The Last Academy (7 page)

I
started keeping to myself. I did homework during announcements instead of talking to anyone in the seats near me. I went up to the lacrosse field and watched boys scrimmage instead of going to see Brynn play tennis. I brought a textbook to the dining hall and sat alone. After, I’d go to the library.

I needed the time to think. My roommate hated me. A junior had branded me as a rat and I’d broken a pretty serious school rule. Plus, I couldn’t ignore the fact that I had seen, heard, and thought things that seemed pretty mentally unbalanced. It was a lot to process.

But what kept coming back to stick in my mind was what Tamara had said about my parents not wanting me anymore. I mean, I knew it was a lie. But I couldn’t let it go.

Why
had
they sent me to boarding school? I’d been a good student, never the kind of kid who needed a strict, away-from-home kind of environment. It was weird, but now that I was here, I could barely remember the summer, when the decision had been made. Had I been so consumed by my issues with Lia, my life, and my friends that I’d somehow missed something bad happening between me and my parents?

Wondering about it made me feel like I was some stupid dog a family didn’t want anymore and so they drove out to the woods and let it go. The family tells themselves the dog is going to be all happy chasing rabbits and frolicking and stuff. The dog doesn’t even know what’s going on until the car is out of sight.

Half a dozen times, I picked up the phone in the dorm hallway to call my parents and disprove my roommate’s rattlesnake-mean theory. But there was always a good reason not to dial. Like I had work to do, or someone else was already on the phone, or the two-hour time change made it too late to call there. Keeping busy seemed a lot easier than having to dial home and ask whoever picked up on the other end why I was far away when they were together.

And even all that was better than thinking about those other things that had happened: The Golden Mummy Girl Tamara had turned into, or that smell on her that made me think I was being poisoned. Or what Tamara had said at the end:
Go ask your friend Barnaby Charon
.

A few days later, I sat on a bleacher seat, pretending to watch lacrosse. I felt nice and invisible there. The boys in the bleachers watched the game and the other girls mooned over the players, so there wasn’t too much pressure to talk to anyone. This time, a few of the varsity players stayed to watch the JV team practice. That meant I got to peek at Mark Elliott for a whole hour. I didn’t want to care about boys anymore, but even as Eeyored out as I felt, I couldn’t entirely ignore him.

When the practice finished and everybody started heading back to campus, he caught up and walked next to me.

“Hi,” he said. Just like that.

“Hi,” I said. He was still sweaty and dirty from practice, and he scrubbed his face with his jersey. When it pulled up, I saw his stomach was completely flat, except
for these muscles that flexed when he moved. It made me a little dizzy.

“Some scrimmage,” he said, into the jersey.

“Yeah.” I kept sneaking glances. It was like being exposed to some superprivate thing. Like his belly button was the page of a diary. “I thought Kirby was going to tank when he got the ball, but he held in there. Janson’s got a serious tackle.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. Game something. I nodded. When was the last time I had taken a breath? I felt kind of faint. When I inhaled, everything smelled overwhelming: the sun on the grass. The occasional whiff of Mark Elliott. My own hair blowing around, getting caught in the corner of my mouth.

“Yeah,” I said.

“You know Beau?” Mark Elliott asked. Beau was one of his friends. They played lacrosse together. Beau was walking a distance behind us, talking to three other senior jocks, his hands tucked casually into his waistband, I guess for lack of pockets.

“Think you might want to go out with him sometime?” Mark Elliott asked me, staring out across the field, not meeting my eye. His eyebrows squinched together like he was angry.

“What?” I stopped moving. Breathing, talking, and walking were all I could handle. Throw thinking into the mix, and I had to give something up.

“He’s kind of shy, but he thinks you’re cute,” Mark Elliott said, still looking off at the horizon like he was too annoyed with me to make eye contact.

I glanced back at Beau. He and his friends had stopped, too. Beau was cute. He was popular and seemed nice enough. I was superflattered, but I didn’t go all flushed and giggly at the idea of him. I mean, zero sparks. He wasn’t Mark Elliott, was all. We started walking again.

“No, thanks. I mean, I like him fine. But I don’t … he’s not …” I stopped, totally flustered. Was I actually rejecting a date with a good-looking senior? Did I just say no to something Mark Elliott asked me? How could I be more wrong?

“He’s not what?” he persisted.

“I like you.” As soon as it was out of my mouth, I smacked my hand to my lips, trying to grab the words back before they got heard.

“Oh,” Mark Elliott said. He stopped. I kept walking. I don’t know why. I just kept walking. I wanted to die.

I continued to want to die all the way across the soccer field and the baseball diamond, past the pool and the tennis courts, along the theater, and down to Kelser House.

