Academy of the Forgotten

by Eva Chase

  “I don’t think it’s pathetic.” Her fingers closed around the metal flower. She tucked it into her pocket and looked at me. “I’m not used to people trying to help me. I do have plenty of experience with assholes jerking me around, sometimes while pretending it’s really for my own good. So, strangely enough, I tend to assume the latter is happening rather than the former.”

  “I don’t think that’s strange.” I let myself meet her eyes. “I’m glad you’re getting out of here, but I’m also not. More the first part, though. It’ll be fun imagining the havoc you’re going to wreak out there in the real world.”

  She hummed to herself, the slightest smile curving the corners of her mouth. “Not to disappoint you or anything, but I’ve actually had some second thoughts about that.”

  My pulse outright lurched. “Trix, you have to take this chance—”

  She held up her hand to stop me. “I know why you’re saying that. And maybe I still will. But the decision isn’t just about me—what I want, or what’s ‘best’ for me, or any of that. You tried to help me, and I think Elias and Jenson did too, and you risked a lot doing that. Maybe more than I even understand. I don’t care what you did that brought you here or what the professors think they’re punishing you for. None of what they’re doing here is right.”

  I wasn’t sure I agreed with that, but whether I did or not was beside the point. “The difference is, we’re stuck. You can’t do anything to change that.”

  “You can’t know that for sure. You didn’t think even I could get out to begin with, did you?” She turned to face the western sky, tucking back a strand of hair that the cool breeze had snatched. “There’s at least one more thing I haven’t tried yet. I’ve got until tomorrow morning at the very least. We’ll see where that gets me. If I find any reason to hope that I can push farther than I have already, I’m telling the dean I’ve changed my mind.”

  There was no real competition between the sensations dueling in my chest. The potent pang of horror that she might give up her freedom in part for me easily overwhelmed the muffled joy of knowing that I mattered to her that much, despite everything. But I clung to the joy anyway, because the tone of her voice allowed for no argument.

  “I’d never ask you to do that,” I started anyway.

  “Of course not. That’s why I’m not asking your permission.”

  “You know, if you do leave, you could still do something for me. I don’t know if they’re freaked out or glad to be rid of me, but my parents must have wondered why I’ve gone completely off the radar for so long.” For all I knew they’d even come looking for me like Trix had for Cade, but hadn’t managed to get past the school’s protections, as must have been the case for just about everyone. “If you could look them up and just let them know that I’m okay—enough—and I hope they can move on from—” I halted at the haunted look that had come over Trix’s face. “What?”

  “I assumed you knew. I guess there’s no way you could.” She swiped her hand across her mouth. “I have no idea how they manage it, but the way the school seems to shield itself—everyone forgets. That they ever knew you, that you even existed. My own foster parents who had me and Cade for five years thought I was pulling their leg when I tried to talk to them about him. His friends completely blanked. That was why I came out this way—it was so obvious something really weird was going on.”

  Everyone forgets. I had a sudden vision of my parents and little brother sitting around the kitchen table back home, eating a peaceful dinner with soft smiles and playful laughter, like those hazy memories from back in my childhood before I’d turned everything sour. The thought twisted my gut, but not in an entirely unpleasant way. Erasing me might be the best thing that could have happened to them—to everyone who’d known me.

  “But you remembered Cade,” I said.

  “Yeah. I’ve got no idea why their voodoo didn’t work on me.”

  My throat closed up for a second, which was ridiculous, because he was her brother, foster or not. But still. “You must have had something really special. You were so close to each other they couldn’t touch that bond.”

  Her head bowed. The dim light of dusk turned her hair the deeper orange of autumn leaves. “I know I probably seem a little crazy, going through all this to find him, but he’s always been there for me, right from the start. He stood up for me and listened to me and made me feel like I mattered to someone when I didn’t have anyone else. Even if there were times— Hell, I only had a home to leave because he figured out some illegal stuff our foster parents were into and used that as leverage so they didn’t kick us out as soon as we each turned eighteen.”

  “I’m sure you were there for him just as much, if current events are anything to go by.”

  “I tried. With him being older and better at dealing with people most of the time than I am, I couldn’t really pay him back quite as much. But I did my best.” That hint of a smile came back. “There was one time—when he was sixteen and first found the evidence of the crap our foster parents were into, our foster dad flipped his shit and came at him like he was going to bash him to pieces. I didn’t even think; I just jumped in between them. Those first swings he was already making messed my head up so bad I ended up in the hospital for a couple of days. But it stopped him wailing on Cade.”

  My hands balled at the thought of anyone hurting Trix like that. “And you wanted to keep living with those assholes after that?”

  She shrugged. “Better the devil you know? They were my fourth family. Others were worse. And once we had that dirt on them, they had to be more careful. Cade had it all set up. Even after he left to come here, even after they forgot he’d existed, it was enough to protect me. He was going through God knows what here and still looking after me at the same time. And that whole time—”

  She cut herself off again, her back tensing. Things she wasn’t ready to talk about, at least with me. But watching her, hearing the devotion and regret in her voice, a sort of determination welled up inside me.

