by Nikki Loftin
NIKKI LOFTIN
ILLUSTRATED BY
BRENNA EERNISSE
An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy
RAZORBILL
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Young Readers Group
345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Mairangi Bay, Auckland 1311, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Copyright © 2012 Nikki Loftin
Illustrations © 2012 Brenna Eernisse
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-1-101-57553-6
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
FOR DAVE,
CAMERON,
AND DREW
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
ONE: Splintered
TWO: Splendid Academy
THREE: Dangerous Favorite
FOUR: The First Day of School
FIVE: A Terrible Joke
SIX: Bon Appétit
SEVEN: Forgetting
EIGHT: One Mouthful of Mystery
NINE: Bright Sand, Dark Secret
TEN: Force-Fed
ELEVEN: Suspicion
TWELVE: Nothing Special
THIRTEEN: Toil and Trouble
FOURTEEN: The Unspoken Rule
FIFTEEN: Stepmothers
SIXTEEN: In the Soup
SEVENTEEN: A Message in Code
EIGHTEEN: The Secret of the Sand
NINETEEN: The Nature of Their Power
TWENTY: Perfectly Named
TWENTY-ONE: One Night to Decide
TWENTY-TWO: Witch Material
TWENTY-THREE: Poison Plan
TWENTY-FOUR: Imprisoned
TWENTY-FIVE: Running Away
TWENTY-SIX: Deeper Than Pain
TWENTY-SEVEN: Set Free
TWENTY-EIGHT: Finally Forgiven
Acknowledgments
CHAPTER ONE:
SPLINTERED
When my mom was alive, she read me stories every night. “Use your imagination, Lorelei,” she’d say, “and your whole life can be a fairy tale.” I wanted that to be true. But I should have paid more attention to the fairy tales.
Because not all of the children in them come out alive.
And sometimes there are witches hiding in the woods.
My soon-to-be stepmother was a witch, I was sure of that. I wasn’t quite certain whether she wanted me to die, but it was looking possible. Die of humiliation, if nothing else.
Somehow, she had convinced my dad to make me wear a peach-and-white petticoat dress, with white shoes that looked like they’d been stolen off an American Girl doll. They were about that big, too. I could feel the blisters coming up as I walked to the minivan.
“Hurry up, Lorelei,” Dad shouted from the front seat. He already had the engine on. “I don’t want to be late for my own wedding. Molly will kill me!”
“Molly’s already trying to kill me,” I murmured as I shut the door. I hadn’t been quiet enough. Dad had heard.
“Lorelei,” he warned. “Molly is not trying to kill you. Why do you insist on being so negative about her? She’s going to be your new mother—”
A rude noise came from the back seat. Bryan, my older brother, had pulled out his earbuds to listen in. “Stepmother,” he said. “She’s not Mom.”
Mom. The word hung in the air like sparkles of dust in the sunlight, bringing with it memories and pain. My heart thumped hard against my seat belt. Nobody said anything for a few seconds. Nobody breathed. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see if Bryan was giving me the look he’d given me over a year before.
The day I had destroyed our family.
At last, Dad cleared his throat. “No, Molly’s not Mom.” I opened my eyes. His face was reflected in the rearview mirror, sadness settling into the lines at the corners of his mouth. “But she’s important to me, and we love each other, and she loves you kids. That’s why we invited you to take part in the ceremony. I know you’ll be the finest flower girl and groomsman a dad could ever ask for.”
Bryan pretended to puke.
“Bryan! I expect you both to make some effort. Be nice.”
“I’ll be as nice to her as she is to me,” I heard Bryan mutter.
As nice as Molly? That wasn’t asking much. I started to hum the Darth Vader theme from Star Wars and when Bryan laughed, I did, too.
Dad frowned. I thought he was mad at me, but he was just disappointed, as usual. He was staring at my hair. “Did you even try to get a brush through that mess?” he asked.
I knew I’d forgotten something. “Sorry,” I said. “I’ll do it at the church.”
He put the van in reverse and sighed. “What happened to my princess?”
I didn’t answer. We all knew what had happened.
I looked down at my palm and started picking at a tree-climbing splinter that had gotten stuck in there the day before. The splinter didn’t hurt. Not nearly as much as the memory of my mom; that throbbed and tore at me all the time, like a splinter I couldn’t budge.
I had been a princess. My life had been perfect. I had been Daddy’s best girl, my room stuffed full of Barbies and decorated with a pink bedspread and flowery curtains. Maybe Molly would have liked me more if I was still that girl: the coloring-book, rainbow-cupcake, dollhouse kind. We could have made friends, like Dad kept begging me to do, over makeup and curling irons.
