I nod, feeling increasingly stupid by the minute.
“Good God, why?”
“Because I have to go back to Wade,” I admit. “This place is messing my head up. I love Wade. I have for years and I can’t just let that go.”
“I thought Wade was cheating on you? With your best friend, no less.”
“Thanks for reminding me,” I mutter. “But if I go back, I might be able to go back to before the crash, to before Wade and Sophie started up a thing. I can change it.”
“Oh, honey, you can’t change anything. I don’t see why you would even want to. No matter what you had or thought you had with this boy, the fact is that he’s cheating on you. If he can do it once, he can do it again.”
“Yes, but I’m dead, aren’t I? Maybe it doesn’t count as cheating if one party is deceased. He wouldn’t do it if I was there. Neither would Sophie.”
“What about your nice friend, Anthony?” she asks. “You’re just going to leave him?”
“You don’t understand,” I moan. “He’s one of the reasons I have to get out of here. I’m completely devoted to Wade, but the more time I spend with Anthony, the more I’m starting to see that Wade has some flaws, and Anthony is… Well, Anthony is… I don’t know. He’s just Anthony.”
“I know you don’t want to hear it, but that sounds to me like you need to spend more time with Anthony and less time fixated on the person who is jumping into bed with your best friend less than a fortnight after he caused the accident that killed you.”
“What I need to do is go home,” I tell her. “Go back to my life. Back to how things were. Everything was just perfect until it all got so messed up. I need that back.”
“So you’re trying to get yourself expelled?”
I nod sullenly.
“Dare I ask what three little pigs have got to do with that?”
“They’re just a prank,” I say. I pull a marker pen out of my pocket and hold it up.
“I was going to write on them. Label them numbers one, two, and four and then let them loose in the school. The teachers will spend all day looking for number three.”
Narcissa stares at me for a while, and I think she is going to go mad. She is going to think I’m cruel to animals and report me to the head teacher or possibly fry me with her fire breath.
Then she bursts out laughing.
She keeps laughing until she is gasping for air and snorting almost as much as the pigs.
“That is one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard,” she breathes out eventually.
“So you’re not mad?”
“I think you’re crazy, Riley, but that’s an excellent prank.”
“Thanks, I—”
“They won’t expel you though,” she says. “They can’t expel you.”
“Why not?”
“There’s nowhere for you to go,” she says. “You can’t go back home, no matter how much you want to. Getting yourself thrown out won’t happen. It can’t happen.”
I’m about to protest but she continues, “There’s no body for you to go back to in your old dimension, Ri. Your physical body is in the ground. There’s nothing else. You can’t see what’s outside of these grounds until you graduate from Afterlife Academy. The only way out of here is to graduate. Trying to get expelled won’t work. It could get you in a lot of trouble though. Kids have been in detention for months for doing much less than releasing some pigs.”
“I don’t care about that,” I say.
“I think you do,” Narcissa challenges. “How many times were you in detention in your old school?”
“None. I was never stupid enough to get caught.”
“You can and will get caught here,” she says. “Anthony would really miss you if you couldn’t spend lunchtimes with him anymore because you were stuck in detention all day.”
“I doubt that’s true,” I say, but deep down inside, my stomach leaps and I can’t help the smile that spreads across my face. I had never thought that Anthony might miss me before.
Narcissa smiles.
“There are rumours of a secret exit,” I blurt out before I can stop myself. “They say that you can go back to before your death. That you can go back and have enough time to change it.”
She sighs like I’m the stupidest person in the world. “Oh, that old nugget.”
“You’ve heard it?”
“Everyone’s heard it, Riley,” she says. “No one’s ever stupid enough to look for it.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her about Clare’s group and the forum on the Internet, but I keep myself quiet. “Why not?” I ask instead.
“Because you can’t change the course of the universe. You’re here because you’re supposed to be here. No matter what you believe, you can’t change the way things happened. It would throw the whole world off-kilter. It would be disastrous for you and everyone you know.”
I nod like I believe her.
Nothing about getting back together with Wade can be wrong. Being away from him and watching him screw my best friend are what’s throwing the world off-kilter.
“Please don’t tell me you’ve been looking for this exit?”
“No,” I lie.
We sit in silence for a moment.
“Does it really exist then?” I ask, trying to sound nonchalant.
“I don’t know, Riley,” Narcissa sighs. “All I know is that you shouldn’t be looking for it, and you shouldn’t be trying to get yourself kicked out of a school that can’t kick you out.”
I sigh and throw my arms up frustratedly. “Then what the bloody hell am I going to do with these pigs?”
“Well, I have always wanted a pet,” she says.
I grin.
Okay, so I didn’t get to do my prank, but Narcissa really does love pigs.
CHAPTER 26
The following day we have another new class. This one is written on the schedules as Haunting Level 1.
“Sounds interesting,” Anthony mutters as we slip into seats next to each other in the room where we used to have geography. It’s a small and dark little room, tucked away in the corner of a building, stark and dank even in the living world. Here it’s even worse in all its grey cloudiness.
“Good morning, everyone,” the teacher greets us when we walk in. He is small and grey too, like his room. I haven’t seen him around the school much.
