Afterlife Academy (14 page)

Yeah, I wonder what that would
be. Stabbing class or something.

“How about you, Riley?” Mr
Perkins asks.

“Er… I miss my boyfriend,” I say
eventually. “And my best friend. And my parents. And I’m not used to being
treated like an outsider because I’m not grey like everyone else is here.”

Mr Perkins nods, then directs
his attention elsewhere. “And you, Anthony?”

“Er…” Anthony stutters. “I don’t
mind it here so much, actually.”

“Freak,” Jody says under her
breath.

“Don’t call him that,” I say,
surprising myself.

“How can you miss your boyfriend
when he’s already here?” she retorts.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I say
calmly. “But you don’t have to call him names.”

“Enough, girls,” Mr Perkins
says. “Tom, why don’t you tell us what you’re finding most difficult?”

I know Anthony is staring at me
in surprise. I can feel his eyes boring into me but I don’t look at him.

I know he didn’t expect me to
stand up for him.

But it’s Anthony. If this is
some kind of karmic retribution, then I owe him one. I owe him about six
thousand ones. He’s been so nice to me even though I don’t deserve it. And it’s
been really nice to spend time with him. I
have
been enjoying his company.

I’ve called him a freak often
enough to know that it hurts him.

And I don’t want to see him
hurt. He’s dead, for God’s sake. He’s hurt enough.

Something about hearing Jody say
that made me bristle. Anthony doesn’t deserve to have people call him a freak
just because he likes something that other people don’t.

I am losing my mind. Never mind
being dead, Sophie would
kill
me if she heard me
thinking that.

I sense when Anthony looks away
from me and turn my attention back to the room.

“I miss the food,” Tom is
saying.

I think he’s a bit nuts, to be
honest. “You can get food here.”

“There’s no point in eating
things that I can choke on when I’m already dead. Where’s the risk in that?”

“Why do you want to eat food you
might choke on?”

“It was my party piece. My
friends used to come up with loads of different things and I’d take bets on
whether I could eat it or not. Made a nice bit of money too.”

“You don’t mean edible things,
do you?” William asks him.

“What’s the point of eating
edible things?” Tom asks like it’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard.

“While I’m sure this is helping
everyone,” Mr Perkins says quickly, “let’s see if we can’t move on to something
more productive. Why don’t we all tell each other one thing that we’d like to
see happen in the near future. Just anything that might make your attendance here
easier.”

“I wish you could still kill
dead people,” Jody says menacingly.

“I wish teachers would stop
being so bloody cryptic all the time and just answer our questions,” William
says and I wholeheartedly agree with him.

“I would like to make some
friends,” Shanna, the fluffy-slippers-of-doom girl says quietly.

“I’d like to pass maths,”
Anthony says.

“I want to go home,” I tell
them.

“That’s a very good point
actually, Riley,” Mr Perkins says. “I’m sure you’re all feeling just like
that.”

There’s a vague murmur of
agreement but no one really says anything.

“Now this is one of the points
we cover in our group therapy sessions. Not usually the first session, but
seeing as it has come up, we’ll have a little chat about it, shall we? Now
then, I’m sure you’ve all realised that this place is actually home now, and
going back to your old lives is simply not a possibility. Everybody here knows
how hard it can be to accept something like that—hence my employment. I’m sure
you’ve all been made aware that as well as our regular group-therapy sessions,
I am available for one-to-one counselling sessions as well. Does anyone have
any questions about that? I promise not to shirk out of a proper answer like
some teachers are prone to do.”

No one speaks.

After Mr Perkins says we can
leave, I pick up my bag and walk as fast as I can, trying to avoid Anthony
after what just happened.

I forget that Anthony can run
though and he grabs my arm and falls into step next to me just as I get out the
door.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hi.” I smile back.

Why can’t he just drop it?
Sticking up for Anthony is just my way of appeasing my guilt about all the
times I was cruel to him.

I am in love with Wade.

Anthony is just a friend.
Friends stick up for each other all the time. A week ago I would have laughed
if you said I’d be calling Anthony a friend.

Anthony. He walks around with a
calculator in his pocket, for God’s sake.

