Upon Expectation

"No, no! In the garden, Squeak!" Hannil had whispered harshly before he grabbed the excess of Noah's sleeve and pulled him into the garden. Noah spent the entire morning with Hannil, gathering and raking, picking weeds and having Hannil laugh at what little Noah knew of plants all because there were "fewer eyes and ears" than inside the castle.

    "A woman?" Hannil asked after he explained what he had seen.

    "She was just standing there," Noah replied with a small shake of his head, "Looking at her watch or phone or something."

    "Not like," Hannil pointed a long, fork-like tool he called a cultivator at a group of students that were mostly girls.

    Noah nodded, "Older. Fifty, maybe? Dyed hair and everything."

    Hannil looked surprised for a moment before he leaned on the staff of the cultivator and stared with scrunched eyes at the brightened forest.

    "Where'd she go?" He asked.

    Noah shook his head as he went back to weeding, "I didn't see. When I looked back, she was gone."

    "And you think that a teacher's going to help us?"

    "They might?" Noah replied weakly before he leaned back onto the cobblestone path and took off his gloves, a sigh of frustration left him as he tossed them aside. "Maybe she won't."

    "I'm just saying," Hannil held his hands out broadly before he dropped the cultivator and walked toward him, he sat down next to him on the cobblestone.

    "I think that we should tell someone, you know?" Noah looked at him.

    "Everyone in this place is beneath the thumb of the Headmaster," Hannil replied quickly. "Even us."

    "Teachers are good people...usually," Noah replied, "They're teachers to help take care of children."

    "Not to crash the world down on you, but we hardly qualify as 'children'."

    Noah took in a deep, ragged breath. "That's a horrible reminder."

    Hannil began to laugh before he took off his gloves and tossed them onto the hot cobblestone.

    "So, where do we find this teacher?" Hannil asked him.

    "I don't know," Noah replied as he wrapped his arms loosely around his knees, his ankles crossed as he looked out onto the yard and forest. "Their classroom? Teacher's lounge?"

    Hannil tilted his head from side to side in thought, his eyes were fixated on the forest and he watched the leaves sway in the breeze. The sun was striking him in such a way that Noah noticed how truly golden-brown his skin was, that his hair did seem to have a tint of blue in it, his eyes almost clear with sunlight streaming through them. All of his features were lit up by the sunlight, from his slightly arched, broad nose to his bowed lips and eyebrows that were scrunched together in thought, to his neck and collarbone that were just visible beneath his unbuttoned collar. When Hannil's eyes moved from the trees back to Noah, Noah panicked and darted his eyes back to the forest, his ears turned warm.

    "I'll take the area by the theater and Headmaster's office," Hannil told him.

    "Wh—What?" Noah stammered when he turned his attention back toward him.

    Hannil shrugged, "We have to search the castle somehow," he scoffed a laugh at the word.

    Noah looked up at the school, his house could easily fit in it time and time again. He looked back at Hannil curiously, remembering what Mi Na told him.

    "You really think it's small, don't you?" Noah asked.

    His eyes went back to him then he looked at the castle, he looked back at Noah before he pointed his thumb over his shoulder at the school. Noah nodded and Hannil laughed once more.

    "It's hardly got one hundred rooms!" Hannil replied, "It's tiny!"

    "I'm sorry—do you live in a castle or?" Noah said teasingly.

    "I do," Hannil replied seriously.

    "Yeah, yeah, we all do," Noah shrugged him off.

    "I live in a castle outside of London," Hannil told him as he leaned back onto his hand. "My grandparents live an even bigger castle in Scotland, my aunt lives in one in Wales, my uncle lives in one in Western-China."

    Noah leaned away from him after he realized how serious Hannil was.

    "And you're just—what? Living there?"

    Hannil nodded, "I live in a house where that is about the size of the house my parents have casual parties in." Noah was struck both by his dismissal and characterization of Leuthold Preparatory as "that" in such a derogatory manner.

    "You're not going to tell me your British Royalty—are you?"

