I resist the urge to point out that we’re all dead anyway. “I’m sorry,” I say, hoping it sounds genuine. I am sorry I did that.
“What are you playing at, Riley?”
“I was trying to get expelled,” I admit quietly.
“What? Why?”
“Because I wanted to go home,” I say, suddenly realising that I’m fighting back tears.
“Riley—”
“I know, okay?” I interrupt. “I know. It’s stupid. But I miss my boyfriend and my family so much. I’ve been so desperate to get out of here that I had to try something. Anything.”
“Riley…” She tries again.
“I didn’t know that about the fire alarm though,” I sniffle. “I didn’t realise until we were outside how seriously you all take it. I know I shouldn’t have done it. I’d never thought of it as crying wolf before.”
She stares at me with a bewildered look on her face while she takes it all in. Eventually she says, “Let me get this straight. You’ve been trying to get yourself expelled?”
I nod silently.
The more I think about it, the more stupid it sounds.
“Riley, we don’t do that. We can’t expel people. We can punish people, but nothing you do will ever result in a suspension because there is simply no place for you to go. When you die, this is your home until you graduate.”
“So people keep telling me,” I mumble.
My head is bowed and I’m feeling utterly stupid.
“Riley, look at me.”
I sigh but do as she says.
“You just said that you wanted to go home and you were trying to get expelled. Was that supposed to be past tense?”
“I… er…”
Because somewhere between Haunting class and getting hauled out of the canteen, I’ve been thinking. Maybe this isn’t such a great idea after all.
I mean, this place isn’t perfect. I still don’t fit in. But after Haunting class, a few people seem to like me. And even I have to admit that it’s more interesting than geography. And I love Narcissa. And the pigs. And the microwave. And Caydi. Even Clare is nice enough. I even find myself liking Charlie the vampiric pumpkin.
And then there’s Anthony.
I don’t even know what my feelings for him are, but I think they might need exploring further.
Oh, and he’s not cheating on me with my best friend.
“This place kind of grows on you after a while,” I mumble.
Eliza Carbonell smiles at that. A huge grin that lights up her whole grey face. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
“What? Why?” I ask.
“It’s the first sign of adjustment,” she says. “Believe me, Riley, you’re not the first student to want to get out of here and you’re not the first one to try. But it’s always a good feeling to see someone trying to accept their fate no matter how difficult it may be.”
“I still wish I was at home,” I say. “My life was perfect. It didn’t need screwing up so badly.”
“Except it wasn’t perfect, was it? You weren’t the… nicest person in the world, were you? And I know you feel bad about that now that you’ve had a chance to experience life on the other side of the fence.”
“You mean the colour thing?”
She nods.
“Do you know what that is? Why I still have my colour?”
“I can’t say for sure, Riley, but do you believe in karma?”
“Yeah, I kinda do,” I admit.
“I think the colour thing might be some kind of karmic payback. You were the girl who always fitted in. You were the girl who made fun of other people who perhaps didn’t or who looked different from others. The powers that be saw an opportunity for you to redeem yourself. I might be wrong on this because I honestly don’t know for certain, but I do know that a big part of death is challenging the life you led. You were pretty and popular with a gang of equally pretty and popular friends, and you made fun of anyone who was different than you were. I think the colour thing may simply be that someone saw fit to make sure you know how it feels.”
I nod.
“I am sorry about what I was like,” I say. “But there’s not a lot I can do about the people I picked on now, being dead and all.”
“Well,” she says, “you can go to your Redemption class this afternoon.”
“What about punishment?” I ask.
“I’m not going to punish you this time,” she says. “I know you’re probably bored of hearing this by now, but we do understand how hard it is to accept everything that’s happening to you. I understand wanting to get back home. For years I was desperate to return to my old life. I had a daughter, you know. She was only six years old when I died. Never a day goes by when I don’t think of her. She’s a pensioner now,” Eliza says with a sad look in her eye. “And yet I haven’t aged a day in sixty years. It’s a strange way to live, but we have to adjust to the things life throws at us.”
“Do you Visualise her?” I ask.
“Sometimes. Not as much now as I did in the first thirty years. I was able to watch her wedding. I wished I could have been there more than anything, but that’s just not the way life works. I have my purpose here and it’s enough to fulfil me. You’ll find your purpose too.”
I nod.
I’m so messed up.
It doesn’t change the fact that I don’t want to be here. I still miss Wade. Although, somehow, slightly less since I saw him screwing Sophie.
“Riley,” Eliza says. “I won’t punish you this time, but you’d better believe that the next time you pull some stupid stunt I’m not going to be so understanding.”
“I’ll behave,” I say. “I promise.”
She nods. “You might not be able to make up to all the people you’ve hurt, but just accepting that you weren’t always fair goes a long way to righting the wrong.”
I nod again.
“I have to say that you’re doing a pretty good job with the one person you have had a chance to make it up to.”
“You mean Anthony?” I ask.
She nods.
