Smoke and Mist (The Academy Book 1)

by Kate Hall

  She orders Chinese take-out for herself, Sarah, and Mark when it gets close to lunch, and on the way to pick it up from the side entrance, she passes Alex in the hallway. She tries to ignore his puffy eyes or the way he curls into himself just a bit more whilst sitting on the floor by a row of lockers. His pain, though, radiates into her.

  Sequoias don’t feel pain the way humans do—when she was a child, before her sister was expected to become a premiere lawyer and before her brother couldn’t bear the world, their family took a roadtrip in their old, beat-up station wagon that Dad refused to sell, all the way to California. She got to walk through the redwoods, her soul calm from the presence of the ancient giants.

  She texts Kelly a link to an art college in San Francisco. It’s right along the forests, and Kelly can get her degree in animation while Gabby hides among the trees, away from all this pain.

  HALF THE SCHOOL IS AT CYNTHIA’S FUNERAL on Saturday. Gabby didn’t want to go, but when she decided not to yesterday, she had a nightmare that she died and nobody showed up to her own funeral. She texted Sarah to find out if she’d be attending, but she’d replied that it wouldn’t feel right to attend the funeral of someone she never knew. She said it would feel too much like an intrusion.

  So, when Gabby goes to the funeral, she goes alone.

  There’s a service at Cynthia’s family’s church, a huge cathedral smack dab in the middle of downtown. Gabby is early, as she always aims to be for this sort of thing. The emotions of others are easier to sort through when she doesn’t take in too many at once.

  The day is sunny and hot, and she almost regrets wearing her long black gown with thick lace sleeves and huge black hat that obscures her features. The church is air conditioned, but after the service, she’ll be standing out in the sun in all black.

  She enters the cathedral, and the force of Cynthia’s family’s emotions makes her stumble. She already wants to scream, to cry out in anguish as her heart fills with the heavy weight of tears. The casket is at the front of the room, open so that anyone can see her one last time.

  Gabby approaches slowly. Cynthia’s parents’ sadness weighs down her dress, trying to drag her back, down the aisle and out the door into the humid parking lot.

  She hates funerals.

  The steps she takes echo throughout the otherwise empty building, half stone and half colorful windows, which depict different stories, most with Jesus in the center. Somehow, all of them seem sad. How can anyone survive in a building filled with such constant sadness?

  She has to take two steps up in order to face Cynthia, who is lying in a bed of lavender and wildflowers. Her hands are resting gently on a bouquet of pink peonies. Gabby has never believed in Catholicism, but at this moment, she desperately hopes that she’s wrong, that Cynthia gets to go to heaven.

  Her eyes are shut, and Gabby’s mind tries to convince her that she’s just sleeping, delicate arms crossed over her. Gabby will not cry on the pretty green dress, the same one Cynthia wore to the graduation ball last year—long-sleeved, probably to cover the dark symbols carved into her arms by her murderer. Her skin has an unnatural blush, and Gabby wants to slap the mortician who used such a bright shade of pink lipstick on her cool-toned skin. She can’t help but think that she could’ve done better by her, but these thoughts aren’t allowed. Of course, she looks beautiful, an elven queen who’s laid down for a nap in this casket of flowers.

  With the wrong shade of lipstick.

  Fucking mortician.

  Gabby almost reaches out to touch her, to see if she’s warm, in case she’s really asleep and nobody has noticed yet. What if she wakes up a moment after she’s put in the ground? Gabby ties her hands together behind her back and turns away to approach the family.

  Cynthia’s mother is staring straight ahead, and she reaches out to shake Gabby’s hand automatically, which are clad in black satin gloves—she’s certain that if she were to touch this grieving mother directly, she would go to the highest point of this building and dive off of it, leadened with the weight of a mother’s sadness. Gabby has no idea how she has the strength to stand here while all these strangers stare at her with sympathy.

  “My condolences,” Gabby mutters as she shakes her hand. The woman nods and continues to stare right through her. Gabby can’t blame her.

  When she gets to Cynthia’s father, he whispers, his voice catching, “Are...were you a friend of hers?” She can feel that saying her name would shatter him. Although she only talked to Cynthia on a few occasions, she nods. He smiles weakly. “She had so many wonderful friends,” he whispers, a tear escaping his eye.

