Afterlife Academy (9 page)

“How do you know my name?”

But she doesn’t answer my
question.

How does she even know who I’m
sending email to?

“I know you’re new here,” she
continues, “so maybe there are some rules that we need to go over. Contact with
the living is strictly forbidden.”

“How did you even know?”

Again she ignores my question.

“I understand that it must be
hard to adjust, but you have to stick to the rules.”

“Why can’t I get into my own
email then?” I ask her. “How come even Google isn’t recognised?”

“This is our Internet, Riley,”
she says, sounding slightly kinder now. “Our Internet is different from the one
you are used to. Websites created by the living world aren’t available here.”

I roll my eyes.

“So please, no more attempts to
email the living. They are not a part of this world and contact with them could
cause serious consequences for everyone.”

I sigh.

“Fine,” I mutter. “It’s not like
I can get through anyway.”

“No, you can’t. Now, is there
anything else you wanted the computer for?”

I glance at it like it holds the
answer.

“I’d like to do a bit of
research for school work,” I lie. “Does this world have a search engine I can
use?”

She leans over and types in the
address and then before I’ve finished blinking, she’s back behind the main desk
halfway across the room.

This place is creepy. You can’t
even type an email without people breathing down your neck. If they even
breathe. God, I hadn’t thought of that. Breathing, I mean. I concentrate hard
and realise that I am still doing it. Do I need to? Is it just out of habit or
do I really need air? It’s not like I can die if I hold my breath for long
enough, is it?

I turn my attention back to the
search engine on the screen in front of me. I type in
Afterlife
Academy
and press the search button.

I don’t really know what I’m
looking for, so I click through a few results. Mainly official-looking rules
and regulations signed by Mrs Carbonell.

I add the word
escape
to my search, hoping that the bloody librarian
isn’t watching that as well.

That’s when I find something in
the results. It’s a forum, and I click on the thread called “Anyone found it
yet?”

I scroll through it. There are
hundreds of posts. They all must be from students here. And judging by the
comments, this thread has been found and shut down by “officials” a few times
but it keeps popping back up.

The gist is that there is a way
out. An exit. No one seems to have found it yet, but one person writes, “
Someone disappeared yesterday. Maybe they found it
.”
There are a hundred questions: How do we know it exists if no one has found it?
Where does it exit
to
? And the obvious one:
Where is it?

There are no concrete answers.
The posters seem to know that there
is
an exit
but nothing more. Nothing important.

But surely if this thread has
been closed down, then it must mean there’s something to it. No one would care
about a forum thread if there wasn’t an exit to find.

That’s good enough for me. I
can’t stay here, no matter what. If there’s even a chance that I can get out, I
have to find it.

I’m lying in bed that night,
thinking about everything that has happened. I’m thinking about Wade. Holding
my rose necklace in my hand, like I usually do when we’re apart. Holding it
makes me feel slightly less alone. Almost like I could pick up the phone and
call him, there would be a signal, and he would pick up like normal. Not like
this, where his name is blocked out and I can’t even send him a bloody email.

The acrylic rose feels warm in
my hand and I squeeze it even tighter. It connects me to Wade even though he’s
not here, and it—

Oh my god, that’s it! It
connects me to Wade. That’s why the rose is still pink. That’s why my hair is
still my own colour. I’m still connected to Wade. Clearly our love is too
strong a bond to be broken. Our love defies boundaries. I must still be in touch
with the living world. Maybe that’s why it’s so hard for me to fit in here.

And if I’m still connected to
the living world, then the living world must still be connected to me.

I concentrate really hard on
Wade. If we’re still connected then he should be able to feel me. He must know.
He
has
to know.

It’s all starting to make sense
now. Wade can feel me. We’re still connected. Afterlife Academy hasn’t worked
its grey magic on me yet because I still have a connection to the living world.

He knows I’m not really dead.

He’s going to come and rescue
me.