    Hannil laughed as he pushed himself upright, he replied as he began up the path: "Oh, that'd ruin all my fun, Squeak!"

    "Don't call me that!" Noah said begrudgingly before he pushed himself up and sprinted after him.

_____________________________

Noah was a bit glad that Hannil offered to take the parts by the theater and Headmaster's office. Neither did he wanted to run into Headmaster Berg nor the girl in the bathroom, nor Ms. Rae whom he felt he had evaded for several months. Despite that, Noah unconsciously began to think of the tape recorder and the phones that he was supposed to be able to use.

    He hadn't seen the tape recorder in his room, but that didn't mean he hadn't stashed it away. The phones, he had little idea where they were located, but with so many people away from home, Noah guessed someone did. And, if he was still in school, it meant he hadn't been punished again. He wasn't thrown out and he didn't want to imagine what his parents said during the holidays while he was absent in his own body. But he hadn't been thrown out, he tried to focus on that thought alone. Even if he was caught wandering around, he doubted Hannil would be quick to turn in their intentions—besides, Noah wagered with himself, what was the real harm in a student seeking out a teacher in school?

    Noah walked by classrooms that sounded full and had the blinds drawn over the windows. The teachers sounded so mid-lecture that he didn't dare open them, the blinds being on the other side of the glass left him with little choice but to go on. He tried to eliminate rooms by their voices alone. He was able to take out some as they were clearly men or had much-too-broad voices for that small woman to carry.

    Despite that the castle had "hardly one hundred rooms", Noah stopped partway through his search feeling he could go forever and never find the woman he saw in the garden. Even without a sea of students, he couldn't find a single point where he could stand and survey the entire area. There were too many cut-offs, dead-ends, and closed doors for him to see properly.

    By the time he had wandered to the end of one side of the castle, Noah realized he had taken a mostly straight-shot to where he now stood; after he left Hannil at the steps, he hadn't stopped in his straight-line approach until he reached four windows that marked the dead-end of the castle.

    "You're alone," a voice popped up so quickly that he jumped away from it, turned, and was more shocked than anything to see Hanna looking down the hall on both sides, as if to confirm her statement.

    "What—what are you doing here?" Noah hadn't realized how out-of-breath he had gotten, his words choked in his throat and he knew that he sounded more suspicious than anything by the way she looked curiously back at him.

    "Crazy morning," Noah continued weakly and avoided her eyes.

    "Are you alone?" Hanna asked.

    He looked at her and saw fear in her eyes, panic even. He felt as though he recognized that look, as if he had seen it a million times staring back at him from his reflection. Anxiously, Noah checked his surroundings before he nodded.

    "Where's that man from the garden?" She asked.

    "Hannil?"

    She nodded.

    Noah shrugged, "In the theater, I guess."

    He saw her tighten her jaw and looked down at her hands that fumbled with the buttons on her sleeve nervously. Her hands shook, her eyes moved around quickly, she glanced over her shoulder time and time again. Within moments, she had chewed off part of her lower lip, her eyes had grown wider with freight. He straightened out his back as he remembered what Hannil said in his bedroom about how things had been strange while he was gone. For a moment, Noah thought that maybe Hannil wasn't the only one that noticed.

    "Are you alright?" Noah asked quietly.

    "Yes!" Hanna quickly replied, her attention turned back to him as if he had snuck up on her. Her eyes drifted away and she soon stared at the windows beyond him. "No," she finished, "I am not."

    "What's—uh—what's wrong?" He fumbled as he knotted his fingers much as she had done.

    Hanna stepped to the side and grabbed him by the arm, she pushed him backward until the back of his legs hit a chair and he instinctively sat down. His heart was already in his ears, his mind racing; fearing the worst, he watched her look around in some kind of desperate internal struggle before she sat down in the other plush, red leather chair in front of a large painting.

    "I must ask you questions," she said.

    "Oh, um, sure," he answered nervously.

    "Your siblings, what are their names?"

    "I don't have any siblings."

