Fandomania

Chapter 21 - Torn Apart

The next four months proved to be rather uneventful compared to the first week of school. They didn't bother Lancaster or any adults again, but Miles and his newfound group of friends continued to try and crack the mystery of Ms. Lisa's loyalties. They hadn't found much more, but they didn't give up at any point. If anything, they continued to bond and grow closer over the shared suspicions. Miles, Caspar, Lilly, and Jason were now a inseparable group and no one except them knew why. All four of them had been getting along pretty well, with just a few small bumps along the way.

It was late December, which meant Christmas. Lancaster had been doing his best to provide a secure place for the kids to meet with their parents. Most of the teachers were gone as well; they had been given a vacation period for the holidays to reconnect with their families or do whatever teachers do when they're not teaching. This was on the occasion, of course, that the teachers or students tell no one what was going on inside of Fandomania. Lancaster was really pushing for full secrecy, reasoning the the more people that knew what's going on, the more danger they could be in. It was a threat to the kids' safety, as well as their own.

Miles learned all of this from Caspar, of course, who had found the perfect spot outside of the house to spy on some of Lancaster's conversations. After a long conflict with Lilly behind the ethics of this, Caspar had reassured them that he would only listen to conversations concerning the kids at the academy. Lilly had seemed okay with this resolution. However, Caspar could only hear the conversations with other teachers. Private conversations remained private, much to Caspar's annoyance.

Miles, Caspar, Lilly, and Jason had all agreed to stay in Fandomania over the holiday family-visiting period. It had actually probably been the quickest any of them had ever all agreed on one thing. Miles knew that seeing his mom for only several days wouldn't help the complicated situation any. It was easier to leave things be and try to explain it all in the end. Jason figured that seeing his parents would only make them worry about him more. Lilly thought that seeing her family would be too emotional knowing that in a few days, she would have to leave again. Caspar provided nothing more than a nod when asked if he was planning on staying. Apparently he had decided on staying before any of them, because he did not come when Miles, Jason, and Lilly went to inform Lancaster of their decision on meeting family.

Staying in Fandomania was Miles, Jason, Lilly, Caspar, Kane, and Dawn. The only staff that would be staying was Lancaster and Captain R. Everyone else would be leaving on the 17th, which was tomorrow. Miles was having a hard time imagining what he would do with himself at Fandomania all day with no classes, but he'd figure something out. There were, after all, many different activities in Fandomania that had been abandoned a little recently. With Miles and the group meeting to decipher the code, they hadn't had much time for basketball, archery, combat, cards, and things like that. Two weeks was more than enough time to get to everything, though, and then some.

The past few months had, Miles had been busy with school classes and homework (which was really just more school work since he didn't go home), but at least once a day, Miles, Jason, Caspar, and Lilly met in the basement room to look over what they were calling "The Code". It had been months, but they still hadn't gotten far. One week they had spent hours trying to unscramble words from the code. So far they had gotten State Of The Beaver, which gave them absolutely nothing, and was probably wrong anyway. When they looked it up, "State Of The Beaver" came up with some non-profit organization helping beavers. So it was a dead end there. They also translated LBWOE GNEUEE into Below Eugene, which when searched came up with absolutely nothing. They had ended up translating all of the lines, because it was the only lead they had. TSAL GAPE turned out to be Salt Page. This merely came up as the Facebook pages for salt when searched on the internet. WNE REYAS VEE VEE they figured would be New Year's Eve Eve. The long one, DNIPOCMIALR took about a month to de-scramble as the word palindromic—a word only Lilly knew existed—and MEIT was time. So, Palindromic Time. This meant that if the words really were meant to be unscrambled, they would get: