The Academy (34 page)

“She okayed it with you!” Myla pointed to the editor. “And
you
!”

The editor looked at the floor.

“No,” Mr. Booth said. “She didn’t.”

“Bullshit!”

The adviser looked at her coldly. “We’re done here,” he said. “I think you’d better leave.”

*

Brad was worried. After break, Myla hadn’t shown up for English. She never missed a class, and when he saw her empty chair, he knew in his gut that something had to be wrong. He wanted to call or message her, but even if students had been allowed to use them, cell phones still wouldn’t work on campus.

He was so distracted that in PE he forgot to change his socks while suiting up for basketball. Both socks were white, so it shouldn’t have made any difference, but ever since they’d started wearing these fucking uniforms at the beginning of the week, teachers—PE teachers especially—had been on the warpath, inspecting every aspect of their attire, from shirt tucks to shoelaces, punishing students for every minor infraction.

And he had forgotten to change from one pair of white socks to another.

Coach Nicholson called him on it the second he stepped into the gym. “Becker!”

Brad looked up at the sound of the raspy bark.

“Get your ass back in there and put on the proper socks or you’ll be given ten demerits! I want you on the court and dressed appropriately! Now!”

Brad ran back into the locker room. But he stopped running as soon as he passed through the doorway. Something was wrong. He could feel it. It wasn’t a change in temperature, but it was a physical sensation nonetheless, a sudden difference in the quality of the air, and it hit him instantly. And hard. He glanced first to his left, then to his right. The locker room was empty, but . . .

But it didn’t feel empty. Dim gray sunshine shone through the clouded skylight in the center of the room, creating shadowed areas near the toilets and the coach’s office where someone could be hiding. The locker room was silent, but it was a pregnant silence, too perfect to be real, one that seemed to be hiding something within it.

He walked forward slowly, warily, not thinking that someone would jump him exactly but aware that it was a possibility.

His rubber-soled gym shoes slapped loudly on the wet cement floor.

The coach was probably writing him up right now, marking him as tardy as well as piling on those demerits, but Brad approached his locker cautiously. The feeling that he was not alone in here had grown, and though his locker row was directly beneath the skylight, the weak illumination offered no comfort and served only to make the outlying parts of the room seem even darker. He looked toward the end of the aisle.

There was a figure standing in the shower.

Van Nguyen.

The boy was fully clothed, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, standing in the far corner of the tiled shower stall, staring down at a basketball at his feet. Even though Brad could not see his face, he knew it was Van. With the unfounded certainty of dream logic, he also knew that he did not want Van to look up, that if the other boy did and Brad saw his eyes . . . something would happen.

What, exactly, he did not know.

But . . . something.

Brad looked away, quickly spun the combination on his lock and took his gym socks out of his locker. He hazarded a glance back at the shower.

Van had moved.

Brad’s mouth went dry. The boy was still looking down at the basketball at his feet, but now he was in the center of the shower stall, beneath the middle nozzle. Brad didn’t know whether Van was a ghost or whether he was just acting strange, but either way, he was afraid of the other boy, and if he saw even the slightest bit of movement, he was going to haul ass back to the gym and take his demerits. There was no way he was going to stay here and wait for Van to do something.

Heart pounding crazily, Brad kept an eye on the unmoving figure while he kicked off his shoes. He sat down quickly on the center changing bench, still watching the shower, but he had to look away for a few seconds while he took off his socks. He looked up again.

Van had moved to the edge of the shower stall.

And was facing him.

Brad ran. He didn’t bother to pick up his socks from the floor or close his locker—he just took off, grabbing his shoes and dashing through the locker room to the doorway that led to the gym. Ahead, he could see the rest of the class already playing basketball. Mr. Nicholson was standing behind the basket, whistle in his mouth, watching their performance. Brad was still afraid enough of the coach to not want to be yelled at, so he sat down at the edge of the gym to put on his shoes. He didn’t have any socks on and would get in trouble for that, but it was nothing compared with what he would have to face if he returned barefoot.

He hastily untied the laces of his sneakers and slipped the first one on, but before he could put on the other shoe or even tie the laces of the first one up again, he heard a low
tap-tap-tap,
like the drip of water from a faucet. He turned around—

—to see Van standing directly behind him, unmoving, staring down at the basketball lying at his feet.

Brad jumped up, screaming, and, with only one shoe on, ran into the center of the gym. In that split-second glimpse, he had seen Van’s face, and it was a sight that he would never forget. Van’s skin was ashen, an almost whitish blue, and his mouth was open in a toothless O. His eyes were wide open and fixed.

The rest of his class stopped what they were doing and watched, several of them laughing, as Brad ran toward them, laces flapping on his one shod but sock-less foot, his other bare sole slapping against the hardwood floor. The coach looked angry, and he blew his whistle, pointing. “Get your ass back in there and put on the proper footwear!” he ordered.

“Van Nguyen!” Brad shouted, still running forward, away from the locker rooms. “I saw him in there! His ghost or something! It’s in there! It tried to attack me!”

Now nearly everyone was laughing as Coach Nicholson strode purposefully across the gym toward Brad.

