“I guess we’re all having a good day,” Anna said, watching as Steph disappeared around the corner. John held his breath until she looked over at him with a weak smile.
“Yeah, right,” he breathed out, relieved. She never stayed mad at him for long. “Are you all right? I’ve never seen your dad that mad before.”
Anna nodded. Then shrugged. Then frowned.
“You think I’m doing the right thing, yeah?” she asked, sounding a little unsure of herself. It wasn’t a tone John was used to hearing from her.
“Yeah,” he said in the least convincing voice ever. “I think it’s great.”
Anna stared up at him. Seriously?
“Anyway.” John cleared his throat and flexed his non-existent bicep. “PE is calling.”
Anna waved him off with a sigh and wondered how she had managed to ruin her day so spectacularly before the morning bell had rung. Even for her, that had to be some kind of record.
* * *
Steph was also having a very, very bad day. Veronica, her girlfriend, had flat-out refused to come to visit her for the holidays, and her parents had decided a vacation in Mexico without her was much more appealing than Christmas in Scotland. After all, they were the ones who encouraged her to apply to spend her senior year abroad in the first place. Well, her dad anyway, when he went through their long family lineage from Europe.
She skulked back through the front door, staring at her phone, willing her girlfriend to call back and change her mind.
“Miss North!”
She stopped in her tracks at the sound of his voice. It was Mr. Savage, the assistant principal and quite possibly the most appropriately named one ever. Savage was tall and lanky with faded red hair, uneven, outdated glasses, and a permanent sneer under his thick beard. He was trying very hard not to perspire from his morning patrol of the school’s parking lot. If someone told Steph he’d recently arrived on Earth from a far-away alien universe, she wouldn’t have questioned it for a second.
“Miss North,” he said again, planting himself directly in her path. “I need you to drop the homeless story.”
“It’s an editorial!” Steph replied. She hated Savage, but she hated injustice even more, and took her role as the editor of the school blog incredibly seriously. Although, to be fair, Steph took everything incredibly seriously. “You can’t tell us what we can and can’t write about.”
“It’s a school blog, Miss North, not The Times,” Savage replied, towering over her. “The city council sets our budgets, so we play nice with the council. Hopefully we get some new computers.”
“I’m going to see Principal Gill,” Steph said. It wasn’t in her nature to give up, even when she probably should. “He’s still the head of the school, he can overrule you.”
“Be my guest!” Savage declared happily, nodding toward the principal’s office. Principal Gill stood outside, proudly displaying his “I’m retiring” badge while accepting farewell gifts from the staff and students.
“He’s got two days left,” Savage said softly. “And come January, this school, the students, and the blog are mine.”
Steph gulped at the very thought.
“Oh, Miss North.” He glanced down at the car keys in her hand. “I’ve told you time and time again.”
She gripped the keys tightly. No. Absolutely no way.
“Park your vehicle on school property and…” He held out his hand. “It becomes school property. Give!”
He yanked the keys out of her grip and his face split with a sickly smile.
“Thank you,” Savage said, pocketing the keys before turning his attention to a kissing couple a few steps away. “Withdraw your tongues!” He continued down the hallway to ruin someone else’s day.
Without her car keys, she couldn’t deliver the gifts she’d collected for the homeless shelter, and without the blog, she couldn’t write the story she’d promised she would. No family, no girlfriend, no presents, and no blog. Steph sighed out loud.
Could today really get any worse?
* * *
While everyone ran around her, rushing to their first class of the day, Anna lingered by her locker. She had a study period first thing but was in no rush to get to the library. Instead, she stared at a picture stuck to the inside of her locker door. It was a map of Australia. It was her mom’s map of Australia.
When Anna was younger, her mom would tell her all kinds of stories about her travels. She’d been everywhere—Cambodia, Peru, Vietnam, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Africa, China, Japan. She’d visited more countries than Anna could even name, but her favorite place of all was Australia. That was where she’d met Anna’s dad. It was too hard for Anna to imagine it now, but she’d seen the photos—proof that her dad had been an adventurer himself once upon a time, right up until Anna’s mom found out she was pregnant, somewhere between Sydney and Byron Bay.
They came home, they got married, they lived happily, and twelve years later, she got ill and then died. All those adventures were just snuffed out, gone forever. After her mom passed away, Anna and her dad moved to this little town to be closer to her grandparents, but now they were gone, too, and it was just the two of them. She knew he didn’t want her to leave, but she had to. She had to see the things her mom had seen, find out what else was in the world. She traced a fingertip along the map, stopping at every place her mom had marked with a star.
