by Anita Oh
“I thought we were in a rush,” Sam whispered back.
“We are, but…” I pointed finger guns to where Katie was pacing beside the fountain. She was obviously waiting for someone, and everyone else was at the assembly, so it was either me or one of her evil contacts. Either way, it was better to be hiding behind the bush.
“It doesn’t look like she’s leaving anytime soon,” said Sam.
It really didn’t. I sighed. We could double back and go through the front entrance, but we’d need to go the whole way around the school for that, and the assembly would probably be over by the time we got there. I sighed and stepped back onto the path.
Any hope I’d had of passing her quietly by vanished as soon as she saw us. She rushed straight up to us, her eyes flickering around wildly.
“You have to leave,” she whispered. “Now. Today. Go! Now. Get off the island, any way you can.”
“Katie, what?” Sam reached out to touch her arm, and she flinched away, twitching and looking back over her shoulder.
I’d never seen her like that before. Even when she was scared or nervous, she’d always held it together, but now she was a wreck. The more I looked at her, the more I could see it: the dark shadows under her eyes, the way her normally sleek hair was frizzed around her face. Whether or not she was telling us the truth, she was in some serious trouble.
“What’s going on, Katie?” I asked her.
“They won’t let me go,” she whispered. “So, you have to get out of here. It’s the only way to stop it.”
Even though she was freaking out, I couldn’t just take her at her word. The last time I had, the whole pack had nearly died.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m in a hurry. Maybe if you show me some concrete evidence of what you’re saying, I can help out.”
I felt bad, turning away from her when she was so obviously in distress. We’d been friends once, or at least, I’d thought so at the time. But even if I could trust her, I couldn’t trust the hold my father’s evil cronies had over her. Maybe she was freaked out because they were threatening her or mind-controlling her, or who even knew what. I glanced back at her, still pacing in front of the fountain, then headed up into the courtyard.
The heavy doors of the assembly hall creaked as we pulled them open. The only noise from within was Assistant Head Noel’s voice, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. A few people turned to look at us as we crept in, but most people kept facing the front. The assembly hall was more crowded than I’d ever seen it, so many people that there weren’t even enough seats. I looked around to spot Tennyson and the others, but it was impossible to find them from the back of the hall.
At the front, Assistant Head Noel was standing up on the stage, speaking into the microphone. Beside him was an oversized picture of Hannah Morgan mounted on an easel, with a wreath of flowers at the bottom. It all seemed very ominous.
What’s going on? I asked Tennyson, trying not to let panic overtake me.
It couldn’t be what it seemed like. That would just be too terrible.
I’d tried looking for Hannah Morgan. There hadn’t been very much I could do, but I’d tried. I had no power, no money, no idea where to start, but I’d done everything I could think of to find her. I couldn’t believe I’d failed her.
“In times like these, it’s important to stay strong,” Assistant Head Noel said. “Support each other, rely on each other.”
If that was the kind of thing he was droning on with, I was pleased I’d missed most of the assembly, but still, I wanted to know the facts.
What’s all this about? Answer me, Tennyson!
“You can’t speak to Tennyson?” Sam whispered. “I can’t feel the pack bond either.” He nodded toward the ceiling, to the intricately carved cornices. “I think they’re threaded with silver.”
“The headmistress told me the school was originally built for…” I glanced furtively around, but everyone was still fixed on Assistant Head Noel. “You know, special people. People like us. Maybe this was originally, like, a panic room or something?”
Sam shrugged. “Makes as much sense as anything.”
“Still doesn’t tell us what’s going on here, though.”
Sam gave me a sharp look, which I ignored. Just because it seemed obvious didn’t mean it was. Maybe Hannah had been found and was safe. Maybe her parents had donated money for an extension to the school golf course. We couldn’t jump to conclusions. When she went missing, there hadn’t been any sort of school announcement or acknowledgement, so maybe they were just getting around to that now, almost a year later. Just because there were flowers and people looking sad didn’t mean we should expect the worst. Whatever it was, it seemed as if Assistant Head Noel wasn’t going to give us a nice neat little summary before he dismissed us for class. He just kept rambling on with his well-meaning platitudes. I bet he was the kind of guy who posted those inspirational posts on his Facebook wall, like “Impossible just means I’m possible” and “Life is like photography: we develop from the negatives” with pictures of rainbows and dolphins in the background.
Finally, he dismissed us, and everyone surged toward the doors. I tried to stick around so I could find Tennyson, but the crowd swept me away.
“I’ll see you at lunch,” Sam said. He was getting pulled in the other direction. He gave me a bracing smile before he turned away, and I knew he thought Hannah had come to a sticky end, but I couldn’t believe it.
As I made my way to history class, I kept an eye out for anyone who might tell me what had happened in the assembly. It was kind of depressing how few friends I had, or even people who would reply if I asked them a question. My complete lack of popularity didn’t normally bother me, but today I could see why it might be useful.
