Afterlife Academy
by
Jaimie Admans
Afterlife Academy © Jaimie Admans.
First Kindle Edition.
All rights reserved.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents portrayed in it are a product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the author.
First published in 2013 by Jaimie Admans.
Cover design by Jaimie Admans. Image © BeauSnyder/iStockPhoto.
Find out more about the author at http://www.jaimieadmans.com
Also by Jaimie Admans:
Kismetology
A feel-good romantic comedy about finding the perfect man… For your mother!
Creepy Christmas
If you listen closely, you can hear the faint sound of screaming over the Jingle Bells... Can Kaity help Santa's daughter save Christmas from being destroyed by Anti-Claus?
A fun, festive, family read!
CHAPTER 1
I have always been a good girl. I’ve always been a girl who never gets into trouble. In fact, the one and only time that I do something even vaguely wrong, do you know what happens?
I die.
At least, that seems like the most logical explanation, given the circumstances.
I remember impact.
And then nothing.
I open my eyes and look around. I am standing in front of the school gate.
Of all places.
It’s freezing. Something feels wrong. I’m just pulling my jacket further around myself when I hear a voice to my left.
“You,” it says angrily.
It startles me and I spin around to see Anthony.
Of all people.
Somehow I have gone from being in the car with Wade to standing in front of the school gate with the geekiest, most boring, weirdest nerd boy from my form.
“You,” I snarl back at him.
He sighs.
I huff out a breath, which appears in front of my face because it’s so cold. It’s the middle of April. It shouldn’t be this cold.
I look around and realise something is really wrong with this place.
We’re standing on the road outside our school gate.
Except we’re not.
On the road, that is.
I mean, we’re outside the school. Our school. And we’re standing on a road. But this isn’t the road. There are no cars. No houses. No sandwich shop opposite. There’s nothing but an endless country lane. There is nothing in either direction. Just a plain tarmac road. And trees. Lots of trees.
I glance back at Anthony to see if he’s seeing this too. Obviously he is because he’s looking around, clearly just as bewildered as I am.
“What happened?” I say, more to myself than to him.
I don’t usually talk to him. Sophie, my best friend, would laugh at me for even looking at our school’s biggest geek.
“Oh, so I’m allowed to speak to you now?” he snaps.
“Are you even seeing this?” I snap back. “What the hell happened?”
“How am I supposed to know?”
“You’re the one so enthralled by chemistry classes.”
“There’s nothing wrong with wanting to improve your mind. I happen to find science interesting. Probably in the same way that you find painting your fingernails interesting.”
“Oh, shut up. Don’t you think we have more important things to worry about at the moment? Like where the hell we are, for instance?”
“We’re at school, genius.” He scowls.
“Yes, but look…” I indicate wildly with my hands. “Do you think there’s been some kind of nuclear war or something?”
“I find that highly unlikely,” he says, but he does look a bit freaked out.
I look up at the school that looms in front of us. And then I notice something else wrong.
The school is grey. Everything is grey. The building itself, which is usually a shade of ancient red brick, is grey. Even the grassy hill outside is an unhealthy-looking shade of grey.
This is wrong.
I look at Anthony. He’s staring at the school too. Even he looks a bit dull. Not that he isn’t dull anyway, but even he doesn’t usually look this washed out.
There’s a low cloud hanging everywhere. It’s shrouding the school. It’s covering the tops of the trees that line the road. It looks like an ordinary foggy morning. But really, really foggy and grey.
And again, that doesn’t follow because it’s late afternoon. I know it is because Wade and I just cut last class.
“Do you have the time, please?” I ask Anthony.
“Check your own watch,” he mutters.
“Like a watch goes with this outfit.”
“Fine.” He makes a big show of pulling his sleeve up and looking at his wrist. “Oh,” he says, sounding surprised. “It’s stopped. This watch never stops. It’s radio controlled.”
What a loser. Who cares if their watch stops occasionally?
I’m about to say something to that effect when he talks instead.
“What’s with all the mist?”
“Like I’m gonna know.” I shrug.
“Maybe there’s been some kind of holocaust. What’s the last thing you remember?”
“I don’t…” I trail off as I think. “You,” I say suddenly. “You… In the car… Wade… He…”
Memories flood my mind and make me shudder. “What do you remember?” I ask as I try to shake the cold feeling that has crept down my spine.
He shrugs. “I was on my way home. You and that idiot boyfriend of yours were speeding around in some car that obviously didn’t belong to either of you. I yelled at him to slow down, there’s a nursery school just down the road, he could have killed someone…”
The cold feeling intensifies.
I think he did.
“We hit you,” I say suddenly. “I know we did.”
It was his brother’s car. Wade had grabbed me at lunchtime and persuaded me to meet him outside just before last lesson. And really, who needs to learn French? So I had cut class, hiding behind the exam wing until the coast was clear of roaming teachers, then snuck out through the fence and met Wade down a side street. We are experts at cutting class now. At the end of the day, as long as you’re not failing, I don’t see the need to attend every single class. Unlike some geeks.
