Wuthering high: a bard academy novel (7 page)

“And anyway, I didn’t wreck her car. My boyfriend did.”

“You mean your
felon
boyfriend did.”

“He wasn’t a felon when I was dating him. That was after,” Hana clarifies.

I try cutting the mystery meat, but I’m not getting anywhere with this plastic fork. I’d be better off using chopsticks.

“What’s with the plastic utensils?” I ask, holding up a fork.

“Someone got stabbed last year,” Samir says, unperturbed.

“Stabbed? Seriously?”

“It wasn’t very deep,” Hana says. “Some guy went ballistic on his roommate. Stabbed him in the arm with his fork. He tried to stab Ms. W, too, but missed.”

“He didn’t miss,” Samir says. “He hit Ms. W right in the forearm, but she didn’t bleed. Everybody knows that story. She’s an alien. Everybody knows it.”

“That is totally just a campus legend,” Hana says.

“Campus legend?”

“Bard’s version of urban legends,” Samir says. “Like the faculty don’t eat or sleep.”

“Or like the one about the UFO that crashed in the forest that keeps giving out that weird magnetic pulse, which makes people walk in circles out there.”

“That’s funny you should say that, because I went into the woods, and…”

Both Samir and Hana drop their forks and their mouths hang open.

“You went into the woods!” they both cry at once in raised voices. A couple of other people look at us, and two Guardians standing by the mashed potatoes line glare in our direction.

Hana lowers her voice. “Baring the fact that if you were caught,” Hana says, looking from one direction to the other to make sure she’s not overheard, “you’d get grounded here for Thanksgiving
and
Christmas, not to mention dish duty for the semester, there’s the problem of…”

“Bears,” Samir says.

“And…” Hana starts.

“And wolves, don’t forget the wolves,” Samir adds.

“And…”

“And the ghost of Kate Shaw.”

“Would you let me finish my story?” Hana shouts.

“Who’s Kate Shaw?”

“The best campus legend,” Samir asks.

“I’m telling the story,” Hana says, giving him a stern look. “Kate Shaw,” she continues, “was a sophomore who came to Bard several years ago. Just like you, Kate Shaw tried to escape. They sent out a search party the next morning looking for her…”

“You’re not telling it right,” Samir says. “You left out the part about her backpack.”

“If you’d
let
me finish, I was getting to that part.” Hana glares at Samir, who just shrugs. “So she took her backpack, right? They searched for her for five days. And on the fifth day, they found her backpack in the woods by a stream. And it was covered in blood.”

“You are
so
telling this wrong,” Samir says. Hana ignores him.

“And it was empty, except for one book and a note. The note was covered in blood, and it said, ‘Beware the Third Bell.’”

“She was telling people not to be tardy?” I ask.

Samir laughs. “Hana, you’re forgetting that they also found her Bard jacket and it was —”

“Wait, let me guess. Covered in blood?” I’m not scared at this point. Just amused.

“And sometimes, late at night,” Hana says, continuing even though I’m clearly not scared, “people have seen her ghost wandering the woods and asking people if they’ve seen her backpack.”

“It’s much scarier when I tell it,” Samir tells me.

“It would’ve been fine if you hadn’t interrupted,” Hana says.

The lights above our heads flicker.

“What’s with the lights?” I ask them.

They shrug. “The island is powered by a generator,” Samir says. “But it’s not exactly like being plugged into General Electric.”

“Okay, so now back to noncampus legends and real-campus people,” I say. “Who are those people?” I nod my head toward a table two over from us. It’s filled with Goth types, complete with black lipstick and spiky black hair. “What’s their story?”

“Those are the E/rave kids. They’re always connected, even in here, with drugs.”

“And them?” I ask, pointing to what looks like the jock table.

“Impulse-control problems. Those guys steal everything that isn’t nailed down,” Hana says.

“And nearly all of them have probably hit one of their parents,” Samir says.

“What about them?” I ask, looking over at what must be the geek table, where Well Girl from the bus is sitting.

“The freaks? They’re the harmless ones. They aren’t trying to be social outcasts, they’re just that way naturally. They look all weird, but they don’t really want to harm anybody but themselves. There are a lot of cutters over there.”

“Gross,” I say, wrinkling my nose.