“Anthony is nice,” I admit. “But I don’t think he could ever like me as more than a friend, given the way I’ve treated him.”
“I think you may be surprised,” she says cryptically. “Now go on, the buzzer is going to ring any second, and I don’t want you to be late for your next class.”
“Thanks,” I say. “For not punishing me, and for everything else.”
“You’re welcome. But like I said, if I have to call you here again, next time I won’t be so lenient.”
CHAPTER 28
I have to run to make it to Redemption class on time, and I’m panting and out of breath as I slide into the seat next to Anthony. Even then, I’m still last to get into the classroom.
“I thought you weren’t going to come, Miss Richardson.” Mrs Brown is looking at me like she hates me again.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I mutter.
“What did Mrs Carbonell want you for?” Anthony whispers, his mouth so close to my ear that he’s almost touching me with his lips and it sends a shiver down my spine.
“I’ll explain later,” I whisper back.
“Mr Marsden, I didn’t know you were a talker,” Mrs Brown says. “Perhaps you’d like to stand up and share your list with the class?”
The list! Oh shit. It was homework from the last class, and I’ve forgotten to do it. We were supposed to write a list of all the people we’ve wronged and I haven’t done it.
Bugger.
Guess I’ll just have to improvise.
Anthony stands up with his exercise book in his hand and starts reading out from it.
“My grandma,” he says. “For the things I talked about last week when I first moved in with her. And my maths teacher in Year Seven for cheating on some tests.”
Wait. Anthony cheated on maths tests?
Wow. Maybe he’s not such a geek after all.
“And lastly to a n
ew friend, I’m sorry for keeping a secret I shouldn’t have kept.”
“What?” I hiss as he sits back down. I have no idea if that new friend is me or not. It’s probably not. Anthony has made loads of new friends here. He probably feels guilty for not telling them he once cheated on a maths test.
“Now is not the time for talking, Miss Richardson,” Mrs Brown says. “Perhaps you’d like to read your list out to the class, although I expect it is quite long so maybe we won’t have time to hear all of it.”
“Er, okay,” I stand up awkwardly and pick up my exercise book. I flip to an empty page and pretend to be reading from it.
“Well, to start with—”
“Put the book down, Miss Richardson. I know you haven’t done your homework.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I just forgot. I’ve been so busy this week. I can improvise though. And I’ll do it properly tonight, I swear.”
Mrs Brown sighs but waves her hand in a “go ahead” gesture.
Right. Improvisation. Um.
“Well, I…” I start again. “I know that I wasn’t always the nicest person in the world. I picked on a lot of kids who didn’t deserve it, just to make my friends laugh at me so they would like me. I know I almost single-handedly made kids in my school outsiders. Not many people would dare to be friends with someone who was a target of my crowd. There are definitely some people I owe an apology to.”
“While this is not the homework I set, Riley,” Mrs Brown cuts in, “I do believe this is called progress. My question for you now is this: If you went back today, exactly as you are now, having had the experience of Afterlife Academy, would you do anything differently? Would you apologise to all those people, even if it meant that your friends would exclude you? Even if it meant that you might become their next target?”
I’m tempted to say that it can’t be any worse than here but I bite my tongue.
I think about her question. I think about Anthony. About how much he means to me. About how much I wish we’d been friends in our old school. About how much better my life has become just because he was nice to me. And I think about Wade and Sophie humping each other on the bed.
Maybe my life wasn’t so great after all.
“Yes,” I say. “Yes, I would.”
Mrs Brown lets out a huge grin at that.
“Welcome to Redemption class, Riley,” she says.
I smile and sit back down.
“Don’t sit down yet, you still haven’t read your improvised list out to us.”
Oh, crap. I stand up again.
“I… er…” I glance down at Anthony. “I used to pick on him. He sat next to me in maths, which was his favourite class and my worst class. I guess I was always jealous because he’d be sitting there writing away, and my best friend and I would be staring at the board like it was written in Japanese. He made the rest of us look bad, so we would do anything we could to make him look bad too. Whenever I got the chance, I would steal his glasses, or his calculator, or his pencil case, or anything else he needed. One time I had to hand out the textbooks, and I ripped a page out of his and the teacher thought he’d done it. Whenever I pinched things off his desk, I would hand them off to one of my friends so even if he told on me, I would never have the item in question on me.”
I take a deep breath and keep going. “The one time he did tell on me was for stealing his glasses, and I’d already passed them to the girl behind me, so I told the teacher I’d overheard him saying that he’d forgotten them that morning and he was lying to get himself out of trouble. Obviously I didn’t have the glasses on me, so the teacher believed me and Anthony got detention for it. We’d always give him everything back after class, but it wasn’t a very nice way to treat him.
“And my boyfriend always used to make a racket with his friends in our form room, so our teacher split them up and sent Wade to sit next to Anthony. We decided we shared a mutual dislike of him and we set our gang of friends against him too. No one wanted to go against us, so we set quite a large portion of our year on an anti-Anthony stance. There were plenty of people who wanted to join our group, so when they saw what we were doing, they joined in too.
