Page 17 of The Bad Weather Friend

“I’m just another kid,” Benny said.

Speer’s smile was conspiratorial, as though they shared a secret that bonded them. “You’re clearheaded and centered. The masters here want us to put all childish things behind us, to be clearheaded and centered. We have classes in centeredness.”

Benny shrugged.

“The funny thing,” Speer said, “is that the masters are all muddleheaded. A faculty of fools and losers—and worse.”

“Mrs. Baneberry-Smith seems very nice,” Benny said.

“The bug lady.”

“Entomologist.”

“She was bitten by an exotic spider.”

Benny shrugged again. “Her cookies taste good.”

“The ones that smell like mushrooms or the ones that smell like onions or the ones that smell like wet dog fur?”

“Mushrooms,” Benny said. “But they tasted good.”

Leaning forward in his chair and out of the light, his luminous eyes going dark in their sockets, Speer said, “Never, never, never eat her cookies.”

“Why not? I like cookies.”

“She teaches a tenth-grade course in the fifteenth-century history of Italy.”

“Yeah. She told me. So?”

“Borgias.”

“What?”

“The Borgias. Catherine de’ Medici. The century of poisoners. The rich, the royals, poisoning their own kind, poisoning cardinals and princesses. Everyone knows Mrs. Baneberry-Smith isfascinatedwith poisons and poisoners ... and poisonous insects.”

Benny considered the boy’s implication, but not too seriously. Mrs. Baneberry-Smith was only a tiny bit as creepy as Jurgen Speer. “Do a lot of people at Briarbush die of poisoning?”

Leaning back into the lamplight, his luminous eyes souring into view once more, Speer said, “No. Murder isn’t what the headmaster and his wife are about. They don’t want to kill us. They want tochangeus.”

“Change us how?”

“I don’t know how, but I’m going to find out.” He closed his eyes and punctuated his silence with a series of deep inhalations and exhalations. Then he focused on Benny again. “I believe you’re sane, Ben Catspaw. I’m counting on you being sane. Are you sane?”

“Well, gee, I think so. Yeah. I’m pretty sure.”

Speer tapped his chest with one finger. “I’m sane, too. There aren’t many sane boys left at Briarbush. Most have been changed.”

“Spooky,” Benny said.

“Yes. It’s way spooky. But they won’t change us, Ben.” He slid to the edge of his chair, palms flattened on the seat cushion, body tense, head thrust forward. “We’ll look out for each other. If I see the slightest sign you’re changing, I’ll tell you. You do the same for me. Promise you’ll do the same for me. At the slightest sign.”

“I’ll do the same for you,” Benny promised, because at that moment Jurgen Speer was reminiscent of a tarantula preparing to jump. Tarantulas could jump five feet. Speer looked as if he might spring from chair to footstool and from there fling himself through the air onto Benny, not with any good intention. “But what ... what would a sign look like?”

During his next silence, Speer sat with his hands curved like claws on the arms of his chair, his pointy fingernails dimpling but not quite puncturing the leather, lower lip sucked entirely into his mouth, and eyes narrowed to slits. Just as Benny was about to repeat his question, Speer said, “A sign would be like what happened to Prescott Galsbury.”

“Who’s Prescott Galsbury?”

“My roommate before you. He was fourteen when ... it started.”

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