Good vs. Evil High (2 page)

“Ok...” I couldn’t stop coughing. I couldn’t
even think straight. “...I...I need you to come with me.” They
didn’t move. As pain began spreading throughout my body, I moved to
the girls and grabbed two of them by the arms. “Come on.” I began
pulling them through the door, forcing them to step in my vomit
along the way. The rest of them followed, and we were running to
Room Six and then to the window.

I helped each of the girls out before I
realized one wasn’t there. “Who’s missing?” I asked the last one as
she climbed out.

“Annicka’s under the bed,” the little girl
said.

No!
I leaned out the window to take in
a deep breath of clean air and ran back into the hallway, feeling
extremely lightheaded now.

“Annicka,” I called out in Room Five. No
response. “
Annicka
!” Nothing. I lay down and moved around
against the floor, looking under every bed.

My eyes were getting heavy. By the time I got
to the fifth bed, I could barely keep them open. As everything
began getting hazy, I saw a hand under one of the beds up ahead. It
seemed so far away. And I needed to sleep, but I had to help that
little girl. Sirens echoed inside my head. I couldn’t stay awake
much longer.

Using the last bit of strength I possessed
and my final driving thought,
...must...help...her....
I
dragged myself to the seventh bed and reached out to hold that tiny
hand. It was the only way they would find her. They would see me
and follow my arm to hers. She would be saved...if anyone found
us...she would be saved...

Chapter
Two

~ Recruit ~

I let out a groan. My head pounded as I tried
to remember. There was something...something I knew I needed to
remember. I reached up to touch my forehead and felt needles stab
every part of my hand. I gasped and opened my eyes.

The pain in my heavily bandaged hand was
quickly wiped from my mind as I realized five teenagers about my
age were standing at the edge of my bed watching me. I’d never seen
any of them before. And they were all wearing full white suits so
that only their heads and hands were exposed.

“Good morning,” the boy nearest me said with
a smile. “How are you feeling?”

“Terrible.” I looked around the room and
realized I was in a small hospital room. “The fire!” I sat up
straight. “Did everyone make it out alive?”

“Mm-hm. The firefighters got everyone out
safely.”

“Thank goodness.” I sat back in my bed and
smiled. That little girl was okay.

But I had to wonder who the people
surrounding me were. “Do you mind if I ask who you guys are?” I
said.

“We’re here because we want to take you
somewhere with us,” the shortest girl said, the only one who had
her black hair in a bun instead of a ponytail.

“Where?”

“Up north, farther than most people have ever
traveled, to a school for exceptional kids, the kind who would risk
their lives without thinking twice to save someone else’s.”

The girl beside her spoke next. “Our
headmaster heard about what you did, so he sent us down here to
find out about you. We talked to a lot of the girls from the home
and your school, your caretakers and teachers. You’re not someone
who easily takes charge or does things for glory. You move quietly
among others, almost unnoticed. But when it comes down to it, you
will always do what’s right. Fear and outside influence won’t
affect your decision. You proved that in the fire.”

I raised a skeptical eyebrow. What they were
saying didn’t make any sense. “So you came all the way down here
from the North Pole to take me to a school for quiet heroes?”

“Not exactly,” the boy who’d spoken before
said. “It’s kind of like a boarding school for high school students
who possess an unusual amount of good, enough that there’s no room
for bad inside them, kids who can do a lot of good in the world in
time. I’m Roman, by the way.”

“I’m Hunter,” said the boy with glasses who
was standing beside him.

“Nadine,” the smallest girl said.

“Sassy.”

“And I’m Harmony.”

“I guess it would be pointless to introduce
myself,” I said.

“Yeah,” Harmony said. “We already know you’re
Kristine Ariel Fayre, born April twenty-fourth at six am. Your
favorite food is pizza, favorite color gold, favorite animal
kittens...I could go on and on.”

I couldn’t decide if I was creeped out or
impressed. “Right. If you really want me to transfer schools and go
live somewhere else, shouldn’t you be talking to the people who run
the orphanage?”