Next to the map was a photo of the three of them together, and next to the photo was a postcard, the last thing her mom had sent her. Even though it had a photograph of a gorgeous sunset and a sandy beach on the front, she knew it had been dropped in the mailbox at the local hospital.
“Anna?”
A voice behind her made her jump. She slammed the locker shut to see her friend Chris waving his smartphone in her face.
“Can you check this?” he asked. “It’s my show reel for Miss Wright’s film class. I’m not sure if it’s ready yet, but I’m supposed to present it this morning.”
Anna took the phone and smiled. Chris was a sweetheart. For every ounce of bitterness others might have, Chris had twice the amount of innocence and naïveté. She’d watched a ton of his short films and they were usually full of fake blood and guts, sock puppets, and incredibly bad special effects. This one didn’t look to be all that different. The bell rang, startling them both.
“Oh no,” he whispered as Anna pulled up his film. “I need to pee.”
“TMI, Chris,” she muttered sweetly, handing the phone back to him.
“I don’t have enough time to pee, do I?” he asked, panicking.
“Nope,” she replied. “Good luck with your show reel.”
“See you at lunch,” Chris called back, already running off down the hallway. “Have a good morning.”
“Bit late for that,” Anna said to herself, opening the locker and pulling out a slim, white, well-worn envelope. She opened it carefully, as though it might fall apart in her hands. Inside was her airline ticket, first stop Sydney, and then who knew where the adventure might take her. She wanted to experience everything; full moon parties in Thailand, Buddhist temples in Tibet, surfing in Nicaragua, that sanctuary for orphaned baby monkeys in Costa Rica that she’d seen on YouTube. Her bucket list was endless, and there was nothing anyone could say or do to convince her that another four years stuck in a classroom was a better option. This was more than a flight voucher. It was her ticket out of there, literally. Out of school, out of Scotland and out of her zombie-like existence. Maybe this life was enough for John and Chris and her dad, but Anna knew she needed more, and now that she had the ticket in her hands, she couldn’t wait to get started.
3
THE LITTLE HAVEN High School Christmas Show was an annual town tradition. Every year, the older students signed up to show off their talents, or, more often, lack thereof. Singers, dancers, magicians, and God forbid, one time there had even been a mime. Anna shuddered at the memory as she walked into the hall later that same day, looking for her
friend Lisa. Whenever she was feeling trapped or frustrated, Lisa always knew what to say to cheer her up. And if that wasn’t enough, she’d been going out with Chris for what seemed like forever. The girl needed to be canonized immediately. Or institutionalized. Anna wasn’t sure which.
Anna slid into the back row of chairs and watched as two boys from the grade below attempted a beatbox version of “All I Want for Christmas” on the stage. To say that it was not good would have been the understatement of the year. On the other side of the hall, she noticed a boy from her English class gnawing on his hand while his friend scratched at the noticeboard over and over.
“Stage fright will do terrible things to a person,” Anna surmised, settling in to enjoy the awful rehearsals and wait for Lisa. But she didn’t have to wait for long. A pretty brunette came running out from backstage, clad in a sexy blue gown that was about as far away from the school uniform as possible. Two costume assistants trailed after her, clutching at the fabric with safety pins hanging out of their mouths as Lisa almost knocked her friend down with an enthusiastic hug.
“What do you think?” she asked, giving a twirl.
Anna looked past her at the scenery on the stage.
“The dress is beautiful,” she said. “But it looks like Narnia threw up all over Oz in here.”
“I know,” Lisa mooned proudly. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
It wasn’t the word Anna would have chosen to describe it, but she would never squash her closest girlfriend’s unbridled optimism. It was, after all, part of what made Lisa, well, Lisa.
“So, I told my dad,” Anna said, wincing at the memory of her morning.
“Oh my God.” Lisa wrapped her up in a second hug, and one of the seams of her dress popped open. “Tell me every single little thing.”
“Hold still!” ordered the first costume assistant, attempting to pin the dress before Lisa gave everyone in the hall a different kind of show than the one they were expecting.
“Maybe when we’re alone?” Anna suggested, nodding to the costume assistants.
“Oh, they’re fine,” Lisa insisted. “I was sexting Chris earlier and they were helping. It was hilarious.”
“I’m literally never having sex,” the second costume assistant whispered to himself, tears in his eyes.
“So, was it okay?” Lisa asked.
Anna shook her head. Even though she knew she was doing the right thing, she still felt guilty. Her father had spent her entire life trying to be a good dad, and she hated feeling as though she was letting him down.
“Okay-ish?” Lisa asked.
“Not even a little bit,” Anna said. “The opposite, in fact.”
“Oh, babe.” Lisa was all sympathy and cleavage. It was an odd combination.