I looked out the van window, watching a bunch of bulldozers pushing earth around, changing the shape of the land as fast as they could. A tall woman, with black hair pulled back under a hard hat, walked across the site, pointing things out to the workers with a small branch—probably from a tree I’d climbed. Changing my neighborhood.
I should have been used to it. Everything in my life had changed—permanently.
We passed the Willow Grove city limits sign a few minutes later, and I finally gave up trying to think of a way
to make Dad smile again. Sucking up to Molly wouldn’t be enough, I knew. Even if she was the nicest stepmother in the world, even if I wished we could be friends, it wouldn’t fix what was wrong with our family.
Me.
CHAPTER TWO:
SPLENDID ACADEMY
Three excruciating days later, on the way back from the wedding, the flower girl torture was over and we were all out of nice.
Dad was driving back home, quieter than usual and definitely not smiling, with my new stepmonster, Molly, in the front seat. Bryan was in the back, as usual, his ears stuffed full of headphones.
I was looking out the window, thinking about calling my friend Allison once I got home, when I saw it. It was the construction site I’d noticed on the way to the wedding, the one with the bulldozers. But there were no bulldozers now. Instead, there was a building. A completely finished red brick building with bright yellow doors, sparkling clean windows, and a sign. “What is that?” I murmured.
Dad didn’t answer. Bryan did.
“Can’t you read, ignoramus? Oh, I forgot. You can’t. It’s a school.” He read the words super slowly, just to be mean. “Splendid Academy: A Charter School for Grades Four to Eight.”
“I’m not an ignoramus, you jerk. And I can read fine. I just can’t write very well.” Bryan had spent the last year either ignoring me or making fun of my kindergarten handwriting style. My fifth grade teacher had bugged Dad to get me tested to find out exactly what was wrong with me. She said it might be dysgraphia, and she wanted to get it checked out so I could use a computer keyboard for my exams. Maybe even get some help—there were all sorts of therapies, or so she said. But Dad never got around to filling out the testing papers. He had a lot on his mind, he said. I understood. We all had a lot on our minds last year.
So I wasn’t sure if I really was dysgraphic or not. Maybe I was dumb. I smacked Bryan in the head, anyway, just on principle.
“Cool it, Lorelei!” Dad warned. “Molly has seen plenty of your behavior this weekend. Both of you.”
I guessed he was referring to the incident at the hotel when Molly told the wedding guests she was planning to be “the best mother a child could have.” I probably shouldn’t have made that gagging sound so loud everyone could hear. But later I’d overheard her privately telling the minister at the reception she thought it was God’s will Mom had died, to make a place for Molly in our family.
Really, throwing a glass of ice water on her head hadn’t been the most terrible thing I could have done.
Bryan yelling at everyone to get back because “the witch was melting” sure hadn’t helped, though.
“Dad! That school. It just . . . appeared!”
“We don’t shout in the van,” Molly said, not turning around. It sounded like she was gritting her teeth. “It’s not polite, sweetheart. And schools don’t just appear. It’s been under construction for a while, I’m sure.”
I hated it when she called me sweetheart. That was Mom’s word. “Excuse me, Molly,” I said, trying not to sound as impatient as I felt. “But they just started building it last Friday. It’s brand new. And it’s finished.”
“What did you say, Lorelei?” Dad asked. He was making googly eyes at Molly, and he didn’t look either.
“Remember that site that was just bulldozers three days ago?” I tried again. “I saw it when we were driving out of the neighborhood. Look at it now.”
“It’s not polite to demand, sweetheart,” Molly said, her voice as fake as Velveeta. “You should ask with a ‘please.’”
“Dad. Just look at it?” Someone had to look. This was unbelievable. I’d spent a lot of my free time that summer exploring the drainage ditches near my house, the ones that butted up against the lots that were still under construction. So I knew that it took time—a lot of time—to go from bulldozers to bricks. There was all sorts of stuff they did with plumbing, foundations, lumber, drywall, and roofing materials. I wondered for a second if this was a movie set. It couldn’t be real, could it? And built in three days?
“Please,” I begged, “somebody look.”
But Dad had stopped at the stop sign and was staring into Molly’s eyes. “You’ll make a wonderful mother, darling,” he said, as if I couldn’t hear him. “You’ve got the knack.”
“I wish. But you know what they say,” she whispered back. “Practice makes perfect.”
“Mmm, now there’s a thought.” Dad leaned over to her. “I know something we should practice. Pucker up, gorgeous.”
I stuck my fingers in my ears and closed my eyes so I didn’t have to see them kiss.