  She’d come all this way. She was going to be making a decision that might decide the course of her entire life tomorrow. She deserved to know exactly what she’d be leaving behind or staying for.

  I got to my feet. “I think there’s something you should see before you do anything else.”

  Trix looked up at me, puzzled and then with a glimmer of hope in her eyes. More than I wanted her to have. But I couldn’t tell her what to be prepared for. I wasn’t even totally sure I’d find what I was looking for.

  She followed me across the lawn to the edge of the woods. When I moved to step between the trees, she hesitated.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I wouldn’t be suggesting this if I thought there was anything in here that could really hurt you.”

  “Okay.” She dragged in a breath. “It’s silly. I just— When I went into the forest at night before, it felt like someone was messing with my head.”

  Messing with it pretty badly if it was enough for this girl to balk. I held out my hand to her, which seemed like a poor offering at best, but she took it and twined her fingers tightly with mine.

  In the daytime, we wouldn’t have had much of a chance. Either he slept or simply had enough awareness to steer clear of anyone who came wandering. Once it got dark, it was a different story. I’d heard stories from the newer students who’d dare each other to come out and face “the beast.” I’d ventured out myself once just for the sake of seeing. The encounters always seemed to happen around the same spot.

  I headed right toward the thickest section at the center of the woods. As the dusk dwindled beneath the canopy of leaves, Trix took out her phone for extra light. She glanced at me curiously now and then, but didn’t push for answers. I guessed she’d learned that lesson about how things worked at Roseborne awfully fast.

  An owl swooped by us with a flutter of its feathers and then hooted from a distance. A rotten branch let out a low creaking as it swayed in the breeze. We passed a tall, moss
y boulder that served as a landmark; I swerved a little to the right to adjust our course. Then, from up ahead but not that far, a ragged howl split the air.

  Trix’s fingers tightened around mine. I tugged her along gently until we reached a patch between the trees that was a little more open, if hardly large enough to call it anything like a clearing. There, I grabbed a fallen branch from the ground. I rapped it against a nearby tree trunk, paused, and banged at the tree again. Drawing attention.

  “Ryo,” Trix said, hugging herself. “Are you sure—”

  Pebbles rattled nearby with a huff of breath that was mostly snarl. A dark form emerged from the shadows several feet from where we stood.

  I couldn’t have said what kind of animal it was meant to be most like, if the powers that be had given it all that much thought. Its body was as large as a bear’s, with fur as coarse and shaggy and shoulders as broad, but its head sported conical ears and an extended snout that were much more wolf-like. Like no animal I’d ever seen, uneven fangs jutted from its jaws to crisscross against its muzzle. Its gangly limbs looked overly jointed, as if they could bend in ways no living being should be able to. Short but jagged claws glinted on its paws in the light from Trix’s phone.

  She sucked in a breath, a tremor running through her. The creature swung its monstrous head toward her.

  “Easy there,” I said in my steadiest voice. “Let’s just—”

  Before I had time to register what was happening, the thing’s muscles bunched. It launched itself straight at Trix.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Trix

  The monster in the woods hurled itself at me so suddenly I barely managed to move. My feet stumbled backward, the phone slipped from my fingers, and then its massive paws were smacking into my chest, knocking me to the ground.

  “Trix!” Ryo shouted, barely audible through the panicked rush of my pulse past my ears. “Hey, stop it! Get off her!”

  The creature loomed over me as it pinned me in place, its mouth opening with a knife-like snicking of its interlocking teeth. Hot breath laced with a rancid scent flooded my face. My spine ached where my back had hit the forest floor. Terror held me momentarily frozen, afraid that if I tried to fight I’d only provoke the thing more.

  It peered down at me, the light from my fallen phone shining off the pale eyes embedded in its mass of thick black fur. Pale gray eyes, just a shade shy of silver and weirdly human-looking. Weirdly… familiar.

  My breath caught in my throat. Ryo shoved the monster, and it snapped at him with a clack of its teeth, but it bounded off me. As I scrambled into a sitting position, braced to flee, it hunched into a crouch a few feet away. My gaze skipped down over its body to its left front leg. To the streaks of white fur that cut through the darkness like a starburst.

  My stomach flipped over. I moved to get to my feet, and the creature whirled. It charged off into the night as swiftly as it’d leapt at us. I stared after it, a shiver rippling through me from head to toe. The chill it brought sank deep into my chest.

  “It had— That was—” I couldn’t quite force the words out. My voice shook.

  Ryo touched my arm tentatively, his expression fraught, looking as if he expected me to scream at him for bringing me here. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t think it—he— I thought you’d be fine because of who you are. It’s never hurt anyone that badly, but if I’d realized there was any chance—”

  He’d stumbled, started to call the thing he. The pieces clicked together even more solidly in my head.

  “That was Cade,” I said, barely managing more than a whisper. “That’s what the school did to him. It turned him into that… that monster.”

  Those had been my brother’s eyes staring at me from the creature’s face. That had been his birthmark, the one I’d carved into my own skin, marking its foreleg. My hand rose to brush over the scarred spot on my arm.

