Chapter Text
The bags sat on Stiles’ bed. His dad had packed them for him. Stiles wondered if his dad didn’t trust him not to sneak in something that was against the rules, or if his dad was concerned he’d forget something important, or if he just wanted to be more efficient and knew Stiles would get distracted if he packed for himself. Stiles opened up one of the bags and looked and neatly folded shirts inside. He glanced at his shelves, wondering if he should take some of his books.
“What about my laptop?” Stiles asked.
“The school provides computers,” his dad answered. There was no emotion in his voice. No anger. No hurt. Somehow that was worse than if he’d raged and yelled. It was like he’d already shut Stiles out. In the face of that, Stiles couldn’t even be upset that he’d probably be using computers with software installed that let the school track everything he looked up and every word he typed.
“Dad...” Stiles started for what felt like the thousandth time, but he trailed off. What could he say? He’d cost his dad his job and his reputation. He couldn’t explain that he’d kidnapped Jackson to protect people. His dad would never believe the truth. He didn’t believe a word Stiles said now.
“How long is it going to be for?” Stiles asked.
“You’ll finish off the school year there,” his dad answered. “After that, we’ll see. It will depend on your progress and the school’s report.”
It wasn’t like it would be for a whole year. It would be a couple of months and then he’d be back for summer. He’d be able to see Scott and Derek and everyone then. But would his dad decide that two months was punishment enough? Could Stiles even cope with that? His imagination furnished him with visions of a strict military school, demanding complete focus. Stiles wasn’t good at focus.
His dad picked up one of the bags and started down to the car. Stiles took the other, trailing after him. He didn’t have much choice about this. His dad wanted him to go to this boarding school to straighten him out. After everything Stiles had put his dad through, after nearly getting him killed by Matt and costing him all he’d worked for, Stiles wasn’t going to fight him on this. He’d tried apologising, he’d tried promising not to commit any further crimes, but his dad had been set on this and, for once, Stiles was going to do what his father wanted.
When they were on the road, the silence hung painful between them.
“Dad,” Stiles tried again. “I love you.”
“Love you too,” his dad said, but his voice still had that cold, distant tone. There was no warmth to those words. Was there any feeling behind them?
Stiles turned his head away, staring out at the passing trees, and blinked hard to keep the tears from falling. He wasn’t going to break down.
It was going to be a long drive.
***
The stopped at a diner on the way and Stiles automatically started making comments about the merits of chicken over beef, but his words died in his throat. His dad didn’t say anything. When he ordered the chicken burger, it didn’t feel like a victory.
They drove on again. Stiles plugged headphones into his phone and listened to music, just so that he didn’t have to face the silence, but somehow he could still hear the oppressive weight of nothing just beyond the tunes. Something had fractured between him and his dad, and now there was this impassable gap between them. The worst thing was, Stiles knew this was all his fault. He should have just come clean to his dad about everything right from the start, right from the moment he found out about werewolves. He should have just told the truth. Then his dad wouldn’t be so disappointed in him.
The edge of the school was marked by a high wall tipped with ornate metal spikes. Someone had worked hard with twirls of metal to try and disguise the fact that this was basically a prison wall, built to keep people from climbing over it. There were trees inside and out, but Stiles noticed that none of the ones he could see stood close enough to the wall for anyone to use them to climb over. This didn’t inspire him with confidence about the school.
His dad stopped outside the heavy, iron gates and spoke into the intercom, explaining who they were. Stiles noted the security cameras above the gate and along the length of the wall. It was worse than what Gerard had done in Beacon Hills High. Stiles remembered the itchy, crawly sensation he’d had when those cameras had first been put in, the distaste at being constantly observed. He resigned himself to two months of feeling like that.
The gates swung open and his dad drove inside. The drive passed between lines of trees up to the large building. There was no sign that this was a school, other than the size of the building, four storeys high with lots of windows. At least there weren’t bars on the windows. The building looked substantially less like a prison than the outer wall had. Stiles climbed out of the car and lugged one of his bags up a set of stone steps between carved figures of griffins. He didn’t see the point of hesitating.
A tall, grey-haired white guy was opening the door for them. He smiled with more warmth than Stiles had expected, but he could just be putting on a good show for the parent.
“You must be Stiles,” he said. “I’m Dr Hawthorn, principal of this establishment.” He held out a hand. Stiles shifted his bag over to his other hand and shook, hoping for a calmly respectful expression. He didn’t want to make a bad impression on his first day. He dreaded to think what this guy had been told about him.