  By the time she makes it to a seat near the back of the church, she’s shaking, fat tears falling out of her eyes and onto her dress.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Alex

  HE’S AT THE CEMETERY BEFORE ANYONE ELSE. THE air smells like fire, and he has to check to make sure his hands aren’t catching. The smell isn’t his familiar campfire smell, though. This fire is a forest dying in the night, the funeral pyre of a child taken too soon, a house burning to the ground with the family inside.

  He doesn’t want to be here, but he feels obligated to pay his respects. He was the last contact she had before dying. He was the closest thing to comfort she found, and she held onto him until her final breath. He has to be here.

  There’s nothing I could’ve done, he tells himself. His heart races, a lump forming in his throat. Tears sting at his eyes, threatening to fall.

  The first vehicle there is the hearse, followed by a long black limousine carrying her family. A line of cars pulls slowly into the cemetery, stopping along the thin road that weaves along the graves. When there isn’t enough room in the cemetery, people pull over on the street and abandon their cars.

  He stands behind a mausoleum; if he can avoid being seen, he will. He’s here for nobody except Cynthia and himself. He owes it to her to see her put in her final resting place. He’s not really the religious type, but he whispers a prayer that her soul makes it to heaven. It’s the least he can do, even if God doesn’t want to hear him.

  The sky is too bright, the sun bearing down on everyone as they stand in a half circle around the grave. His pale, sensitive skin is burning before they even start the sermon. It’s never ending as they bow their heads in prayer five times and go through what feels like every scripture about death and perseverance.

  Before they start the final prayer, Alex moves to the back of the crowd. Still, a few people from St. Merlin’s notice him and shoot him dirty looks. Those who would force him to leave, however, are closer to her casket and don’t see him skulking around. That’s how they would probably describe him, although he tries his hardest to not skulk often.

  He wants to scream at those still glaring at him, I felt her pain! You have no idea what she went through. You have no idea what I would’ve done if I could! Instead, He keeps his head bowed low to avoid their gazes.

  Gabby Savalza joins him at the back, gently making her way through the crowd. Whenever someone makes an attempt to shame her, she seems to know what they need to hear. Vince Palmer shoots her a dirty look, but, instead of returning it, she puts a hand on his cheek and whispers back, “It’s okay to be hurting. I know you loved her.” After she walks away from him, his face crumples, and a sob bursts out of him with agony that Alex didn’t know was possible. There are so many other people crying that nobody judges him, although a few people shuffle over to give him space for his grief.

  When Gabby makes it back to Alex, she takes his hand in hers, lacing her fingers through his own. He’s not short, but in her heels, she’s half a head taller than him, so he rests his head on her shoulder, mussing his styled black hair. He’s caught her watching him a few times since Cynthia’s death, and he suspects that she’s been tuning in to his emotions.

  “You did what nobody else could,” she whispers, watching ahead as they lower the pearl white casket into the ground. He wishes he could speak up, tell everyone how Cyn
thia stayed proud, how she found a way to not be alone in her last moments. “You took some of her pain so that she wasn’t alone. That’s more than anyone else did.”

  You could’ve done better, he wants to say, but everyone has grown silent as the casket finishes its descent.

  Before Cynthia is buried, he lets go of Gabby’s hand and walks back to his car. He doesn’t want to hurt Cynthia’s close friends and family by existing too near their pain. He weaves his way through the cemetery, letting his tears fall freely. Usually, when he’s really upset, he has a tendency to catch fire. Today, his hands feel like ice. The spark in his heart is all but gone, and he wants to go back to his dorm to curl up and cry alone.

  When he turns to look at the crowd of mourners one last time, he’s not the only one leaving early. A middle-aged woman with red hair and a square jaw is looking right at him, but after catching his gaze, she turns around and strides away.

  He knows this exchange is important, but there’s something in his mind, a wall that prevents him from knowing why.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Sarah

  SARAH COULDN’T BRING HERSELF TO GO TO THE funeral. Since Mark is at the service and Elizabeth is working at the zoo all day, Sarah spends Saturday morning lying in bed, catatonic. She can only think about her parents’ funeral, like a movie playing over and over again in her head, until she falls asleep, her thoughts only on death.