My heart leapt when I spotted Fatima across the hall. Even though she didn’t particularly like me, we’d both been friends with Hannah, and I knew she’d at least tell it to me straight. Our eyes met, but before I could make my way over to her, she shook her head and ran off in the other direction. She looked as if she’d been crying, but that didn’t mean anything. They might’ve been tears of happiness at Hannah being found. Or she might’ve done badly on an assignment or something. It wasn’t good to jump to conclusions just because all the facts pointed in a certain direction.
I tried to listen in to people's conversations, but hardly anyone was talking. There were a few mutters of things like, "At least the dance isn't cancelled,” and "What a downer,” but no specifics.
What happened in the assembly? I asked Tennyson.
If you cared, you’d have shown up yourself, he replied.
I sighed. I hated when he got like that.
I got there as fast as I could, I told him. I only caught the end of it.
Don’t you have your history test now? We’ll talk about it afterwards.
But the history test was the last thing on my mind. I knew it was important, and I’d studied super hard for it, but I just couldn’t focus on Nazi Germany. I stared and stared at the paper, but the words made no sense to me.
There was no way that Hannah was dead. The Others had taken her for a reason, and that reason wasn’t just to kill her. They’d taken Sam, and he was still alive. They had made it look as if he was dead, though, so surely that was what was going on here. If there was some sort of evidence of Hannah being dead and that was what all the fuss was over, then it was probably the same thing. There’d been pretty convincing evidence for Sam being dead, but they’d just been doing creepy experiments or something on him and turning him into a werewolf.
I wondered what Hannah would be like as a werewolf. She’d been pretty badass and morally bankrupt as a witch, though awesome as a roomie. I doubted the Others would do the kind of experiments on people that made them offer to pop the popcorn during a Netflix marathon, though. I wondered if their experiments were all that different from my evil dad’s and if there was a link between the two somehow. The Others seemed to want to bring out people
’s abilities, whereas my dad and his cronies were more on the side of putting an end to those abilities, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a connection. The Others didn’t seem human, and I had my own theories about what they were, that they’d started off like me, people with that weird zero gene. People who had cycled through all the types of paranormal creatures they could be until they ascended into a being of pure evil. My only proof for thinking that was a picture I’d seen on a wall in a dream, but that didn’t make it untrue.
And those things had Hannah. I was sure of it. I was sure she was still alive.
The bell rang.
I looked down at my paper. I’d barely written on it, a few one-word answers and some doodles. Not good. I needed to pass that test, or my scholarship would be in serious trouble. I looked between the teacher and my paper, trying to somehow make the answers appear, but nothing happened. The classroom emptied, and I still had no ideas. I couldn’t hand that in. I’d get a zero. I couldn’t get a zero.
“Some of us have places to be,” said the teacher, a fly-in we’d had for a few weeks. He was apparently some genius PhD candidate from an Ivy League school, and he looked as if he resented every second he was there.
I got up and walked toward his desk, my legs feeling heavy. What could I do? I couldn’t hand that paper in.
“I was wondering if I could re-sit the test,” I said as I got closer.
“Are you going to be any less stupid next week than this week?” he asked, snatching the paper out of my hands. “My answer is no.”
He turned and walked away.
I stood in the empty classroom, wondering if this day could possibly get any worse.
Chapter 3
The day definitely didn’t get any better. All through algebra, I worried about Hannah. If the Others had decided to fake her death, what possible reason could they have for it? Even if she was still alive, it seemed like a bad sign. Finally, the bell rang for lunch, and I hurried to meet up with Tennyson so he could tell me what was going on.
I braced myself for bad news as I entered the dining hall. The mood was somber; nobody was talking or laughing. Nearly everyone else had been to school together right from the start, so even if they weren’t friends with Hannah, I guessed it was still a shock. Tennyson and the others were already up on their lunch balcony, so I made my way toward them. Nobody made eye contact with me, which was unusual — I normally got a few filthy looks, at least.
There was no sign of Fatima, and I hoped she was okay. She’d been closer to Hannah than anyone, the two of them and their friend Milo. I rarely saw Milo around at all anymore. We had no classes together, and if we saw each other in passing, he ignored me. He’d never liked me much, right from the start, and there was that one time I’d almost eaten him when I was in wolf form. He had basically accused me of being behind Hannah’s disappearance, he suspected Tennyson was a werewolf, and he was the most paranoid person I’d ever met, so it made sense for him to stay out of my way. Fatima seemed to have moved on to a different friendship group since she’d transferred to Green House, but I hoped at least that she and Milo would console each other over this. They didn’t have the benefit of knowing that more was going on like I did.
I sat down between Sam and Althea and flicked through the lunch menu, even though I knew what I was having. The Friday chef always did amazing things with pulled pork, like grilled mac & cheese pulled pork and roast potatoes stuffed with pulled pork and pulled pork nachos. It was my favorite day of the week.
“So, is someone going to tell me what’s going on?” I said, scrolling back up the menu. “Wait, where is the pork? I only see lamb here. Why is there no pork?” I couldn’t stomach lamb at all, not since the time my little brothers had gotten sick off some bad gyros. Maybe there was an error with the menu.
“Friday chef is sick, I heard,” said Nikolai.