“How nice to have a class full of new faces,” he says chirpily. “My name is Mr Golding, and I will be your Haunting instructor. Hopefully you will all have a bit of fun in this class. We know Afterlife Academy can seem terribly serious at times, but we do want to you to enjoy a few lessons as well. Haunting is meant to be fun. After all, what is the essence of being a ghost if you cannot haunt?” He chortles at his own joke and I notice a few kids around the class are grinning too.
I raise my hand.
“Yes, Riley Richardson?”
Ugh. I shudder. A teacher knowing your name when you’ve never so much as spoken to them before never gets any less creepy.
“Does haunting mean that we get to haunt people? Living people?”
“It depends.”
“On what?” I ask.
“On how you do in this class. On your pass marks for this and other classes.”
I nod.
“Is there someone in particular that you’d like to haunt?”
I laugh. I’d kind of like to haunt Wade and Sophie.
“I can think of a few people,” Anthony hisses in my ear and I can’t help but smile at him. Whoever would have thought that Anthony would turn out to be fun?
“Okay,” Mr Golding says. “Hands up—who’s ever seen a horror movie?”
Everyone raises their hands.
“Hands up—who’s ever laughed at a horror movie?”
Again, everyone raises their hands.
“That’s the problem with horror movies,” Mr Golding says. “You’re not supposed to laugh at them, and yet so many of them are so poorly made that
they are perceived as comedies.”
“What if you’ve ever been scared by a horror movie?” Shanna, the fluffy-slippers-of-doom girl, asks.
“Then they were probably doing it right,” he replies. “Now, who’s seen a movie about ghosts?”
Everyone’s hand goes up again.
“Who can tell me things about ghosts that they’ve learned from movies? What do ghosts do when they haunt a house?”
“Make spooky noises,” someone says.
“Rattle the walls,” I say when Mr Golding points to me. I’m thinking of that haunted house one where Owen Wilson got killed far too early on in the movie.
“They can kill the living,” says a boy opposite us.
“Ah, now that is entirely untrue,” Mr Golding says. “As a ghost, you can do all manner of shaking walls and spooky noises, but you cannot kill a living person.”
“What if you rattling their walls drives them so insane that they top themselves?” the boy asks.
“Then you’re a very good ghost,” Mr Golding says and the entire class bursts out laughing. “But seriously, you shouldn’t be haunting anyone vulnerable. But that is a topic for later in your training. Anyone else got any horror movie clichés for me?”
“They can move things without people seeing them so they think it’s moving by itself,” someone says from behind me.
“They can possess people,” someone else chimes in.
“Ah yes, now we don’t want to be getting confused between ghosts and poltergeists,” Mr Golding says. “Poltergeists are evil spirits that are not from our world. Ghosts are just out to have a bit of fun, like yourselves. We don’t mean any harm to the people whose houses we haunt. Occasionally even, being a good haunter can procure you a nice little job or two. Estate agents often use us to get people out of a house they want to sell or put people up on the price they’re willing to pay. Corrupt souls those ones, but a nice little earner.” He chuckles to himself again.
“Now then, before the buzzer rings and all we’ve done is talk about horror movies—interesting chat, of course, but Mrs Carbonell would have my head on a stick if it was all I taught you—we’ll all have a practice at one of the most basic aspects of haunting. Invisibility.”
“Aren’t we invisible anyway, sir?” a girl at the front asks.
“In a manner of speaking, we are, but when we come to haunt the living, we cannot take any chances. We must learn invisibility as a skill, and we must learn it so well that it comes as second nature to us. I should warn you that this invisibility only works against each other for limited time, so don’t go getting any ideas about spying on your fellow classmates.” He winks at us like spying on our classmates is our top priority.
“I want you to turn to the person sitting next to you, hold your arms out and place your hands palm-to-palm with them.”
I turn to Anthony.
He grins at me and we hold our hands up and slowly move our palms towards each other. I close my eyes and feel a little electric spark and the good kind of shudder runs down my spine when we touch.
Ooh.
I never felt that with Wade.
“Now then,” Mr Golding is saying, “I want one partner to close their eyes and concentrate, and one partner to watch your joined hands. You will each get a turn to try, so don’t worry about who goes first.”
“You go first,” Anthony says. “I’ll watch.”
“Okay, partner number one, close your eyes and clear your mind. You’ve all been to a couple of Visualisation classes by now, so it’s a bit like that, but more fun. Rather than thinking of a memory, visualise your hand becoming invisible.”
I sit there and do that. It’s hard at first because all I can think about is Anthony’s hand touching mine. I have to resist the urge to lace my fingers with his and give his hand a squeeze.
Then Anthony says, “Oh my god,” and I think maybe my brain has run away with me and I’ve done just that. My eyes snap open and I realise I am only looking at Anthony’s hand.
Mine has gone.
Then it flickers iridescently and starts to reappear.
“That’s it,” Mr Golding says. “Riley’s got it.”
Wow, I think.
Wow.
Everyone is watching me as I try again. This time my hand disappears and half of my arm does too.
“That’s so cool,” someone says.
“That’s amazing,” another girl says.
