Afterlife Academy (18 page)

I nod, still trying to take all
this in.

“How long have you been
looking?” I ask after a while.

She shrugs. “Few months. I’d
heard the rumours about it, obviously. But when my friend disappeared, I
figured that she must have found the exit, so I started up the forum on the
Internet, met a few others, and started the group. You will come on Saturday,
won’t you?”

“Yeah, definitely. I’ll try to
bring Anthony as well.”

You know, if he ever speaks to
me again.

“Great,” Clare says as she gets
up and leaves as quickly as she came.

I’m late by the time I run into
the Visualisation classroom that morning. Anthony is already there, sitting at
the desk we share. I briefly consider avoiding him and going to sit somewhere
else, but Mr Nathan is already sitting at his desk looking none too pleased, so
I sink quietly into my chair next to Anthony.

“Morning,” he says quietly.

“Er… Hi,” I say, and knock my
knee against his gently. We can’t exactly talk here, but I don’t want him to
think I’m still angry at him over last night. Even though I am a little bit.

Maybe because the kiss
didn’t
mean anything.

I don’t even know if I wanted it
to mean something.

I’ve never been this messed up
over a boy before.

God, I need to see Wade to
remind me of who I really love and get this Anthony nonsense out of my head.

“Now that we’re all here,” Mr
Nathan is saying, pointedly looking at me, “I hope you all remember what we
talked about last week. Again, I repeat: no one is required to do this. This is
not compulsory. If you want to leave this class, you can do so.”

Jeez. He’s mad at me for being
slightly late and now he’s telling people to leave if they want to.

“Okay then,” Mr Nathan says. “As
we did last week—everyone sit back in your seats, clear your mind of all
thoughts, and then concentrate on one strong, vivid memory of the person you
want to visualise. Don’t force it. Just relax and let it come to you.”

There is silence in the room as
everyone does as he says.

I wonder who Anthony is
visualising. He said he didn’t want to see his grandma because she’d be too
upset. Maybe he’s changed his mind. Maybe he does want to see her. Maybe
there’s someone else he’s missing from home.

No.

Anthony does not have a
girlfriend.

He can’t.

Wait… Why do I even care if Anthony
has a girlfriend?

I have a perfectly good
boyfriend of my own who I am very happy with.

Speaking of which, I should
probably be concentrating on this visualisation lark rather than thinking about
Anthony.

I have to see Wade. I have to
know he’s okay. I just have to remember how much he means to me.

I try to do as Mr Nathan says
and clear my mind of all thoughts. If Anthony could just not breathe in the
chair next to me, it might stop reminding me of him.

Right. Wade. That day we left
school at lunchtime, climbed out the fence at the back of the field, and spent
the whole afternoon making out while lying on a gym mat in the forest behind
the school. Wade laughed at me for being scared of spiders and not wanting to
get my clothes muddy, but it was okay because he kissed me as well.

Suddenly Wade is there. Not
lying on a gym mat in a forest, but behind my closed eyelids.

I recognise the bedroom around
him. He’s lying on his back on his bed. His leg is still in a cast, but his arm
is out of plaster now and is thrown out across a pillow at his side.

And he’s moaning.

Oh my gosh, my poor baby must be
in so much pain.

His eyes are closed and he’s
moaning.

I need to go home to him.

But then something else flashes
in front of the picture I’m seeing.

It looks like… hair.

No, it can’t be. Or maybe he has
one of his mates over for company.

It must be pretty hard to have a
leg in plaster and have just lost your girlfriend and be totally alone.

Yeah, that must be it.

Except I catch sight of the hair
again. This time I can tell that it’s definitely hair, and that’s quite weird
because I don’t remember any of Wade’s friend’s having long hair like that.

Unless it’s a new friend. Maybe
some guy he made friends with at the hospital or something.

Whoever he is, he doesn’t seem
very concerned about Wade’s moaning. If I was there, I would be doing something
to alleviate his pain.

But then… No… It can’t be.

The head of hair is on top of
Wade. It’s moving up his body. There are little noises and sucking sounds.

The realisation hits me like a
freight truck.

Wade isn’t moaning in pain.