  IT SHOULD RAIN AT EVERY FUNERAL. THE BEST WAY to cleanse one’s pain is to mask their tears with raindrops, the cool water pulling away all the hurt.

  Mom and Dad always told Sarah that rain is purifying. “Unicorns play in the rain,” Dad prodded late one summer, which convinced her to sprint out to the pasture in her boots and her favorite dress. She danced until the sun went down, but she didn’t see any unicorns. “You’ll have to try longer tomorrow,” Dad said to her frown.

  It didn’t rain at Mom and Dad’s funeral. It was too cold for rain, so sleet pelted her in the face—she had to squint against the wind to not get stabbed in the eyes. Her fingers were numb before anybody else got there, but that’s because she walked. Uncle John had passed out drunk deep into the night, so when she woke up, he was practically comatose. Luckily, his house was only a few miles from the one cemetery in town.

  While she sat in a cheap folding chair in the front row, waiting for someone else to show up, a hand rested on her shoulder, and she spun around. An elven woman stood over her, her dark face gentle and soft. Her golden hair was a fluffy halo around her despite the weather.

  “Where’s your Uncle?” Winifred asked. Her sheep farm backed up to the far end of the Jacksons’ pasture, and she was always the one to find Sarah when she ran off and fell asleep in a pile of the woolen creatures. It was only appropriate that she found Sarah at the funeral, shivering next to an empty grave.

  Tears welled in Sarah’s eyes, and she wrapped her arms around the familiar woman.

  The rest of the neighbors showed up after the hearse. There weren’t enough people to carry the caskets, so someone levitated them over. They hovered there while the preacher spoke, his words too loud over the tiny gathering.

  The thick wooden caskets holding her parents’ remains fell into the ground with a finality she hadn’t felt until now. As people dropped fistfuls of dirt over the grave, Sarah was buried, piece by piece, until there was nothing left of her heart.

  “I’ll drive you home,” Winifred said gently. She lead Sarah to an older pickup truck and bought her fast food, which her parents only rarely allowed. Sarah cried over her hamburger, and she cried when Winifred carried her back to the truck.

  When they got to the cold, unfeeling house, Winifred walked Sarah to the door. Sarah clung to Winifred, begging to go with her.

  She looked at Sarah with large, sad eyes. “I wish I could, darling.”

  The door swung open, and Sarah’s uncle dragged her into the house by her lower arm.

  EARLY IN THE AFTERNOON, THE SOUND OF THE doorbell wakes Sarah up. She wanders through the house, peeking into the kitchen and then her Aunt and Uncle’s bedroom before determining that they haven’t made it back yet. When the bell rings again, she pads over and looks through the peephole to see Gabby standing on the porch, huddled under an enormous hat and slim black dress.

  She opens the door and notices Gabby’s hulking black SUV, which seems to suck in all the sunlight pouring onto the driveway rather than reflecting it. The grille grins at Sarah as if it’s waiting for her to get a joke it’s just told. Whatever it is, it isn’t funny.

  Gabby leans forward and puts her head on Sarah’s shoulder, a feat due to their height difference, which is dramatically larger because of Gabby’s high heels. She’s shaking, so Sarah wraps her arms around her friend and pulls her into the house and onto the vintage couch in the front sitting room. The keys in Gabby’s hand dig into Sarah’s thigh, but she bites her lip and ignores the pain. Her chin rests on Gabby’s coconut-scented hair as she waits for the anxiety attack to abate.

  They sit like this for a few minutes, until Gabby catches her breath and sits up. She rubs her eyes, somehow not smearing her makeup. “Oh, god, I’m sorry,” she says, laughing shakily. “It’s been a long fucking day.” Sarah scoots over to give her some breathing room and notices the Cadillac emblem now imprinted on her own thigh, which she traces her finger over.

  “Funerals suck,” she replies, not sure what else she should say. These things are never easy, and she can’t find words to get rid of Gabby’s pain, especially when she can’t keep her own away, still clinging to her from the dream.

