Джош Малерман - Inspection

“Nobody!” S called. More laughter from the boys. This time charged with excitement.

Richard held up an open hand.

“Now,” he said. The boys shifted in their seats because they knew what was coming next. D.A.D. always closed his speeches the same way. D.A.D. thrummed his fingers on the podium, a drumroll of sorts. All at once the Body Hall erupted into two simple words, as the boys cried out exuberantly with their D.A.D. “Let’s eat!”

Richard acknowledged the choir. Voices. The six boys rose, took their places in the shadows again.

J SAID TO D, “I thought the notebook was for me only. D.A.D. told me it was for me.”

“What?”

But they didn’t have time to discuss this. And despite J’s obvious concern, he and the other five boys began Miserere mei, Deus together.

The other Alphabet Boys made for the Body Hall doors.

RICHARD STEPPED FROM the podium. The staff made to leave, too, but Warren Bratt was easy to catch up with.

“Lawrence,” Richard said, calling Bratt by his nom de plume lest a boy was in earshot. “How hungry are you?”

Bratt turned to face him, and all of Richard’s concerns with the author of the boys’ leisure books were increased. Warren Bratt was a priggish, stuffy, self-centered former punk who once fancied himself a fine writer. Ten years as Lawrence Luxley had done much to squash the snobbery, but Richard was learning that, as Burt once said, you could only tie an artist’s hands together for so long before he began creating with his feet.

Warren’s leisure-book ideas had grown disturbingly original. Not a good thing at all.

“Pretty hungry,” Warren said.

“That’s fine. Gordon will meet you in your office after breakfast.”

“Why?”

Richard did not feign friendliness.

“I think it important that, as the boys’ tastes change, so do the books they enjoy.”

Warren nodded. “I know that, Richard. But I’d like to—”

“Good. Then you won’t mind a chat.” He eyed Warren from head to foot. “And wash your shirt. The sweat stains make it look like you’re working too hard. As if you’re being forced to write something you don’t want to write.” As he stepped by Bratt, guards in tow, he added, “The boys worship Lawrence Luxley. Please, show them how a genius dresses.”

Seated six a table at four large round tops, most of the Alphabet Boys appeared charged by D.A.D.’s speech in the Body Hall. F, funny F, joked as freely as if the Parenthood had outlawed studying for the day. His large front teeth looked especially white in contrast to his black button-down shirt and the black blazer that hung over his seat back. J and D had long, privately, joked that F looked like a “living cartoon.” They watched him talk, now, as they once smiled at drawings scribbled into the margins of their textbooks.

“Hey, W,” F said. “Don’t eat my breakfast today. I know you’re gonna want to and I know you’re gonna ask for my leftovers, but there simply won’t be any. So the only way you’re gonna get at my food is by eating your way through my stomach.” He paused, feigned seriousness with his overweight friend. “I shouldn’t have given you that idea, huh.”

J eyed the two boys. F and W were very close. They’d shared a floor with P and T their whole lives. And would J be sharing a floor with any of them when the day of the floor shift came? And how many years would it be that way?

“And what’s with you ?” F asked, pointing two fingers directly at J. “You look like you just got sent to the Corner.”

“Oh, come now,” L said. Conservative, proper L.

F snorted. “Oh, stop it, L,” he said. “It’s good to talk about scary things. Makes them less so. But I’m not gonna let J here get off the hook just because you don’t like the way I speak.” He smiled at J. Eyes wide. It was F’s way: exaggeration.

“Nothing’s wrong,” J said. But it was clear something was.

“ Is something the matter?” Q asked. Q’s glasses magnified his eyes as the Inspectors’ glasses might.

“No…it’s just…”

“Ah- ha !” F said. “I knew it! I told you! Am I good, or am I good?” He nudged W, and W nodded a yes. “Come on, then, J. Out with it.”

J thought fast. He couldn’t and wouldn’t tell them that he’d hidden information in the morning’s Inspection. He would not look hysterical in front of his brothers any more than he would the Parenthood.

“The notebooks,” J said. And as the words left his mouth, he understood that he was more upset about it than he’d realized.

“And what about them?” F asked, his big teeth wrinkling his lower lip.

“Well, in my Inspection this morning, D.A.D. told me he had an idea, just for me. He mentioned a notebook. Something I could write in. Fill…just for him.”

W smiled and his fat cheeks turned a rosy shade of red. “You mean this one?” He pulled one out from under the table. A large black W was printed on its cover.

“You sneak!” F said. “You already went up to your room and nabbed it!”

“I move well for a large boy, F.”

The friends laughed heartily. Then W turned his focus on J. Like Q, W had especially intelligent eyes. Quiet as he was, he often gave off the impression that he knew something the other boys did not. But whereas Q’s intelligence seemed to flow from an inquisitive place, W’s was more rooted in the Constitution of the Parenthood. D.A.D. himself had said W would make an excellent lawyer one day.

“Either way, what you’re saying isn’t true,” W said. J felt a quiet jolt. Had W just suggested J hid something in his Inspection?

But no. He had not.

“What do you mean?” J asked.

W hid the notebook back under the table. “Three days ago, in Professor Kinney’s class, K’s calculator stopped working. Kinney sent me to the office to fetch him a new one.”

“No doubt to encourage a little exercise, friend,” F poked.

W waved his brother off. “While I was there?” He leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms. “I saw a stack of twenty-four blue notebooks, each with one of our names printed bold upon its cover.”

“I don’t follow,” L said.

“You never do,” F said.

“What W is saying,” Q kindly said, “is that D.A.D. couldn’t have told J he had an idea planned just for him, when three days ago he’d already carried out the same idea for us all.”

Silence at the table. The voices of the other boys in the cafeteria filled the space.

They all looked to J for some sort of rebuttal. But J was at a loss for words. D.A.D. had told him he’d thought of the notebook just for him. And the way he’d said it…like he’d just thought of it…

Suddenly, as if a fan had been turned on in a very hot room, J felt some of his own guilt cool off. But the cool air brought cold.

Had J and D.A.D. lied to one another on the same day?

It was almost too frightening to imagine.

“You must’ve misunderstood him,” L said. “Simple as that.”

“But I didn’t.”

“Poor J,” F said. “Thought he had a little special attention and, in the end, he did not.”

“Obviously you’re not suggesting D.A.D. lied to you, J,” Q said.

J thought of the Corner. What little he knew of it. A door in the basement of the tower. A basement none of the boys knew how to get to.

“I didn’t say he lied, ” J said.

“Of course you didn’t,” Q said. “That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“But you are saying he got something wrong,” W added. “And that’s perhaps just as egregious.”