He’s moaning in pleasure.

And that long blond hair isn’t a
bloke.

It isn’t some new friend he met
at the hospital.

It’s a head of hair that I have
straightened and plaited and curled and twisted around rollers at various
sleepovers our whole lives.

It’s Sophie.

No.

It’s definitely Sophie. And
she’s lying on Wade’s bed, on top of Wade, and Wade doesn’t exactly seem to
mind.

In fact, Wade’s quite enjoying
it.

I want to look away but I can’t.
I don’t want to see this. But I do.

I can’t believe it’s happening.

I can’t believe Wade would do
that to me.

I haven’t been gone that long.

I can’t believe Sophie would do
that to me.

With Wade.

She’s never even particularly
liked Wade. I mean, she’s never particularly disliked him either, but you don’t
do that sort of thing with someone you’re indifferent to, especially if that
someone is your dead best friend’s boyfriend.

Oh. My. God.

She’s kissing him all over.
Avoiding the leg cast, but kissing all the way up his body, mouthing and
sucking little bites here and there. Flipping her hair around. She’s
fake-moaning herself, a perfect concerto to Wade’s genuine moaning.

This is disgusting.

But I can’t look away.

Not because of what they’re
doing, but because of who they’re doing it to.

Me.

They’re completely screwing me
over.

Sophie is supposed to be my best
friend. You don’t sleep with your best friend’s boyfriend even if your best
friend is dead.

And you certainly don’t sleep
with your girlfriend’s best friend, even if your girlfriend is dead.

I can’t believe this is
happening.

I can’t believe they would do
this to me.

My life is over.

You know, in more ways than one.

Sophie kisses her way up Wade’s
body, stopping to bite at his nipples. How does she know he likes that?

And Wade certainly seems to be
enjoying himself. The leg cast isn’t slowing him down at all. He’s humping up
against Sophie’s thigh and having a grand time.

You wouldn’t even know that he
was indirectly responsible for killing his girlfriend last week.

Sophie turns her attention to
Wade’s mouth. She kisses him passionately, right in front of me.

I can’t believe I’m seeing this.

There are more slurping noises
that I try to block out of my ears, but unfortunately Visualisation class comes
with complete surround sound. Wade gasps in a breath before crying out Sophie’s
name and I guess it’s over for him.

The visualisation ends abruptly
and I find myself staring at our old Technology classroom. Everyone is sitting
calm and quiet, some still have their eyes closed. Some are fiddling with their
bags or their fingernails. I can’t bring myself to look at Anthony.

No one seems to have noticed
that I just saw my boyfriend cheating on me with my best friend.

“All right, Riley?” Mr Nathan
asks me.

“No,” I mumble. Then I get up
and run out of the class. Again.

I don’t know where to go or what
to do. It’s still the middle of lesson time so there is no one around. I stand
still outside the old technology block and try to process what I’ve just seen.
It doesn’t work. I can’t get my head around it. I wander slowly down towards
the canteen.

If anything can fix this, it
will be ice cream.

CHAPTER 22

Thankfully Narcissa is alone behind the counter when I walk
in.

“Hi, Riley.” She smiles when she
sees me. “You’re out early today.”

“Can I have the biggest, most
fattening, calorific thing you’ve got?” I ask.

Trying to speak around the lump
rising in my throat is a hard job, and Narcissa studies me for a moment.

“This sounds like a job for
chocolate cake,” she says as she reaches behind the counter and pulls out a
huge, warm, gooey chocolate fudge cake.

Just the sight of it makes my
eyes fill up.

“Sit down,” she says. “I’ll
bring over some tea.”

I take the cake and do as she
says, sitting at the little table that Anthony and I usually choose.

Within minutes, Narcissa has
joined me with two forks and two mugs of tea.

“Now then,” she says. “Spill.”

“I just…” I stop to shove a huge
forkful of chocolate cake into my mouth.

It helps.

“I hate this place,” I mutter
eventually. “It’s keeping me away from my boyfriend.”

“Ah yes, the wonderful Wade,”
Narcissa says. “Is he still hurt?”