“John Stilinski,” his dad said, offering his hand to shake. “We spoke on the phone.”
“Of course. A pleasure. Please, come through to my office.”
The office was a nice room, all carved antique furniture and shelves crammed with books. Under other circumstances, Stiles might have studied the shelves to try and get a feel for his new principal, but he didn’t want to seem rude five minutes after his arrival. He sat down in a surprisingly comfortable chair in front of the principal’s desk, his dad sitting down beside him. There was a third chair empty beside him; presumably most students were dropped off by two parents.
“Now, Stiles,” Hawthorn gave another smile, “there are a few rules we should make clear from the start.”
“OK,” said Stiles. “Rules are good. I can do rules.”
Under other circumstances, his dad might give a snort of laughter at that, but there was silence from beside him today.
“We have a firm timetable,” Hawthorn said, “starting with a run at 6am. If the weather doesn’t permit that, it will be replaced by indoor athletic activities in the school gym. Breakfast starts at 7am but you will also have an opportunity to shower and change in this time. The first block of academic work runs from 8am to noon; we’ll work out your academic schedule later today. At noon, there is indoor athletic training, followed by lunch at 1pm. The second block of academic work runs from 2pm to 4pm. Dinner is served promptly at 7pm. The rest of the afternoon and evening is free time to spend on leisure, personal study projects, or group sports. We do encourage students to participate in at least one group sport. Saturdays and Sundays, you don’t have the academic blocks but the meals and athletic requirements remain the same, with the addition that we sometimes organise hikes on Saturday or Sunday afternoons if the weather is good. The hikes are optional but encouraged.”
Sport twice a day, every day, probably more often. At least Coach wouldn’t be able to complain about his fitness levels if he ever got back to Beacon Hills High School.
“Is the goal to exhaust us physically so we’re too tired to cause trouble?” Stiles asked, before he could think better of it.
“Our goal here is to promote healthy bodies, minds, and attitudes. Exercise is a part of that. Are there any injuries or conditions that would interfere with the physical activities?”
Stiles considered making up a dodgy knee to get out of morning cross-country, but he couldn’t lie with his dad sitting right next to him. “No.”
“Any allergies or special food requirements we need to take into account?”
“No.”
“I understand from your father that you take medication for ADHD?”
“That’s right. I need it to focus.”
“You usually control your own supply and dosage?”
Stiles nodded. He felt a terrified knot in his gut at the thought that they might try to take control of his medication. What if they were the sort of people to consider medication a crutch to be avoided? What if they didn’t let him take his pills and then punished him for lack of focus? A spiral of ‘what if’s circled his brain, but Hawthorn didn’t seem to notice his fear.
“We have a very strict policy on drugs around here,” Hawthorn continued. “You will keep control of your medication but if you sell or give any to another student, there will be severe punishment.” Stiles wasn’t worried about that; he needed his medication too much to think about selling it. “You will have a safe in your room. I suggest keeping your supply there, but keep an eye on the levels. Even safes are not enough to discourage some of our more troubled students. If you suspect someone is taking any of your medication, you must inform a member of staff immediately.”
“Or, let me guess, severe punishment?” Stiles could help the trace of sarcasm in his tone.
“Precisely. Is there any other medication I should be aware of?” Stiles shook his head. “Any religious requirements that need to be accounted for?” Stiles shook his head again.
They continued on for a little longer, then Hawthorne got into more general rules. Cell phones were only allowed in the afternoon and evening, after end of the academic blocks. Use of a phone outside of these times would result in the phone being confiscated for at least a week. Weapons or anything to make fire were banned. Students were expected to help out with clearing dishes on weekends and there was a rota. Limited switching of slots to be with friends was acceptable, but anyone found shirking duties would receive, big surprise, severe punishment. Stiles bit down on the urge to ask what exactly was considered a severe punishment.
Students were not allowed to leave their corridors after lights out, or go into another student’s room at night. Students were not allowed into another student’s room without permission from that student. Teachers’ offices were similar. Most of the rules were straightforward and to be expected. Violence and bullying were to be reported immediately. Apparently those sort of behaviours were not tolerated in any way here. Hawthorn was very firm in his tone, staring hard at Stiles as he said that, and Stiles wondered what he’d been told about the Jackson incident.
The rules were eventually finished, and Hawthorn offered to show Stiles up to his room. Stiles was surprised that the principal would give the tour himself. Stiles’ dad followed behind. He’d barely spoken during the meeting. They went up a flight of stairs and along a twist of corridors that Stiles was sure to forget. Fortunately, the accommodation corridors had the names of all occupants written on a sheet on the door. Each corridor consisted of ten bedrooms, with shared shower and bathroom facilities at the end. Stiles’ bedroom door had his name written up on a little slip next to it.