    "Oh," the word barely left her lips as she looked at her lap before she moved toward him again, "Your parents, you know them, no?"

    Noah nodded, his fear began to spin out-of-control and his confusion had begun to make him dizzy.

    "What are their names?" She asked in a whisper.

    For a moment, he panicked, though of his own parents and could only think of them as his parents. He struggled only for a moment or two before he answered:

    "Nancy and Walt...Walter," He answered, nodding slightly at his own parents' names.

    "And your family name?"

    "Cooper."

    "Where did you grow up?"

    "In a house in Vermont."

    "No, the address!"

    He paused once more before he answered: "5438 North Abbot Street."

    "What does it look like?"

    "A house," he answered with a shrug, "it had a strange shape. My mother always said it was 'bat-shaped' and that it was good for letting in air and sunlight."

    "The paint of it, what color?"

    "It was brick on the outside, the rooms were painted neutral colors. You know, beige, yellow, pale green," Noah rolled his hand.

    "You have," Hanna held her hand to her knee, "pet?"

    "No."

    "Your parents live in that house?"

    "Yes."

    "What are their names?"

    Noah stared at her for a moment out of suspicion rather than ignorance, "Nancy and Walter Cooper."

    "And the road you grew up on?"

    "North Abbot." He shook his head, "What are you asking all of this?"

    Hanna took in a deep breath, "You are not one of them." She said.

    "One of who?" Noah asked.

    She gestured vaguely, "Everyone."

    He looked down the empty corridor, just able to make out the end of the hall. He thought he could see students moving slowly far, far away before he looked back at her.

    "No one," she whispered, "no one remembers where they come from. The names of their family. The names of their homes."

    "Do you remember?" He asked.

    She nodded, "My mother is Anja and my father is Dieter. I grew up in Cochem, Germany and I had two cats, one named Minka and the other named Susi. I too was an only child."

    "I'm glad you remember," Noah said when silence fell over them and he was able to hear the lectures down the hall.

    "No one can answer my questions," she said to him. "I ask so many people around me. I ask the girls across the dorm, Mi Na's friends, the gardener, the Headmaster!" She shook her head, "They all change the subject or lie to me."

    "How do you know they're lying?" Noah replied, "I mean—"

    "They lie!" She replied harshly, "I ask them once, then I ask them again and they forget! I do not need to remember my father's name! I remember it! I remember my cats! I remember my home!"

    There was a long pause before she continued, "I speak to a lot of the students over the past months. None of them will answer me. None of them seem to want to." She shifted in her seat, "I feared I was the only one that knew anything, but you came to Mi Na so afraid and lost your memory, I thought that you were like me."

    "Mi Na must remember her family—she knows she's an American."

    "She lies!" Hanna said bitterly, "I trust her for so long and then she tells me stories of which she's told me before, but the names, places, times, the details have changed! I have good memory!" She tapped her temple, "I remember!"

     Noah hesitated in his response.

    "Not all," Hanna said, before she got off of the chair, the toes of her loafers didn't make a noise on the hardwood. "Come, I show you."

    He followed her back down the hallway and she whispered to him:

    "The students are like robots! They all answer the same way, get out of conversations the same way. It is too similar for me to forget or not notice. You are asocial and don't start conversations so why would you notice?"

    He only hummed in response.

    "Last week, I sneak into Headmaster's office and try to find files on students so that I can read what they are doing to us! What they put us through," she explained, "I open drawer and there is no drawer."

    "What?"

    "The drawer was like a magic trick," she stopped to hold her hands apart and make an invisible box, "It sounded like a drawer with many files inside on little rails you can slide out," she gestured pulling out the drawer, "But it was nothing but a box of nothing."

    "It was empty?"

    "No!" She shook her head, "It was as if I was looking into a place that did not exist! As if there was nothing to touch or feel! It was a box of nothing!"

    He narrowed his eyes at her explanation, his suspicion was clear enough that Hanna huffed.

    "I show you another box of nothing!" She said once more before she marched across the hall to an active lecture room.