“Yes, very well done, Riley,” Mr Golding says. “You’re a natural.”
My arm glimmers and comes back in to view, then everyone goes back to watching their own partners and Anthony closes his eyes to try while I watch him.
I stare at him. Why did I never notice how pretty his face is before? Smooth, flat cheekbones and soft-looking lips. Overly long hair that is now a perfect shade of charcoal. I can almost imagine the feel of it curling around my fingers if I were to run my hands through it.
If we weren’t in class, I’d lean over and kiss him.
I did not just think that.
It’s probably a good thing that Wade has cheated on me with Sophie because I am certainly having some interesting thoughts about Anthony. Not that Anthony thinks about me that way, but I’m starting to wish he did.
“Whoa, look,” I say suddenly, and Anthony’s eyes fly open to look at his hand, which has disappeared.
“Wow,” he breathes.
“Oh, very good,” says Mr Golding.
“That’s amazing,” Anthony says.
“Yes,” I say, “it is.”
And I’m not talking about just his hand.
A few more people make their hands glimmer, but none disappear completely like ours did.
“See you next week, class,” Mr Golding says as we all swing our bags over our shoulders to leave. “Good job, you two,” he says to Anthony and me.
And I realise something.
I really enjoyed that.
And not just because I got to hold Anthony’s hand for a majority of the lesson.
I actually enjoyed a class at Afterlife Academy.
I’m looking forward to next week. I don’t even mind that we have Redemption class this afternoon.
Then I realise something else.
I probably won’t be here next week.
I have to go. I have to get back to Wade and there’s no time to waste.
I want to get expelled before next week.
I feel slightly sick at the thought of that.
Wade, I think. Concentrate on Wade. Think about his beautiful short hair and his plump lips. Think about finally getting to stare into those big brown eyes again.
It does nothing to help the sick feeling in my stomach.
But the fact of the matter is that I have to go home. I can’t even consider staying in this awful place just because there’s one class I’m good at.
And because of Anthony.
I don’t even like Anthony. I have to remember that.
“You were brilliant in there,” Anthony says, snapping me out of my thoughts.
“Thanks,” I murmur. “You weren’t so bad yourself.”
“Hey, Riley.” One of the boys from the back of the class comes up to us. “Can you teach me how to do that? It looked awesome.”
“Er, thanks,” I say, surprised. “I have no idea what I did. It just happened.”
“Well, you were awesome.” He pats me on the back and pushes past us to catch up with his mates.
God, what is wrong with me? I’ve been here for two weeks and I’ve already forgotten how to talk to people.
“Great job, Riley!” a girl shouts out as she walks past.
A couple of other people clap me on the shoulder as they pass us.
“Looks like someone might not be as unpopular as she first thought,” Anthony says.
“It’s just a fluke,” I say, but I’m grinning from ear to ear.
So much so that Narcissa doesn’t even offer me comfort food when we get to the canteen.
&nb
sp; Unfortunately my joy is short-lived, because as Anthony and I are eating lunch at our table, the prefect who appeared at the gate on our first day comes in and stalks over to us.
“You.” He points at me with a sneer on his face. “Eliza Carbonell’s office. Now.” Then he stalks off again.
“Oh hell, what have you done now, Ri?” Anthony says, rolling his eyes.
“Nothing,” I mutter, but it doesn’t stop my heart thudding in my chest as I walk out on shaky legs.
A few people from Haunting class smile or wave at me as I pass their tables, and I can’t help but feel warm inside.
It feels like home.
Suddenly I’m scared that Eliza Carbonell might be about to say otherwise.
CHAPTER 27
I wobble over to the main hall and find Eliza Carbonell waiting for me. She beckons me into her office.
This isn’t going to be good.
“Take a seat, Riley. Do you have anything you want to tell me?”
Oh, how I love that question. It’s nothing but a ploy to get you to confess to something that they’re pretending to already know about.
“About what?” I ask innocently.
“Okay, I’ll make it clear,” she says. “Let’s start with something easy. Why did you pull the fire alarm the other night?”
“I didn—”
“Don’t even start that sentence if it’s going to be a lie,” she says. “I fingerprinted the device. Unless you’ve been standing there stroking it for fun, I’m taking a guess that for some reason you thought it would be a good idea to test it in the middle of the night. After we discovered that, Mr Burgrove was kind enough to tell me that he’d caught you and your boyfriend sneaking around outside after dark. Is any of this true?”
“He’s not my—”
“Is it true?”
“Maybe,” I admit. “But it’s not what you think.”
“No? Because I think you’re doing everything you can to get yourself stuck in detention for approximately three years. You’re a nice girl, Riley. Prone to cutting class, but a good worker and respectful to teachers is what I have in your files from your old school. You must understand how seriously we take safety in this school. You must know why there are smoke alarms and fire extinguishers around every corner. You must understand why we don’t play with them. Particularly at two in the morning. But that is not the point. It’s the boy who cried wolf. Next time the fire alarm rings at two in the morning, the kids might think it’s just a drill again and not bother to get out of bed, and next time it might be a real fire. People could die, all because you decided to play silly beggars with the alarm one day.”
Afterlife Academy Page 17