I’m sure he is.

That would be a totally Wade
thing to do. Rescue a girl, I mean. He’s a total hero. Rescuing people is right
up his street. Okay, in a way, it’s his fault that I’m here in the first place,
but it’s not like he intended it to happen. But it doesn’t matter now because
he’s going to make it right. He knows where I am and he’s coming to help me.

I just don’t know when.

I concentrate even harder. I’m
trying to send a subliminal message to him, and half expecting a teacher to
burst in any moment and forbid me from communicating with the living.

But no one comes.

The only sound I can hear is
Caydi snoring lightly in the top bunk.

I try to get the words Afterlife
Academy through to Wade. After all, if he’s coming to rescue me then he has to
know where to come. I’m sure he’ll understand the message because Wade is
surprisingly cleverer than he looks and what his grades say, but that’s beside
the point. He can look up Afterlife Academy on the Internet and find out about
it. He might be able to locate the way in and out without even coming here.
Maybe he can telepathically communicate to me where the way out is. Or, more
likely, he will come here, ride in on a white horse, which is much more Wade’s
style, although possibly without the horse as I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have
one, but he could always borrow one. Anyway, the point is, Wade is very good at
being the knight in shining armour. He can ride in, snatch me away, and we’ll
go home together.

My parents will be so happy that
he effectively brought me back from the dead, they’ll instantly like him
forever and ever.

Although I doubt my dad would
ever let me get in a car with him again.

I wonder how Wade is. I mean,
it’s all very well and good thinking he might rescue me, but what if he’s hurt
too? I have no idea how badly he got out of the accident. He could be seriously
injured. An accident that killed two people couldn’t have been a walk in the
park for the other person either.

Poor Wade.

It’s okay for me, being dead and
all. I don’t have to recover from my injuries. Mine were just gone. I don’t
even know what killed me. Whatever my injuries were, they vanished when I got
here. I guess death is like the fastest healing process in the world. Anthony’s
too. I saw Anthony’s head crack open on the windshield with my own eyes. God,
Anthony’s blood splattered on me through the passenger window, and he’s
perfectly fine now. He was perfectly fine the moment we arrived. I mean, he was
dead, but uninjured. Unless you could class being dead as an injury in itself.

But poor Wade must be hurt.
Maybe badly.

I guess I’ll just have to be
patient in waiting for him.

The important part is that I
know he knows I’m still alive and I know he’s going to come and rescue me.

I just don’t know when. But
that’s okay. The main thing is that I know he’s coming. It doesn’t matter when
as long as he does.

I just wish I had some kind of
sign that he got my subliminal messages. Wade isn’t exactly overly attentive
when it comes to listening.

Caydi is not very impressed with
my plan when I tell her the next morning. She doesn’t believe some “silly
plastic necklace” can really be a line of communication with the living, but it
is. I know it is. I don’t think the object is as important as the connection
that comes with it. The necklace just happens to be something Wade gave me. It
could have been anything. It could have been a book or an MP3 player. It could
have been a piece of paper. It just has to have been something that was
important between us when I was alive. I used to hold the necklace in my hand
when Wade had gone home or when my parents forced me to stay in and do GCSE
coursework rather than go out with him. I would stroke my fingers over the pink
acrylic and it would make me feel better.

CHAPTER 10

I head down to the canteen for breakfast. If I can eat
whatever I want and not get fat then I fully intend to make the most of it. I
might not be here long, depending on how long Wade’s injuries take to heal. Our
first Visualisation class is this afternoon, and I’m really hoping I might get
the chance to see him, just so I know he’s okay. Maybe he will feel me watching
him and our connection will be even stronger. And knowing how severe his
injuries are might give me a timeline, just so I know how long it will be
before he has a chance to rescue me.

The canteen is as gloomy as it
was yesterday. Grey, everywhere. The only flash of colour is the red horns on
the demon woman’s forehead and my reflection in the windows.

