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through the trees. A terrifying grin on his face.
    “Please! What path?” I turned back to her, begging. But she was gone.
    “Got her, up here by the sculpture garden,” Freddy bragged into his earpiece. “I’m handling it.”
    I just stood there petrified. Like one of the blackened, bronze statues.
    He paused, listening to the response in his ear. Anger twisting his mouth.
    “Uh-huh.”
    His face went from medium rare to bloody.
    “Uh-huh.”
    Not a man of many words.
    “Said I’m handling it.” And he started for me.
    Freddy clutched his pepper spray and edged closer. His eyes were everywhere, checking out the area around us, evaluating my movements. Then he looked straight at me, and I saw a flicker of fear in his eyes before he looked away. Like I was an escaped tiger who might attack at any second. I had the urge to do just that. To rave and scream and claw. But my sense of defeat overwhelmed everything else.
    Sweat slipped down my forehead, stinging my eyes. I touched my back pocket, wishing my sketchbook were there. I’d draw myself into someplace safe. Without possessed statues or sadistic schools. I’d make my life make sense again.
    Freddy was feet from me, inches now. This wasn’t gonna be pretty. I’d seen what they’d done to Nami. His fat hand twitched, eagerly, and I braced myself.
    Then his radio beeped again. He paused, listening to his earpiece.
    “Crap. Another one.” Freddy’s watery eyes filled with regret. “I don’t have time to teach you a lesson right now. But I promise, I’ll get to it soon enough. And I’m a man of my word.”
    Freddy grabbed my sore arm and dragged me back into the trees. The branches bent low, tangling in my hair. Ripping it out as Freddy pulled me along.
    I wished I were back out under the open sky of the clearing, even if it meant being near those creepy statues. Or listening to Rita.
    Be careful. The path is hard to follow.
There’d been something in her voice, an urgency, that made it hard for me to just shrug her off. But Rita and her path vanished from my thoughts as soon as I saw Dr. Mordoch waiting outside the Compass Rose with her satisfied little smile.
    “Thank you, Caretaker. I assume she wasn’t too much trouble.”
    “Oh no, Dr. Mordoch. We can handle the students. Firmness and restraint. Just like it says in the handbook.” Behind Freddy’s smile was a glint of spitefulness, but Dr. Mordoch didn’t react. She sent Freddy off toward the next “incident” and turned to me.
    “I’m glad this happened before we officially started our semester.” Dr. Mordoch motioned for me to follow her back up the hill, in the opposite direction from the dorms. A breeze swatted uselessly at the stagnant air. We skirted around the other house I’d seen from the roof that morning. Its wooden porch sagged and the paint was faded and chipped. A brass plaque gleamed incongruously on the weathered door, reading
Knowledge Annex
. Next to the house was a wide, empty corral, big enough for cows or horses.
Some sort of barnyard therapy?
    “It allows me to be lenient. I’ll give you this chance before we begin our term to decide whether you’re going to allow Holbrook to help you. Perhaps, if I give you some time to think it over, you’ll come around.” She beamed at me as she led me up a dirt trail through the oppressive woods. “Meditation can work wonders.”
    We came to a small skinny building that looked a little like an old rest-stop bathroom. Only a row of metal ventilation pipes on the roof kept the place from blending into the trees completely. Five doors evenly divided the wooden building, each with a stick-on silver number labeling them one through five.
    “The monks used this building for contemplation.” Dr. Mordoch unlocked the fence that circled the building. No razor wire here. “The Meditation Center serves the same purpose for us at the Academy. At every turn, I’ve tried to incorporate the values of self-reflection and discipline