The Academie Read Online Free PDF Page A

or gave their
employees a half day off so that parents and siblings could say
goodbye to family members. News stations ran a continuous broadcast
from local Academie facilities, shifting periodically to Washington
for updates from government officials. The President gave an
address reiterating what a difference The Academie would make for
the future of our nation. It was all stuff that we heard him say
countless times before, but for some reason people seemed glued to
the T.V. when he came out to say it again.
    It was October, so I was away at
college. Since I wasn’t allowed to keep a car on campus, my dad was
kind enough to make the three hour trek to take me home to see my
sixteen-year-old brother, Matt, off to The Academie the next day.
That night we had one last family dinner, ate cake, and said
goodbye to life as we’d known it. The next morning, mom, dad, Matt,
Andy—five-years-old at the time, and I ventured off to my former
high school—now a fully functional Academie facility complete with
16 foot prison fences, and we left Matt within its
gates.
    A year later, here I was. Within
months of the first enrollment of high schoolers, the message came
out: The Academie was a success. The program would be expanded. I
knew some of the modern theories of adolescence; we’d discussed
them in College Pysch. Many experts believed that young people
today weren’t fully developed until they were in their early
twenties or beyond. Some said we weren’t adults until thirty. The
Academie used these studies to support the expansion. That’s how
I—and every other person under the age of 23—got drafted into the
program: they changed the definition of adult.
    The thing that frightened
me wasn’t even the place itself, as much as how eager people were
to accept it. The Academie system supplanted all previous
educational options. Yet rarely did I hear complaints. And if I
did, they were just that: complaints. No action. Is that what it means to be an adult?
    Bryan came into the picture about six
months ago, after my visit with Matt. I couldn’t think about that
now. I pushed Bryan’s image from my brain.
    I focused instead on my nightmare
visit with Matt. It still made me sick to think about it. Matt and
I had always been so close, but now all he seemed to care about was
his education—his future.
    “ The opportunities here
are immense,” I remember him saying. “The teachers are exceptional
and not only am I already working on my college degree way ahead of
schedule, when I leave here, the teachers will be able to offer me
great references to get me started. They are all army personnel,
you know, and that will look great on my resume.”
    I’d worked so hard to get to visit; I
tried to ignore how he was acting. “But do you get outside? Does it
suck being stuck here?”
    “ Allie, aren’t you
listening? It’s great here. I get outside plenty and the people
here are like my family. I have no reason to leave."
    Like family? That
hurt…both then and all over again as I remembered it. I remember
looking away. That’s when I saw the video camera. “Are they watching us?”
    “ I don’t know, probably.
What difference does it make?
    “ Well it’s weird, isn’t
it? I don’t like the idea of being watched. I’m glad you like it
here, but this place gives me the creeps. Do you know that they
have a guard shack and a gated entrance out front? They gave me a
hard time about coming here, and then they made me fill out a huge
stack of paperwork and show two forms of identification just to be
able to see you today.”
    “ Well, you heard what they
said at orientation: they don’t want anything interfering with our
education. Frankly, I agree with them.”
    “ What are you saying? You
don’t want me to visit?”
    “ I’m just saying that I’ve
now been taken out of class twice because you’ve visited and mom
and dad visited a month ago, and I’m missing out on a lot I’ll have
to catch up on.”
    I remember