  “Tell me about it.”

  After digging around the kitchen for coping snacks—mostly chocolate—they go to Sarah’s room, which is a complete mess. She rarely remembers to toss her dirty clothes in her hamper, so they’re strewn all over the floor.

  “You do know that floors exist, right?” Gabby chides, and Sarah shoves her shoulder against her as they sit cross-legged in the center of the bed. Gabby waves a finger, and all the clothes fly over to the hamper. Sarah has to dodge a St. Merlin’s blazer so that she doesn’t lose a chunk of her face to one of the buttons.

  “Thanks,” she says. “I, uh, don’t know that one.” It’s a lie—she knows the spell, but she’s never been able to do it.

  They snack in silence for a few minutes, then Gabby asks, “Why do you have a fire going? It’s a million degrees today.”

  Sarah freezes. She hadn’t put the spell up before answering the door, so her secret is out there for anyone to see. She opens her mouth, but she doesn’t have a good response lined up before Gabby jumps out of bed and strolls over, bending down to look in the fireplace. Sarah tries to stop her, but she ends up dumping a bag of Doritos all over the bed, and while she’s distracted by the mess, Gabby finds what nobody was supposed to.

  “Ho. Lee. Shit.” She spins around to face Sarah. “Where the hell did you get a forest dragon egg?”

  “I don't—It’s not -,” Sarah sputters, her heart leaping into her throat.

  “I’m not gonna tell anyone. It’s just....this is super illegal.”

  Sarah flinches. “It can’t be that bad.”

  “I mean, you technically can get a permit, but it’s super strict and expensive,” Gabby continues, kneeling down by the fireplace. “They’re considered exotic animals. I think some director in Hollywood has one, but that’s just a rumor. How are you gonna keep it a secret after it hatches?”

  Sarah joins her on the floor, taking a large pair of tongs to twist the egg around. Every time she adjusts it, the fledgling’s life energy thrums through her fingertips. She wants to take the egg and hold it in her arms, but her body temperature isn’t nearly high enough to sustain the still-fragile life inside.

  “I have an idea,” she says, hopping to a standing position.

  GABBY PARALLEL PARKS HER ESCALADE BEHIND a silver car on the shoulder of the road along the park, and she puts anything valuable in her small black leather backpack before joining S
arah on the sidewalk. The warm air has brought flocks of visitors to the zoo this Saturday afternoon, so they have to walk nearly a mile from their parking spot to get to the front gate.

  Gabby is now wearing a borrowed pair of Sarah’s galaxy leggings and a black tank-top, plus a pair of flip-flops that were buried in the backseat, and Sarah is still in the ugly shorts and t-shirt she’d been in when Gabby showed up to her house.

  The zoo is crowded, and Sarah and Gabby have to weave their way through packs of slow-moving women with strollers to get to the Aviary. On the way here, Sarah had texted Elizabeth to let her know she was coming, and Elizabeth had been quite excited to know that Sarah was bringing a friend.

  She probably wouldn’t be so excited if she knew about the dragon egg in Sarah’s room.

  Sarah recognizes Victor as soon as they walk in, and he raises a hand to catch the girls’ attention when they step into the almost chilly educational area.

  “Elizabeth’s niece, right?” he says upon approaching them. He shakes both of their hands, and Sarah is thrown by how he’s treating them like people. All of John’s colleagues and friends had treated her like a toddler until the moment she left. “Your aunt told me you’d be coming.”

  At the exact same moment, Sarah’s phone dings. When she looks at it, she has a text from her aunt.

  I have a surprise for you!

  “Miss Halacourt informs me that, last time you visited, you had quite the connection with Hawthorne,” he says, leading the way through a door labelled “Staff Facilities.”

  The room they enter is a concrete hallway with another door at the end. The girls follow Victor through the dim corridor, and they have to blink away the brightness of the fluorescent room they walk into. While he tells them the different things they do with the dragon program, Sarah takes in as much as she can. At one point, she sees an artificial nest filled with opal and onyx and rose quartz eggs, and Gabby has to drag her by the arm to keep up with Victor’s spry pace.