Dying for an Education

by Stacey Alabaster

  I trailed off. I wasn’t quite ready to admit to Matt what my next plan of attack was just yet. Maybe because I wasn’t quite ready to admit it to myself.

  Oh, where is Alyson when you need her the most?

  Things had been a little weird between Matt and I for a while, but now there was a little frisson of excitement every time I saw him because I was just waiting for him to pull out the engagement ring I had found in his hallway closet. I wasn’t even sure what my answer was going to be…but I was ready to hear the question.

  I thought.

  But so far, there had been no mention of it. And I was starting to wonder if I had imagined the whole thing.

  Maybe a ghost had put the ring in Matt’s closet drawers.

  Matt was at the top of the stairs. I stood back, barely brave enough to even look as he slowly walked around. He moved the stool back to its rightful position. Somehow, overnight, it had found its way to the edge of the landing, AGAIN.

  “See?” he said a little nervously. “All fixed.”

  Yeah, right. I could see the creeped-out look in his eyes as he descended the stairs even if he tried to hide it.

  There was something up there. And I was going to get to the bottom of it. Even if I had to go take extreme measures.

  I was ready.

  7

  Alyson

  “Yikes,” I said as Sam and I exited the poetry lecture. “I don’t think that’s for me.” I felt completely drained after an hour in Adrian Malone’s presence. He’d spent the majority of the time lecturing on dense philosophical theories about metaphor and meaning, and I’d felt like I was in an algebra lesson. Or taking a foreign language. None of it had sunk in, and I felt like an alien on another planet.

  But Sam was actually nice for once. Encouraging. “Adrian is just more of a dry lecturer than Rick is… He doesn’t explain the concepts as well. It doesn’t mean that you are stupid for not understanding it. Even I have trouble keeping up.”

  “Thanks,” I mumbled, although I wasn’t sure I believed him. There were heaps of students in the class who had been following along just fine, who had been able to raise their hands and contribute and even had some arguments against the philosophers we were discussing. You had to understand what someone was saying before you could argue against it.

  “I really think I need a bit more prep before I just throw myself in,” I said, taking a deep breath as I clutched my books to my chest.

  “Don’t forget that you’ve been trying out classes from all levels…” Sam said, shoving his hands in his pockets. “This was a third-year level class. When you actually start, you’ll be eased into it a bit.”

  Yes. ‘A bit.’ But I would still be expected to understand the basics, and I’d have to contribute in tutorials and lectures the way that Sam and the other students did. And I had seen the reading lists for most of these classes—I would have to read more books in a week than I usually read in ten years.

  “So where to next?” Sam asked me, still being friendly.

  “Well, I need to actually attend one of my business lectures now,” I said, a little flat after what had just happened. “Seeing as this is what I am actually coming to university to study.”

  Sam clearly looked down on the business facility a bit because the look on his face was dismissive. No longer interested. “Ah, well, I’m sure you’ll fit in better there.”

  What a guy!

  I trudged over to the other side of campus where the business building was —a large, looming white building that was thirty years newer than the old English building. It was strange —by the time I reached the white tower, I was starting to miss the English facility. Well, what do you know? Claire would be so proud. Of course, I would never tell her. She would be far too smug about it, and she was already pretty smug.

  The kids in the business lecture—small business finance was the topic—were less fashionable than the English kids. A lot of pale blue button-up shirts. A lot of mini-Troys everywhere I looked.

  The lecture had been going for ten minutes, but I was having trouble keeping my eyes open, let alone my ears to focus.

  My gosh, it was so dry. I looked around at the other students and just thought, How do you do it? And these guys weren’t just trying out the class like I was. They had already paid tuition, bought the textbooks, and gone into debt over this snooze-fest.

  I was starting to get a thumping headache. I just had to get out of there.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, standing up and gathering my books. “But there is somewhere else I need to be.”

  Fortunately, with the drama of what had happened the night before, I wasn’t the only student acting weird and running out of classes, so even though the lecturer—a man with cropped black hair and thick glasses—looked weary, he waved me out of there.

  As soon as I was outside, I felt like I could breathe again.

  Phew.

  I was about to head to the quad for an iced coffee when I saw Adrian Malone, bustling along, heading toward what looked to be the staff lounge of the English Department.

  Hmmm. A plan started to form in my head.

  He had never seen me at the lecture because I had sat in the back and I definitely hadn’t put my hand up to try and answer any questions and embarrass myself terribly.

  I took a sneak peek into the lounge. Maybe this was my moment to really find out what had happened to Rick Niemer.

  And maybe being older could finally work to my advantage.

  8

  Claire

  I needed someone to talk to…about everything.

  And so here I was. To talk. Hopefully more.

  I was trying to keep an open mind.

  I stepped through the doors of the new age store and the scent of incense hit me in the face. But I wasn’t there to shop. I was there to be hustled along to the backroom where a woman was waiting for me.

  A woman who claimed she could help me with all of my ghostly problems.

