Afterlife Academy (23 page)

“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.”

I resist the urge to point out
that we’re all dead anyway. “I’m sorry,” I say, hoping it sounds genuine. I am
sorry I did that.

“What are you playing at,
Riley?”

“I was trying to get expelled,”
I admit quietly.

“What? Why?”

“Because I wanted to go home,” I
say, suddenly realising that I’m fighting back tears.

“Riley—”

“I know, okay?” I interrupt. “I
know. It’s stupid. But I miss my boyfriend and my family so much. I’ve been so
desperate to get out of here that I had to try something. Anything.”

“Riley…” She tries again.

“I didn’t know that about the
fire alarm though,” I sniffle. “I didn’t realise until we were outside how
seriously you all take it. I know I shouldn’t have done it. I’d never thought
of it as crying wolf before.”

She stares at me with a
bewildered look on her face while she takes it all in. Eventually she says,
“Let me get this straight. You’ve been trying to get yourself expelled?”

I nod silently.

The more I think about it, the
more stupid it sounds.

“Riley, we don’t do that. We
can’t expel people. We can punish people, but nothing you do will ever result
in a suspension because there is simply no place for you to go. When you die,
this is your home until you graduate.”

“So people keep telling me,” I
mumble.

My head is bowed and I’m feeling
utterly stupid.

“Riley, look at me.”

I sigh but do as she says.

“You just said that you want
ed
to go home and you
were
trying to get expelled. Was that supposed to be past tense?”

“I… er…”

Because somewhere between
Haunting class and getting hauled out of the canteen, I’ve been thinking. Maybe
this isn’t such a great idea after all.

I mean, this place isn’t
perfect. I still don’t fit in. But after Haunting class, a few people seem to
like me. And even I have to admit that it’s more interesting than geography.
And I love Narcissa. And the pigs. And the microwave. And Caydi. Even Clare is
nice enough. I even find myself liking Charlie the vampiric pumpkin.

And then there’s Anthony.

I don’t even know what my
feelings for him are, but I think they might need exploring further.

Oh, and he’s not cheating on me
with my best friend.

“This place kind of grows on you
after a while,” I mumble.

Eliza Carbonell smiles at that.
A huge grin that lights up her whole grey face. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

“What? Why?” I ask.

“It’s the first sign of
adjustment,” she says. “Believe me, Riley, you’re not the first student to want
to get out of here and you’re not the first one to try. But it’s always a good
feeling to see someone trying to accept their fate no matter how difficult it
may be.”

“I still wish I was at home,” I
say. “My life was perfect. It didn’t need screwing up so badly.”

“Except it wasn’t perfect, was
it? You weren’t the… nicest person in the world, were you? And I know you feel
bad about that now that you’ve had a chance to experience life on the other
side of the fence.”

“You mean the colour thing?”

She nods.

“Do you know what that is? Why I
still have my colour?”

“I can’t say for sure, Riley,
but do you believe in karma?”

“Yeah, I kinda do,” I admit.

“I think the colour thing might
be some kind of karmic payback. You were the girl who always fitted in. You
were the girl who made fun of other people who perhaps didn’t or who looked
different from others. The powers that be saw an opportunity for you to redeem
yourself. I might be wrong on this because I honestly don’t know for certain,
but I do know that a big part of death is challenging the life you led. You
were pretty and popular with a gang of equally pretty and popular friends, and
you made fun of anyone who was different than you were. I think the colour
thing may simply be that someone saw fit to make sure you know how it feels.”

I nod.

“I am sorry about what I was
like,” I say. “But there’s not a lot I can do about the people I picked on now,
being dead and all.”

“Well,” she says, “you can go to
your Redemption class this afternoon.”

“What about punishment?” I ask.

“I’m not going to punish you
this time,” she says. “I know you’re probably bored of hearing this by now, but
we do understand how hard it is to accept everything that’s happening to you. I
understand wanting to get back home. For years I was desperate to return to my
old life. I had a daughter, you know. She was only six years old when I died.
Never a day goes by when I don’t think of her. She’s a pensioner now,” Eliza
says with a sad look in her eye. “And yet I haven’t aged a day in sixty years.
It’s a strange way to live, but we have to adjust to the things life throws at
us.”

“Do you Visualise her?” I ask.

“Sometimes. Not as much now as I
did in the first thirty years. I was able to watch her wedding. I wished I
could have been there more than anything, but that’s just not the way life
works. I have my purpose here and it’s enough to fulfil me. You’ll find your
purpose too.”

I nod.

I’m so messed up.

It doesn’t change the fact that
I don’t want to be here. I still miss Wade. Although, somehow, slightly less
since I saw him screwing Sophie.

“Riley,” Eliza says. “I won’t
punish you this time, but you’d better believe that the next time you pull some
stupid stunt I’m not going to be so understanding.”

“I’ll behave,” I say. “I
promise.”

She nods. “You might not be able
to make up to all the people you’ve hurt, but just accepting that you weren’t
always fair goes a long way to righting the wrong.”

I nod again.

“I have to say that you’re doing
a pretty good job with the one person you have had a chance to make it up to.”

“You mean Anthony?” I ask.

She nods.

“Anthony is nice,” I admit. “But
I don’t think he could ever like me as more than a friend, given the way I’ve
treated him.”

“I think you may be surprised,”
she says cryptically. “Now go on, the buzzer is going to ring any second, and I
don’t want you to be late for your next class.”

“Thanks,” I say. “For not
punishing me, and for everything else.”

“You’re welcome. But like I
said, if I have to call you here again, next time I won’t be so lenient.”

CHAPTER 28

I have to run to make it to Redemption class on time, and
I’m panting and out of breath as I slide into the seat next to Anthony. Even
then, I’m still last to get into the classroom.

