The New Newbridge Academy

by Amber Benson

  Henry shook his head in agreement. “This is incredible. I haven’t felt anything in such a very long time.”

  As if in response to Henry’s words, all the drapes in the room rolled down, covering the windows and blocking out the ambient light. There was another sharp drop in the temperature, and Noh’s teeth started to chatter.

  “What’s going on, Henry?” Noh moved closer to her dead friend, but his company did nothing to relieve the very bad feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  “I don’t know,” he said through chattering teeth.

  “Ghosts’ teeth aren’t supposed to chatter!” Noh said in a shocked voice. “At least, I don’t think they are. I mean, I would guess that they shouldn’t.”

  Noh shut her mouth, embarrassed by her nervous babbling. She kept silent as she watched Henry clench his teeth and squeeze his eyes tight. His shape seemed to flicker for a moment, but then he returned to normal.

  “Should I try the door?” Noh said, walking toward it.

  Henry shook his head. “I wouldn’t bother. I just tried to disappear, but I couldn’t. And that’s never happened to me before.”

  “You tried to leave me?” shouted Noh. “That’s not very nice!”

  She stomped over to the door and put her hand on the knob. “We’ll just see how you like it!”

  She felt a prickly numbing in her hand and released the knob quickly. It was almost as if she’d run her hand under a hot and a cold tap at the same time. She held her hand to her chest, cradling it as it throbbed miserably in time to the beat of her pulse. Without thinking, she reached into her pocket. The moment her fingers closed around the evil eye stone, the pain in her hand sub-sided.

  At that very moment the wind picked up in earnest. Dust and pieces of litter, caught up in the wind’s orbit, circled around their heads like tiny satellites.

  “We’ve got to get out of here!” Noh shouted over the din.

  “I think we’re good and trapped!” Henry countered just as loudly.

  Suddenly a small orb of light flared into existence in front of them and started to expand until it was as large as a doorway.

  Henry sucked in his breath and drifted toward Noh. In a hushed voice he whispered, “It’s my time. I have to go now.” He dropped his hand on her shoulder in goodbye, but it only slid through her flesh.

  “Wait, Henry! What’re you talking about?” Noh tried to grab him, but he slipped out of her grasp and floated toward the glowing light.

  “I only wish we’d gotten to be real friends,” he said, his voice faint in the rush of the wind. When he reached the orb, he gave her a quick wave, then disappeared into the honeyed light.

  “Henry!” Noh shouted, but she was too late. The light flared, and then the orb folded in upon itself and was gone.

  Noh stared at the place where the light had once been, yet all traces of its existence had fled.

  The temperature returned to normal, but Noh’s teeth somehow wouldn’t stop chattering. She looked down at her clenched fist, and it took her a moment before she realized she was clutching her evil eye stone as if it were a talisman.

  Looking around the now empty room, it was as if the past few hours hadn’t happened at all.

  Noh sighed, upset that she had lost the first friend she had made at the New Newbridge Academy. She was just about to leave when she noticed a sheaf of yellowed paper sitting on the desktop. She picked it up and started to put it into one of the desk drawers when she became filled with curiosity.

  Making sure she was unobserved, Noh stuffed the papers into her back pocket. She picked up her flashlight and walked to the door. She made a hesitant grab for the knob, and when it didn’t hurt her hand, she threw the door open and stepped out into the hall. Not wanting to spend any more time in the West Wing than she had to, she made a run for the stairway. The thumping of her feet echoed in the empty building, obscuring the sound of Henry’s bedroom door being slammed shut by a pair of unseen hands.

  Hullie Says

  Noh hit the outside path at a run. She didn’t look back at the West Wing as she ran, fearful that she would see something else “amazing” if she did.

  She pumped her legs as fast as they would go. She didn’t care if she got a stitch in her side or if her lungs collapsed from exertion.

