The Academy--Chapter Three--Continued

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At lunch the next day, I sat with the same group of football boys and other girls that I usually sat with. The veil of guiltiness was beginning to thin quite a bit, and people didn’t ignore me as much anymore. For this, I was glad. It seemed like forever since I had seen Avery smile at me.
Alastair plopped himself down beside me. Everyone still seemed to be ignoring him, but I believed that it was just because he was new and different.
“Can I talk to you?” he asked, glancing nervously at the others sitting at our table.
“Of course.”
He chewed his lip for a second and then said, “Alone?”
I threw a short look at the others at our table, too. Nobody was really paying attention to us. Only Avery, still getting closer to Jasper, would look at me every little while to seek my approval of her actions through a smile.
“Okay.”
We both got up and moved a few steps away from the table, into the middle of the rectangular courtyard where groups of satisfied students were gathering.
“So,” I said suspiciously. “What did you want to talk about?”
“I think I can explain it better now,” was Alastair’s answer.
“Explain what?” I asked lightly, though I knew.
“It’s a simple cause and effect situation.” His voice was low and serious. “I was breaking the rule, right?”
“Yes, I suppose so, but I–”
“No contradicting me yet. Okay. So, I was breaking the rule. You came over to tell me not to. You were doing the right thing by trying to get me to stop. I wasn’t listening, though, so it was right of them to punish me.” I scrutinized his face as I processed this. “Even though it was such a harsh punishment for just picking some stupid leaves off of the tree,” he mumbled as an afterthought.
“So,” I said slowly, shaking my head at this impossibility. “You’re saying that it was wrong of them to punish me because I didn’t do anything?”
“Yes. That’s right.”
“No, but I did.” I was becoming tired of his futile attempts to convince me that what I had learned at this school was wrong. “I did. I was with you.”
“Poppy!” he cried, almost angrily, drawing a few heads to look our way. “Haven’t you ever, once, questioned what you’ve learned here?”
“I’ve been tutored in the most advanced fashion,” I mumbled without strength. My voice was so small and hoarse. I tried to hold onto what I’d always learned; what everyone here had always told me.
“Sure, you’ve learned a lot about math and science. But what about the rules? What about these moral values? You’re fourteen, right? Haven’t you ever thought that something was wrong here?”
We were both silent.
The truth was, I’d never questioned any of the rules or anything that the counselors or the principal had told me until Alastair questioned them. Nobody at the school questioned the rules. In fact, there was a rule against questioning rules.
I used this as a quick getaway. “Rule number 3. No questioning rules. We could get in trouble for this.”
Alastair was beat. He shrugged as if shrugging me out of this life, out of this world, and walked away.