“I thought you weren’t going to
come, Miss Richardson.” Mrs Brown is looking at me like she hates me again.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the
world,” I mutter.

“What did Mrs Carbonell want you
for?” Anthony whispers, his mouth so close to my ear that he’s almost touching
me with his lips and it sends a shiver down my spine.

“I’ll explain later,” I whisper
back.

“Mr Marsden, I didn’t know you
were a talker,” Mrs Brown says. “Perhaps you’d like to stand up and share your
list with the class?”

The list! Oh shit. It was
homework from the last class, and I’ve forgotten to do it. We were supposed to
write a list of all the people we’ve wronged and I haven’t done it.

Bugger.

Guess I’ll just have to
improvise.

Anthony stands up with his
exercise book in his hand and starts reading out from it.

“My grandma,” he says. “For the
things I talked about last week when I first moved in with her. And my maths
teacher in Year Seven for cheating on some tests.”

Wait. Anthony cheated on maths
tests?

Wow. Maybe he’s not such a geek
after all.

“And lastly to a new friend, I’m
sorry for keeping a secret I shouldn’t have kept.”

“What?” I hiss as he sits back
down. I have no idea if that new friend is me or not. It’s probably not.
Anthony has made loads of new friends here. He probably feels guilty for not
telling them he once cheated on a maths test.

“Now is not the time for
talking, Miss Richardson,” Mrs Brown says. “Perhaps you’d like to read your
list out to the class, although I expect it is quite long so maybe we won’t
have time to hear all of it.”

“Er, okay,” I stand up awkwardly
and pick up my exercise book. I flip to an empty page and pretend to be reading
from it.

“Well, to start with—”

“Put the book down, Miss
Richardson. I know you haven’t done your homework.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I just
forgot. I’ve been so busy this week. I can improvise though. And I’ll do it
properly tonight, I swear.”

Mrs Brown sighs but waves her
hand in a “go ahead” gesture.

Right. Improvisation. Um.

“Well, I…” I start again. “I
know that I wasn’t always the nicest person in the world. I picked on a lot of
kids who didn’t deserve it, just to make my friends laugh at me so they would
like me. I know I almost single-handedly made kids in my school outsiders. Not
many people would dare to be friends with someone who was a target of my crowd.
There are definitely some people I owe an apology to.”

“While this is not the homework
I set, Riley,” Mrs Brown cuts in, “I do believe this is called progress. My
question for you now is this: If you went back today, exactly as you are now,
having had the experience of Afterlife Academy, would you do anything
differently? Would you apologise to all those people, even if it meant that
your friends would exclude you? Even if it meant that
you
might become their next target?”

I’m tempted to say that it can’t
be any worse than here but I bite my tongue.

I think about her question. I
think about Anthony. About how much he means to me. About how much I wish we’d
been friends in our old school. About how much better my life has become just
because he was nice to me. And I think about Wade and Sophie humping each other
on the bed.

Maybe my life wasn’t so great
after all.

“Yes,” I say. “Yes, I would.”

Mrs Brown lets out a huge grin
at that.

“Welcome to Redemption class,
Riley,” she says.

I smile and sit back down.

“Don’t sit down yet, you still
haven’t read your improvised list out to us.”

Oh, crap. I stand up again.

“I… er…” I glance down at
Anthony. “I used to pick on him. He sat next to me in maths, which was his
favourite class and my worst class. I guess I was always jealous because he’d
be sitting there writing away, and my best friend and I would be staring at the
board like it was written in Japanese. He made the rest of us look bad, so we
would do anything we could to make him look bad too. Whenever I got the chance,
I would steal his glasses, or his calculator, or his pencil case, or anything
else he needed. One time I had to hand out the textbooks, and I ripped a page
out of his and the teacher thought he’d done it. Whenever I pinched things off
his desk, I would hand them off to one of my friends so even if he told on me,
I would never have the item in question on me.”

I take a deep breath and keep
going. “The one time he did tell on me was for stealing his glasses, and I’d
already passed them to the girl behind me, so I told the teacher I’d overheard
him saying that he’d forgotten them that morning and he was lying to get
himself out of trouble. Obviously I didn’t have the glasses on me, so the
teacher believed me and Anthony got detention for it. We’d always give him
everything back after class, but it wasn’t a very nice way to treat him.

“And my boyfriend always used to
make a racket with his friends in our form room, so our teacher split them up
and sent Wade to sit next to Anthony. We decided we shared a mutual dislike of
him and we set our gang of friends against him too. No one wanted to go against
us, so we set quite a large portion of our year on an anti-Anthony stance.
There were plenty of people who wanted to join our group, so when they saw what
we were doing, they joined in too.

“We would trip him up if he
walked past, shout insults at him, but mainly I just tried to make him look bad
in front of the teachers because he was so good at everything. I would take his
exercise books out of his bag for the class we were just going into so it
looked like he’d forgotten his books. There was a project for IT once. He had
it in a little folder and had obviously worked hard on it, and when he went to
the bathroom, I sent my boyfriend in after him where he took the project out of
Anthony’s bag and ran it under the tap and then put it back. Anthony had no
idea and when he went to hand it to the teacher, it was soaking wet and ruined,
and the teacher thought it was a bad excuse for not doing the homework and gave
him a bollocking while we all laughed.

“It was a horrible thing to do.
I know that now, but at the time I didn’t care as long as I made people laugh.
I was a horrible person. I knew that Anthony had had a personal tragedy in his
life—we all knew that—but where it should have made us sympathetic, it made him
an even more vulnerable target.”  This is so hard to admit to, but I know I
have to just get it out there, so I keep on.