Afterlife Academy

Also by Jaimie Admans:

Kismetology

A feel-good romantic comedy about finding the perfect man… For
your mother!

Creepy Christmas

If you listen closely, you can hear the faint sound of
screaming over the Jingle Bells... Can Kaity help Santa's daughter save
Christmas from being destroyed by Anti-Claus?

A fun, festive, family read!

CHAPTER 1

I have always been a good girl. I’ve always been a girl who
never gets into trouble. In fact, the one and only time that I do something
even vaguely wrong, do you know what happens?

I die.

At least, that seems like the
most logical explanation, given the circumstances.

I remember impact.

And then nothing.

I open my eyes and look around.
I am standing in front of the school gate.

Of all places.

It’s freezing. Something feels
wrong. I’m just pulling my jacket further around myself when I hear a voice to
my left.

“You,” it says angrily.

It startles me and I spin around
to see Anthony.

Of all people.

Somehow I have gone from being
in the car with Wade to standing in front of the school gate with the geekiest,
most boring, weirdest nerd boy from my form.

“You,” I snarl back at him.

He sighs.

I huff out a breath, which
appears in front of my face because it’s so cold. It’s the middle of April. It
shouldn’t be this cold.

I look around and realise
something is really wrong with this place.

We’re standing on the road
outside our school gate.

Except we’re not.

On the road, that is.

I mean, we’re outside the
school. Our school. And we’re standing on a road. But this isn’t
the
road. There are no cars. No houses. No sandwich
shop opposite. There’s nothing but an endless country lane. There is nothing in
either direction. Just a plain tarmac road. And trees. Lots of trees.

I glance back at Anthony to see
if he’s seeing this too. Obviously he is because he’s looking around, clearly
just as bewildered as I am.

“What happened?” I say, more to
myself than to him.

I don’t usually talk to him.
Sophie, my best friend, would laugh at me for even looking at our school’s
biggest geek.

“Oh, so I’m allowed to speak to
you now?” he snaps.

“Are you even seeing this?” I
snap back. “What the hell happened?”

“How am I supposed to know?”

“You’re the one so enthralled by
chemistry classes.”

“There’s nothing wrong with
wanting to improve your mind. I happen to find science interesting. Probably in
the same way that you find painting your fingernails interesting.”

“Oh, shut up. Don’t you think we
have more important things to worry about at the moment? Like where the hell we
are, for instance?”

“We’re at school, genius.” He
scowls.

“Yes, but look…” I indicate
wildly with my hands. “Do you think there’s been some kind of nuclear war or
something?”

“I find that highly unlikely,”
he says, but he does look a bit freaked out.

I look up at the school that
looms in front of us. And then I notice something else wrong.

The school is grey. Everything
is grey. The building itself, which is usually a shade of ancient red brick, is
grey. Even the grassy hill outside is an unhealthy-looking shade of grey.

This is wrong.

I look at Anthony. He’s staring
at the school too. Even he looks a bit dull. Not that he isn’t dull anyway, but
even he doesn’t usually look
this
washed out.

There’s a low cloud hanging
everywhere. It’s shrouding the school. It’s covering the tops of the trees that
line the road. It looks like an ordinary foggy morning. But really, really
foggy and grey.

And again, that doesn’t follow
because it’s late afternoon. I know it is because Wade and I just cut last
class.

“Do you have the time, please?”
I ask Anthony.

“Check your own watch,” he
mutters.

“Like a watch goes with this
outfit.”

“Fine.” He makes a big show of
pulling his sleeve up and looking at his wrist. “Oh,” he says, sounding
surprised. “It’s stopped. This watch never stops. It’s radio controlled.”

What a loser. Who cares if their
watch stops occasionally?

I’m about to say something to
that effect when he talks instead.

“What’s with all the mist?”

“Like I’m gonna know.” I shrug.

“Maybe there’s been some kind of
holocaust. What’s the last thing you remember?”

“I don’t…” I trail off as I
think. “You,” I say suddenly. “You… In the car… Wade… He…”

Memories flood my mind and make
me shudder. “What do you remember?” I ask as I try to shake the cold feeling
that has crept down my spine.

He shrugs. “I was on my way
home. You and that idiot boyfriend of yours were speeding around in some car
that obviously didn’t belong to either of you. I yelled at him to slow down,
there’s a nursery school just down the road, he could have killed someone…”

The cold feeling intensifies.

I think
he did
.

“We hit you,” I say suddenly. “I
know we did.”

It was his brother’s car. Wade
had grabbed me at lunchtime and persuaded me to meet him outside just before
last lesson. And really, who needs to learn French? So I had cut class, hiding
behind the exam wing until the coast was clear of roaming teachers, then snuck
out through the fence and met Wade down a side street. We are experts at
cutting class now. At the end of the day, as long as you’re not failing, I
don’t see the need to attend every single class. Unlike
some
geeks.

I cast a sideways glance at
Anthony. His hair is too long and now a shade of charcoal instead of the usual
dull brown, and he has a faraway look in his grey eyes. I know he’s thinking
about what happened.

