At first she heard nothing, and then in the distance a shout. Then a few seconds later, a faint scream. Allie leaned forward to peer into the darkness. There was no moon tonight, and clouds obscured the stars. She could see only darkness. Suddenly, very nearby, a noise – a creaking sound, like footsteps on old wood.
What the hell was that? Whatever it was, it was on the roof.
Down below, she thought she saw something dart across the grass into the woods. She held her breath to listen. Was that … laughter?
After a few minutes she heard a voice whisper so faintly she wasn’t sure she hadn’t imagined it: ‘It’s OK, Allie. Go to sleep.’
She looked around the room. She was alone. She shook her head fiercely, trying to determine if she was awake or asleep.
‘I’m going insane,’ she muttered, and closed the window, locking it firmly, before climbing into bed.
As she fell back asleep, she could have sworn she heard the same voice chuckle very faintly.
FIVE
The alarm’s jarring ring woke Allie from a deep sleep the next morning at seven. Groggy, she swatted it several times before finding the off switch.
Sitting up in bed, she stretched languorously. Another weird dream. What was with that voice? It had seemed so real. She blamed The Rules.
This school is just freaking me out.
After a quick breakfast, she made it to class with a few minutes to spare. Jo was already in her seat. Carter, she noticed, was not in his. Jo bubbled with questions. She barely waited until Allie was at the desk.
‘What happened last night after we left? What bad luck that he walked up while we were talking about him. Gabe felt really awful about putting you in that situation.’
Allie wondered how much to tell her. She remembered Carter’s maxim: ‘Never be afraid to be honest’.
But then, Carter is a dick.
‘We talked for a while, but all he seemed to want was to find out what I was doing at Cimmeria.’ She shrugged. ‘I got pissed off and walked out.’
Jo looked surprised. ‘Why did you get pissed off?’
Allie tried not to sound sulky and juvenile. ‘I don’t know. It just seemed to me he didn’t think I should be here. Like I’m not good enough to be here.’
Jo leaned forward and lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Allie, I’m no fan of Carter’s as you know, but that really doesn’t sound like him at all. He’s sort of the last person to be snobbish about anything. He thinks everybody’s too stuck on themselves here. He’s always going on about it. It’s one of the reasons people don’t like him.’
Jerry called the class to order. Reluctantly, they both turned towards the front. Jo pulled out a piece of paper and wrote furiously. As he began drawing lungs on the white board, the door opened and Carter walked in.
Jo slid the paper across the desk to Allie. It said, ‘You must have misunderstood. I promise.’
Allie lifted her eyes from the paper to find Carter watching her as he walked by. She dropped her eyes instantly and covered the paper with her hand.
She sighed and shook her head as if to physically clear it of crazy thoughts, and twirled her pen around her fingers.
One, two, three times.
And then at the bottom of the note she scrawled, ‘OK. I believe you,’ and passed it back to Jo, who looked pleased.
Allie tried to tune in to Jerry’s lecture. She could not spend every single class distracted by Carter West.
*
‘He just gives me the weirdest looks all the time,’ Allie said. ‘He’s always staring at me.’
She and Jo were sitting in the dining room as the lunch crowd waned, twirling salad leaves around their plates and talking about Carter.
Jo wrinkled her pert nose. ‘He probably just wants you to fancy him. He wants everyone to fancy him.’
‘Well if that’s the case, then he’s kind of failing,’ Allie said. ‘God, can you believe the energy we’re giving this conversation about some guy we don’t even like? Tell me about Gabe. How long have you two been together?’
Jo brightened. ‘Let’s see. We’ve been together more than a year now. When I first came here I was going out with this guy Lucas, but then I met Gabe and it was just … like, forget it. He’s the coolest guy I’ve ever known. The funniest. The sexiest. The … everything.’ She laughed at her own giddiness.
‘I can’t believe you’ve been going out a whole year,’ Allie said. ‘I don’t know anybody who’s been together that long.’
