Secrecy: Olde Earth Academy: Year One

by Amabel Daniels

“And he kept the garment?” she pressed.

  “I don’t know. I don’t talk to him anymore. Not my type.”

  Glorian rose her head in half of a nod. “And his name?”

  Sabine blew out a raspberry like it was the craziest thing she’d ever heard. “His name? Like I’d remember. I just told you he wasn’t my type.”

  “You don’t remember his name?”

  Sabine almost smirked. “I’ve got lots of boys’ names to keep on file up here.” She tapped her temple. “He didn’t make the cut.”

  Glorian studied Sabine for a moment, long enough that it seemed like she was believing this act. And she should. My sister had been training for this her whole life. Manipulating and conning others.

  “Very well, ladies. I appreciate you coming to speak with me. I will follow up on this unidentifiable junior from the Gold House. You are dismissed.”

  She’s not even going to ask about the blood?

  I wasted no time shooting to my feet and leaving as briskly and as politely possible with Sabine. In the hallway, she had a facial wardrobe change. Gone was the sugary smile and twangy sweetheart voice of persuasion. She gripped my upper arm and steered me toward an alcove on the way back to Mr. Souza’s Latin lesson. Her eyes were narrow slits like she was rearing up to become venomous, her lips snaked into a snarl.

  Alone, with no one else in the hallway, she directed me into the shadows.

  “What the hell, Layla? What the hell happened to that shirt?” she demanded. She let go of my arm with a shove.

  “I don’t know.” I knew that I’d used it to secure the longma’s injury. After that? I didn’t have a clue.

  “Don’t even try to lie to me.” She huffed and set her hand on her hip. “That was a lot of damn blood.”

  I raised my brows. “Are you— You’re concerned about me?”

  She glowered that don’t-even look at me. “Well, you’re not a seasoned fighter yet, so no, I don’t think that came from some act of violence.”

  Yet? Why would she say that like I might be a “fighter” in the future? I yanked on my earlobe and scrunched up my face at her. “Why do they know where Dad went to college?” And his fraternity? Seemed…extreme. It wasn’t like he was a student here? What did Olde Earth care about Dad?

  Sabine gaped at me. “What? Why do you even care if they know?”

  I shrugged. “Seems like an invasion of privacy.”

  “They’re all about family backgrounds here.”

  I’d heard it mentioned. Paige, Ethel, and Ren all referred to the concept, how “traditional” families were a big deal. What had she learned or heard? “How so?”

  She flipped a hand at me. “I don’t know. Aura and Ren always talk about these lines of legacy and shit. Layla, what happened to that shirt?”

  I couldn’t tell her. I shook my head.

  Another don’t even look.

  Well, I was don’t evening.

  “Layla—”

  “Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

  She got up in my face. “Are we in danger?”

  I cringed. I didn’t think so. Someone had shot my longma, though. Yes, dammit. It was my longma. I’d bonded with it somehow. Like owner and pet. Why an arrow would be aimed at it, I had no clue. Maybe it had been shot in self-defense.

  “What is with this old-ass place?” She paced in our small hideout and ranted. “What kind of a school has secrets like this? We’re supposed to take martial arts and self-defense next year. Why do I keep hearing upperclassmen refer to a menagar…menaga…”

  “Menagerie?”

  She dropped her head back to look at the ceiling with a groan. “You’ve heard of it too?”

  I refused to even acknowledge that.

  “You have some bloody sweatshirt you left somewhere. They won’t let us out after dark. We can’t hang with the older guys. What the hell are they preparing us for? Why are we here?”

  I slanted her a glare. “We? Why are we here?” I jabbed a finger at her. “You weren’t supposed to even come!”

  “Oh, get over it. Like I was going to stay back in Coltin and let you go somewhere cool.”

  “Okay, but the answer to your question,” I whisper-shouted as I put my hands around my mouth as though yelling it in a megaphone, “you aren’t supposed to be here.”

  “Fine, then why did they want you here so bad?”