“Yeah, it’s pretty much the rainbow of problems here. Do their parents send them to therapists? No, they send them to a prison school, hoping it’ll all work out. Does that make sense to you?” Samir points his fork at me for emphasis. “But, like Headmaster B says, we’re all here because we have self-esteem issues.”

“Ugh,” Hana says, rolling her eyes. “Everything here is about self-esteem.”

“But what about them? They look normal,” I say, nodding toward a table full of people wearing Izod shirts.

“Oh no, they’re the
worst,
” Hana says. “They’re the rich kids. They tend to fall into the “Daddy got my drug/ date rape charges dismissed because he knows the DA” category. They’re the worst criminals here by far. The ring leader is sitting in the middle with the ponytail. That’s Parker Rodham, a junior. She poisoned her own mother with rat poison, or so the rumor goes.”

“The mother lived, but she lost a kidney,” Samir says.

“Seriously?”

“That’s the rumor,” Hana says. “Also, all of Parker’s boyfriends keep dropping off the face of the earth. We think she kills them.”

“Speaking of, looks like Parker found a replacement boyfriend in record time,” Samir says, as a blond boy who looks like he ought to be on the cover of a J. Crew catalog takes a seat next to Parker.

With a jolt, I realize I know him.

Ryan Kent, former star of the varsity basketball team at my old school. He was one year ahead of me. He was a sophomore at my school last year, until he had that car accident. His girlfriend was killed and he dropped out of school. Rumor had it he finished up his sophomore year at some private school in the Northeast. Looks like that school is Bard Academy.

I did not just get so lucky. This changes everything. I’m going to have to rethink my guyatus.

“Ryan Kent,” I exclaim, without meaning to. Both Samir and Hana look at me.

“You know him?” she says.

“Uh-huh,” I mutter, unable to stop staring. Even in his Bard uniform, you can just make out the outline of his state-championship triceps. It’s not possible for him to be more gorgeous. And if that’s not enough, he’s also an honors student. Brains and brawn. Things are definitely looking up. This is the first good news I’ve gotten since landing at Bard.

“Parker always does snatch up the best-looking boys,” Hana says, just as Parker leans in and whispers something into Ryan’s ear.

Okay, maybe I spoke too soon about things looking up.

“They can’t be dating,” I say, as my eyes slide back to Ryan and Parker.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,” I say, watching Parker rub Ryan’s arm possessively. “They just can’t be.”

Seven

After dinner,
I find Blade asleep in our dorm room. She’s found my stash of pretzels from the plane in my backpack and chowed down on them because there are empty wrappers on my bed. Nice. She’s laid out on her back and snoring. Apparently, stealing my stuff has really worn her out. I take the wrappers from my bed and toss them onto her chest. One of them flitters near her face. She swats at it, then rolls over and starts snoring soundly again.

I slip into my pajamas and crawl into bed, too. I stare at my photos for a while. I keep looking at Dad’s picture, although I don’t know why. It’s like I’m trying to figure him out. What about
this
day made him smile, when he never smiles any other time? I wonder how he found out about this place? Maybe it was one of his annoying golf buddies, like Mr. Lorgan who stares at my butt when he thinks I don’t see. Perv.

The bell outside starts tolling, signaling lights out. It’s then that I notice that my closet light is on again. I slip out of bed, and turn it off, then climb back into bed and switch off my desk lamp. The room feels suddenly colder than it did before, now that it’s nearly completely dark. I pull the covers high up to my chin and stare at the ceiling. I’m acutely aware of the weird sounds in my room. There’s the snoring from Blade, a kind of wheezing whine, and the eerie creaks and groans of the floorboards above my head. It sounds like someone is walking above me, but they shouldn’t be, since we’re all supposed to be in bed.

The furthest thing from my mind is sleep. The wind howls against my window and every so often a tree branch outside hits it just right so that I think someone is out there tapping on it. I’ve never felt so out of place and alone before. I would probably have better luck sleeping in a deserted and haunted mineshaft or maybe a cursed Indian burial ground. Not that I’m the sort of person who believes in ghosts, but it’s hard not to think something is weird about this place. If there is such a thing as spirits, this is the place they’d be.

I have got to find a way out of here.

