I’d like to begin by pointing out that this is all Sydney’s dumb idea.  As if I don’t have enough to do with lessons, experiments and simulations, now he wants me to keep a journal.  A journal!  It took him a while just to explain what a journal was.  Having seen the word in his office, I was thinking of something along the lines of The New England Journal of Medicine or The American Journal of Psychiatry; something useful.  Nope.  It turns out, the kind of journal he means is ‘a place to write some of your feelings, experiences, and reflections to make sense of life.’  Oookay.  Do people actually do that?  Or is Sydney pulling me into another sociology study?

At least I can be sure that he won’t be eavesdropping on my ‘feelings, experiences, and reflections.’  I came up with this code after my last military sim.  It can’t be read without the key, and the key is locked in my prodigious little brain.  So there.  This could be fun, actually; it will give me a chance to try out some of the new vocabulary Miss Parker’s been teaching me, especially the words Sydney doesn’t approve of.  I hope to someday understand why Sydney considers the word ‘loser’ inappropriate, while ‘copulation’ is perfectly mundane.

Still, it bothers me that Sydney thinks I need this journal writing activity.  The day after he assigned it—before he’d really explained it—I snuck into his office looking for inspiration.  I read an article out of The American Journal of Psychiatry.  It was all about the effects of introspection on traumatized children.  It suggested “diary or journal keeping for those too damaged to function consistently.”  Wait a minute, children?!!  I’m not a child, I’m twelve years old!  And besides, I’m not damaged or traumatized.  Honestly, it’s been months since I’ve refused to eat or speak, and that identity crisis in January was really overblown!

That’s psychiatrists for you; you go nonverbal once or twice, have a little incident with amnesia, maybe a bit of unprovoked violence directed against toothpicks, and they think the sky is falling!  I shudder to think what Sydney would do if I ever had a real problem.

Oh well, this is an hour out of my day in which I won’t be running treadmills, memorizing files, or working through calculus problems.  I might as well try it.

It’s the quiet ones you have to watch.  Angelo is a perfect example of this.  The kid barely says a word, and yet he’s done more damage to the Centre in the past month than I could hope to accomplish in a year.  That time when all the pens went missing from every office on the sublevel?  Yeah, that was him.  I’m still not sure why he needed all of them, but some very strange graffiti started cropping up in the air vents and on the undersides of furniture.  And that time when the elevators mysteriously stopped working and I couldn’t get to the lab for a week?  I found some of the wiring wrapped around his wrists like bracelets.

And yet, the Centre never suspects him.  I get hauled in for questioning, but whenever someone suggests Angelo as a suspect, he just looks up at them with those big vacant eyes.  Then, whoever suggested him is laughed out of the room.  I don’t know how he does it, but I tip my hat to him.  Or, I would if I had a hat.  Maybe Angelo can get me a hat?  There seems to be no place in the Centre he can’t get to.  He brings me stuff sometimes—souvenirs from his travels.  In a pillowcase under my mattress I have a packet of ketchup from the mess, a disposable diaper from the neonatal unit, and an expensive-looking paperweight that could only have come from someone’s private office.

Angelo can get away with it because he’s so quiet and placid-looking.  Whenever I get into trouble, I tend to broadcast it.  Like a couple weeks ago when I rerouted the security system; I could have gotten away with that, but no I had to act like an idiot, laughing and spinning in my chair.  Of course Sydney caught me.  He didn’t even have to look back through the security footage; he took one look at my face and knew I was guilty.  I need to get better at controlling myself.

The best criminals are the ones who don’t realize they’re doing anything wrong.  Maybe that’s why Angelo can be so calm in the face of very annoyed sweepers.  I remember a time when I was about six—back when I still got breaks during the day.  Sydney had some paperwork to catch up on, so he took me into his office with him (where I’m sitting now, actually) and gave me an Erector set to play with.  Well, it didn’t take long for me to get bored with the Erector set and start looking for entertainment.  

Sydney had foolishly left some of his most recent paperwork piled in a cardboard box on the floor.  I found the pages and decided they would make great material for my origami.  So, for two hours Sydney sat at his desk doing paperwork, and for two hours I sat at his feet turning said paperwork into little paper birds.  He never glanced down, not even when I took the paper that he’d just finished working on from his hand and started folding it.  At the end of the day, I had “improved” about thirty pages of what turned out to be my own file!  I just think it’s a pity that after all that, Sydney went back and unfolded all the birds.  All my hard work went right down the toilet!  So now, quite a few of my old progress reports are held together with scotch tape and adorned with suspicious looking creases.  When he finally wised up, Sydney wasn’t too happy, but what could he do?  I didn’t realize I was doing anything wrong.  Yes, I was good at innocent looks back then.  It’s a skill I need to reclaim. 

