Heather King

“Kate was too preoccupied to notice. She was absently braiding her hair into complicated knots, then unbraiding it again. “I really don’t get it, boys. What’s the point of learning this mush?” It suddenly occurred to Reynie what had struck him as familiar. “I think it’s connected to the hidden messages! Remember that phrase we heard on the Receiver? ‘Brush your teeth and kill the germs’? That has to be related to the hygiene lesson, don’t you think?” “Hey, you’re right!” Kate said, brightening. “And now that I think of it, on our first day here we overheard the kids in S.Q.’s class going on and on about the market this, the market that—” “The Free Market Drill,” said Sticky. “Exactly! And ‘market’ was the very first word we heard come through Mr. Benedict’s Receiver, remember?” Sticky nodded—of course he remembered—but Kate only shrugged. “I’ll have to take your word for it,” she said. “Anyway, the classes are obviously linked to the hidden messages. So the question is how it all fits together.” “The sooner we become Messengers, the sooner we find out!” said Reynie excitedly. “We aren’t Messengers yet, so hold your horses,” said Sticky, who was still trying to recover from his wounded feelings and felt a bit testy. “We’ve only been here a few days.” “It’s true,” Reynie sighed. “All right, let’s report this to Mr. Benedict.” They prepared to send a report to the mainland, only to be thwarted by the presence of Mr. Curtain on the plaza. And then, just as Mr. Curtain was finally going inside, a couple of Executives came out for a leisurely stroll over the Institute grounds. They”
― Trenton Lee Stewart, The Mysterious Benedict Society