Jo set her fork down. ‘Cimmeria’s funny that way. People who get together tend to stay together. That’s why everybody talks about Carter so much. It’s kind of not done, the whole one-night-stand thing. I don’t know why. Maybe because we’re here so much of the time. I mean, some kids here, like, never go home. They’re just always here. Like this is their home. And we’re their family.’
‘Who does that?’ Allie asked curiously.
‘Well, Carter. And Gabe. And, well, me, I guess.’
Allie couldn’t hide her surprise. ‘You never go home?’
‘Long story,’ Jo said with a shrug.
She looked around the room, which was nearly empty. ‘Oh bollocks! What time is it?’
They both reached for their book bags and ran out the door, down the hallway and up the stairs. As they neared the first floor landing they were both giggling hysterically.
‘Late again!’ Allie said as they careened down the corridor and divided to go to their separate classes.
‘What are we like?’ Jo giggled breathlessly.
Allie stopped at the closed door to her history class to catch her breath, then opened it quietly. In the awful sudden stillness, the students all turned to look at her.
‘Miss Sheridan.’ Mr Zelazny insisted on keeping an old-fashioned chalkboard in his room, and he was standing in front of it now, glaring at her. ‘Class started two minutes ago. I know you’re new, but I presume you know our rules on tardiness.’
Allie nodded mutely.
‘Yes? Good. Well then, see me after class.’
Allie trudged to her seat, her eyes downcast.
I can’t do anything right.
No matter how hard she tried to change her life it didn’t work. It was as if trouble were her default setting.
At the end of class she waited for the others to leave, pretending to organise her books until the room was mostly empty. Then she walked up to Mr Zelazny’s desk. He was writing, and did not immediately look up. She cleared her throat timidly. After a moment, he raised his head and fixed her with an icy glare.
‘I’m very sorry to have to speak to you a second time about tardiness in your first week. It is a very bad sign for your future at Cimmeria Academy. I know the other teachers say you have great promise, but I must say I haven’t seen any sign of it.’
An angry flush rose to Allie’s cheeks, but she bit her lip and said nothing. He held out a handwritten piece of paper.
‘This is your detention notice. Tomorrow morning at six-thirty, meet the group outside the chapel and hand the teacher this.’
Allie couldn’t believe it.
‘Six-thirty in the morning? But tomorrow’s Saturday!’
His expression of cool disinterest did not change. ‘I’ve only given you one day’s detention, Miss Sheridan. If it happens again I will make it a week.’
Allie walked into English class draped in an almost visible shroud of frustration. Isabelle gave her a questioning look, but Allie lowered her eyes to her book and, as the headmistress began the class, slipped, relieved, into the familiar cotton wool world of self-pity until Carter walked in five minutes later.
Isabelle stopped her lecture. ‘Carter, you’re usually a little late and I’m willing to overlook a little tardiness but this is ridiculous. Do you have an excuse?’
‘Just running late, Isabelle,’ Carter shrugged. ‘It happens.’
The headmistress sighed and made a note on a piece of paper in her hand. ‘You know the rules,
Carter. Please stay after class to speak with me.’
When a discussion of T.S. Eliot ensued, Allie tuned out, fretting about what detention would entail and wondering (secretly hoping) if Jo had been given detention too so she wouldn’t be alone. She felt a quick lash of guilt for hoping that something bad had happened to her only friend at Cimmeria.
Suddenly she tuned back in, hypnotised by the combination of words and the familiar voice reading them. She’d always hated poetry, but she’d never heard poetry like this.
‘And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.’
She looked across the circle to see Carter sit down. He didn’t look at her, but she had the feeling he was conscious of her gaze.
‘So, what’s he saying here? What does he mean by “fear in a handful of dust”?’ Isabelle looked around the class. Impetuously, Allie started to speak and then immediately wished she hadn’t.
Isabelle nodded at her.
‘It sounds like …’ she faltered, but her teacher’s gaze was steady and patient. Allie thought it through and started again. ‘I mean, to me, it sounds like a warning. He’s saying “Be afraid of me. You will get hurt with me.”’
Isabelle nodded again. ‘I think that’s fair enough – there’s obviously a warning or a threat in there. Does anybody else have thoughts?’
‘It’s about death.’ Carter didn’t wait to be called upon.
Allie’s heart beat faster.
‘Everything he’s writing about is unstoppable – unavoidable. And what’s everybody most afraid of? Death.’
Allie stared at her desk but she knew without looking up that Carter was staring at her.
‘Zelazny is such a wanker!’ Jo was furious. ‘You were only, like, two minutes late. I don’t know how he could do that to you when you’re still in your first week.’
It turned out that Jo’s French teacher hadn’t even noticed she was late as he’d been discussing an impending trip to Paris with some advanced students and hadn’t realised that class should have begun. So Allie was going to be alone in detention. Jo had few comforting words for her.
‘I’ve done detention so many times I’ve lost count. It’s such a thing here because the rules are so strict and if you veer even a step outside them …’ She made a pistol out of her fingers and fired it into the air. ‘There are always at least ten students in it. But it’s bloody hard work, so brace yourself.’
Allie was puzzled. ‘Isn’t it just reading or studying?’
Jo’s tone was wry. ‘Oh no. Not at Cimmeria. Here it’s hard labour. You’ll either be painting something or weeding, planting, clearing … God knows. It’s always something that makes you sweat. It only lasts a couple of hours but it can be horribly dull if they give you something awful. But, you know, at least you’ll get to meet the other troublemakers.’
Allie rolled her eyes. ‘Oh great. Lucky me. Like I don’t know enough troublemakers already.’
They were sitting at the table after dinner in the quiet dining room; most of the other students had left. Jo looked around the emptying room. ‘Let’s get out of here. Have you explored the grounds yet? Or have you just been imprisoned inside with dusty books and me?’
She hooked her arm through Allie’s and they strolled out of the dining room. Ahead of them, the flow of students swirled in several directions; they followed the tributary rolling to the door.
They wandered out across the drive, which in the evening light had lost the ivory lustre that Allie remembered from two days ago. Now it just looked like an ordinary grey gravel path. The smooth green school lawns stretched out in all directions, and the long shadows of the trees reached out for them as Jo led the way onto the grass.
‘Where’s Gabe tonight?’ Allie asked.
‘He’s working on some special project, I think it’s going to keep him busy until curfew.’ Jo smiled indulgently. ‘OK, FYI? See that path through the trees there?’ She pointed at a row of pine trees across the lawn of the east wing. Allie could just make out a path going into the woods. ‘That leads to the chapel. That’s where you need to go tomorrow.’
Then she pointed in the opposite direction at a pathway that wandered from the west wing of the school building down to the treeline.
‘Over there,’ she said, ‘there’s a summerhouse just beyond the edge of the woods. Sometimes we have picnics there.’
‘So what’s further out in the woods?’
Jo looked at her quizzically. ‘Trees?’
Allie laughed. ‘No, I mean, are there more buildings? Or things to do …?’
‘I think there are a few houses far in the woods where staff or teachers live, but I don’t know for sure. We don’t actually do much in the woods, and they kind of discourage it because of, I dunno, health and safety or something. You’ll like the chapel though. It’s really old.’
They walked around the west side of the building and then behind it, where stone steps led up through a series of terraced lawns edged with colourful flowers. Beyond the last stretch of grass, the ground rose steeply up a lightly forested hill.
‘There’s a tower at the top of the hill.’ Jo pointed and Allie could faintly make out a structure. ‘It looks like there used to be a castle or something there but it’s just ruins now. The tower’s kind of cool. You can climb to the top and see everything. Some people say they can see all the way to London, but all I see are trees and fields.’