    Noah began to panic as she took hold of the doorknob and threw the door open. He was ready to apologize, ready to throw himself at the mercy of Ms. Rae, ready to even run all the way back to his dorm and claim he never left. Yet, he did nothing but stare into the empty lecture room across the hall. He could hear the lecture going on inside, but he saw no teacher, no professor.

    After a few steps of his own, he stood inside the lecture room, a lecture was happening all around him but there were no students, marks on the chalkboard that were old and blended together.

    "It's empty," Noah commented.

    "All of the rooms are like this," Hanna said by the door. "I open up every door but all I find are empty rooms. No students—no professors."

    "The noise," he said as he turned around.

    "Speakers," Hanna pointed around the room to eight different speakers, "You are too afraid to open door, but I am not. You try and use the phones!" She said almost proudly, "Nothing will happen! You will speak to a voice of your mother but it is not your mother. Only a recording of her."

    Dumbfounded, Noah spun on his heels again, his eye fixated on each and every speaker that told the faint story of a lecture in a foreign language.

    "Where do all the students go?" He asked.

    "I do not know," she replied nervously, "As I say, they are robots or aliens or something not natural! Not human!"

    "They're human," Noah replied. "The Headmaster, Mi Na, Hannil, Liam—"

    She nervously grabbed her arm, "Mi Na is not one of them, but she is one of the ones that makes them."

    "What?" Noah replied.

    "I don't know details," she shook her head, "All I know is that Mi Na convinces me to stay by..." her voice trailed off for a moment, "She convinces me and I stay, things get worse. She tells me she hates Headmaster Berg but she talks to him as if he is old friend. They have lunch in his office! I don't know why, but Mi Na keeps us here to make us one of them!"

    "That's...not possible," Noah replied with a shake of his head.

    "Your roommate must do it too! Your friend too!"

    "No!" Noah replied quickly, "Liam remembers his family, he told me all about it endlessly. Hannil just told me about his family this morning. Like an hour ago!"

    "What did he say?"

    "He grew up in a castle outside of London, England. His grandparents own a castle in Scotland, his aunt lives in a castle in Wales, his uncle lives in China, I guess!" Noah shrugged as he put his hands on his hips, "Most of his family is from the British Isles."

    "The three of you," she said as she held the door, "You must come with me."

    "Go with you where?"

    "Away!" She whispered.

    "You're running away?"

    "Shh!"

    He glanced around once more before he moved with her into the hallway. "Where are you going?"

    "Germany is not far!" She paused, a haunted look came over her before she shook her head, "I am leaving tonight."

    "What?" He replied.

    "I must leave!" She whispered, her eyes turned desperate. "I do not know why but I feel it deep within me that if I do not leave it will be my end!"

    "No, no, no, it's dangerous to leave!"

    "You go with me!"

    "I can't just grab Liam and Hannil!"

    "Then leave them!"

    "No!"

    She took in a deep breath and it somehow reminded him to do the same.

    "I am leaving just after the sun sets," she told him softly, "whether or not you come is up to you."

    She pushed by him and began down the hall. He rubbed his forehead and realized then how much he had begun to sweat. How much he had truly panicked in her speech to him.

    "Noah Cooper," she called out and he turned back to her.

    "Your parents' names?"

    "Nancy and Walt."

    She nodded, "You should consider it, before you are gone for more than a few months."

    "There is nothing but gates and mountains," Noah replied to her in a whisper.

    "And I shall climb and trek through them," she replied before she paused, "You will know if I succeed if you never hear from me again," another pause, "at least, not until the police come."

    "You'll send help?" He asked.

    She nodded, "I must." A foregone look came over her before she looked at another talkative lecture, "Should I ever return, you will know."

    Noah felt his shoulders drop, unable to wish her well, he merely watched her leave before he looked back to the lecture they had opened the door onto. Only voices were around as if ghosts in the air. He walked to the door and shut it quietly. A single thought in his mind: to find Hannil and Liam and get to Hanna at sunset.