“That’ll be taken care of.”

“No offense, but...”

“We sound crazy?” Harmony asked. She
definitely had the prettiest and most genuine smile of the three
girls.

“Yeah. I mean, do you have any identification
or anything?”

“We’ve got a book in the jet that’ll explain
everything. But we really need to get going. We need to get you out
of here unnoticed and there’s not a lot of time.”

Jet? Seriously?

“How did you know when I would wake up?”

“We stopped the drip giving you sleeping
medication and gave you something to help you wake up. The doctor
wanted you to get twenty-four hours of good sleep. No one’ll be
checking on you for awhile.”

This still sounded crazy. “So there’s nothing
you can offer me to show me you’re for real?”

Harmony and Roman looked at each other for a
second. Then she pulled something out of the only front pocket I
could see. It was a small silver box, a little bigger than a cell
phone. She touched the top and it slid back. Paper-thin blades
popped out of the open space inside and began spinning like a
helicopter, pulling the box up with it by a thin wire. What was
left of the box began unfolding and snapping together until it
formed a silver rectangle.

“Hello, Harmony,” a voice said. “What can I
do for you today?” I was surprised by how natural it sounded, not
robotic at all.

“Would you please show recruit Kristine Fayre
a picture of North Haven High?”

“Absolutely.” The flying thing turned around
so that I saw a woman with golden blonde hair like mine on a
screen. “Hello, Kristine,” she said to me before it began moving in
my direction.

I sat up nervously, wondering if the blades
came too close if they would slice right through me. “Um,
hello.”

The woman smiled and waved before she
disappeared and was replaced by a picture of a glistening castle
made completely of ice. Snowy mountains surrounded the magical
world of white.

For a second I decided it couldn’t be real. A
place that beautiful and amazing couldn’t exist. But what about the
flying thing the picture was on? I’d never seen or heard of
anything like it. I began to let hope and excitement creep in.
Maybe I was actually going to get out of the Hell I was living in,
the cruelty of the orphanage I’d been forced to endure since I was
eight years old, and be able to go live in an ice castle
somewhere.

“Sooo—that’s a real high school and they
actually go there?” I asked, feeling like a complete idiot talking
to the picture on the screen. But I had to be sure before I let my
guard down.

“Yes. Roman Armstrong, Hunter Bradshaw,
Harmony Foxen, Nadine Rodriguez, and Sassy Johnson are currently
attending North Haven High School,” the voice said. Clips of each
one moving through school hallways, sitting in classrooms, and
walking around all bundled up out in front of the school played
across the screen. The fact that they were always under
surveillance came across as odd, but the place was obviously real,
and everyone looked really happy there. Finally, I decided I could
trust them and let myself look forward to going to their
unbelievable school. I climbed out of bed and smiled at what I
hoped were my new friends and castle-mates. “I’m in.”

“Yay!” Harmony ran to me and gave me a
hug.

“Good.” Roman picked up the folded white suit
at the foot of my bed that I hadn’t noticed until then. “Put this
on and meet us in the hallway.”

Four of them started moving toward the door,
but Harmony stayed where she was. “Harmony Con, return.” The screen
still hanging over my bed moved toward her as it began folding up.
“Don’t worry, you’ll get one too,” she said to me. Then she held
out her hand and let the little box fall into it. “So, do you want
some help getting dressed since you’ve got a busted hand?”

“I might. Maybe you could stay, just in
case.” I wasn’t shy. I’d been changing in front of other girls for
years. Of course, I doubted I would look as good as they did in my
own bodysuit. I wouldn’t call myself overweight. Body-wise, I’m
pretty average. But the girls all had perfect bodies under their
suits and the guys were just as outrageously fit. I wondered if
they took some futuristic pills that gave them perfect bodies and
if I could get some too.

Roman handed me my suit when he walked past
me. As soon as the door shut behind him, I pulled off my hospital
gown and tossed it on the bed.

“What about a bra?” I asked.

