The Apprentices by Maile Meloy Read Free Book Online Page B

reached for the telephone on his desk.
    Janie’s mind was still tumbling over the events of the week. “Did you kick me out in the first place so he could take it?” she asked. “Mr. Magnusson never lets an opportunity go by, does he? He even gave me the week to perfect it.”
    The headmaster held the telephone receiver to his ear. “You’re beginning to seem paranoid to me, Miss Scott.Perhaps it’s not the police I should call. Perhaps we should arrange a psychiatric evaluation.” He started to dial.
    Janie backed toward the door. If she wasn’t careful, she was going to end up in a padded cell. Carted off to the loony bin. Who had said that? Tadpole Porter. But he wasn’t part of the conspiracy. Or was he? She had to get out of here. She started to say something about her aunt in Concord, anything to make Mr. Willingham think that an adult was looking out for her, when she bumped into someone behind her and whirled around.
    But it wasn’t an orderly carrying a straitjacket. It was just the headmaster’s fluffy-haired secretary, looking concerned. “Is everything all right?” she asked.
    Janie darted around her and out the door, through the reception area, and into the hall. She made her way outside the building and stood on the steps, gulping air. She felt as if she hadn’t really breathed the whole time she was in the office. The air outside was cold and clear, untainted by Mr. Willingham’s noxious pipe smoke and his lies.
    She wanted to crumple right there on the steps. But she had to move forward. Raffaello and his family had been kind to her, but they couldn’t help her with this. She needed to find the only people who could help her fight back.

CHAPTER 8
Code-breaking
    R affaello was waiting for Janie on the sidewalk outside Bruno’s restaurant. “We’re late for school,” he said. “Where have you been? It’s the auditions today!”
    “Sorry,” she said. “I’m not feeling well. I don’t think I can go.”
    Raffaello hesitated, puzzled. “You could be Hermia. Or Helena.”
    “I can’t audition,” Janie said. “They’d find out I’m not really enrolled at the school.”
    Raffaello’s face fell.
    “Go on,” she said. “Go try out for the play.”
    He kicked the sidewalk and said nothing.
    “I fought Giovanna for you!” she said. “Don’t waste it!”
    Raffaello looked up. “You really think I might get a part?”
    Janie was losing patience. “I don’t know!” she said. “But you won’t get one if you don’t
go.
”
    He yawned self-consciously, in that way boys did when they felt embarrassed and uncertain, and finally shouldered his knapsack and set off.
    Alone in the living room upstairs, Janie got out Benjamin’sletters, the only hard evidence she had that he existed. She looked at the familiar handwriting, trying to see something she hadn’t seen before. She had studied the postmarks a hundred times, and they all seemed deliberately blurred in the same way. She rubbed the paper with her thumb and guessed that Benjamin had treated the paper with something that resisted the postmark’s ink, so it wouldn’t take.
    She took out the first letter again and unfolded it. It had arrived in London about two months after Benjamin first sent her diary back. The letter said:
    Dear J.,
    How’s all? Really beastly industrial nastiness, here. Can’t help insulting natives, apparently. But so far no one’s trying to run us out of town. So that’s something. Miss you a lot. Tell your parents Figment says hello. My dad sends his regards.
    Bx
    Parts of the letter were clear. The
x
was a kiss, which had made her knees go weak the first time she read it. “Figment” was her father’s joking name for Benjamin; it came from “figment of your imagination.” Her parents had invented a whole aristocratic English family called the Figments, fourteenth cousins to the Queen. Benjamin was supposed to be the son and heir. They thought the whole thing was hilarious. At the time, Janie