But even if I did manage to escape, where would I go? My parents think I’m a delinquent. Especially Dad. God, he’s so clueless. If he spent five minutes with me he might actually
know
something about me. If you quizzed him on my friends’ names, I bet he couldn’t come up with a single one.

When he and Mom were still married, at least Mom would tell him things about me, so he’d know something. I miss those days, I guess, even though it wasn’t all a big Disney movie or anything. They fought all the time, and usually Dad traveled a lot for work and wasn’t around much, but at least back then Mom wasn’t obsessed with her wrinkles and Dad wasn’t completely preoccupied with golf. And every so often, I felt like we were a family. Now I just feel like I’m in the middle of a battlefield all the time. And just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, they send me away, a hundred miles away from my friends and everything I loved about my life. It’s like Dad wasn’t just content with ruining our family. He had to ruin my whole life, too.

I’m starting to feel pretty sorry for myself, which is what usually happens when I think about Mom and Dad splitting up. I don’t know why, because, I mean, people’s parents get divorced all the time. It’s more the rule than the exception, isn’t it?

I feel a lump in my throat and I suddenly feel like I might cry.

Before I can, my closet light flicks on. I start, sitting up in bed. The light from inside the closet outlines the door, sending slashes of light across my bedspread.

What the…?

My heartbeat kicks up a few notches. It’s been a long while since I thought there might be monsters hiding in my closet, but I’ve never seen a light just come on by itself before. I’m temporarily paralyzed. Do I get up and investigate? I’m not exactly all that thrilled about investigating an odd light coming from the closet. I’m no horror movie virgin. I know what happens to the curious. It starts out as a weird closet light coming on and ends up with me being hacked to pieces.

Cue tense horror music.

Then I remember that we’re not allowed to have any lights on after lights out. If somebody sees that closet light, it’ll mean detention, or worse.

Reluctantly, I throw the covers off and try to pretend like I am not freaked, when really I am. A little. Okay, more than a little. Even though I know it’s probably just a bad lightbulb, right? Or a faulty electrical switch. This place is ancient, so I bet the wiring isn’t too new. It is
not
a ghost. Or a serial killer. Or Jason. Or…man, I need to stop trying to think of scary things.

I get to the closet, and just when I’m about to open the door so I can turn off the light, something cold touches my shoulder.

“Aaaaaaaaaah,” I cry, jumping, I swear, six feet straight up in the air. If this were a scene in a movie, it would be the exact moment you spilled your popcorn all over your knees.

“Ms. Tate,” comes the stern voice of Ms. W behind me. She’s the one responsible for taking twenty years off my life. “I thought I warned you about lights out.”

“But it’s not my fault. I was trying to turn it off,” I say.

Ms. W steps in between me and the closet, reaching an arm into the closet and turning the light off.

“Time for bed,” she says.

I climb back into bed, feeling like a moron. I was scared of a light and Ms. W. I have got to get a grip.

Before I know it, I’m crying. I’m like Mom crying at commercials. What’s wrong with me? I shut my eyes, trying to hold back my tears, but they leak out anyway, pooling on my pillow.

Eight

That night I dream
there’s a huge thunderstorm, so loud it rattles the windows of our tiny dorm room. In the dream, I’m standing at the window, watching the lightning. As I’m watching the raindrops splatter and flatten against the windowpane, something big and shadowy moves outside. Before I know it, the shadow comes toward me, through the window, and glass is flying everywhere. It’s a giant tree branch, whipped up by the wind. I wrap my hands around the branch and push it out again, but as I do so, I realize the branch has turned into human hands and they’re clutching my wrists. They belong to a girl floating outside the window. She’s pale and creepy and her mouth is moving, and she’s asking to be let in. And she looks a lot like…me.

I sit up in bed, my heart racing and cold sweat trickling down my back. The first thing I see is Blade’s poster of Satan and I almost scream. But then I remember where I am. Hell on Earth — Bard Academy. The grayish light of dawn seeps in through the window and I don’t know what time it is, but it’s definitely early.

It takes me a moment to shake off the scary vibe from the nightmare. I rub my face and try to shake off the fright, even though the backs of my legs tingle with pins and needles and my whole body feels wired with adrenaline.