The room wasn’t bad; at least he wasn’t expected to share with a roomful of guys. There was a bed, a closet, some drawers, and a small desk under the window.
“I thought the school provided computers,” Stiles said, looking at the empty desk.
“In the library,” Hawthorn said. “We did have computers in the bedrooms for a short time, but a large number got infected with viruses thanks to students downloading personal files from some less than reputable websites. So now the computers are in public areas. If you wish to engage in personal activities, you’re welcome to use your phone, or I suspect you could get printed materials from your fellow students, but I make it a point not to know anything about that.”
For a fraction of a second, Stiles almost liked this guy. He wasn’t being at all condescending or superior about the fact that teenage guys would be using porn.
Hawthorn gave them a quick tour of the school, pointing out other accommodation corridors, teaching rooms, science labs, the big library, the teachers’ offices. Stiles saw some people around. A group of three students were in one of the teaching rooms, while a black woman talked them through some chemical formulae on a board. Another room had half a dozen teenagers holding conversations in French, while a teacher looked on. Stiles saw through windows into the teachers’ offices that some members of staff were in there, engaged in one to one conversations with students. There were more students in the library, working alone or in little clusters, but there were no signs of big classes. Maybe the afternoon slot was for homework and stuff, and the classes would be in the mornings. Stiles supposed he’d find out.
Hawthorn showed them the well-equipped gym and the dining room, before leading them back to the foyer. He smiled at Stiles’ dad.
“Do you have any questions about the school or Stiles’ place here?” he asked.
“No. Thank you.” The two men shook hands. Stiles’ dad turned to Stiles and pulled him into a stiff hug. “I’ll call you tomorrow and see how you’re settling in,” he promised. Stiles nodded and swallowed around the lump in his throat.
Stiles watched the door shut and waited for Hawthorn’s friendly demeanour to shift, but the man remained smiling.
“Well, Stiles,” he said, “we should get you sorted with your academic levels.”
He took Stiles down a corridor which hadn’t been part of the main tour. A number of doors were labelled as testing rooms, with little green and red boards on the door that could show whether they were available or occupied. Hawthorn picked one and flipped the board over to occupied and then ushered Stiles inside. The room was tiny, with a single computer and a chair in front of it. Hawthorn fired up a programme on the computer and the words ‘Initial Assessment’ lit up the screen.
“Don’t you have my academic file from my old school?” Stiles asked.
“We’ve found this to be much more useful. We have a very flexible approach here and this test will identify strengths, subjects of interest, and areas which require additional support. It will start with a series of basic questions on the standard subjects but will get progressively more difficult based on your answers. For every question, you have a space to answer, but also options to say that you have been taught something but have forgotten, in which case we can arrange some refresher materials, or to say that you haven’t been taught something. There’s no shame in admitting to not knowing something. In fact, the whole point of this test is to reach a point where you don’t know the answers so we can see what gaps in your knowledge we need to fill. There is no benefit in cheating, but I should inform you that the room is monitored and this machine doesn’t have access to the internet so you can’t Google anything. I’ll leave you to it.”
Stiles sat down at the computer as the door closed behind him. He clicked the button to start the test. The first few questions were ridiculously easy. There were some arithmetic questions a three year old could probably answer, some insert-a-word sentences, a multiple-choice history question asking him to give the year that the First World War started, and so on. As promised though, the questions got rapidly more difficult. The topics jumped wildly, from chemistry to algebra, but that somehow worked for Stiles’ random way of thinking. He ploughed through, only occasionally having to mark that he didn’t know something, then the questions started getting weird.
There were some language questions, where some text was displayed and Stiles had to type in the language and pick a translation from a multiple choice list. That was fair enough for French and Spanish, but the test threw in a Latin one and then what looked like Norse runes and, to Stiles’ astonishment, what looked like the elfish script from The Lord of the Rings books. There were a few other scripts Stiles couldn’t identify and, after pressing the ‘I don’t know’ button a few times, the language questions stopped coming.
What astonished Stiles and froze him in his seat for several seconds was a question that came up on the properties of plants. It asked for uses for the mountain ash tree and one of the options listed in the multiple choice section was ‘protection from supernatural creatures and energies’. Stiles stared at that answer for a long while, wondering what the hell this question was doing in the middle of a serious test. In the end, he clicked the button, and moved on with the test.