  I remained quiet, no answers coming to mind. Ren had made it clear mine was a last-minute, prioritized, outsider enrollment. Because of that video of me helping the dogs? Like my connection to animals made me stand out. Now that I knew animals were connected to me, controllable by my thoughts… I gulped. Jesus, what did they want me for?

  “The only difference”—she huffed—“the biggest difference between you and I—”

  “You and me. It’s supposed to be you and m—”

  She groaned. “Oh, my God, shut up. The only difference is you’re a freak. A lunatic who thinks she can see…”

  Nope. Believe it or not, I’m not a lunatic.

  “Oh. Hell. No.” She stepped closer to me again, getting back in my face.

  “What?”

  “Suthering said they saw that video of you with those dogs. If this is about you and, and animals…” She shook her head, clamping her lips together tightly. “If this is about you and what you think you can see. Some other imaginary monster thing…”

  I pulled my lips in between my teeth.

  “Oh, my God. No. Not again. Jesus. Do you have any idea how crappy it is to be your sister?” She flung her arms out. “You think you see this weird stuff and then…”

  It’s all real, though, dammit! I inhaled a deep breath for calm. “I told you you wouldn’t want to know about that sweatshirt.”

  “Dammit, Layla!” With her finger in my face, she threatened, “If you ruin this, if you cry wolf and say there’s some monster animal after you here… They’ll make you leave. Make us leave.”

  I crossed my arms. If anyone would be kicked out, I’d make sure it was her.

  “Do not. Do not screw this up for me.” She stepped back, readying to leave. “I don’t care how crazy you are or what happened to that shirt. Do not screw up my chance of being here. I’ve got a study date with the fifty-first to the throne of England.”

  And then she stalked off to class.

  Oh, jeez. Fifty what? Being that close and distant to not-even royalty was that big of a deal? I snorted. She was impossible. Silly me to think she’d cared about me. Some things would never change.

  One thing that I appreciated remaining constant was Paige as my roomie. Every night, we’d take a break from homework and catch up on each other’s days. She’d ramble about whichever adorkable geek she was currently sure she was in love with, and I’d ask her about what it was like living here. Even though the Academy was no longer new to me, she just had so many insights on the place, having resided here with Ethel before being old enough to attend courses for freshman year.

  When she came barreling into our dorm that night, she didn’t wait to explode. “Layla!”

  I’d just come out of the bathroom at her outburst of a greeting.

  “What did Glorian want earlier?”

  It was the first time we’d been able to talk in private.

  Ah. How to phrase this…

  “Mom asked me if you’d been injured lately.” She let her bag drop to her chair before she tugged my hand and guided me to sit next to her on her bed. “I was, like, no? She asked if you’d been cut or something. And I was so confused. Why would she care? If you’d been hurt, you would have told me, and I would have helped you get whatever you needed at the clinic. I mean, we’re roomies. I would’ve known if something happened to you.”

  She paused briefly to laugh at herself. “Then she said someone had turned in your shirt to Glorian. It was all bloody like you’d been hurt! I told her it had to be some mistake.”

  “How’d your mom know about the shirt being turned in?”

>   She dropped her jaw. “So it was your shirt?”

  “Uh. I don’t know…” At her pressing frown, I rushed to lie. “It was so mangled, it was hard to tell. And you’re right. I haven’t been injured.” As if to prove the point, I held my arms out to show her my skin.

  “I know. That’s what I said. Mom was just linked in a group message from Glorian. She sent out a message to all of your and Sabine’s instructors. Probably to her, too, since I’m your roomie and she’s my mom. Must have thought she’d know.”

  Hmm. Such a web of connection to stay wary of.

  “I wonder what could have happened to it.” Paige twitched her lips in thought. “Mom said it was reported as bloodied and destroyed. Found in the woods.”

  I shrugged.

  “Wonder why Glorian thought it belonged to you.”

  Because it is mine.

  “Or that it could be Sabine’s?”

