Read Online The Academy: Book 2 by Chad Leito - Free Book Online Page A

could possibly have put at the end of the passage. Asa reached his hand as far down the extra tunnel as he could, feeling nothing as it went forward.
    And do I ask Teddy about this extension he’s built? Sure I do. There’s no reason not to. It probably doesn’t actually go anywhere: what would be down the tunnel? Another room? For what? Is Teddy kidnapping Fishies and keeping them chained up in a hidden passage above my dwelling?
    Asa actually smiled at his own thoughts. It seemed ludicrous.
    Am I being paranoid? This was a question that had been bothering Asa a lot lately. He feared that perhaps the traumatic things that he had gone through and witnessed in the past five months were having an ill effect on him. He could remember watching a documentary when he lived in his home ( That feels like ages ago ) about the effects that years at war had on the brains of Vietnam soldiers. Being in a war zone for an extended period of time made it so that your brain was constantly soaked in cortisol and adrenaline. Asa couldn’t remember the exact physiology of what happened to these soldiers, but he knew that they started acting odd: they got jumpy. A lot of the veterans spent the rest of their lives sleeping with a gun under their pillow, and hitting the floor every time the neighbor’s car backfired.
    Get a grip, he thought to himself. There’s probably some architectural reason for this extra tunnel that I don’t understand. It’s probably nothing. And Teddy will think I’m paranoid if I ask him about it.
    Not wanting to take too long, Asa continued on the normal path and emerged over the bathtub.
    It was much warmer in the normal dwelling than it had been in the secret compartment, especially near the tunnel’s opening, over the fire. Asa came out, landing with wet feet on the bathtub’s lid.
    “Here,” Teddy said, and threw him a towel.
    The towel hurtled through the air at a surprising speed, and Asa caught it with one hand, remembering how Edna had caught that knife speeding at her in the woods. He thought of how mangy she was and wondered at the reason for her unkemptness.
    “You know what this is?” Teddy asked.
    Asa gave his hair a few quick scrubs with the towel before stepping off the lid and into the living room. Teddy was holding a clean white envelope with the single word “Asa” written on it in blue ink. Asa had seen the handwriting before; it had to be Charlotte’s.
    “No,” Asa said. “I wasn’t expecting anything from her.”
    Teddy held it out to Asa. “Do you want to read it?”
    Asa took it and set it back down on the coffee table. “Not right now.”
    Asa and Teddy disagreed with the way that Asa was treating Charlotte. For one fantastic week after the last end of semester ceremony, Asa and Charlotte had been a couple. They had done everything together. After some bad dreams, Asa wrote Charlotte and told her that they couldn’t be together anymore. It wasn’t worth it to him; he cared too much about her to spend much more time with her and risk Multipliers coming after them.
    After Asa told Teddy that he had broken up with her, his friend had guessed exactly what had happened. He looked at Asa with his yellowing eyeballs and said: “You got scared? How could you do that! You told her you were over that fear thing.” They had been in the rec room at that time, and Teddy shoved the ping-pong paddle he was holding into the container before walking away and muttering something with the word “coward” included in it.
    A fire exploded in Asa’s mind. You dirty bigot: you cried all last year. Where do you get the idea to call me scared!? But Asa said: “You’re wrong.”
    “Oh, I’m wrong?” Teddy’s chest bowed out and he got uncomfortably closed to Asa, so that their noses were almost touching.
    “Yeah. You’re wrong. I don’t like her. It’s just not a good idea. I’m,” pause, “not,” pause, “scared.”
    Teddy smiled. “Okay, boss.”
    In retrospect, Asa didn’t