  When she got to the football field, Noh slowed to a jog and noticed for the first time how warm the day had become. She decided that going directly back to the dining hall would be a bad idea. She didn’t want anyone to see her so spooked. She figured if she were to walk the length of the football field seven times (as seven was a lucky number), she’d be calm enough to return to normalcy.

  “I can speak to ghosts, and the evil eye stone made my hand stop hurting,” Noh said as she walked, even though there was no one around to hear her. “That has to mean something.”

  Sometimes when Noh was trying to find the answer to an important question, she would talk to herself out loud. Giving voice to her thoughts enabled her to sort out the helpful ones from the not-so-helpful ones. As she mulled over the two seemingly incongruous ideas, she got a tingly feeling all over. Instinctively she pulled the evil eye stone from her pocket and looked at it in the sunlight. It seemed to wink at her, as if to say that the answer she sought was right there in her hand.

  Noh grinned as the solution hit her like lightning: The evil eye stone has to be the catalyst for my new abilities!

  Noh wasn’t one hundred percent certain that her hypothesis was correct, but she decided it would be smart to keep her new good luck charm close by just to be safe. She slipped the stone back into her pocket for safekeeping and continued her march around the football field.

  Noh had almost finished her seventh lap when she heard a voice calling from the far side of the bleachers. She squinted into the sun and saw Hullie waving his arms wildly at her to get her attention.

  He was too far away for her to hear exactly what he was saying, but Noh thought she could make out the words “lunch” and “hungry.”

  She picked up her pace and reached the groundskeeper before he could say “Jack Sprat.”

  “You weren’t waiting for me to get your lunch, were you?” Noh called out as she ran.

  Hullie shook his head and smiled.

  “Nope, I was just hoping we could have a few minutes to chat before we went in, that’s all. I looked around for you earlier, but you had disappeared.”

  Noh fell into step with Hullie as they walked toward the dining room.

  “Does this belong to you?” Hullie said as he pulled Noh’s toothbrush out of his pocket and brandished it about like a sword.

  Noh couldn’t decide if she should fess up to being the owner of the toothbrush or deny it completely. She decided that honesty was her only choice because she sincerely liked Hullie and didn’t want him to think she was a liar. Trust was a lot like lemonade. Once you stirred in the sugar, it could never be unsweetened again.

  “Um, yeah?… It’s, uh, mine, I guess.”

  Hullie nodded and handed the toothbrush to her. She quickly pocketed it.

  “Where did you get it?” Noh wanted to know. Hullie shrugged.

  “Don’t worry, my dear, it’s our little secret.” He gave her a pat on the shoulder, then pulled open the door so Noh could go inside.

  “But, Hullie, the toothbrush was—”

  Hullie put his finger to his lips to silence her as they rounded the corner and the massive double doors that led to the dining room came into view.

  “We’ll talk again later,” he said. “The walls have ears, you know.”

  At least I wasn’t imagining things, she thought as her nose followed the delicious food smells into the dining room. There really are some strange and amazing things happening around here.

  Noh and Hullie were the last ones to come in for lunch. Everyone else had already eaten and returned to whatever work they were doing. Noh didn’t mind. It meant that she could have seconds and thirds without feeling like a glutton.

&nb
sp; She and Hullie tucked into their food in silence, both savoring the taste of the homemade meat loaf and garlic bread. When Mrs. Marble came out with hot apple pie for dessert, Noh and Hullie each had two pieces.

  After Hullie had eaten the last bite of his pie, he wiped his mouth gingerly with his napkin and gave a polite burp, which made Noh giggle.

  “Why don’t we head outside and I’ll show you where you can find a five-leaf clover,” Hullie announced, setting his napkin on top of his empty plate.

  Noh nodded, still remembering his comment about the walls having ears.

  Five-Leaf

  (or Six- or Seven-Leaf)

  Clovers

  Noh followed Hullie out the double doors and across the lawn, her smaller feet taking two steps for every one of Hullie’s.

  “Where are we going, Hullie?” Noh said curiously.