  But I still couldn’t quite believe where I was. I so badly wanted to send Alyson a snap and show her. But she was being super weird. Wouldn’t even tell me what her classes were like or how she was getting on with the other students. Maybe she hated it there and just didn’t want to admit it.

  Oh well, I would let her be until she was willing to admit what was really going on.

  “Claire?” The woman behind the crystal ball was old, maybe 70, maybe slightly older, with white hair and piercing blue eyes. She smiled at me in a serious but kind manner and introduced herself as Byron.

  Byron only did readings once a week, on Thursday. I’d been lucky she had a cancellation that morning and I’d been able to slip right in. Byron actually said that it must have been the universe saying it was meant to be.

  “So, tell me, dear,” she said in a voice that sounded at once girlish and elderly. There was a croak to it, but a sing-song quality as well.

  “I am being haunted,” I said with a small gulp. “I know that sounds…”

  I was ready to be defensive, to try and show her that I knew it was crazy and I WAS a logical person, but she gently interrupted me.

  But Bryon held up her index finger and gently told me to shush. I was in a safe place. There was nothing I could say there that would sound crazy. So, I exhaled and relaxed a little and told her everything that had been happening with the stool and the strange sounds and the very eerie vibes I was getting every time I walked into the shop. She told me that she would use a set of cards to divine the problem. She asked me to close my eyes and to take three from the deck without thinking about it, just using my intuition.

  I did as I was told.

  “Are the answers there?” I asked, gulping. I was on the edge of the little seat across from her, just waiting for Byron to tell me what I could do. She was charging me a hundred bucks for the session, so I was eager to get some bang for my buck.

  She nodded and looked at the cards. I was trying to read the look on her face. It was grave, but it had been
quite serious since I’d walked in even though she was kindly. Or maybe I was reading it wrong and it was more reverence for the whole thing.

  “You are definitely being haunted,” she said. “And it’s a presence that is going to need your full attention.”

  Oh, great.

  I had actually come in for reassurance that I wasn’t or that if I was, there was an easy fix. Like, if I just ignored it then it would go away. But at least now I knew I wasn’t going completely mad. There really was something in the shop

  But Byron had more to say. And what she said just confused me even more.

  She was staring at the cards with a furrowed brow, looking more and more serious.

  “There is someone…something coming. A ghost. But you have yet to encounter this being.”

  “Huh?” I said, giving her a black stare, my crossed legs causing me pins and needles. “Believe me, I have encountered this ghost. I’ve been living with it all week.”

  But all Byron did was shake her head and tell me to wait. I wanted my money back, to be honest.

  It wasn’t until I walked out into the street that I realized that she had been telling me the truth after all. In fact, maybe she should have been charging double for her skills.

  My ex-boyfriend Chris was standing right there. And he was waiting for me.

  9

  Alyson

  I had taken off my ripped denim jacket and replaced it with a blazer from Troy’s collection while he was out reading the paper and having an espresso in a nearby coffee shop. I knew it was an expensive garment compared to what the rest of the English faculty were wearing, but it was paired with my cheap jeans and knockoff shoes. And a belt that had frayed edges. So all in all, I figured I was passing as a member of the English and Literature teaching staff.

  I walked right into the staff lounge like I belonged there and went right up to the kitchenette, where Adrian was helping himself to the jar of cookies. I reached out and took one and gave an exaggerated sigh. “Long day, hey?” I said and bit down on the country cream shortbread.

  He nodded a little and reached for yet another cookie. He was already holding three. “Such a drag teaching all those dummies in the third year. They think they know it all, but they actually know nothing. It gives me a headache having to restrain all my eyeballing.”

  Wow. I was pretty tempted to tell him I had been in that class. And I wanted to point out that maybe the students weren’t the problem, but instead, maybe it was his dry and dense teaching style.

  But I just smiled and rolled my eyes a little as if to say, ‘Oh boy, don’t I know what you mean.’ Just to let him know that I got it—I totally understood how tiresome students could be. Though I couldn’t help but think that if I WERE a teacher, that I would inspire and entertain with my classes, and I hoped that I would be as beloved by my students as Rick was, not as confusing and disliked as Adrian.

  Adrian poured himself a cup of coffee and offered the jug to me. I shook my head and screwed my mouth up. I preferred espresso not filtered. “Ugh, wish they had some decent coffee around here,” I commented without even meaning to sound like I was really one of the teaching staff. But apparently, that statement made me fit right in.

  “You’re telling me!” Adrian said, then put his cup down. He shot me a smile. First time I had seen him do that. “Maybe we should go for coffee sometime?”

  “I…”

  Oh my goodness, I was completely without words for that one. Of all the things I had expected to happen in the staff lounge, I did not think Adrian Malone asking me out on a date would be one of them. So I stuttered for a minute trying to figure out the best way to let him down without causing him offense.

  It turned out there was none, because the smile was gone from his face and he suddenly looked at me accusingly.

  “Tell me, what is it that you teach, again?”