“We would trip him up if he walked past, shout insults at him, but mainly I just tried to make him look bad in front of the teachers because he was so good at everything. I would take his exercise books out of his bag for the class we were just going into so it looked like he’d forgotten his books. There was a project for IT once. He had it in a little folder and had obviously worked hard on it, and when he went to the bathroom, I sent my boyfriend in after him where he took the project out of Anthony’s bag and ran it under the tap and then put it back. Anthony had no idea and when he went to hand it to the teacher, it was soaking wet and ruined, and the teacher thought it was a bad excuse for not doing the homework and gave him a bollocking while we all laughed.
“It was a horrible thing to do. I know that now, but at the time I didn’t care as long as I made people laugh. I was a horrible person. I knew that Anthony had had a personal tragedy in his life—we all knew that—but where it should have made us sympathetic, it made him an even more vulnerable target.” This is so hard to admit to, but I know I have to just get it out there, so I keep on.
“One time in PE, we all had to leave our bags in the changing rooms and one of the boys had found a carton of gone-off milk in the bin. He took it and poured the entire thing into Anthony’s bag when no one was looking. Those are just a few of the things we did. I know it was awful…”
I turn to face Anthony and am horrified to see that he has tears in his eyes. I want to hug him. I really, really want to sit down and hug him, but I don’t think I’m the best person to comfort him given the circumstances.
I put my hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry doesn’t even begin to cover it, Anthony,” I say, blinking back tears myself.
“It’s okay,” he says quietly.
No one mentions how sad he looks.
“Anything else you’d like to share, Riley?” Mrs Brown asks me before I can sit down. “Anthony wasn’t the only person you were cruel to, I assume.”
“No.” I swallow hard. “There were others. My friends and I would pick on anyone who didn’t fit in with our idea of perfect. Year Sevens were our favourite target because they were either terrified or running around screaming and shouting and thinking they owned the place. One boy in Year Seven had red hair, glasses, and braces. Mainly we would just shout insults at him because we weren’t in the same year and only saw him at lunchtimes. Wade found his Facebook page and spammed him with comments about how ugly he was, and I got some pornographic pictures and pasted a photograph of his head where the bloke’s should be and posted them on the Internet. We were a pretty rotten gang. I didn’t think about it at the time. I didn’t think it was important as long as people liked me. I would say sorry to everybody if I could, but I know that just saying it doesn’t change anything. I know that you have to mean it as well, and I do now. If I could go back, I’d apologise to everyone, and I’d stop my friends behaving the way they did.”
“Good work, Riley,” Mrs Brown says. “You can sit down now.”
“Okay?” Anthony says, bumping his shoulder against mine. He’s not crying anymore but I still have a strong urge to hug him.
I nod and am overwhelmed by how nice it is that he’s asking me if I’m okay after all I’ve just admitted doing to him.
Anthony and I eat dinner together that night but neither of us talks about what I said in Redemption class. I want to tell him how sorry I am for what I did to him, but it seems useless. How can you even begin to make up for treating somebody like that? If I was Anthony, I wouldn’t have even spoken to me when we got here, and yet he’s been so nice to me. I don’t know how to put what I feel into words.
We stick to small talk instead. Eventually Anthony says goodnight and that he’s looking forward to the dance tomorrow. Funnily enough, so am I.
CHAPTER 29
The
next day is Saturday, the day of the big ball. Our dorm is full of excited girls and the buzz is infectious. This feels like the prom that I never had. Except without Wade, obviously. Instead I have a date with Anthony, although I can’t believe he still wants to go with me after everything I said yesterday.
Being in the dorm room today doesn’t feel like being dead. It feels like being at a sleepover. There is squealing, hair straighteners, and catwalk shows in the corridor as people get opinions on their dresses, hairstyles, and perfume. Some of the girls even ask my opinion. They seem to think that because I still have brown hair that I’m a good person to ask about all things beauty related.
I’m in my element. This is just like being with Sophie, except none of these girls are sleeping with my boyfriend.
It’s actually better than that. It’s fun. People come in and out of our dorm room all day. They always give Charlie a stroke, and one girl even brings him a dog chew. I don’t know where she got it from but Charlie doesn’t approve and spits it out onto the floor with a growl.
I’m so busy talking to other people that I almost forget about my own dress until Caydi reminds me.
My dress is grey. Everyone’s dresses are grey though, so that’s not a surprise. Dresses appeared for everyone in our wardrobes earlier this week. Whoever put them there has really good taste. Caydi has customised both of ours by making a few cuts and sewing some buttons and safety pins on.
It’s only as I’m changing that I notice something.
The rose around my neck isn’t pink anymore. It’s grey too. I stare at it for a moment. I have no idea what it means.
Maybe it means I’m not connected to Wade anymore.
Maybe that’s a good thing.
Afterlife Academy Page 18