Come to think of it, there’s a bird very much like the ones I used to make still in this office with me.  It’s on the top of Sydney’s bookshelf, which must be why I’ve never noticed it before.  Sydney probably bought it in a store or made it himself out of real origami paper.  Still, the more I look at it, the more it looks familiar.  Yes, there are letters and numbers on the wings in Sydney’s handwriting.  Almost as if the paper began its life as one of my old progress reports.

There’s one thing I’ve never understood about simulations:  Why all the dramatic lighting?  I don’t think better when there’s a spotlight on my head . . . or at least I don’t think I think better, but then I really don’t have much to compare it to.  It’s annoying, though, never being able to look up for fear of being blinded, having to constantly squint at objects in shadow.  Whoever designs the sims always makes sure that I’m quite literally the brightest thing in the room.  My one consolation is that if my eyes wear out, the Centre will have to pay for glasses.  I can just imagine what they’ll tell the optometrist:  Oh, nothing to worry about, just get your equipment loaded onto this cart so we can take you twenty stories underground to see a kid in our “special environment.”  Nope, nothing to worry about, no abuse going on here, we’re all quite happy together, aren’t we, Jarod? *poke, poke*  Yeah, that’ll be a fun day.

Sydney tells me that the custom of shining a small spotlight on me began when I first arrived at the Centre.  I didn’t know much of anything and had, as Sydney likes to say, “The attention span of a goldfish.”  So, to teach me how to behave during simulations, they surrounded me with a bright circle of light and told me not to step out of it or else.  I picked up simming pretty quickly after that.  Now, the circle just irritates me.  I mean, seriously, I’m twelve years old!  Why does Sydney insist on treating me like a kid?  Realistically, though, it’s probably not all his doing.  Mr. Raines likes to lurk up on the balcony above the lab and watch my simulations.  When the spotlight is on, I can’t see him—which is okay with me.

Still, my eyes are getting tired.  What we need is another good power outage.  Last time the storm even knocked the backup generators out, so it was pitch black in our sublevel.  It was good timing, too; I was in the middle of an incredibly boring sim about coastal erosions, and just as Sydney was starting to get annoyed with me, the projector went out.  And Sydney couldn’t even blame me this time because I’d been sitting there under that stupid spotlight for three hours!  I wanted to jump up and shout Sayonara suckers, just like Miss Parker did that one time.  Although I still haven’t figured out what a “sucker” is, or how it relates to the Japanese word for “farewell,” it seemed so fitting.

I had a feeling, though, that such a display might put Sydney in a bad mood, so I restrained myself.  In the long run, I’m glad I did.  Sydney went to his office to make a phone call, and when he came back he said that since the power wouldn’t be back any time soon, we’d just have to take the rest of the afternoon off.  The sweepers had all left—presumably to fix the generator—so he just pulled out a battery-powered lamp and a deck of cards.  He taught me something called “Rummy” and we played right there in the middle of the sim lab by the light of Sydney’s camping lantern.  When I told Miss Parker she was actually jealous!  Her daddy never has time to play cards with her anymore, and she’s almost forgotten how.

Miss Parker . . . She came to one of my simulations yesterday.  It was a search and rescue scenario, so I was moving around a lot.  Naturally, that stupid spotlight followed me everywhere I went.  Because I couldn’t look up, I didn’t realize Miss Parker was watching from the balcony until she snuck down to talk to me afterwards.  To my surprise, she was beaming and gushing.  “That was so awesome, Jarod, you do that every day?”  I’m sure my confusion showed on my face, but that didn’t seem to deter her.  It never does.  “Seriously, the way that spotlight was following you around, you looked like a movie star!  And the way you led them right to the missing kid . . . that was so cool!”

So, now I’ll have to ask Sydney what a movie star is and hope he actually answers me this time.  If not, I can always sneak into his office and see if it’s in the dictionary.  Maybe a movie star is someone who walks around with their own star following them?  Maybe that helps them fight crime?  Whatever it is, I think I like the sound of it.

Miss Parker only had a few minutes to talk, but I managed to mention that I have another simulation scheduled for tomorrow.  It’s a recreation of a hostage simulation, and Sydney says I’ll have my own fully functional SWAT gear.  I know she’s busy . . . but she thought I looked like a movie star, so maybe she’ll come.  Maybe.  If she does, bring on the spotlight and the shadowy corners and the mood lighting!  I can take it.