by April Marcom
~ North Haven ~
“Breakfast, dearie,” sang the sweetest voice. A hand patted my back and I reached up to rub my eyes.
But instead of my hand, I felt a pillow push against my right eye. I sat up too quickly and bumped into a pretty young woman with wavy brown hair who was leaning over me. “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. Looking around the inside of the jet, it all came back to me. I reached back and felt around for my book.
“That’s quite all right. Is this what you’re looking for?” The woman held my book out to me. I realized she had a soft accent, though I couldn’t figure out what kind.
“Morning, Kristine,” Harmony called from the other end of the room. She and the others were already sitting at the table eating.
“Is that bacon and eggs?” I asked. For breakfast, all we ever got at the orphanage were stale biscuits and the occasional piece of jellied toast if we were lucky.
“Aye, they are,” the woman said. She sat down and put her arm around me. “I’m Miss McCree and I look after the girls in your hall. You’ll be seeing a lot of me once you’ve settled in.”
Irish! That’s what her accent was, I realized.
“She’s the best!” Harmony said. “She comes to tuck you into bed every night and she makes the best brownies and she helps with homework and studying.”
Miss McCree smiled. “You’re makin’ me blush over here. It’s an honor to take care of such fine young ladies. Now why don’t you go have some breakfast, Kristine, before it gets too cold?”
“All right, thanks.” I practically ran to that bacon and ate ten pieces when I got there.
“Don’t make yourself sick.” Sassy laughed from across the table.
“Sorry, I haven’t had bacon in years.”
“Bad orphanage?” Hunter asked.
“That’s putting it mildly.”
“It makes me sick the way people think they can treat children when there’s no one there to protect them from it,” Miss McCree said, crossing the room. “You’ll never be treated like that where we’re taking yah’.” She picked up the half empty pitcher of orange juice and carried it out of the room through a door beside the table.
“She grew up in a bad orphanage too,” Sassy whispered. “She got herself and three other girls out of it, but I think it was probably worse than yours. There were no signs or reports of physical abuse on you or the other girls.”
“No one’s ever hit us or anything,” I said, feeling bad that it might have happened to Miss McCree.
I jumped when I heard five very different sounds at once. Drums banged, someone began singing opera, a rooster crowed, techno played, and it even sounded like rain had suddenly begun pouring over Nadine, who was right beside me. Everyone reached into their pockets and pulled out their own silver box, touching the tops and letting them fly up on their own. “Morning announcements,” Nadine said. “It’s what we usually wake up to.”
The same woman I’d seen on Harmony and Roman’s screens came up on Nadine’s. “Good morning, students. I hope you all slept well last night.” Miss McCree came back into the room with her own flying thing floating in front of her. She came to set a full pitcher of orange juice in the middle of the table.
“The time is six a.m. There are only a few morning announcements today. The countdown to Winter Competitions is at only eight days. Make sure you’re training hard. We want to beat the Southland Cinders for the third year in a row. Miss Tripside is very ill, so all math classes will be canceled today and possibly tomorrow.”
“Yes!” Roman put his fists up in the air.
“A showing of volcanoes will be held in The Dome Room at six p.m. for any students who wish to attend.
“And finally, Roman Armstrong, Hunter Bradshaw, Harmony Foxen, Nadine Rodriguez, and Sassy Johnson successfully recruited Kristine Fayre last night…”
I was horrified to see a picture of myself appear on the screen. I was really hoping to blend in when I got there. No chance of that happening now.
Everyone around the table began clapping as the announcer went on. “…so be sure to say hello if you pass her in the hallway and make her feel welcome with the rest of us. That’s all for now. Have a great day.”
The screens went black and began to fold up.
“Good morning, passengers. This is your pilot speaking,” Mr. Westhyme said over the intercom. “We’ll be landing in about fifteen minutes. Please remain seated until we come to a complete stop. And thanks for flying with us today.”
Sassy and Nadine started laughing. “He cracks me up,” Sassy said.
“Is that woman on your flying thing real?” I asked Hunter, since he was sitting across the table from me.
“Connie? Nah, one person would never be able to keep up with all the students. When she was created she was named Con, short for convenience. Whenever you get your own con you’ll address it as Kristine Con, but besides that, everyone calls her Connie. Con just sounds like an old guy you’d find in a prison cell.”
“When will I get my own?”