“Will you talk to me for a
minute?” Anthony says eventually after I’ve made it clear that I have no
intention of stopping.

“Fine.” I spin round and glare
at him.

“Thank you,” he says eventually.
“Thanks for sticking up for me in there.”

I stare at him for a moment and
feel my resolve softening with every blink of those grey eyes of his.

Oh God, Riley. Please stop. You
don’t like Anthony, remember?

“It’s okay,” I say eventually.
“I figure I owe you one, you know, considering…”

“Considering the amount of times
you’ve called me much worse than a freak?”

“Not that I needed reminding,
but yeah, I guess.” I pause and think about it. “Wait, no. It’s not just that.
You’re my friend now. I know how crazy that sounds, and maybe I don’t have any
right to expect you to be friends with me after the way I’ve treated you, but
I’ve really liked your company this week, and I thought we were friends, and
friends stick up for each other, and…”

“I like you too, Riley,” he
says. “And I can’t believe I’m saying it either, but you’re okay when you’re
not surrounded by a gang of jerks.”

“Not much chance of that here,”
I mutter.

He looks at me.

“Not that I would want it or
anything,” I add quickly.

“I’m glad we’re friends,” he
says. “And don’t worry, I’m not stupid enough to think that you would ever give
me the time of day if Wade or Sophie were here, but I don’t mind being second
choice. I’ll catch you tomorrow, okay?”

He blushes and rushes off,
leaving me standing there staring after him. Something bothers me about Anthony
thinking he’s second choice.

“Anthony, it’s not like that,” I
shout after him, but he doesn’t hear me.

“Aww, fight with the boyfriend?”
Jody taunts as she walks past.

“Oh, sod off,” I tell her and
then remember that I probably shouldn’t get on the wrong side of her given the
whole tendency to stab people thing.

I can’t like Anthony. Not in
that way.

But I do. A little bit.

But I can’t. I had literally
never spoken to him civilly before this whole thing happened.

It’s just projection because
Wade isn’t here. I’m convincing myself I like the first boy that comes along
because I miss Wade. But I love Wade. I haven’t even so much as looked at another
boy in the year since Wade and I got together.

Wade is going to come and rescue
me. Just as soon as his leg is better. I know he is. He’d be devastated if he
knew I’d thought about another boy like that. It would be like I’d cheated on
him, and I could never do that to Wade.

Every time Anthony is near I’ll
just have to repeat in my head “Anthony is just a substitute for Wade until he
gets here to rescue us.”

Yes. That will work.

CHAPTER 17

I’m lying in bed that night, holding my plastic rose necklace
in my hand, but it’s not Wade I’m trying to visualise this time.

I keep thinking about my
parents. It’s funny how important some things seem now when in life they were
utterly irrelevant. I used to have a great relationship with my parents, but it
changed when I started comprehensive school. My life became about boys,
friends, make-up, and clothes. My parents became an annoyance. They were the
people standing in the way of me having a good time. They were always the ones
who said ‘no’. Lately, they had become the enemy. They didn’t approve of Wade.
They didn’t approve of the clothes Sophie and I wore when we went out on
weekends or after school. They didn’t approve of us going out on a school
night. They didn’t approve of my grades or my report cards from the teachers.

Before I died, I was counting
down the months until Sophie and I could get a flat together and they wouldn’t
be able to tell me what to do anymore.

It’s funny how dying can change
your perspective on things. I can suddenly see that they weren’t just being
boring old fogies, but they actually cared about me.

Right now I would give anything
to hear my mum shouting about the length of my skirt or my dad stuttering his
way through a lecture about the importance of condoms and the high rates of teenage
pregnancy these days.

Maybe if I had listened to them
more, I might not have got into that car with Wade.

Although I lived with them, I
feel like we’ve been out of touch for years. I can’t remember the last time I
asked my mum or dad how they were, or how their day was, how their jobs were
going. I know my dad was worried about getting laid off and at the time, the
only thing I could think was how awful it would be for me if he was around the
house more often to keep watch on everything I did. I didn’t even consider how
much that would affect my dad and my mum, or how worried they were about it.
The only thing that mattered was how it would affect me.