“No,” I say. “Well, yes, but…”

More chocolate cake. How did I
ever survive without eating food like this?

“It’s worse than that,” I
mumble, because I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it.
But I have to tell someone. “He’s cheating on me,” I say eventually.

“Well—”

“With my best friend,” I cut her
off, feeling my eyes fill up at the thought of it.

“Oh, honey, that’s bad,”
Narcissa says, pulling a tissue seemingly out of thin air and handing it to me.

“How can he do this to me?” I
wail. “And Soph… We’ve been best friends since primary school. I haven’t been
dead a week and she’s screwing my boyfriend behind my back. She didn’t even
like him.”

“Time passes differently down
there,” Narcissa reminds me. “It’s been more than a week.”

“However long it’s been, it
doesn’t matter. You don’t sleep with your best friend’s boyfriend, no matter
what.”

Narcissa nods and pats my hand
as I simultaneously cry and shovel chocolate fudge cake into my mouth.

“Where did you find this out?”
she asks as my sobs subside slightly.

“Visualisation class,” I say. “I
saw them together, clear as day.”

Narcissa looks thoughtful as she
eats a piece of the cake as well.

“You know, maybe it’s for the
best,” she says. “I know it must be awful, but it’s better to find out sooner
rather than later.”

“It’s better for them not to be
screwing each other when I’ve only just gone,” I snap.

“Can’t deny that,” she says.
“But you were very hung up on him, and it’s not healthy to be that hung up on a
living boy. Forgive me for being so honest, but maybe this is just what you
needed to move on.”

I think about that for a moment.
Is it possible that the school somehow engineered for me to see that? Everyone
knows I’m uppity. Everyone knows I want to get out, and everyone knows that I’m
in love with Wade. The teachers are constantly telling me to move on. Is it
possible that someone set this up? That they faked it? That I didn’t really see
it?

I want to believe that. I really
do.

But I can’t.

That was Wade. And Sophie. It
wasn’t fake. I know the sound of Wade’s moans pretty well myself.

And they were real. Very real,
unfortunately.

“It’s not over though,” I say.
“If anything it just proves that I have to get back. Maybe it was just a
one-time thing.”

I can tell that Narcissa doesn’t
know what to say to me. I doubt she’s used to dealing with traumatised
teenagers.

“Maybe they were just looking
for comfort?” she offers.

“Exactly,” I say. “Maybe they just
miss me so much that they don’t know what to do with themselves. Maybe being
close to each other was the only a way for them to feel closer to me.”

I don’t know who I’m trying to
convince, but it’s not working.

I know as well as anyone that
they weren’t trying to feel closer to me. They were screwing around behind my
back. Except that they don’t know I can see them. They don’t think I have a
back to screw around behind.

I think about it while I eat
more chocolate cake. Really, really good chocolate cake.

It’s Sophie, for god’s sake.

Soph.

My best friend for almost ten
years.

She wouldn’t do it.

I watched her do it with my own
eyes. But it must have been an error in judgement. Just a mistake.

I bet she’s sitting alone crying
about it right now.

And I can forgive a mistake,
can’t I?

“Honey, it’s nearly lunchtime,”
Narcissa says. “I’ve got to go and do crowd control. Stay here, okay? That nice
friend of yours will probably be along in a minute.”

“Anthony is not my—”

Oh God, Anthony.

He hates me.

I highly doubt he’s even
speaking to me after last night.

“Tell your microwave thanks for
the cake,” I say as Narcissa walks away.

I’m still stuffing chocolate
cake into my mouth—seriously, it’s like it never ends. No matter how much I eat,
it never seems to diminish—when Anthony takes his usual seat opposite me.

“Here,” he says, pushing another
cup of tea towards me. “Narcissa said you might need this.”

“Thanks,” I mumble.

We sit in silence for a while.

He’s going to get up and walk
away any second now. I know he is.

“Look, Riley,” he starts after a
while. “About last night… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to kiss you, I just knew
that someone was there and I didn’t know what else to do to make us not look
suspicious. I know you’re with Wade, and I really wasn’t trying anything. It
was just spur-of-the-moment thinking, and I’m sorry. It didn’t mean anything,
you know?”