I cast a sideways glance at Anthony. His hair is too long and now a shade of charcoal instead of the usual dull brown, and he has a faraway look in his grey eyes. I know he’s thinking about what happened.
I suddenly realise that the blood is gone. The last time I saw Anthony, he was covered in blood.
Because of Wade.
Because of me.
Wade had borrowed his brother’s car. I use the term borrowed loosely because I doubt his brother knew he had borrowed it. We’d cut the class and gone for a drive. Not very far and nowhere that would attract attention, because neither of us has a driving license. We were on the way back to school so I could jump on the bus with Sophie and arrive home as usual, that way my parents would never know anything about it. It’s not like they approved of Wade anyway. They certainly wouldn’t approve of skipping school and riding in cars without a licensed driver.
I remember that Wade sped up as we approached the school. He had to show off. We flew past the nursery school, gaining a few angry glances from mothers picking up their kids. I had the window down, my head leaning out of it
, hair flapping around in the wind and feeling like a rock star. Wade had the music cranked up as high as it could go and was thumping his hands on the steering wheel to the beat.
And then we saw Anthony. Head down, trudging along the pavement. His usual stance.
“What a prick,” Wade had yelled to me over the music.
I nodded.
“Hey!” Wade rolled his window down and yelled at Anthony. “Been to after-school maths club, dude? Off home to see Mama?”
“Get lost,” Anthony muttered.
“Oh, it speaks, it speaks,” Wade mocked him.
Anthony turned to face us. “You shouldn’t be driving like that. There are kids around here.”
“Why don’t you go and tattle on me to a teacher, little baby?” Wade yelled. “You’re good at that. But see how many teeth you have left when I get my hands on you.”
“Sod off,” Anthony said and carried on walking.
“Stupid little twit,” Wade said to me. “We’ll show him.”
He put his foot on the accelerator. We shot off down the road, almost reaching the school before Wade braked so sharply that I was sure I’d have a seatbelt-shaped indentation across my chest. He spun the car in a perfect circle, complete with screeching brakes and the smell of burning rubber.
“What the hell are you doing?” I screamed.
“I’ll teach that geek to tell me to slow down.” Wade grinned.
We flew back up the road, approaching Anthony again within seconds.
“Wade, don’t,” I said, but he didn’t hear me over the music. “Slow down!” I yelled at him.
“Don’t be such a baby,” he said dismissively.
I groaned. We were going too fast. We sped past Anthony again before Wade slammed on the brakes and did another screeching turn.
“Stop it!” I yelled at him.
He ignored me.
“Hey, you!” he’d shouted as we passed Anthony again. He slowed down this time to taunt him some more. “Where’ve you been? Extra-credit science class, because A-plus grades just aren’t enough?”
“You’re only jealous,” Anthony shouted to him.
“Oh yeah. Jealous of you. The stupid little bastard whose granny makes him sandwiches every morning in case he gets his lunch money stolen.”
“Screw you.”
“Wade, stop,” I said again.
“Why?” He snapped his head in my direction. “Tell me you don’t feel sorry for this geek?”
“We should go home,” I said, avoiding the question. “I’ve already missed the bus. You’re going to have to drive me.”
“Then there’s no rush.” He smirked.
“Hey, freak,” he yelled at Anthony who was hurriedly walking away. “Going home to see Mama and Daddy? Oh wait, that’s right. You can’t, can you? They’re both dead! Probably killed themselves because you’re such a prat!”
“Wade, don’t,” I said as he accelerated again and we sped off.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s cruel.”
“Cruel, my ass. Making me sit next to that moron in form room is cruel.”
“They only make you sit by him because you cause too much ruckus with your own friends.”
“If you like him so much, why don’t you sit by him?” Wade slammed his foot on the brake so the car spun around again. We came dangerously close to the side barrier and I screamed.
“Stop being such a girl,” Wade told me.
“Hey, Anthony,” he yelled as we came up to him again. “Going home to see your… Oh, shit!”
This time we didn’t slow down as we approached Anthony. This time there was a noise under the car and we swerved. We more than swerved. We careened across the road, and Anthony stood there frozen as we went right into him.
I remember the sound of his head as it cracked against the windscreen. Blood spilled everywhere. It splattered through the passenger window that was still open. I screamed. I couldn’t see where we were going. The lifeless body blocked the view and bright red blood poured over the glass.
Wade screamed beside me.
“Do something!” I shrieked at him.
Then there was impact. Anthony’s body was crushed right in front of my eyes as we hit something else head-on.
There was the loudest bang I’ve ever heard in my life.
Then there was blackness coming towards me.
Then I was here.
CHAPTER 2
“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 f
or 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.”
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