I was so self-obsessed.

Anthony is right. I was a
horrible person.

It’s all the more reason that I
have to get out of here. I have to go back. I have to make it up to my parents.
They must have buried me thinking I hated them. I
have
to make sure they know different. We used to have loads of fun together. Mum
would help me with my homework and take me shopping for new clothes when I
outgrew the old ones. Dad would take me to the cinema and start a popcorn
fight, much to Mum’s disapproval. But then it became social suicide to be seen
out with your parents. Kids in my school were seen shopping with their mum and
dad on a weekend and ridiculed on Monday morning. It was only acceptable to be
seen in town with your mates, so I stopped hanging out with Mum and Dad and
only hung out with Sophie and later with Wade’s gang of the cool guys after I
started dating him.

Looking back now and knowing
that if I don’t get out of here, I may never see my parents again makes a lump
rise in my throat.

I hold the rose in my hand and
try to visualise them. I lay there and do the same relaxation exercises as we
did in class the other morning. I clear my mind and concentrate hard on a
memory of us eating ice cream on a beach on a freezing January day. My dad had
taken us for a coastal drive and we’d stopped at the sight of an ice-cream van.
We’d got an ice cream each and wandered down onto the sand to eat it, wrapped
up in scarves and gloves. The wind was whipping up a storm and we all probably
ate more sand than ice cream, but I remember laughing as we tried to dodge the
worst of it without dropping our ice cream cones. We’d had to sit in the car
for ten minutes with the heater on before my dad had defrosted enough to drive
away.

I lie there for ages but I’m not
getting anything. I’m close to howling in frustration.

I just need to see them.

I concentrate even harder on the
memory but I’m still getting nothing.

Why won’t it work for me now?

“What are you moaning about down
there?” Caydi asks sleepily from the top bunk.

“Nothing,” I mumble.

“Trying to communicate with your
boyfriend again?”

“No,” I protest. “I was just
practicing visualisation techniques, but it’s not working.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Caydi says.
“You can’t visualise here.”

“Why not?”

“How should I know? All I know
is that the mojo is in the Visualisation classroom. It doesn’t work from
anywhere else in the school.”

“Have you tried it?” I ask.

“Of course,” she says. “I was
new here once as well, you know.”

I nod before I realise that she
can’t see me.

“Don’t worry,” she continues.
“It gets easier.”

“Pfft,” I say without really
meaning to.

“It does. I know it doesn’t seem
like it, but it will.”

“It won’t,” I say. “Besides,
Wade is going to come and rescue me just as soon as he’s better.”

“Yeah, right,” she mutters.
“Riley, I don’t want to burst your bubble, but no one is coming to rescue you.
This is something that you and only you can help yourself with. If you just
give it a chance, be nice to people, and concentrate on your lessons, then
you’ll graduate and that’s the only way anyone is getting out of here.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I don’t want
to graduate,” I say. “Maybe I just want to go back home.”

Caydi sighs. “This is home now
whether you like it or not. You may as well just accept it.”

“I’ll never accept it. They have
no right to keep us here.”

“Who has no right?”

“The teachers. The headmistress.
The silent partners. I don’t know, whoever is keeping us here.”

“The laws of the universe are
keeping us here, Ri. Like it or not, accept it or not, you are dead. Dead
people can’t live on earth. You died, by definition that means your life ended.
Get over it and get on with what’s left.”

“But I didn’t ask to die. I
didn’t want to be killed.”

“By my understanding, it was
your boyfriend who killed you,” Caydi snaps.

I don’t bother to respond to
that.

“Sorry,” she says after a while.
“It’s just that I know what it’s like, and let me tell you it’s a lot easier if
you just accept it rather than spend all your time pining after some impossible
hope. When I first came here, for months I hoped against hope that my older
brother knew where I was and would come and get me. He’s a Goth, like me, and
he’s very into death and stuff like that. I told myself that he would somehow
know about this place and he would come to rescue me. Obviously, he didn’t. The
living don’t know about this place. No matter what you think or what line of
communication you think you have, they don’t. Even if they did, they couldn’t
get in here. You can’t be here unless you’re dead.”