The Apprentices Read Online Free

the region.”
    “They won’t want
me,
” Tadpole said.
    There was general confirming laughter in the classroom. It was true that with his roundness and his glasses he didn’t seem very military. Janie wished Tadpole wouldn’t bring mockery on himself—but maybe it let him control the laughter. Her father was always joking, too, and she wondered what he had been like as a boy.
    “I wouldn’t be so sure, Thaddeus,” Mrs. McClellan said. “Intelligence is much more important in this nuclear age, and the military will need brains. You might be just the kind of draftee they’re looking for.”
    “Except that I’ll be in college,” Tadpole said.
    “Of course you will,” Mrs. McClellan said. “Because life always goes exactly as we plan it.” She turned to the map. “Now, these countries are Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.”
    Even as smart as he was, Tadpole couldn’t really imagine war, Janie thought. None of her classmates could imagine anything truly bad happening to them. All they remembered of the Second World War was the end: flag-waving and parades and the end of butter rationing. Their fathers had been too old for Korea. That was true for Janie, too, but she knewhow the apothecary had suffered when his wife was killed in the London Blitz, and how Jin Lo’s family had been murdered during the Japanese invasion of China, and how Count Vili’s parents had been killed in Hungary. Janie herself had been present at the detonation of a hydrogen bomb. All of that sometimes made her feel out of place at Grayson. But she reminded herself that she was here to learn. She wrote
Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos
in her history notebook.
    “The French took control of the territories that are now Vietnam and Cambodia,” Mrs. McClellan was saying, “when they defeated China in the Sino-French war in 1885.”
    Janie wrote that down:
Sino-French war ended 1885.
    The lecture went on and class was almost over when a girl with curly red hair came to the door and gave Mrs. McClellan a slip of paper. The teacher looked up, and her eyes landed on Janie. “Miss Scott,” she said. “You’re wanted in the headmaster’s office.”
    Janie had no experience with being summoned. Flustered, she gathered her books. The other students stared at her, and Tadpole gave her a questioning look. She wondered if something had happened to her parents, then tried to block out the thought. She left quickly, following the red-haired girl down the hall. “Do you know what this is about?” Janie asked her.
    “Nope,” the girl said. “But Mr. Evensong is there.”
    “Mr. Evensong the math teacher?”
    The girl shot her a look. “No, the
other
Mr. Evensong.”
    Janie had been in the headmaster’s office only once before, with her parents, for a brief meeting when she’d arrived at theschool. Afterward, her father had joked about the unoriginal casting of Mr. Willingham, the headmaster. He looked exactly like you’d expect a headmaster to look. He was tall but not too tall, slightly portly, with a round belly. He was balding, wore tweedy three-piece suits, and smoked a pipe. Janie guessed the school had chosen him for these attributes—for his very unoriginality. It must be reassuring for parents to leave their children with a headmaster who was so perfectly headmasterish.
    Also in the office, as the girl had said, was Mr. Evensong, the math teacher, in his mustard-colored cardigan with the hole in the elbow. He sat stooped in a curved wooden chair in front of Mr. Willingham’s desk, and he turned to look at Janie as she walked in. There was something in his face she couldn’t identify.
    “Ah, Miss Scott,” Mr. Willingham said, rising.
    “Hello,” Janie said.
    “Mr. Evensong has brought me some disturbing news.”
    “Oh?” Janie looked to the teacher, who was still sitting. Could she have failed the math test? But that wasn’t possible—she could do those problems in her sleep.
    “Please sit,” the headmaster said.
    Janie reluctantly