  He looked back at Noh and tapped his ear, reminding her to be quiet. She grinned and he gave her a wink.

  After they left the lawn, they crossed the football field (the long way), went up and down the bleachers twice, walked back across the football field (the long way again), and then veered off into the woods. Noh followed Hullie in silence, her mind buzzing with all the questions that she wasn’t allowed to ask just yet.

  After a few minutes of walking through woods, with twigs and low-hanging branches grabbing at her face and arms, Noh and Hullie emerged by the lake. Noh didn’t think she could ever retrace the path Hullie had taken—not even with a map that marked all the important places with big red Xs.

  When Hullie got to the edge of the lake, he stopped and squatted by the water. He motioned for Noh to join him. She squatted down beside him, her brain itching to ask questions, but before she could open her mouth, Hullie beat her to the punch.

  “This very spot is the safest place in the whole school to have a private conversation,” Hullie said, smiling. “Remember that… if you want to keep your secrets while you’re here.”

  “What makes it so special?” Noh asked. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what made the spot such a great place to have a private conversation. And Noh had a very good imagination.

  Hullie didn’t answer. Instead he looked down at the ground, his hand gesturing toward a small patch of green stuff that they just happened to be squatting next to. Noh hadn’t even noticed it was there until Hullie pointed it out.

  “These little Trifoliums are what make this spot so special,” Hullie said.

  “Trifolium is the Latin name for clovers,” Noh replied, to Hullie’s surprise. “My dad taught me lots of Latin names for plants and stuff. He’s really a bug specialist, but he loves plants, too.”

  Noh looked at the green stuff closely, expecting to see a few mutants mixed in with a bunch of normal-looking three-leafers, but instead she found that every plant she saw was an honest-to-goodness five-leaf clover. And some of them even had six or seven leaves—which made them even luckier!

  “Wow,” Noh said. “This must be the luckiest place in the whole school!”

  Hullie laughed.

  “I think you just answered your own question, Noh,” Hullie said.

  It was true. Now Noh knew exactly why this was such a good place to tell secrets: It was lucky, and you always wanted luck on your side when you had important things to discuss but wanted to keep them private at the same time.

  “Why are there so many of them?” Noh asked.

  Hullie shrugged. “Nobody knows why for certain, but there is a legend about this place… ,” he said.

  Noh couldn’t contain her excitement. She loved legends and myths. In fact, one of her favorite things to do was to curl up under the covers with a flashlight and The Arabian Nights, or a book about King Arthur and Camelot, and read all night long. She actually thought that when she grew up, she might want to write made-up stories exactly like the myths and legends she loved so much now.

  “Do you know the legend?” Noh said, hoping very much that he did.

  Hullie gave her a broad smile, letting her know that he did know the legend… and that he was going to tell her all about it.

  The Legend

  It happened during the New Newbridge Academy’s first dedication ceremony,” Hullie began, taking out a thin, carved toothpick and sticking it in between his teeth.

  “The boy’s name was Hubert,” Hullie continued, “and he was overlarge for his age. This made people assume that he was older than he really was, and since they thought he was older, they treated him like he was older too. Which for some kids would’ve been the greatest blessing in the world, but for a boy like Hubert, well, it was really a curse.”

  Noh could see Hubert in her mind’s eye. Instead of a normal-looking boy, she imagined a giant with fists like meat tenderizers and a head like a gigantic watermelon. She could see exactly why he got yelled at more, why he got teased more, and why he was expected to behave better more. She completely understood why, as far as Hubert was concerned, everything was more, more, more, more, more—and not in a good way.

  “As he got older, Hubert became more and more reserved,” Hullie said, chewing on the end of his toothpick in exactly the same way that Noh chewed on the ends of her pencils. “He very rarely spoke unless spoken to, and he never yelled. Never. His thinking was that if he could just make himself smaller and quieter than everyone else, people would forget he was there and they would leave him alone.”