Nobody so much as looks at me as
I walk in. I’m not used to being ignored like this, although it doesn’t feel
like a bad thing now.

 I can’t believe I’m glad to
fade into the background.

But that’s the thing about
Afterlife Academy. Everything fades into the background. Everything except the
girl with skin-coloured skin, highlighted hair and a pink necklace.

Here, I am the one that stands
out. I am the one who looks different.

Much like that kid with red hair
and freckles who started at our school last year. Soph and I picked on him
because he stood out. It’s not that I didn’t care about all those times he went
to cry in the toilets. It’s really not. But people thought we were hilarious
when we pointed at him and said funny things, so we kept doing it. And if
people laughed at us, then it meant they liked us. Somehow it was more
important to be liked than to be nice to nervous new kids.

I’m beginning to reconsider
that.

The tall girl who was in front
of me in the queue yesterday is sitting at one of the tables just inside the
door with a gang of her mates and when I walk in, she bangs the table for
attention. When everyone is looking at her, she points over at me and says, “Oh
look, it’s Little Miss Prissy,” at the top of her voice.

Everyone stares at me.

“Screw you,” I tell the girl.

If I know one thing, it’s that
showing the bullies they don’t bother you is the best approach. I know that
making fun of someone is only fun for as long as it bothers them. Especially
new kids. Once they make friends and get a bit more sure of themselves, they
laugh off anything you say to them and you move on to someone else.

“You think you’re better than
us,” the girl responds.

“No, I don’t,” I snap.

“Yes you do. Always prancing
around and flipping your pretty hair, trying to make us jealous.”

“I’m not,” I protest. “I didn’t
ask for this. I don’t want to stand out and be different from everyone else,
it’s just the way I am. It’s not something I can change.”

I suddenly get a vivid flashback
of the red-haired Year Seven saying exactly the same thing to me and Sophie.

“Why don’t you just sod off back
to where you came from, then?” she asks. “It’s obvious you don’t want to be
here.”

“Okay, who does want to be
here?” I ask, trying to keep a lid on my temper. “Being here means you died.
Who wants that? Who wants to leave their friends and family behind?”

“Some of us do, actually,” she
snaps. “Some of us chose to be here and we don’t like stuck-up little cows like
you coming in and thinking you’re too good for this place. This is the best
thing that’s ever happened to some of us, so why don’t just shut your trap,
Blondie?”

I try to respond to that but
really, what is there to say?

It hadn’t even crossed my mind
that some of the people here may have committed suicide.

I go to walk away. I can rise
above this and not get into some stupid little argument in the cafeteria with a
girl who can’t even thank the woman who serves her food.

As I walk past her, she pulls
the old trick of sticking her foot out and tripping me up.

It works.

I go flying. I trip right over
and land flat on the floor, smacking my chin on the rough tiles hard enough to
rattle a few teeth. Ouch.

My bag has slid out in front of
me and hit someone else’s feet.

Oh God. I can’t believe this is
happening. This is the sort of thing I do to other people, not have done to me.
I never thought about how embarrassing it is before. Or how much it hurts.

I try to pull myself to my feet
and am surprised when someone holds a hand out and helps me up.

It’s Clare. It was her feet that
my bag hit.

“Ignore her, Riley,” she says as
I stand myself upright and brush my clothes off. “She’s just jealous.”

“Oh yeah, right,” the girl pipes
up. “Jealous of that bitch?”

“Shut up, Gloria,” Clare tells
her.

And there was me thinking Clare
hated me.

“Thanks,” I mumble to her.

“Don’t worry about it,” she says
and she pats me on the shoulder as she brushes past.

“You had better stay away from
me, Little Miss Prom Queen,” Gloria growls as I walk away.

I’m walking with my head down
and my hair over my face because tears have sprung to my eyes and I’m so
embarrassed my face must be completely flaming red and my knees and chin are
throbbing.