  Uh oh. I was about to be entirely sprung. There were other heads turned, looking at us. “I’ve just started taking tutorials for the fourth year Shakespeare unit,” I said, trying to sound full of confidence. I just knew that I was not pulling it off. Suddenly I felt as though I was drowning inside Troy’s oversized blazer. “At the moment, we are discussing the topic of courtly love…” I hoped I sounded like I was pulling it off. Maria had tried to teach me about that once, but I hadn’t really paid attention. I was regretting it.

  Adrian frowned and turned his nose up a little like something smelled bad. Hmm, it was clear that he thought the subject was a little below him. A little lacking in dense philosophy. He gave up on the burnt coffee and grabbed a teabag instead.

  At least he was still talking to me. Maybe I had pulled it off.

  “So,” I said, straightening up and trying to get the topic back on track before I completely blew it and got myself not just kicked out of the staff room but the entire university. “Can’t believe that Rick is really gone.”

  Adrian dunked his teabag, and he even had the audacity to roll his eyes. “Maybe now that he is dead, it will finally come to light that he wasn’t the golden egg of the English Department that all of his students thought…” He was dunking the teabag so vigorously that tea spilled over the side of the mug, which had a print of Prince Charles and Lady Di on it. “And his poetry was terrible.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  He looked at me like I was a bug and like he could see straight through me. “How long have you been teaching here?” he asked accusingly.

  “Like I said, just this semester,” I mumbled, pouring a cup of coffee just so that my hands were busy. I took a sip. It really was burnt.

  “Anyone who has worked here longer than a few weeks would know about the rumors that surrounded Rick Niemer. And they would certainly know about his poetry!”

  I didn’t know what to say. I suddenly felt like a child.

  “What was your name again? Your full name?”

  I gulped. “Alyson Foulkes.”

  Adrian had already pulled up the teaching website on his phone and was searching my name. “You are not on the teaching list.”

  I hung my head while he called for someone called Rex Lewis, who was apparently head of the English Department and the vice dean of the school. “We have an intruder in our midst!”

  I was escorted out of the room by the tall and lanky—and bald—Rex Lewis, who looked down his long nose at me.

  “This is a serious offense, Miss Foulkes. Pretending to be a member of staff is forbidden in the student handbook. I am going to have to think about the best course of action going forward regarding your academic career here.”

  Just like when I had put the petrol in the engine of Troy’s car, I hadn’t realized it was such a deadly offense, that the consequences would be so dire.

  “I just wanted to suss the place out,” I said. “Surely going into the staff room isn’t completely unforgivable.”

  Rex lifted his head toward the sky like I just wasn’t getting it. “You have broken the rules. It’s a matter of trust, Miss Foulkes. Now, it’s not as though students are banned from the staff room, and if you’d just been honest about wanting a little tour, then we would have let you in. But posing as a staff member like that and trying to gain information under false pretenses… Well, I am going to have to review your application for enrollment now and have a good hard think about whether you will be best suited for a place here at Ferguson.”

  I slunk back out into the university grounds like a wounded puppy. But I was not going to give up just yet. Now I knew for a fact that Adrian hated Rick and was glad that he was dead. I needed to know more.

  Looked like I would now have to take Adrian Malone’s classes wearing a disguise.

  10

  Claire

  I wasn’t sure Chris had ever been inside a bookshop. Not a big reader. That had been one of our incompatibility issues.

  But the major one had been that he had taken a job in Bali the year before, last minute, and told me he was leaving and didn’t want me to
follow him. He’d been overseeing a hotel development. Apparently, it was all done and built now. He was ready to return to Oz.

  “Nice place,” he said, taking off his Ray-Ban glasses and putting them on the top of his closely-cropped dark hair. But I knew he was only being polite. Chris had no interest in books and he definitely had no interest in quaint little bookshops in coastal towns.

  He was still super tanned from the trip. Muscular too. Almost looked like he had been surfing.

  “Yes, but Eden Bay is not really the sort of place you like to hang out,” I said. Apparently, someone at my old office had told him where to find me. He had been curious about the place I’d grown up in and recently moved back to. But was it more than just a curiosity? I wanted to ask what the heck he was doing but didn’t quite have the nerve yet.

  He shrugged. “Sydney’s not that far away.” He shot me a grin. “An easy commute for two people who are in love.”

  So what was he suggesting, that we could just pick up things where they left off, even with a year apart and even though we now lived in separate towns?

  He leaned against the counter. “Surely you must still get up to the city a fair bit?”

  I shook my head and started rearranging books. “Actually, I don’t. My life is here in Eden Bay now.”

  Though I was conscious of the fact that I had not mentioned Matt at all. But I would. I was getting to that. Just waiting for the time to be right. It was all about timing, after all.

  But Chris was possibly the best person to talk to about my upstairs issues. He was like the total and complete opposite of Alyson, for example. And I knew he would be able to set me straight about the ghost upstairs. Or at least ease my mind about it.

  But I was nervous to even tell him what I suspected. Chris was a very straight thinker. “Basic,” Alyson would call him if she ever met him. She would hate him.