But I opened them as we went around the corner toward our street, and—I couldn’t help it—shouted again. “A playground!”
Bryan had obviously turned off his iPod, because he whistled long and low. “Would you look at that!”
It was the most elaborate, most breathtaking playground I had ever seen. It took up what must have been two acres, with every single piece of equipment you could imagine. There were monkey bars, swings, climbing frames, and slides, all brightly painted and gleaming with newness. I even saw some of the old equipment that was practically outlawed at other schools—I counted two carousels, four seesaws, a high bar, and two high balance beams. I wasn’t any good at gymnastics, but I’d stolen Bryan’s old skateboard at the beginning of the summer just to bug him. He hadn’t cared, though, and I hadn’t practiced much. But maybe the playground would be open on weekends and I could use one of the balance beams to learn a trick or something.
I wished I could get Bryan to hang out with me again. We never did anything together anymore, not since Mom died. Well, besides fight.
“Check it out,” Bryan whispered and pointed to a grove of trees near the edge of the property. They were some kind of tree I hadn’t seen before, with silvery leaves. I followed Bryan’s finger: Was that a tree house in one of them?
“Wow,” I said, “it’s got everything.” My head buzzed while I stared, humming louder as we moved past. My curiosity faded, replaced by a strange, burning need to throw open the door and run out to the playground. It almost hurt to stay in the van.
“Is that a chess board?” Bryan asked. Through his window I saw it, a life-sized chessboard with red and black painted pieces as big as me. Just beyond that was a rock-climbing wall that must have been thirty feet tall, and two zip lines that stretched from the edge of a soccer field to a tall platform near a half-sized football field, complete with goalposts.
“That is the coolest playground ever.” Bryan’s voice was soft, like adults talk in church. I guess he’d forgotten for a minute that he was a teenager now, and he wasn’t supposed to get all worked up about kid stuff. But I knew how he felt. It was like looking at a miracle. The playground couldn’t have been any more wonderful, even if every kid in the world had voted on what to put in it.
Suddenly, the sun came out from behind a cloud. The light hit the ground around the playground equipment and filled the whole area with a dazzling brightness. It hurt to look straight at it, and I had to cover my eyes.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Bryan said, his voice muffled under the buzzing in my mind. “Glass?”
And then the sun went behind another cloud, and I saw. It was sand. Crystals, actually. The whole playground was covered not with the usual mulch or pea gravel, but with tiny white crystals, each no bigger than a crumb. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, but for some strange reason, seeing that sand made me want to cry.
“I want to go there,” Bryan whispered, still staring at the playground as our van got farther and farther away. “That school looks amazing.”
I nodded. I wanted to go there, too. Even if it had appeared in three days, even if it was too good to be true. I didn’t care. I pressed my flushed face against the cool glass of my window and
wished I could go there.
Wished it with all my heart.
CHAPTER THREE:
DANGEROUS FAVORITE
My wish came true—in a horrible sort of way. The next evening the whole family (oh, and Molly, too) watched Willow Springs Middle School burn down on the nine o’clock news. Some sort of fault in the wiring, the news guy said. All the students would have to be bused across the district until the school was rebuilt. The only other middle school was on the opposite side of Willow Grove. I had been in it once, for one of Bryan’s basketball games. It was old, had graffiti all over the building, and smelled like bleach and cigarette smoke.
Molly had a fit about the distance. Dad muttered for an hour about “substandard test scores” and “educational black holes.”
Bryan and I both knew our prayers had been answered.
“Why should we go all that way every day,” Bryan asked Dad, “when there’s a brand-new school practically right next door?”
“We can’t afford private school for two kids,” Molly interrupted. Dad had to explain that charter schools were free, just like the regular schools in our district.
“It’s not the money,” Dad said. “Although I hear those charter schools sometimes have extra programs they do charge for.”
Molly looked like she wanted to kill the idea if it cost a single cent.
“But think about it,” I said, before Molly could speak. “What if we get sick at school, and Molly has to drive across town to pick us up? It’s so far.”
That stopped her. Molly agreed that would be way too inconvenient, even if she didn’t say it quite as bluntly. “They’ve got a point,” she murmured into Dad’s ear. “Let me go and check it out. It’ll give me a chance to spend some mom-time with the kids.”
So Dad sent Molly, Bryan, and me to check out the charter school. A giant banner had gone up out front, reading SPLENDID ACADEMY: A CHARTER SCHOOL FOR GRADES FOUR THROUGH EIGHT, PROMOTING ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE IN A FUN, UNIQUE ENVIRONMENT. OPEN HOUSE 9 A.M.–1 P.M., SATURDAY, AUGUST 13.