Nora stood outside my room, pounding the patio doors with her fist. I was glad to see her, to really talk to someone for the first time since I had fought with Tamara. At least, until Nora turned around. Her face was pale and worried. I stopped. Nora never worried about anything. When she saw me, she gave me half a smile and rushed over. Compared to her usual bounding stride, rushed walking made her look pinched and weird.

“Hey, you snag those keys yet?” Nora asked, peering over my shoulder.

At first I didn’t even know what she was talking about. Then I remembered her plan to lock up the secret room.

“No. What’s up? How you been?”

I was kind of shocked by how she deflated, like she’d been counting on me having something I had completely forgotten about. It made me squirmy. I still wasn’t sure about the whole thing — she was asking me to do something that might get me kicked out if we got caught. Then
she wiped the look off her face, leaving nothing but determination there.

“Come with me.” Nora grabbed my wrist and led me over to her and Jessie’s patio. She gave a quick, obligatory knock and yanked the door open.

The room was dark. I stood there, waiting for my eyes to adjust. Jessie was slumped on the bed, like a battered piece of luggage forgotten on a claims carousel. Her pretty green eyes, unfocused. I thought:
Just like Tamara-poison-Golden-Mummy-Girl. What’s wrong with everybody?

“Jessie?”

Her rib cage expanded as she breathed, but that was it for movement.

“She’s been like that all day now. Even yesterday it wasn’t this bad.” Nora sounded somewhere between annoyed and concerned.

“Tell Miss Andersen.” I said it out of the corner of my mouth, because it felt weird to be talking about Jessie when she was right there.

“Jessie said not to. She’s been practically comatose since that séance. But last night, she would at least talk to me. Now nothing.” Nora reached over and poked Jessie
with one finger. No response. Nora frowned at me like Jessie was a weird bug she had never seen before.

“The séance?” I asked. That felt like a million years ago. And then I knew.

I’d been focused on scaring Tamara, not even considering how I might have frightened someone I actually liked. My insides sank. Jessie had been in that chapel, waiting for a sign from the dead. And now she was sitting in front of me like she’d swallowed cement.

I got down on my knees so I could see her face. “Jessie, it was me. I knocked on the chapel wall. As a joke. I didn’t mean to scare you.” Behind us, Nora took the opportunity to kick me in my butt. I didn’t care.

Jessie’s eyes cleared and she saw me. “Everything shook, the glass broke, and the lights went out. I wasn’t in the chapel, I was in that car.”

“No. We just …” I thought:
Why get Rachel in trouble?
“I shook the stained-glass wall. That’s what the noise was.” I cringed, remembering the sound of shattering glass, seeing Jessie again in my head, her mouth open in surprise.

She reached out so slowly I didn’t know what she was
going to do until she grabbed the collar of my T-shirt and twisted it around her fist. She pulled me close.

“My brother told me things. Good, terrible things. You brought him … thank you.” She stared past me, like she was speaking to someone else behind me. Dread prickled its way up my spine. What had I done?

I put my hand on Jessie’s fist. We were practically nose to nose. I could smell her, but she didn’t smell like poison or anything. Just like she hadn’t showered in a couple of days.

“It was only a prank,” I said.

She let go of my shirt and smiled weirdly. “It
was
my brother. No one could know that stuff except him.”

Jessie hadn’t stuttered once. I glanced up at Nora. She looked at me with one eyebrow raised.

“Umm. Ohh … kay. What did your brother say?” Nora asked.

Jessie shook her head and mashed her lips together until they were nothing but a white crease. Then she muttered into the front of her shirt, “He told me he was sorry, that it wasn’t my fault. He told me I could go home if I wanted to.”

“You want to go home?” I wondered how come no one besides Nora had noticed what had happened to Jessie.
Except I hadn’t noticed, and she sat right next to me in the chapel every day.

Jessie shook her head, that thin scar for a mouth coming back. “My parents don’t want me back. I look just like him.” She glanced at her desk. It was fairly neat — one textbook, some papers, a strange little gold coin, and a framed photo of Jessie, with her arm around a tall guy with the same moss-green eyes and mocha skin. My heart went icy. In my head I heard Tamara:
Your parents didn’t want you anymore. Their life is better without you.

“Oh, please. I’m sure that’s not true,” Nora was saying to Jessie.

A soothing thought washed over me: We were all away from home for the first time. The stress was getting to everybody. Tamara was meaner than a one-eared alley cat, I was imagining things, and Jessie heard her dead brother. There were plenty of older kids at the school who must have gone through the same thing and come out the other end fairly normal. For us freshmen, the cracks were showing.