  Noh’s image of Hubert changed. She now saw a little boy who just wanted to be left alone, hiding behind a giant shadow of himself. Noh understood wanting to be left alone. She knew how much easier it was to get by in the world when you pretended like you didn’t exist. Being a shadow lingering on the sidelines was usually how Noh liked to appear when she was around kids her own age. That way no one teased her or poked fun at her name—not that she let that bother her too much—but it also meant that no one asked you to join the kickball team or do a science project with them either.

  “How did he do it?” Noh asked curiously.

  “Well, when someone told Hubert that the Native Americans had perfected a way to walk without a sound so as not to scare away the animals they were hunting,” Hullie said, “he read everything he could about them. And the more Hubert read, the more he wanted to be as silent and invisible as an Indian brave stalking his prey.”

  Noh wished she were an Indian brave. She and Hubert were in direct agreement about how cool that would be.

  “Pretty soon Hubert had all but vanished,” Hullie continued, still chewing on his toothpick. “He could go into any room in his house and no one would even look up. He could walk into any store and take what he wanted, and no one was ever the wiser. In fact, he was so invisible that he stopped showing up to school and the principal never even called his parents. His curse, he decided, was now a gift.”

  “But was he really invisible?” Noh asked. She’d heard of lots of strange things—and seen lots of strange things too (like her friend Henry!), but she’d never ever heard of anyone learning to become invisible.

  Hullie didn’t speak immediately. Instead he tilted his head to the side and squinted his eyes, thinking. Finally, he shook his head like he was shifting his thoughts all around inside it and said, “Well, I can’t rightly say.”

  “I think he wasn’t really invisible.” Noh shrugged. “I think he just wanted to be so badly that he made everyone around him believe he was. Kind of like an optical illusion!”

  “Maybe so,” Hullie said. “Maybe so…”

  “Invisible or not, what happened to him next?” Noh asked, picking a six-leaf clover and twirling it between her fingers.

  Hullie continued, “When Hubert heard about the dedication ceremony for the new school, he decided that this would be the ultimate test of his invisibility. He would attend the ceremony, and at the pivotal moment—when the mayor was just about to cut the ribbon officially dedicating the school—Hubert would slip up to the podium, walk right past the mayor, and cut the ribbon himself.”

  “
That’s audacious!” Noh said, liking Hubert’s plan very much.

  “Well, if all went as planned, the audience would be so shocked to see a ribbon cutting itself that they would think the school was haunted and no one would ever let their children go there,” Hullie said, adding, “he would be single-handedly responsible for closing the New Newbridge Academy before it had even opened.”

  Noh’s twelve-year-old mind thought it was the most brilliant and dastardly plan that had ever been conceived. She wished she’d thought of it herself—not that she disliked people enough that she wanted to scare them all so badly.

  “Did it work?” Noh asked.

  “I’ll let you be the judge,” Hullie said, biting his toothpick thoughtfully before returning to the story.

  “Hubert spent almost two months working on becoming even more silent and invisible than he already was. There was only one problem, one thing that Hubert was unaware of, and this one thing would be Hubert’s undoing—but we’ll get to that part later,” Hullie said ominously.

  “So, the day for the dedication ceremony came, and Hubert got up bright and early, brushed his teeth, and prepared for his big day. He spent almost two hours in the woods behind the school, practicing his Indian brave walk before he finally made his way over to where the dedication ceremony was being held in front of the new building.”

  Noh could just see Hubert creeping up to the place where the ceremony was being held. He would be the first person to arrive, of course, except maybe for some old handyman setting up chairs on the lawn for the day’s festivities, but Noh figured that the old handyman would never even know that Hubert had ever been there at all.

  Noh pictured a small stage where, hung between two wooden stakes, was the pièce de résistance of Hubert’s plan: a bright yellow ribbon, rippling in the wind. The setting couldn’t have been more perfect for what Hubert had planned, Noh decided. She bet he could hardly wait to put his insidious plot into motion.