  Another shrug. I figured the less I said, the easier my lack of honesty would be. Besides, how could I explain the shirt was routed back to me because the Academy somehow knew weird facts about my dad? The level of inquisitiveness bothered me. The more I kept quiet and offered vague answers, the safer it had to be.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Since Sabine’s and my visit to speak with Glorian, we drifted further apart. It was…nice. A true separation like I’d always wanted. Sure, we had classes together, but she stuck with Aura and other silly kinds of fools. Meanwhile, I remained secure in a tight, small circle of friends. Okay. Just one friend. Paige. But she was a perfect friend for a quiet person like me. She was bookish enough that we could have intelligent conversations. We shared a love for romcoms and hatred of horror movies. And we could simply be in each other’s company and not have weird, awkward silence when we simply wanted to do nothing.

  Not only did my friendship with Paige strengthen over the next two quarters of my first year at Olde Earth, but I also formed a tighter bond with my longma. Every morning, rain or shine, it waited for my arrival. Through fall and winter, it was there—finally, something I could trust to be there for me, even if it didn’t communicate in words. When the snow came, it didn’t stick at my side for long, and I was curious about the cold temperatures. If it had scales, then was it ectothermic? I assumed it had to be warm-blooded from when I’d administered first aid to its leg.

  The second and third quarterly exams were still survivable. Many groaned and freaked out about them, but with Paige and Ethel as my study supporters and my lack of a campus social life, I had no problem at all maintaining excellent scores. I still hadn’t lost sight of the constantly expressed concerns of how not everyone would graduate to sophomore year. But I had accepted my challenge, and I was almost in the clear.

  Two more weeks, and I’d be able to put the fourth and final freshman exam session behind me. I was confident I’d keep my grades up, despite all the distractions that cluttered my brain.

  Like wondering how Sabine was going to handle not staying when she surely failed. Ignoring her complaints in the cafeteria about crappy grades and unfair assignments.

  Like noticing Flynn too often, to the point of categorizing his tells and ticks. Deciding his hair was a rich chestnut brown, not a precursor to black.

  Like remaining curious about the longma being labeled as a restricted species.

  Does that mean they acknowledge it exists?

  I asked myself that question for what felt like the umpteenth time as I left the dorms for my run.

  After getting that restricted species search result, I’d gone back to the library to find the book that had the light show that snuffed out on me. It wasn’t even there on the bookshelf anymore. And I couldn’t ask Ethel to locate it. When I logged into the catalog again, I found the same lack of answers I’d encountered in my first round of research.

  Longma sightings wasn’t something I’d trust Google with—even though I had browsed on there and was distracted with the usual conspiracy junk online. Without the book or the Academy database at hand, I was limited for answers.

  But, again, does this mean the Academy knows that longmas exist? The air was wet from a night shower and the ground soft and squishy below my feet. Ahead, I spotted a now-familiar dark figure swoop across my path. Springtime brought many new critters, but this one was an anomaly.

  No, not my longma. Another ink-black “companion.” I’d noticed a remarkably large crow following me in the air on my runs once the winter snows melted. Like a spy, it seemed. Yet with my longma always at my back, I never feared any other animals in the woods.

  As I approached the area where I usually spotted him, I worried. He was always waiting for me. Pacing as though he couldn’t wait for me and our exercise. No fresh hoof marks had pressed into the recently showered earth. No purring growls came from the depth of the forest. Only dark, misty air. And that crow.

  It cawed. It had never vocalized any calls or sounds before today. While I waited for my absent longma, I considered that fact as an odd pairing of events—the longma missing and the crow speaking up. Was it trying to tell me something? Danger awaited me? The longma was injured—again?

  With finals coming quickly, I couldn’t afford the time to linger waiting. I took off on my run, keeping an eye out for my buddy. He was a no-show. All through my thirty-five-minute run on the trail, I was alone, with the crow.

  Fear and worry coalesced as I returned to the dorms. They merged into a stomach-churning, all-consuming anxiety by the time I was ready to walk to class.

