When All is Null and Void

Chapter Three

"Uh, yeah, sure," Caleb said. Bryce bumped into his backpack hard enough to push Caleb into the wall. Caleb flopped uselessly against the cement. It was better that way.

"Bryce!" Historian Elderhart snapped, surely taken aback by the vicious display he'd witnessed.

Bryce kept walking, as if her were too dense to hear anything. If only that were true, Caleb might have been able to forgive the guy. Stupidity couldn't be stopped, but outright animosity? Evil to the core.

"You were late again, Caleb," Elderhart said. It lacked condemnation, yet Caleb shrank a little inside.

"I'm sorry," was all he could think to say, even though he wasn't really sorry at all. It's what you said whenever someone called you out.

Elderhart smiled. "Thankfully, your attendance is not what I wanted to talk to you about."

"It isn't?" Caleb perked up. If he wasn't getting a lecture on tardiness, what did his teacher even want?

"I wanted to give this to you." Elderhart pulled an envelope from a pocket inside his jacket. Caleb reached for it, but when his fingertips grazed the paper, he dropped it. The packet plopped against the tile floor. The Museum emblem flashed in gold upon the paper: Five circles representing the five founding members with five, interlocking lines connecting them all. Caleb bent to pick the letter off the ground, if only to stop Professor Elderhart from looking at him.

"Do you remember Felix Andreyev?" Elderhart asked. He leaned against the desk and cocked an eyebrow at Caleb. He didn't comment on the way Caleb held the letter as if it were covered in dog poop.

"I think so?" He scrunched his eyebrows together, pretending he didn't remember the boy at all. The truth was, Caleb knew exactly who Felix Andreyev was and what had happened to him. "He got tested for that accelerated program, right?"

Historian Elderhart nodded at the envelope. "He got the same envelope."

"And they chose to do it with paper?" It was a stupid thing to say, since he'd received a similar envelope this morning. He'd thought it had been because he didn't have a wrist Holo, but maybe Rhea James was old-fashioned.

Historian Elderhart didn't say anything further, just nodded his head primly and rounded his desk. The next period was about to start, and Caleb hurried out of the room with muttered thanks. He walked briskly to his next class--French with Historian Litchfield--and shoved the envelope in his backpack, forgetting it in moments. Historian Litchfield was the kind of woman who bemoaned the trajectory of education, and was thus unafraid to smack students on the back of their heads for seeming too focused on any topic that wasn't hertopic. While physics was a language Caleb had easily picked up, the literal language of French was much harder. He had trouble keeping up with the way this specific class was taught. Concepts were thrown out for a moment, and tests would appear the next day. Caleb wasn't failing the class by any means, but he wasn't getting an A, and it grated on his nerves.

As the day slid forward in hazy monotony, the letter settled firmly on the bottom of his bag. He'd forgotten it by lunch, though that was more by force of will.

Not until Caleb was on the J train, headed for the Museum, did he pulled the letter out of his backpack. The envelope—now crinkled and covered in a film of crumbs from the bottom of Caleb's bag—was addressed to him in printed, white typeface. A hundred years ago, someone had written a book series about a boy who'd gotten a letter like this. Only, that boy wanted to read his letters. Caleb considered tossing his out the window. Littering was illegal, and Caleb had no desire to be fined. With an annoyed sigh, Caleb slit the letter open. This time, it was rectangle of card stock, not the slip of glass that had held the previous note. A short message was written on it: