“You remember,” Anthony says, his voice snapping me out of
my reverie.
“We killed you.”
“That is… quite possible,” he
says after a pause.
I don’t know what to say to
that. “I’m sorry,” I mumble eventually, even though that doesn’t even begin to
cover it. “It was an accident.”
He shrugs. “You told him to slow
down. I heard you. It’s not your fault.”
“Wade didn’t mean to hurt you. I
know he can be a bit cruel sometimes but he didn’t mean to get physical.”
“I think we’re a little past
physical by now, don’t you, Riley?”
I pause for a while and look
around. “How did we get here?” I ask, feeling more than a little sick.
Shouldn’t we be in hospital or something? Perhaps a morgue, in Anthony’s case?
It’s a dream. It has to be a
dream. I must have fallen asleep during history class again. Any minute now
I’ll wake up and it will be time to sneak out the back and meet Wade for a
drive.
It will. I swear it will.
“I know it’s a stupid question,”
Anthony says. “But where do you think all the houses went? And the cars? And
the shop?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I think
this is some kind of freakish dream. Maybe an experiment in one of your beloved
science classes. But we’re going to wake up any minute and everything will be
fine.”
“This is a frigging nightmare,”
he says. “If it was a dream I wouldn’t be stuck here with you.”
“Well, thank you,” I mutter. “I
can think of more interesting people to be with than you too.”
“Yeah well, why don’t you and
Sophie steal my glasses during maths again? That was a fun afternoon.”
I blush at the memory. “Yeah,
I’m sorry about that. I didn’t realise the teacher would write to your gran.
You could’ve just grassed us up, you know.”
“Oh yeah, because you wouldn’t
have had your minions backing you up. You wouldn’t have had ten girls willing
to do anything to be part of your gang. No one would have hidden my glasses to
get you off the hook and me into even more trouble.”
“I am sorry,” I say.
“Whatev… Hey, has that always
been there?”
He points to a sign on the grass
a few feet in front of us.
“Yeah,” I glance towards it.
“It’s just the name of the school so people don’t—”
Welcome to Afterlife Academy. A
prefect will be along shortly.
I stare at it. Then I look at
Anthony and then I look back at the sign.
“It’s never said that before…
has it?”
“What the hell is Afterlife
Academy?” he says. “That isn’t our school.”
I think about that for a minute.
“Well, it’s kind of grey,” I
say. “Our school doesn’t look like this.”
“It’s the mist,” Anthony says.
“It’s not really that grey. It’s just the mist playing tricks with the light.”
I nod but I don’t really believe
him. Mist doesn’t make red bricks grey. It doesn’t make every surrounding
object grey. It just makes things misty.
“Maybe someone will be along in
a minute. We should wait, like the sign says.”
Anthony looks up at the sky.
You can see that it’s still
daytime through the fog.
“So where is everyone? This
place should be swarming with students. Maybe we should go inside.”
“The gate’s locked.”
“We could climb it.”
“Hang on a minute,” I tell him.
“Firstly, this skirt was not made for climbing. And secondly, the gate is
locked and we are on the outside of it. Maybe there’s
a reason for that.”
“And that reason would be?”
I shrug. “Maybe there was an
explosion in chemistry class. Maybe something went wrong. Somehow we got out.
And we should stay out.”
“Don’t you think we would
remember an explosion in chemistry class?”
“Well, you would,” I snap.
“Given the amount of notes you take.”
“Notes help you study,” he
responds.
“There are more important things
in life than studying.”
“Like joyriding with your
boyfriend?”
“It was not… Hey, have you seen
Wade anywhere?”
“You mean since he hit me with
his car? No.”
“How weird is that? We were
together. We were together like ten minutes ago. And now he’s disappeared.”
“Riley, everything has
disappeared. Look at this street. Where are we? We’re in the driveway of our
school, but we’re on a different street. This is too weird.”
“So there’s been some kind of
noxious gas leak. Some other kind of natural disaster that somehow we’ve
escaped from.”
“What’s the last thing you
remember?” He stares at me intently. “The very last thing?”
I think for a moment.
“You,” I tell him. “Your body.
On the windscreen. And a lot of blood. And then we hit something. I couldn’t
see anything because there was so much blood, but there was a huge crash and—”
“And now we’re in a place called
Afterlife Academy. What does that say to you?”
“Are you kidding me? You think
we’re dead? You think we’re ghosts or something?”
He shrugs.
“You really are a nutjob. I
mean, I always thought you were a nutjob, but in an I-enjoy-maths kind of way.
Not in an I-am-actually-a-complete-nutjob kind of way.”
He doesn’t respond.
“So, where’s Wade?” I ask. “He was
in the accident too and he’s not here.”
“I don’t know, okay, Riley?”
Anthony suddenly snaps at me. “I don’t know. The last thing I remember is pain.
A lot of pain. And being flung across the bonnet of your car. And now I’m
standing outside my school, except everything is wrong about it, and I’m with
the biggest bitch in my year.”
“I am not a bitch,” I snarl at
him.
“You are to me,” he says simply.
“Somewhere inside you must be nice because so many people like you. But I’ve
never seen anything other than a complete bitch.”
“That is so unfair,” I say.
“Okay, we tease you sometimes. But you have to admit you’re an easy target.”
“Why does anyone need to be a
target? Why do you need to put someone else down to make yourself feel better?”
“Hey, I resent that. I do not—”
“Could you two shut the hell up
for one
bloody minute?”
We both jump out of our skins
and spin in the direction of the voice.
There is a boy about our age
standing inside the gate watching us. When the hell did he get there? I look
over at Anthony and he looks as shocked as I am. Neither of us saw him
approach.
“Who are you?” I ask.
I don’t recognise him. I know
pretty much everyone in this school, and I’ve never seen him before. He’s
weird-looking enough that I’d remember him. He’s young, but his hair is slicked
back like something out of the 1940s. And he’s almost completely grey. His skin
is grey. His clothes are grey and seriously old-fashioned. His hair is a dark,
ashy colour. Everything about him is grey.
Everything about this whole
place is grey.
“Riley Richardson and Anthony
Marsden?” the strange boy asks.
“Who are you?” I ask him again.
“Please report to the
principal’s office immediately.”
And with that he is gone.
Literally gone.
Not walked away. Just vanished.
Into thin air.
But now the gates are open.
“Okay,” I stutter, looking at
Anthony. “Did you just see that? Please tell me you just saw that.”
“I saw it,” he says. “You still
think I’m a nutjob?”
“Always,” I tell him. “But we
can’t be dead. We can’t be. I’m sixteen. I can’t die at sixteen.”
“People can die at any age,
Riley,” he says. “If you paid more attention in class you would know that.”
“Do not lecture me,” I growl. “I
pay plenty of attention in class. My grades are very good, I’ll have you know.
Not that my grades have anything to do with you anyway.”
“I don’t see how,” he says. “All
you do is gossip or text on the phone you’re not supposed to have or torment
people who are actually listening. Or—”
“My phone!” I interrupt. “My
bag! My stuff! Where is everything? I had a bag with me just now. It was in the
back of the car.”
“Mine’s gone too,” Anthony says.
“Great. Not only has there been
some kind of freakish gas leak but we’ve been mugged as well.”
“I don’t think this is a gas
leak,” he says. “And I don’t think we’ve been mugged.”
“No, you think we’re both bloody
dead. That’s a much more viable option.”
“Look,” he says, “I’m not ruling
anything out. I’m just saying that the last thing either of us remembers is a
car accident. And now we’re back at school, but everything looks wrong and a
very strange guy just vanished into thin air right in front of us.”
“Who was that guy?” I ask.
“How am I supposed to know
that?”
I shrug.
“The sign says a prefect will be
here. Maybe he was a prefect.”
“Weird-looking prefect. Not that
everything isn’t looking a bit strange at the moment,” I mutter.
“Yeah, well, maybe we should do
what he said.”
“We should report to the
principal’s office?”
He shrugs. “He told us to. And
he knew our names.”
“You know, this is reminding me
of that movie where the guy wakes up from a coma and the whole world has been
infested with zombies.”
“I could be wrong, but I don’t
think there’s been a zombie outbreak,” he says.
“So where is everyone? And
everything?”
“Look, let’s just go and see the
principal. If anyone can explain what’s going on, it will be him.”
“Yeah? Because I vote that we
run away.”
“To where, Riley? Look at this
street. It’s the right street but it’s wrong. There should be a roundabout and
a railway bridge just up there, but there’s nothing but fog. Where do you think
we’re going to get to?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “But we
should do something.”
“That guy didn’t ask us our
names. He already knew them. What does that tell you?”
“This is a really creepy
situation and we should get the hell out of here?”
“It tells me that they were
expecting us. It tells me that the principal is waiting for us.”
“Yeah, to eat us. Because he’s a
zombie.”
Anthony rolls his eyes but his
lips twitch up into a smile.
“We don’t even know where the
principal’s office is,” I counter.
“This is our school. The
principal’s office is in the same place it always is.”
“So why is it called—” I read
the sign on the grass and grab Anthony’s arm. “Do you see that?” I ask him.
“Welcome to Afterlife Academy,”
he reads. “Please
report to the principal’s office immediately.”
“Okay, now that’s just plain
weird. That sign used to say that a prefect would come along, and now it says
something different. When on earth did they have time to paint the sign without
us noticing?”
“I don’t think they did,” he
says slowly.
“So what, it’s a magic sign
now?”
“For God’s sake, Riley. The sign
said that a prefect would come along. The prefect came and told us to go see
the principal. Now the sign is telling us to go and see him because so far all
we’ve done is stand here and argue.”
“But how did it change?” I
whine. “This just proves that this is a nightmare and we should both just stand
here until we wake up.”
“Riley…”
“No,” I snap. “Signs don’t just
change of their own accord. That sign is solid metal. It’s been there for
years. It says ‘Welcome to Bellfield Comprehensive School. You are here.’ And
there’s a map. So this is either a nightmare or a really sick joke. Oh my god,
that’s it! Wade was really pissed off with me for telling him not to be cruel
to you. He’s done something to us. Probably drugged us or something. This is
some kind of weird drug trip.”
“Whatever it is, I think we
should do what we’ve been told.”
“Oh, you’re always such a goody
two-shoes. Always doing what the teachers tell you.”
“Insult me all you like. I’m
going to see the principal and get this whole mess straightened out. You can
stay here if you want.”
“You know, Wade is probably
hiding somewhere laughing at us right now.”
“Whatever,” Anthony says and he
begins to walk away.
The thought of standing here by
myself fills me with dread, so even though he’s the class geek and clearly a
complete loon, I run after him anyway.