  Where could he be? For months, that hideous-at-first scaly beast was my buddy. It’d been too easy to keep him a secret. There wasn’t any incentive to tell Paige, or even try to bring it up with Flynn. That longma, my buddy, was, well, mine. I’d never had a pet before, and maybe the longma was an eccentric one, but I was selfish. I truly hadn’t wanted to share him. His absence only had me fearing that maybe he was with someone or something else instead. Because, come on, just like that, he stopped coming? I wasn’t buying it. With each class that passed through the agonizingly long, slow day, I became more and more convinced that something bad had happened to it.

  If it had been shot once before, what was to say it couldn’t be maimed again?

  By the next day, with another no-show of my longma, I was beside myself with worry.

  At lunch, Lorcan picked up on my extreme unease. “Are you worried about the finals?” He assumed I was stressed—like everyone else other than Ren—about the pending exams.

  “Maybe a little. You?”

  He shook his head. “But if it’d make you happier, we could study after class today?”

  I declined. My head was full of information to gain me an A on every test—not cocky, confident—but my heart was saturated with worry. I’d already planned to go to the library and try that book again. The one that had popped up the 3D hologram of the longma. Maybe it had been checked out before. I was reaching for anything. Something. I needed to get at least a clue or hint of what happened to it, or what it was.

  At the end of the day, I was relieved to see Ethel busy helping a couple of students. With her preoccupied at her main help desk, I was free to slip by and head in the direction of the furthest aisles of the library. As I made my way through the vault of books, I passed Paige studying with a boy she was crushing on. There. She was another potential distraction removed from my mission. But I’d forgotten the call number for the specific text I’d referenced last time. Dammit. I detoured to the nearest library computer to pull it up in the catalog. Of course, my tablet needed to be charged.

  Tapping my knuckle to the edge of the desk, I waited for the server to locate the book. “Longma?” Ren’s voice was a whisper of disbelief.

  I stabbed my finger on the mouse, clicking the icon to close the window. In a spin, I whipped around to face him. “Why are you spying on me?” Seriously, who creeps up behind someone in a library? Silently like a stalker, the way he did. And have the gall to read what I had on the screen.


  “What do you know about longmas?” he asked, setting his books down on the table and coming closer.

  Well, thanks to weird, uncooperative book holograms and a block in the database—nothing. “Just a name I heard.”

  “From who?”

  I shrugged.

  “From. Who?”

  I don’t answer to you. I smiled then. “See you around, Ren. Good luck with exams.” I didn’t wait for him to issue another heated whisper. Who did he think he was, demanding answers from me? I didn’t care if his mom was the headmistress. Or if his family had some founding smart ass who lived and breathed the Academy legacy—whatever it was.

  All I cared about was that he was way too interested in my knowledge of the longma.

  He has to know something.

  Frustrated and just as anxious as I had been before Ren had found me in the library, I resolved to finally seek out some answers.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “You want to what?” Flynn asked me in class the next day after the longma didn’t show once again. The lesson was about to begin, so I slid into the seat next to him.

  Miss Comeau started with where we’d left off in the exam prep the day before. I pulled out my notebook and set it on the left of my desk, close enough so Flynn could see. We’d try this old-style.

  I want to know what they do every other Wednesday night.

  Sure, Paige and Ethel passed it off as History classes. Well, maybe someone in there would know something about longmas. It was a far reach. But I needed to know what happened to my buddy. If the database claimed the longma was restricted, perhaps a history instructor could know when that happened. At least Ethel should be knowledgeable about the database, being the head librarian and all. She was a hard-to-reach lady with students constantly seeking her help before exams. I’d tried last night at dinner time to chat with her, but as soon as we’d claimed a table in the library, Glorian, of all people, showed up and said she’d needed to speak to her.

  Now I needed her help—a different kind of help, but still.

  It was my last resort. And with how secret everyone kept those privileged times for only select students, I was sure to gain something useful if I couldn’t get a chance to speak to Ethel.