They skirted the foot of the hill and reached a long stone wall. ‘What’s this?’ Allie asked.
‘You’ll see.’
After a few minutes they came to an ancient wooden door sealed with an incongruously modern combination lock. With the speed that comes of practice, Jo spun the three numbered wheels and the lock clicked open.
She opened the door and walked through, ducking to avoid the low door frame. Allie followed, and Jo carefully closed the door behind them, pocketing the lock.
‘Oh wow.’ Allie breathed, taking in the huge, cultivated walled garden. Vegetables stood in rows of military precision, straight as a rifle barrel. Fruit trees crowded at the back, reaching up above the wall into the evening sun. Around the edges flowers spilled over in vivid pinks and whites and purples.
A stone path ran around the edge of the garden and Jo struck off down it. ‘Welcome to my favourite place at Cimmeria.’
‘It’s amazing! How did you find it? And how do you know the combination?’
‘Um … it’s just this random thing. I had to work here on detention my first year. At first I really hated it – getting up at six every day to come here – but by the end of the week I realised I was going to miss it. I don’t know why. I’m really good at the whole gardening thing, and this place is … peaceful.’
Allie wondered what she’d done to earn a week of detention, but since Jo didn’t volunteer the information she decided not to ask. Besides, it seemed pretty easy to get detention around here.
Jo turned left onto a path that cut across the middle of the gardens, past a classic fountain where a pretty young girl in flowing gowns, with a slightly damaged nose, tipped an urn of water eternally onto rocks, around a blueberry thicket, and then onto the granite path on the other side.
‘Now I help out after class and on weekends. I come here sometimes when I want privacy.’
Amid the lush purple wisteria enrobing the walls a wooden bench was tucked away, and Jo perched on it, gesturing for Allie to do the same. Allie pulled her feet up underneath her and wrapped her arms around her knees, breathing in the cool scent of the flowers.
‘We can talk here,’ Jo said. ‘In fact this might be the only place in Cimmeria where nobody is going to overhear us. As you’ve noticed, this is a really nosy school. How are you doing anyway? It must be totally weird for you to be here. I remember my first few days here – this place completely
freaked me out.’
‘It’s going to sound crazy. But I hate it here. And I kind of love it too.’
Jo gave her an easy smile. ‘I actually completely understand.’
‘It’s very different from any school I’ve ever been to, you know? And it’s a lot of work. But it’s …’ Allie thought for a minute. ‘It’s not my life. And that’s what I like about it. It’s not my life the way it’s been for the last two years, and anything’s better than that.’
Jo considered her. ‘When I came here,’ she said, her words emerging hesitantly, ‘I’d been kicked out of my last school after they caught me and my ex passed out on the roof. We’d drunk some vodka and … Well. Anyway, my parents were unbelievably pissed off. But the thing is, it was supposed to be this great school, but it was just … stupid. The classes were too easy, there was nothing to do, and it was full of rich kids biding their time until Oxbridge.’
She dropped one leg and swung her foot back and forth.
‘My parents sent me here next. I think they thought I’d hate it, but after I got used to how weird it is, I was totally into it. I love how hard it is, and how odd it is. How bizarre some of the teachers are. It just kind of fits. Since then, I’ve been OK. Great, actually. It’s like I’m in the place I need to be.’
Allie rested her chin on her knees and thought for a moment. ‘My life has been … kind of crazy lately.’ She stopped, and then decided to go ahead. ‘I had, I think, the perfect life until a year and a half ago. I was the perfect daughter, got perfect grades, my parents loved me. Then one day … it all ended.’
She stopped and looked up at Jo. ‘You know, I haven’t told this story to anyone. Ever.’
Jo nodded and waited.
Allie took a deep breath; her next words came out in a rush. ‘So I came home from school one day and the police were there. My mum was crying, and my dad was shouting at the policemen although I could tell he wanted to cry, too. It was chaos.
‘My brother was missing. And they never found him.’
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