“It’s going to be OK,” I told Jessie. Her eyes were so glassy and dark that she seemed like a doll, but after a
moment, she nodded. I sat next to her and gave her a side hug. She leaned against me, already seeming more like Jessie and less like a zombie princess.
And if you’re not better tomorrow, I’ll tell Miss Andersen myself
, I decided.
Even if we both get in trouble for sneaking out.

T
hat night I dreamed I was swimming in an inky ocean under a sky full of stars. Flashing red and white lights reflected on the waves. Sirens droned in the distance, but I felt peaceful.
The perfect night for an end-of-summer pool party
, I thought.

Then I was back at the chapel with Rachel. Candlelight flickered through the stained glass and made Rachel look like she was on fire, her skin melting. She yelled, “Run!” and laughed at me as her hair began to smolder. She became a young man with emerald eyes and mocha skin. Jessie’s brother grinned at me and rattled the chapel wall, the muscles in his forearms standing out with the effort.
Stop it!
I tried to say. Inside the chapel, someone screamed. I was screaming.

And then I was awake and falling out of bed. Landing
knocked the wind out of me. On the floor, wrapped up in my bedsheets like a freshly caught fish in a net, I tried to catch my breath. The sun shone through the crack of the curtains of our room, too bright. Confused, I glanced at Tamara’s bed, but it was made and she was gone.

My whole leg was asleep. It was like having a rubber chicken for a limb. I gimped over to the desk and checked the clock. Seven forty-eight. My stomach sank. I must’ve forgotten to set the alarm. Class started in twelve minutes.

I’d already missed room inspection and breakfast sign-in. That was a guaranteed two points each — I’d be working four hours of work crew come Saturday, plus the embarrassment of being in trouble. On the plus side, if I didn’t brush my teeth or comb my hair, I still had the slim hope of making it to first period before the tardy bell rang. I threw some clothes on and ran out the door.

During first period, I realized something was off. Even without the alarm, I never should have been able to sleep as late as I had. Miss Andersen should have woken me up at seven thirty when she came in to inspect our room. Five days a week since school had started, she gave our room
the once-over before checking our names off on her clipboard. So Miss Andersen had missed inspection.

I didn’t get to think about it too long, because Dr. Falzone, the dean of students, showed up at my classroom, interrupting our Spanish quiz. He raised an eyebrow at my rumpled jeans and bed head and pointed one finger at me. I followed him out to the hallway.

“You missed breakfast sign-in,” he said, when we were alone.

I nodded. I was probably going to get some kind of dress-code violation points, too. My jeans had grass stains on the knees and my T-shirt was an accordion of wrinkles.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I woke up late.”

Dr. Falzone frowned, like my story was a morsel of believability steak that he was rolling around in his mouth, chewing on, testing the flavor.

Someone’s high heels
clickity-clack
ed down the terra-cotta hallway toward us, loud with echoes bouncing off the walls. It sounded like a one-pony stampede.

Miss Andersen stopped midclickity when she saw me and Dr. Falzone, as though she’d been looking for one of us, but now that we were both in sight, she didn’t know
what to do next. Dr. Falzone rolled up the attendance sheet and tapped it in his open palm, still frowning. Then he walked away from me.

“Do I have points?” I called after him.

“This is your get-out-of-jail-free card,” he said, waving me back to class. He even smiled at me over his shoulder. It wasn’t until later that I understood he was glad to have found me still safe on campus.

As I walked from Spanish to algebra, I heard a flurry of whispers in the hallways. You have only four minutes to get from one class to the next, and the language classrooms are pretty far from the math lab. So I didn’t stop to listen. But it was like the Santa Anas had gotten into the people around me, with whirlwind bits of nonsensical conversation. Someone behind me whispered, “Suicide …” but moved away too quickly for me to catch the rest.

I guess part of me must have known something. Because after second period ended, and all the students walked to the chapel for announcements, dread started building up inside me. I wanted to drop my books and run the other way. Stupid. I filed into the chapel with everyone else.

Dr. Falzone paced at the front of the stage, tapping his sheaf of papers as people got to their seats. I smiled at Rachel. She gave me a wink.

Jessie’s spot was still empty. Everyone else was pretty much seated. A few people were eyeballing the vacancy next to me.

I glanced over at Nora, who might know Jessie’s whereabouts. She wasn’t in the chapel, either. I got a bad feeling. No one missed announcements.

In desperation, I looked for Nora’s occasional make-out buddy, Thatch. He was sitting center section, twelve rows up. He saw me and gave me a huge grin and a wave. I frowned at him.
My friend, who you’ve kissed in secret, is missing
, I wanted to yell.
Why are you smiling? Haven’t you noticed something is wrong?

Dr. Falzone read a couple of announcements off his papers — school play rehearsals, athletic schedule changes, work crew assignments, dinner menu. Floor announcements came next. A junior raised his hand: The AV club would project
Casablanca
out on the lawn in front of Hadley House Saturday night. Bring a blanket. Popcorn would be served. And then it was over.

