charts and a pristine wooden desk behind which Mr. Lebkuchen sat in an uncomfortable-looking ergonomic chair. Danny fidgeted in his school uniform of black blazer, black pants, white shirt, green tie, black socks, black shoes. He actually didn’t mind the uniform too much. Although he hadn’t worn a uniform at Grover Cleveland, he had at the Las Vegas Primary School for the Arts. He was only fidgeting because this interview had been going on for almost fifteen minutes now, mostly with Mr. Lebkuchen talking about how extraordinary it was to accept a student in the middle of the year and if ithadn’t been for the personal intervention of Juanita’s boss, Mr. Glynn …
    Danny’s parents were on either side of him. His mom in her smart work clothes and Walt—incredibly—in a suit and tie, the first time Danny had seen him so attired since the wedding. He’d even shaved and tied his graying hair in a ponytail behind his head.
    Danny was uneasy. Mr. Lebkuchen looked like a fairly decent guy: late twenties, close-cropped curly blond hair, blue eyes behind rimless John Lennon glasses, and a smudgy Play-Doh friendly face. He wasn’t very tall, smiled a lot, and was obviously enthusiastic about his job. He was wearing white gloves, which was a bit eccentric, but the problem wasn’t Mr. Lebkuchen. The problem was the words coming out of Mr. Lebkuchen’s mouth.
    â€œSo you see, Mr. and Mrs. Brown, that’s been Danny’s main issue, I think. It’s not his fault that he’s not progressing; it’s the fault of his teachers, the fault of the whole educational system. Here at Cobalt Junior High we use the system of Direct Instruction that was developed by Siegfried Engelmann at the University of Oregon. It’s now used by two dozen charter schools across the country. Our method is a modified version of the Slavin approach from Baltimore, which has saved many failing Baltimore schools and which has been used by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to completely transform Native American schools.”
    Who says I’m not progressing? Danny wanted to protest, but didn’t.
    â€œHow does it work?” Juanita asked.
    â€œWell, it’s very simple. Breathtakingly simple, really. Can I give you the standard school pitch? It’ll sound a bit canned, but it covers everything,” Mr. Lebkuchen said, rapping a gloved knuckle on the desk.
    â€œSure,” Juanita said.
    â€œOK. Here goes. Cobalt Junior High Charter School is a publicly funded, tuition-free charter school running