I suddenly realise that the
blood is gone. The last time I saw Anthony, he was covered in blood.

Because of Wade.

Because of me.

Wade had borrowed his brother’s
car. I use the term borrowed loosely because I doubt his brother knew he had
borrowed it. We’d cut the class and gone for a drive. Not very far and nowhere
that would attract attention, because neither of us has a driving license. We
were on the way back to school so I could jump on the bus with Sophie and
arrive home as usual, that way my parents would never know anything about it.
It’s not like they approved of Wade anyway. They certainly wouldn’t approve of
skipping school and riding in cars without a licensed driver.

I remember that Wade sped up as
we approached the school. He had to show off. We flew past the nursery school,
gaining a few angry glances from mothers picking up their kids. I had the
window down, my head leaning out of it, hair flapping around in the wind and
feeling like a rock star. Wade had the music cranked up as high as it could go
and was thumping his hands on the steering wheel to the beat.

And then we saw Anthony. Head
down, trudging along the pavement. His usual stance.

“What a prick,” Wade had yelled
to me over the music.

I nodded.

“Hey!” Wade rolled his window
down and yelled at Anthony. “Been to after-school maths club, dude? Off home to
see Mama?”

“Get lost,” Anthony muttered.

“Oh, it speaks, it speaks,” Wade
mocked him.

Anthony turned to face us. “You
shouldn’t be driving like that. There are kids around here.”

“Why don’t you go and tattle on
me to a teacher, little baby?” Wade yelled. “You’re good at that. But see how
many teeth you have left when I get my hands on you.”

“Sod off,” Anthony said and
carried on walking.

“Stupid little twit,” Wade said
to me. “We’ll show him.”

He put his foot on the
accelerator. We shot off down the road, almost reaching the school before Wade
braked so sharply that I was sure I’d have a seatbelt-shaped indentation across
my chest. He spun the car in a perfect circle, complete with screeching brakes
and the smell of burning rubber.

“What the hell are you doing?” I
screamed.

“I’ll teach that geek to tell me
to slow down.” Wade grinned.

We flew back up the road,
approaching Anthony again within seconds.

“Wade, don’t,” I said, but he
didn’t hear me over the music. “Slow down!” I yelled at him.

“Don’t be such a baby,” he said
dismissively.

I groaned. We were going too
fast. We sped past Anthony again before Wade slammed on the brakes and did
another screeching turn.

“Stop it!” I yelled at him.

He ignored me.

“Hey, you!” he’d shouted as we
passed Anthony again. He slowed down this time to taunt him some more.
“Where’ve you been? Extra-credit science class, because A-plus grades just
aren’t enough?”

“You’re only jealous,” Anthony
shouted to him.

“Oh yeah. Jealous of you. The
stupid little bastard whose granny makes him sandwiches every morning in case
he gets his lunch money stolen.”

“Screw you.”

“Wade, stop,” I said again.

“Why?” He snapped his head in my
direction. “Tell me you don’t feel sorry for this geek?”

“We should go home,” I said,
avoiding the question. “I’ve already missed the bus. You’re going to have to
drive me.”

“Then there’s no rush.” He
smirked.

“Hey, freak,” he yelled at
Anthony who was hurriedly walking away. “Going home to see Mama and Daddy? Oh
wait, that’s right. You can’t, can you? They’re both dead! Probably killed
themselves because you’re such a prat!”

“Wade, don’t,” I said as he
accelerated again and we sped off.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s cruel.”

“Cruel, my ass. Making me sit
next to that moron in form room is cruel.”

“They only make you sit by him
because you cause too much ruckus with your own friends.”

“If you like him so much, why
don’t you sit by him?” Wade slammed his foot on the brake so the car spun
around again. We came dangerously close to the side barrier and I screamed.

“Stop being such a girl,” Wade
told me.

“Hey, Anthony,” he yelled as we
came up to him again. “Going home to see your… Oh, shit!”

This time we didn’t slow down as
we approached Anthony. This time there was a noise under the car and we
swerved. We more than swerved. We careened across the road, and Anthony stood
there frozen as we went right into him.

I remember the sound of his head
as it cracked against the windscreen. Blood spilled everywhere. It splattered
through the passenger window that was still open. I screamed. I couldn’t see
where we were going. The lifeless body blocked the view and bright red blood
poured over the glass.

Wade screamed beside me.

“Do something!” I shrieked at
him.

Then there was impact. Anthony’s
body was crushed right in front of my eyes as we hit something else head-on.

There was the loudest bang I’ve
ever heard in my life.

Then there was blackness coming
towards me.

Then I was here.

CHAPTER 2

“You remember,” Anthony says, his voice snapping me out of
my reverie.

“We killed you.”

“That is… quite possible,” he
says after a pause.

I don’t know what to say to
that. “I’m sorry,” I mumble eventually, even though that doesn’t even begin to
cover it. “It was an accident.”