Afterlife Academy (22 page)

“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.

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?”