“It’s built in,” Harmony said. “And the suit
was made specifically to fit you. It should be in exactly the right
place.”

She took the suit and held it out so I could
step in. After sliding my arms through the sleeves, she zipped it
up in the back, and, just like she’d said, it was a perfect fit. It
even came with built-in slipper type shoes.

“I wonder what they did with what I was
wearing,” I said.

“I’m sure they cut it off of you to check for
more burns. They’re probably in the trash somewhere.”

“The trash? But...they were all I had left.
Everything else went up with the fire.”

“It doesn’t really matter. You’ll find
everything you need in your room at North Haven High.”

As excited as I was, I got even more excited
when she told me this. I was about to ask her what my room would be
like, if by some miracle I would get my own, but she put her hand
on my shoulder before I could and said, “Let’s go.”

I followed her to the door and into the
hallway. The others were standing against the wall.

“Ready?” Roman asked.

Harmony looked at me. “I’m ready,” I said. I
was born ready. The whole thing sounded like a fantastic adventure,
better than I could have ever imagined.

“All right, keep quiet until I say
otherwise.”

The others kept in a single file line as they
followed Roman down the hall. Harmony held a hand out, inviting me
to go in front of her, so I fell in step behind Nadine.

It felt kind of like I was being guarded by
these mysterious kids walking in front of and behind me, like if I
made a move to run they’d all tackle and handcuff me or
something.

But I also felt a certain familiarity and
safety with them. If this school was for real, then these were kids
like me. Kids who truly cared for every other human being, who
didn’t let fear get in the way of doing what was right. The kind I
could lean on whenever things were rough. We turned left and found
ourselves facing three elevators. Remaining at the head of our
perfect line of six, Roman got out his con. Surveillance footage of
a woman sitting behind a desk next to a revolving door appeared on
the screen. We watched her for a couple of minutes before she got
up and walked away. Roman immediately hit the down button and the
elevator door in the middle opened. We all climbed in.

When we stepped out on the first floor, I
stared at the empty front desk as we passed it. Then we were moving
through the rotating glass door and into the dark night.

We walked silently through the deserted
parking lot.

And just as I was thinking how it might have
been smarter to wear black, I noticed Nadine’s suit darkening in
front of me. It took all my willpower not to say anything as I
watched it slowly fade to black. Holding my arms up, I saw that
mine was doing the same. Only the bandages wrapped around my hand
remained white. I smiled like a goof as I tilted my head enough to
see the clothes on the three kids in front of Nadine do the same
thing.

They’ve got to be for real. Clothes don’t go
from sheet white to oily black in seconds. It’s impossible.

As we crossed the street and began walking
under side awnings in downtown, Roman held up his arm and froze. I
bumped gently into Nadine as everyone else copied him. “Sor,” I
began to whisper, but stopped and bit my tongue. She stood there
like a statue.

“Cinders,” Roman turned his head to say.

Chapter
Three

~ Cinders ~

Everyone relaxed.

“Oh man,” Harmony said behind me.

Assuming it was okay to talk, since she was,
I asked, “What are Cinders?”

“Rogues,” Nadine turned around and whispered.
“They move like shadows, the only technology they have that we
don’t. They’re our sworn enemies, kids that go to the school way
down south. The book will tell you everything once we get you
safely to the jet.”

Roman’s body remained still, his fists tight
and his shoulders tense, as he continued to face forward. Out of
nowhere a kid in one of the same black suits we were wearing came
out of the shadows toward us. Others followed, appearing seemingly
out of nowhere as the first one had, one at a time.

The first kid smiled at Roman. “I can’t
believe it. Northlanders. What a coincidence.”

“What are you doing here, Bane? Trying to
steal our jet? Because I can assure you it’s well hidden.”

The boy called Bane laughed. “We don’t need
your piece-of-junk jet—”

“It’s better than whatever you’re riding
in.”

Bane shook his head and continued to smile.
“Whatever you say. We’re here to pick up a new recruit, just like
you.”