“I’m not lying! You can look for yourself! He’s—”

The coach grabbed Brad by the neck and twisted him around. The blunt fingers digging into his skin hurt, and Brad wanted to cry out, but Mr. Nicholson’s grip was restricting his flow of air. The teacher pushed him angrily back into the locker room. “Show me!” he demanded. “Show me why you came running out there with one shoe and no socks, crying like a pussy about ghosts!”

Brad’s eyes darted around. The locker room was empty. There was no sign of Van or his basketball, and that feeling he’d had earlier, that sensation of not being alone, had completely disappeared.

Whatever had been here was gone.

He felt like a tool, a
cowardly
tool, and embarrassed, he tried to come up with a response. “I thought it would be funny,” he lied.

The coach leaned in so close that Brad could smell his foul breath. “No, you didn’t,” he said derisively. And he smiled. “You were
scared
.”

Brad didn’t know what that meant. Was the teacher making fun of him? Or did he know what was really going on? It was impossible to tell, and Brad said nothing, just to be on the safe side.

The coach shoved him back toward the doorway, letting him go. “Get your ass back in the gym and shoot some baskets. You’ve got an F for the day, Becker. Be grateful I don’t fail you for the week.”

There was still no sign of Myla at lunch, but Ed was hanging out at the usual spot, and Brad threw his sack lunch onto the plastic table, sitting down across from his friend.

“What’s up with you?”

“Myla wasn’t in class. I don’t know where she is.” Brad looked around to make sure no one else was listening. “And I saw Van,” he told Ed. “In the locker room.”

“Was he hiding there or—?”

“I think he was a ghost.”

There was no disbelief to overcome—they were beyond that now—and Ed nodded, leaning forward. “What happened?”

Brad told him the details, including the way Coach Nicholson had grabbed his neck and shoved him back into the locker room. “That fucker attacked me.”

“I can still see red marks,” Ed said, looking at the skin above his collar. “We should take some photos of it. Right now. You have a good case here. This is assault. We can get him fired. Shit, you might be able to get some big bucks from the school.”

Brad shook his head. “You know that’s not going to happen. Not here. Not now. In fact, what this really means is that the teachers aren’t even afraid of that possibility anymore. They think they can do what they want without reprisal, and, hell, they probably can. We have to be really careful from now on. It’s a whole new ball game.”

“So to speak,” Ed said drily. “By the way, do we know if Van’s basketball disappeared with him?”

“My guess is yes,” Brad told him.

“So that must have been his basketball’s ghost that you saw.”

“Are you making fun of me?”

“Just trying to keep it light,” Ed said. He dropped his voice, made a show of glancing over at the next table and back again. “Little pitchers.”

Brad held his neck, did a fake stretch and checked out the table. Four girls who could have been freshmen, or could have been sophomores, were eating in silence, obviously listening to the conversations going on about them—including theirs. All of them were wearing Tyler Scout patches on the sleeves of their shirts.

“Did I ever tell you that I have a really big dick?” Ed asked loudly.

“No,” Brad answered, playing along. “But I bet those chicks over there would like some of that.”

All four girls looked immediately in the opposite direction so as not to get drawn into the conversation.

“Yep. I got quite a chunk o’ change hangin’ here.”

“That’s not what your sister told me,” Hal Gurney said. He walked by, slapped Ed on the side of the head.

Ed grimaced, holding a hand over his ear. “The perils and pitfalls of popularity.”

Brad grinned. “It’s nice to see that some things always stay the same.”

They didn’t know who those girls were, whether they were spies or, if they
were
spies, whom they were spying for. So Brad followed Ed’s lead, kept the conversation light and ate his lunch. But he was still freaked-out about seeing Van, and each blur of movement in his peripheral vision made him tense up, conjured in his mind’s eye that horrible ghastly face.

He was also still burning up about his treatment at the hands of the coach.

And he was worried about Myla.

If anything, his experiences in PE had made him even more aware of the possibility that something could have happened to her, that she could be in real, physical danger. He considered going off campus and using his cell phone to call her, but the wall was nearly complete, there were scouts patrolling whatever gaps were left and it was nearly impossible for anyone to leave school during the day anymore. Besides, even if he called her, she might not answer. Her cell might be off. She might be with her parents, dealing with some sort of family emergency. Or at a doctor’s office.

Or a hospital.

He didn’t want to go there.

He saw Myla after lunch, standing outside Mr. Grazer’s class. Walking by with Ed, on the way to their lockers, Brad looked over and saw her standing alone next to the closed door. He hurried over. “Where have you been?” he demanded. He’d been concerned about her, but now he felt angry. Whether she’d had a dentist appointment or a student-council meeting or something else, she should have told him ahead of time, and he blamed her for making him worry.

“My friend Rachel was killed last night by a drunk driver. I just found out at break.”

“Oh my God,” Brad said, sucking in his breath. He could see the look of devastation on her face, and he felt guilty for his resentment. He hugged her, holding her tightly, holding her close. Her muscles were hard, tense. “How come they didn’t say anything about it on the morning announcements?”

“I don’t know.” Myla sounded dazed.

“Holy shit.” Brad was pretty shook-up himself, and he didn’t even know the girl. He’d never been this close to death before, and it felt weird having a girlfriend who knew someone who’d died.

“Was that Rachel Papatos?” Ed asked.

“No, Rachel Jackson-Smith.”