I stared at him in horror.
“Just order the vegan option,” said Tennyson. “Are you interested in Hannah Morgan or not?”
I wrinkled my nose at him. The tofu curry was probably great, but anything would be unsatisfying when you were expecting pulled pork pizza boats. “Of course I’m interested. From the way everyone is acting, I’m guessing Assistant Head Noel reported that she’s dead?”
He nodded. “A body washed up down the coast, and the dental records match hers.”
“They had to use dental records to identify her? That’s not at all suspicious.”
“Not only that,” said Althea, picking at her side salad. “They’ve ruled it a suicide. They claim she jumped off the cliff here, and the tide carried her away.”
“How are people buying that?” I asked. “There’s literally no way they could prove that, especially if she was so unrecognizable that they had to use dental records.”
“Even if we hadn’t seen her disappear from right in front of us, I’d think it was suspicious,” said Tennyson. “Also, announcing it to the entire school the way they did makes me think they have ulterior motives.”
“The headmistress wasn’t there, was she?” I asked. “Is she still on campus?” I hadn’t seen her at the assembly, but she didn’t seem to hang out with the student body all that much.
“I didn’t see her,” Tennyson said.
Nikolai and Althea nodded in agreement.
“They normally make an announcement when she leaves, though,” said Althea. “In seventh grade, we had to have a farewell ceremony, do you remember?”
“Was that when Elisabeth Percy played the harp and sang Taylor Swift’s ‘You Belong with Me’ to Tennyson?” Nikolai asked, laughing. “That was the greatest moment in all of middle school.”
At the look on Tennyson’s face, I heroically forced down my own laughter. “Tennyson would never wear worn-out jeans,” I said in his defense.
“At any rate,” Tennyson said, speaking over the top of Nikolai’s laughter, “someone wants to be sure that nobody is looking for Hannah Morgan. That’s the most logical reason to announce her death.”
“We should find out who informed the school,” said Althea. “It was probably her family, but I’ll talk to Assistant Head Noel this afternoon. He likes me, so he’ll probably tell me everything he knows.”
I felt as if I should be sad that Hannah was confirmed dead, but instead it seemed that it was the closest I’d come to finding her since she’d vanished. Instead of sitting back and waiting for information to turn up, we actually had something to go on for the first time.
Don’t get too excited, Tennyson said, staring at me as my tofu curry appeared on the table. This isn’t necessarily a good sign.
I know, but at least it’s something.
I was distracted from both my curry and my conversation with Tennyson by Sam nudging me with his elbow.
“How did your history test go?” he asked.
I shook my head sadly. “I totally bombed out. I need to get permission to re-sit it, or else I’ll be on academic probation for the rest of the year.”
“Well, that’s easy enough,” said Nikolai. “Just threaten to have his research funding withdrawn, and he’ll soon let you.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Because that’s such a realistic threat from the scholarship kid.”
He shrugged.
“I can’t believe they made you sit a test right after that assembly. Once we explain the circumstances, I’m sure you’ll be allowed to re-sit it,” said Althea. “Mother will step in on your behalf. It’s better for the pack to stay together. You can't leave the school.”
She gave me a small smile. The other three had only just started treating her normally again after the whole thing with the love potion, so I could see why she’d want to keep me around. Nikolai, especially, had been super cold toward her, so it was nice to see them bonding over the dance.
“Yes. In fact, we should see about having you moved to the house next year,” said Tennyson. “It’s inconvenient for you to be in the Red House, especially given your history with roommates. It�
��s better for you to stay close.”
My belly did a weird sort of flip-flop that I didn’t think was because of the curry. I put it down to being uncomfortable with the thought of living in the Golden House, what with all the priceless things I could potentially break. It was all too easy to imagine a lifetime of indentured servitude because I’d stepped on some antique pocket watch.
“I’m not sure you’ve got room for me,” I said, then shoveled some curry into my mouth.
The conversation moved on to other things. Some guy in her pre-calc class had a crush on Althea and had been sending her creepy poems. Nikolai wanted her to read them to us in a funny voice, but she refused. Tennyson had gotten into an argument with his English teacher about The Catcher in the Rye because he’d said that the main theme was white male entitlement and how Holden had turned it into victimhood, and his teacher thought he was missing the point. Nikolai had gone back to bed after assembly, which explained why he was still wearing his dressing gown.
And, of course, we talked about the dance. Nikolai had been having an ongoing war with Laura Montgomery, one of the Green House girls on the planning committee, about which floral motif was more suitable, cherry blossoms or hydrangeas. Nikolai thought cherry blossoms were too common, and finally he'd beaten her down. Althea wasn't sure which dress she should wear, so could I come to the house a bit earlier to help her decide? I listened to them talk as I ate my curry and thought up ways I could find Hannah.
There’s no point worrying until we have more information, Tennyson said. Nothing has actually changed for Hannah Morgan just because of the assembly.
I wrinkled up my nose at him. I just wish I’d been at the assembly so I could’ve heard what they said. Maybe there was some clue that you missed. You should’ve taken notes.