“As soon as we get there. Headmaster’s the one who gives them to the students.”
“I bet we can see North Haven,” Nadine said, moving to the windows.
Book still in hand, I followed, not wanting to have to wait another second to see it. For a minute, we only saw darkness. The sun hadn’t risen yet. Then we broke through the clouds and there it was, light pouring from every window and ground lights surrounding an enchanting castle of ice. “It’s…amazing,” I said in reverent awe.
To me, this was an absolute confirmation that it was all real. Until that moment I had to wonder if it was somehow all a hoax, because it seemed too good to be true. But it was real, and it was unbelievable.
Roman sat down beside me. “Welcome to your new home.”
“Thanks, and thanks for coming to get me. This is even better than being adopted.”
“It is being adopted,” Nadine said. “Everyone’s like family at North Haven. Sassy and Harmony are my sisters, Miss McCree’s our mom, and Headmaster’s like a father to all of us.”
“Aye, ‘tis true,” Miss McCree said.
“Yeah, but not every single person’s like family,” Roman said, rubbing my thumb with one of his fingers. “There are still couples.”
It hit me all at once. He was making a pass at me, and I wasn’t sure how to respond. Having always attended an all-girls school and having been forbidden by Ms. Wendy to so much as speak to a boy, this was a first time thing for me. My instinct was to draw away, since all I’d heard about guys was pretty vicious. I wasn’t stupid enough to believe it was true about every single one, but I knew enough to know I needed to be careful. What if this was the game he played with every girl he recruited? He was really cute, though. I planned to ask Harmony about him later.
“Do you want to go see the volcanic show with me tonight?” Roman asked me. Harmony and Sassy began whispering at the table.
“Okay.” I wasn’t sure how I felt about Roman, but since romance was something foreign to me, I figured I would learn as I went.
A few minutes later, the jet was landing and then it was rolling through an opening that led underneath the castle.
Once we were off the jet, I stopped to look around for a minute. The walls still looked like ice, but I couldn’t see through them. I walked over to the nearest one and reached out to touch it. It didn’t feel cold. “What are these made of?” I asked.
“This whole place was built with something similar to marble, several times stronger, though,” Mr. Westhyme said. He shut the side door to the jet and locked it. “Has to last forever, you know. I think I’m gonna go get some shut-eye for a little while. You kids think you can get Kristine settled in okay?”
“She’ll be fine,” Harmony said. “I’ll take you to Headmaster and wait outside. For today, you’ll be shadowing me, so I’ll make sure you get where you need to be.”
I was kind
of relieved, because that meant I wouldn’t be left alone with Roman later that night.
The others began moving toward the one place in the wall I could see through. It looked like part of a circle poking out of the flat wall and going up through the ceiling. Roman pushed a button beside it. “Come on, you two. The rest of us have to get to class,” he said.
Harmony and I got to the others as we heard a whizzing sound and watched the round glass slide away in front of us. We all stepped into a big glass elevator.
“Welcome back, Hunter, Roman, Harmony, Sassy, Nadine, and Kristine. Where can I take you?” Connie’s voice came from up in the ceiling somewhere.
“Everyone needs to get to their rooms—except for Kristine and me,” Harmony said. “We need to see Headmaster.”
The glass door slid shut and we zoomed upward too fast for me to see much, and then we stopped on a carpeted level with lots of girls in white suits or pajamas walking around. To my left and right I saw more of the glass elevator shafts. Girls were climbing into a few of them.
“We have reached the girls’ living quarters, destination of Nadine and Sassy,” Connie said. The door opened, letting the two girls off.
Then we zoomed up another level, where I saw exactly the same thing, except that it seemed to be inhabited only by boys. “We have reached the boys’ living quarters, destination of Hunter and Roman.”
“Bye,” Hunter said before climbing out, but Roman stopped in front of me.
“I’ll see you tonight.”
I nodded and then he was gone and we were going up again.
Faces and hallways zoomed by for a few seconds and then we began to slow down. “Approaching the highest level available to this elevator. Please exit and go to your right. Take the elevator at the end of the hallway up to Headmaster’s Tower.”
Harmony and I stepped out of the elevator, but I don’t know if you could call what we stepped into a hallway. It was more like a wide-open expanse with fluffy rugs, pillows, or chairs placed here and there, all empty at the moment.
“What’s this floor for?” I asked as we began walking.
