Would they actually send him away to the nuthatch if it started to seem that his elevator no longer went all the way to the top floor? Jake thought the answer to that was a big you bet. No way his father was going to put up with a loony around the house. The name of the place they put him in might not be Sunnyvale, but there would be bars on the windows and there would be young men in white coats and crepe-soled shoes prowling the halls. The young men would have big muscles and watchful eyes and access to hypodermic needles full of artificial sleep.

They’ll tell everybody I went away, Jake thought. The arguing voices in his head were temporarily stilled by a rising tide of panic. They’ll say I’m spending the year with my aunt and uncle in Modesto... or in Sweden as an exchange student... or repairing satellites in outer space. My mother won’t like it... she’ll cry... but she’ll go along. She has her boyfriends, and besides, she always goes along with what he decides. She... they... me...

He felt a shriek welling up his throat and pressed his lips tightly together to hold it in. He looked down again at the wild black scribbles snarled across the photograph of the Leaning Tower and thought: I have to get out of here. I have to get out right now.

He raised his hand.

“Yes, John, what is it?” Ms. Avery was looking at him with the expression of mild exasperation she reserved for students who interrupted her in mid-lecture.

“I’d like to step out for a moment, if I may,” Jake said.

This was another example of Piper-speak. Piper students did not ever have to “take a leak” or “tap a kidney” or, God forbid, “drop a load.” The unspoken assumption was that Piper students were too perfect to create waste byproducts in their tastefully silent glides through life. Once in a while someone requested permission to “step out for a moment,” and that was all.

Ms. Avery sighed. “Must you, John?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“All right. Return as soon as possible.”

“Yes, Ms. Avery.”

He closed the folder as he got up, took hold of it, then reluctantly let go again. No good. Ms. Avery would wonder why he was taking his Final Essay to the toilet with him. He should have removed the damning pages from the folder and stuffed them in his pocket before asking for permission to step out. Too late now.

Jake walked down the aisle toward the door, leaving his folder on the desk and his bookbag lying beneath it.

“Hope everything comes out all right, Chambers,” David Surrey whispered, and snickered into his hand.

“Still your restless lips, David,” Ms. Avery said, clearly exasperated now, and the whole class laughed.

Jake reached the door leading to the hall, and as he grasped the knob, that feeling of hope and surety rose in him again: This is it—really it. I’ll open the door and the desert sun will shine in. I’ll feel that dry wind on my face. I’ll step through and never see this classroom again.