  “I wanted to show you,” Ryo said, equally quiet. “I figured you should know. I just didn’t— Come on, we should head back toward the school. He never comes that close to the buildings, but as long as we’re in his territory, I’m not sure he won’t come at you—or me—again.”

  He bent to pick up my phone and then took my arm again. His fingers curled around my elbow. I balked for a second, gazing off in the direction the beast—my brother—had gone. But the guy beside me could clearly tell me more about what had happened than I’d get from the thing that had just attacked me. My back still throbbed from the fall.

  I turned and walked with Ryo back the way we’d come. My thoughts kept spinning in my head. Not all of the pieces totally fit. What about the painting in the hall? What about the cot in the shed?

  “He wasn’t always like that,” I said into the hush of the forest after a long silence. “He couldn’t have been. He used to be at the school like the rest of you.”

  “I’m not sure of the details,” Ryo said. “And there’s only so much I can say anyway. But—from what I understand, it developed gradually. He’d change and change back, and over time it lasted longer.”

  So Cade hadn’t just transformed into that thing once and been done with it? He’d had to shift back and forth, over and over… Somehow I didn’t think the college had let that be an easy process. It was meant as a punishment. God.

  I could picture it with the shreds of his history here I did have. He’d been able to attend classes at first, to sleep in the dorms too, presumably. And then as he’d been trapped in that horrible form for more and more time, he’d retreated to the forest. He must have kept his humanity during the night for the longest—he’d started sleeping in the shed rather than interrupt his roommates’ sleep by coming and going from the dorm at odd hours…

  “Does he change back at all now?” I asked as the thought struck me. “Or is he just always… like that?”

  Ryo grimaced. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him looking like him in a few months now.” He glanced over at me. “I wish I could have told you something to prepare you better—I can’t imagine how you feel.”

  I put my hand over his where he was still holding my arm. “It’s okay. I’m just glad someone finally let me know, one way or another.”

  What did it mean for Cade that he’d been warped into that thing? Was there any way to turn him back into his old self, no matter what I did? I’d thought if I could fight back, take on the college and what it stood for, maybe I could break the control the staff wielded over this place, but the monster they’d turned him into was a hell of a lot more extreme than refusing to let some burns heal or forcing Elias to teach a frustrating class.

  Whatever power this place had, it was even more potent than I’d suspected.

  I couldn’t talk to Cade about it, even in a one-sided conversation. I wasn’t sure he’d recognized me at all. If they’d given him monstrous impulses to go with that form, then who knew how deeply the man he’d been was locked away underneath?

  Maybe it wasn’t so surprising that everyone had avoided trying to answer my questions about him. They couldn’t have told me directly, and they might have thought it’d be worse if I knew than if I simply thought he’d disappeared.

  If I went to the professors and told them what had really happened, why he’d acted the way he had—that I’d been responsible for the whole thing, really—was there any chance they’d reverse his fate? Let him go free? I’d be trading places with him, but by all rights, it should have been me here in the first place. The methods they used for bringing in new “students” were obviously flawed.

  I didn’t trust any of the staff to have an honest conversation with me, though. They were just as likely to suck me into their psycho system without changing a thing about Cade’s situation as they were to show any kind of compassion. I didn’t have the leverage to make deals with people who could transform a human man into a monstrous beast.

  “Lots of deep thoughts?” Ryo said lightly as we stepped from the forest onto the lawn. “Not that I blame you. But if you want to talk any
thing through—I’ll do my best.”

  He’d been waiting patiently in silence for most of that walk. I swallowed hard, looking at the school building ahead of us, every bone in my body resisting the idea of setting foot inside those walls where the staff ruled so completely.

  “Is there somewhere we can talk that’s even a little private?” I asked.

  One side of his mouth quirked up, even though he still looked mostly sad. “We can always make use of the carriage house. I didn’t get to show you much of it last time.”

  We gave the school a wide berth, slipping through the faint glow that spilled from the lit bedroom windows. The door to the carriage house opened easily. The smells of aged wood and leather washed over me, more comforting than I’d expected.

  Ryo led me over to the hall that ran along the length of the building. One side held doors to the stalls that I guessed must have housed cars rather than carriages in more recent years… however recently Roseborne had admitted long-term visitors in cars onto campus. Old tack—harnesses and bridles, some of it looking on the verge of disintegrating—hung between the doors. A line of benches stood along the opposite wall, mostly wood but with the seats covered by a thin layer of cracked leather.

  I sank into one of those, Ryo beside me. He dropped my arm and then didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. His awkwardness and the concern shining from his golden eyes brought a pang of affection into my chest.

  He was trying so hard to do right by me, for no reason other than he wanted to, even though he’d just met me. Like Cade had all those years ago, except even Cade had the motivation of knowing he’d be stuck with me for at least as long as our foster parents held on to both of us. Ryo could have easily shunned me like the rest of the students had.

  Maybe he would still shun me if he knew the whole story. If he knew I’d been as much responsible for turning my brother into that monster as the school was. If he ever found out…