“It’s just a quiet corner in the west wing, a place where kids can come to study or think or be alone.”
I looked out the windows but still saw only darkness.
We reached the end of the hallway and found two elevators. Harmony pushed the button in between the doors.
“What about Roman? Is he like that with all the new girls?” I asked, hoping she wouldn’t think I was into him and tell everyone about it, because I was pretty sure I wasn’t.
“Nope. I’ve never seen him like that with any girl, actually. When they showed that footage of you during class, asking for volunteers to go get you, I thought his eyes would bug out of his head. He didn’t even ask Miss Tripside if he could go before he ran from the classroom for Headmaster’s office to volunteer.”
“What footage?” I didn’t realize video footage of me even existed.
“Apparently there’s a bank close to your orphanage. Headmaster got some footage of you walking by. It must have been taken by one of the outside cameras. They also showed that school picture of you in the corner of the screen.”
The glass elevator on the right came shooting upward and stopped in front of us. I wondered why Connie didn’t say anything as we started going up, but figured if everything was connected to one system and it always knew where each of us was and where we were going, she probably knew where to take us.
“Me and Sassy and Nadine have been talking about how we needed a fourth roommate, so we volunteered too,” Harmony said. “Hunter just likes to get out of North Haven sometimes. He goes to get a lot of recruits.”
“What happened to your last roommate?” I asked.
“There’s not a last roommate. Kids get put in rooms with vacancies and with kids of the same age as they come in. We’ll all leave school at about the same time and then new girls will take our old room one at a time until there’s four.”
The thought made me sad. I didn’t want to leave, ever.
“We have reached Headmaster’s Tower, destination of Harmony And Kristine,” Connie said as the door slid open.
The round hallway we stepped into was different than the rest of what I’d seen. The lighting was a bit softer and the walls were red and velvety, hung with paintings of little villages and lazy hillsides.
But the first thing that really caught my eye was the picture of two boys, maybe ten years old, hanging up across from the elevator door. Arms around one another, they looked exactly alike and yet totally different. One’s coat was left unbuttoned and his shirt partially untucked. His hair wasn’t messy exactly, but definitely untidy. And his smile made me shiver, it was so cold. The smile of the other brother was perfectly polished and warm enough to make up for the iciness of the other’s. “That’s Headmaster when he was a kid,” Harmony said, pointing to the better-looking one. “The other one’s his brother, headmaster to the Cinders.”
“I’m glad I got recruited to this school and not the other one.”
“Me too. Headmaster’s office is right around the corner.” Harmony led the way to our left. “I remember my first time up here. It was my thirteenth birthday. I was terrified, but Headmaster’s really nice. There was no reason to be worried.”
I was glad I wasn’t the only one to start out that way. “What did you do to get recruited?” I asked.
“It’s kind of weird, but there are a lot of weird stories here…See, I’ve always had this thing for animals. I used to bring strays back to my foster home until I could find them their own home. If I was never going to find a family and a home, I figured at least I could find one for them. No one was ever around at my foster home, so no one noticed for a long time. I even used wire cutters to break a bunch of dogs out of the pound. Somehow I found them all good homes before anyone figured out it was me. I got in a lot of trouble, but I did what they couldn’t. I got all those dogs into happy homes and saved their lives. My story made headlines and got a lot of other kids on their own animal rescue missions. It’s not as good as yours, but that’s my story…Here we are.”
We stopped next to a door with a silver plaque on it that read ‘Headmaster Trey Veziamo’. Harmony knocked on it.
“Come in,” a man immediately responded.
“I’ll be right here,” Harmony said before she sat against the hallway’s wall.
Looks like I’m going in alone. I took a deep breath and grasped the doorknob, wondering what Headmaster would be like.
Short Book Description:
Two schools, born of two very different and very competitive brothers, exist at the farthest reaches of the north and south. One for particularly evil teenagers left alone in the world, and one for those who are pure and good, each after the father of their own school. The rivalry the brothers share has been passed on to their students. So every winter, the schools get together for a season of competition, alternately held between the north and the south. For this one season, the schools and their founders put their differences aside to compete, and more importantly, to win. But this year, even though the two student bodies loathe each other entirely, a boy from the south and a girl from the north fall in love. This is where the trouble begins.
Click here to read Ch. 1 or to Buy GOOD VS. EVIL HIGH
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BIND OUR LOVING SOULS EXCERPT:
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