The Ghost Apple by Aaron Thier

Author:Aaron Thier
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2014-01-31T05:00:00+00:00

Undercover Dean: Blog Post #5

I’m writing from St. Renard, where I’m staying at a bed-and-breakfast called A Piece of the Indies. Not surprisingly, my application to the Field Studies Program in Tropical Agriculture was denied, so I ended up coming down on my own steam. But before I go any further, I have to describe the circumstances of my departure from Tripoli. Sensitive readers be warned: It’s not a story for the faint of heart.

As of the new year, I’d moved my things out of the dorm and I was living in my own house once again. After the excitement and camaraderie of the fall, I could hardly bear to be alone with my memories. It was even harder than before.

I hadn’t gone back to work and I doubted that I ever would, but I was still in contact with Burke and Lehman, and from them I heard some bizarre rumors: Beckford was living in the art museum, which he’d trashed. He’d put student-athletes to work cleaning bathrooms. He’d been pushing a drug called Malpraxalin.

One day I went back to campus to see for myself, but the place seemed quiet and serene. In the library, where I went to warm up, some students were discussing an article on the Telegraph’s website. The president of Keesy College had reportedly said that you could lock a young person in a closet for four years and they’d do as well on the job market as they would if they’d spent those four years at Tripoli.

“But it’s absurd,” one of the students was saying. “He doesn’t even consider the psychological damage that being locked in a closet would do to someone. Trust me, you’re not going to do well on the job market if you’ve been standing upright in the darkness for four years, eating whatever your captors allow you to eat and eliminating waste under who knows what circumstances.”

I tightened my scarf and went outside thinking that nothing had changed. It was business as usual at Tripoli.

But as I walked east across the quad, I saw a crowd of students and professors that had gathered around the big bare oak in front of Pinkman Hall. Since there was a crust of ice on the flagstone paths, I was concentrating on my footing and at first I didn’t see the pale stubby man under the oak, but there he was: Bish Pinkman III. He was stripped to the waist and his hands were tied to a low branch above his head. The rope was pulled so tight that his toes were only just touching the ground, and he rotated slowly as he struggled to free himself. He was much thinner than the last time I’d seen him, although you still wouldn’t call him thin. His soft body looked sad and vulnerable in the frozen afternoon.

Acting President Beckford was standing on the steps a short distance away. He was wearing a black trench coat and sunglasses, although there was only a diffuse gray light in the southern sky.

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