Behind the Walls. NOVEL By Claire Darcy.

22. The Truth Hurts.

JOSH.

I took a seat in my next class and glanced around the room.

"Josh, where's Ace? Isn't she meant to be in this class?" Tyler asked from the table beside mine. I shrugged and glanced at the doorway. Ace had just found out what Rowan had done. Maybe he'd even told her more than he told me. I didn't know. In any case, there was no doubt she was horrified.

"She probably won't want to see anyone for a while," I said. Tyler nodded, but didn't say anything else.

I looked up towards the front, where the teacher would be waiting. All the classrooms were the same. Glass-walled buildings with blank desks and a screen up the front that the teacher could use if they wanted. Everything was perfectly in line, situated with precision in symmetrical patterns. It was all so... orderly.

Of course, other rooms were different. The weapons room was a lot bigger, and had heaps more going on. And apparently Fear-Training was in a special room, too, although I hadn't had that class yet. All the regular school subjects were in the classrooms.

As the teacher began to drone on about Mathematics or something, things I already knew, I felt my eyes wondering towards the window. In reality, the entire wall was pretty much a window, but only in certain places could you actually see through the glass to something other than another building.

Outside, the sun was shining brightly, and a gentle breeze tousled the neatly pruned plants and blew the water from the fountains slightly off course. The sunshine caught in the glass walls and sent sparkling colours across the stark white pavement, and made almost holographic images swirl in the water features. Small silver machines buzzed about the campus, and high-tech security cameras twitched at any movements.

In all honesty, the Academy was a marvelous feat of technology and engineering. It would have been an amazing place, was it not for the unsettling evil undertones that seeped through the glittery mask of beauty. Ooh, poetic. I should write that one down for Ace.

"Joshua Rigby? My goodness, Joshua Rigby!?"

I snapped my eyes over to the front and saw the teacher glaring at me. He was an older man in a soldier's uniform, and peered at me over thin-framed glasses.

"I... uh, yes, Sir?" I stumbled, confused.

"Hurry up and answer my question, boy! What is the solution to this equation?"

I looked at the screen. On it, seemingly hundreds of numbers and signs were scrawled, with an equals sign and an empty space at the end. I bit my lip and studied the numbers, my mind whirring. I'd always been good at mathematics; it was time to put my skills into action.

"Four-thousand-fifty-two...Square root of... Eighty-nine-hundred... Multiplied... Five-hundred-seventy-two... Divided..." I mumbled under my breath for a few second more, and then nodded sharply. "The answer is 21," I said shortly.

The entire class was silent. The teacher raised a confused eyebrow, then looked down at his personal screen.

"Correct," he said in a suspicious tone, watching me carefully as if I were about to leap out of my seat. I sat still under his scrutiny for a moment longer, then he continued on with the class and I wasn't bothered again.

I glanced to the side to see Tyler staring at me, his mouth slightly ajar and his eyes wide.

'What?' I mouthed, not daring to grab the teacher's attention again.

"So you're like, 'smart' smart," he said hesitantly, "Not just regular smart."

I shrugged and looked at the window again.