All around me, students got up and left. Two girls
passed by and one murmured, “I heard they called an ambulance, but she was already cold.” Dr. Falzone was still at the head of the chapel, talking to a junior named Jake. I made my way, against the current, toward them.

“Dr. Falzone,” I said, when Jake walked off. “Jessie …” I was suddenly afraid to say anything. Like somehow, if I didn’t bring attention to it, nothing bad would happen. But the look on his face when I said my friend’s name let me know something had already happened. “Where’s Jessie?” I asked.

He studied his papers for a minute, his brow furrowed. “Jessie Keita made the decision to withdraw from school. Perhaps you were aware she’d been dealing with a family tragedy?” I nodded, dumbstruck. Dr. Falzone smiled sadly and sighed. “Camden, I spoke to her at length. This decision was the right one for her.”

I stood there, shocked mute. Dr. Falzone added in a kind voice, “Students come and go here more frequently than you might expect. Lethe is a wonderful, exciting place to be, but the pressure of the lessons here can be overwhelming.” Then he scooped up his papers and left.

I went straight to Nora and Jessie’s room. A crowd of girls clogged the hallway, clustered up in twos and threes.
Jessie and Nora’s door was closed and no light came from the crack at the floor.

This was why Miss Andersen never came to do room inspection, I realized. She had bigger fish to fry this morning.
I wanted to tell Miss Andersen about Jessie.
Guilt stabbed me in the lungs.
Why didn’t I?
The answer came back quick:
Because you were protecting your own hide.
I pushed my way through the gawkers and knocked on the door. No answer.

“She’s gone,” someone said.

“Get out of here!” I yelled. One kid bolted down the hallway. A sophomore girl turned her head away. The rest stayed where they were. It was like yelling at city pigeons.

I opened the door. “Nora?” I asked the empty room. Jessie’s closet doors were open and I could see all her clothes and shoes still inside. On her desk lay her wallet, with her student ID under a plastic window in front. An ATM card, a five-dollar bill, two ones, and a twenty were tucked into the side pocket, along with a card for a free serving at FroYo2Go with eight of the twelve spaces punched.

I set the wallet back down and wiped my hands on my jeans, remembering what Jessie had said to me the night before. How flat she’d sounded. I’d told her it was going to be OK. This was definitely not OK. Who decided to
leave school in the middle of the night? Without telling anybody? And leaving their wallet? Nobody, that’s who.

The thing is that life doesn’t stop. So I made myself stumble up the path to my third-period class, gut punched.

Tamara stood with a bunch of sophomore guys. A guy I was pretty sure was Shane yelled, “So is it true?” His friend elbowed him in the side. “Quit it!” A couple of other guys laughed and pointed at me.

I squinted. It was bright out on the lawn, compared to the dimness of Jessie’s empty room. My fingertips were tingly and numb where I had touched her wallet. I guess I could have walked up to those sophomores so they didn’t yell for everyone to hear, but they seemed like slow summer wasps. The angry buzz of their words lit up the part of my brain where survival instincts hung out. I didn’t want to go near them.

Shane cupped his hands and yelled again. “I heard Jessie Keita killed herself because of you.
You
knew her brother was dead.
You
tricked her at a séance. And
you
did it on purpose.” It echoed across the lawn.

It was like glass breaking, only it was the whole world.
Tamara’s snickers broke the silence. She took a step closer to Shane. Her hip grazed his forearm. My guts took the express elevator to my shoes. I remembered Tamara crying that night she’d snuck out. I had told her what I had done in the chapel. And now she had told everyone. Worst of all, it was true.

I couldn’t deny it, so I mainly concentrated on not fainting. I’d never live it down if that happened.
Get up to my brain and help me think, blood!
I thought. My blood was comfy staying down below my knees.

“I have to go to class,” I said. It was the squeak of a mouse being strangled with twine.

“Killer!” one of the guys shouted at me, as I ran off. More laughter behind me. “Did you really do that? Hey, I’m asking you a question! Did you do it?”

My classes kept me straitjacketed into the day’s schedule. Nora stayed missing and Jessie stayed gone, and still I was in class. Teachers called on me while I was trying to think. Had I scared Jessie so bad that she’d left school? Or was Dr. Falzone lying? Had she killed herself?

You can only freak out for so long before you burn through your supply of adrenaline and your brain gets dull
and wrung out like an old sponge. When that happens, you can think again, if you are willing to go slowly. I went like a snail. Everything in my head was wreckage, and I wandered through it, trying to see if there was any small thing I could salvage. By the time my last class let out, I knew what I needed to do.