“Four more cast members called in sick, so we’re going to have to change the running order,” Savage barked from the auditorium stage. “Please try to remember that hand sanitizer is your friend. Kissing on the mouth is not … your friend.”
Terrorizing them in the halls simply wasn’t enough for him. He’d also appointed himself director of the Christmas show and was just as determined to drain every ounce of fun out of that experience as well. Anna couldn’t even begin to imagine what kind of a tyrant he would become once he was actually the principal. She thanked her lucky stars that her days at this school were numbered.
“You two.” He pointed at Anna and Lisa. “Why aren’t you up on stage? I haven’t got all day, I do have other things to do such as run a school.”
“I’m not in the show,” Anna replied simply. She wasn’t afraid of Savage. He was a nasty piece of work but nothing more than a bully; there was nothing he could do to hurt her.
“Oh yes, that’s right,” he replied with a sickly grin. “Your father is doing my lights.”
She stiffened at the mention of her father. He was the school’s maintenance man, but he did a bit of everything for everyone. Set up the science labs, made sure the sports equipment was taken care of, looked after the electrics, managed the school football team. He’d even been known to stand in for the home economics teacher once or twice. His pineapple upside-down cake was legendary. Everyone loved Anna’s dad. Everyone except Savage.
“When he’s finished cleaning the toilets, would you send him my way?” Savage asked, just to be nasty.
“That’s not his job!” Anna yelled, losing her temper very quickly.
“Anna,” Lisa whispered, trying to catch her friend’s hand to calm her down. There was no point; she saw the anger flashing in Anna’s eyes and knew it was a losing battle. They’d both be lucky to get away without detention.
But Savage was too pleased with himself to care about one little girl’s emotional outburst.
“It will be soon,” he said, a distinct threat in his voice. “I think he’d look just smashing with a plunger in one hand and a mop in the other, don’t you?”
Anna vibrated with rage as Lisa held her back.
“Now where is my magician?” Savage yelled, his attention already elsewhere. A short, confused-looking teenager stumbled across the stage, tripping over his elaborate black cape. As he fell, he grabbed hold of a rope to steady himself. But the rope was attached to a pulley, and the pulley was attached to a huge star, suspended high above the stage. As soon as the magician let go of the rope, the star hurtled down from the ceiling, headed straight for Mr. Savage.
“Oh bloody hell!”
He leaped out of the way, seconds before it could decapitate him, as Anna and Lisa watched, hands clamped over their mouths. The star swung back and forth on its rope, inches above Savage’s head.
“I think it’s about time we had a little chat about health and safety.” Savage scowled, standing up and ducking the still swinging star. “Everybody up on the stage. NOW!”
Before anyone could do as they were told, the bell rang to signal lunchtime. Two students, dressed in giant plush penguin costumes, began to waddle off toward the cafeteria.
“Get back on stage this minute, you flightless chancers!” Savage ordered. The penguins immediately turned and made for the stage.
“I’ll see you after,” Lisa whispered, letting go of Anna’s hand and dashing toward the stage.
“No, no, no!” gasped the second costume assistant as the dress ripped loudly, from top to bottom. Lisa froze, clutching the fabric together as the star swung back and forth above the reluctant penguins and Savage held his head in his hands.
Anna smiled as she left to go find some lunch. At least the morning hadn’t been a complete loss.
* * *
Anna strolled down the corridor, smiling at the memory of Savage almost getting decapitated by a falling star. She couldn’t wait to tell John. She flicked at the zipper of her jacket, replaying the moment, not paying attention to exactly where she was going when she heard a deep gasping moan directly behind her. Something wasn’t right. Anna’s adrenaline immediately pumped into her veins, preparing for possible self-defense. She spun around quickly. A bookish girl that she vaguely recognized from the grade below stood inches from her face. Her eyes were glassy and her skin was shiny with sweat. The girl fell forward into Anna.
“Are you okay?” Anna asked.
The girl didn’t reply; instead she fumbled for her inhaler, struggling to pop off the cap.
“Do you need me to get help?”
Still no reply. It had to be a pretty bad asthma attack to get her in such a state so quickly. Anna held her up and the girl opened her mouth, as though she wanted to say something but couldn’t speak.
“You’re going to be okay, just stay here,” Anna said, holding out her hands to make sure she understood she wanted her to stay put. “I’m going to get the nurse.”
But before she could even try to help, Anna saw something fly past her and hit the girl square in the face. The girl shrieked, dropped her inhaler, and ran off in the other direction. On the floor, right by Anna’s foot, was the remains of the missile. It was a gob of mac and cheese. She tu
rned around to see Nick leaning against the radiator, smug smile on his face and a bowl in his hand.
Just when she thought the day was looking up.
“You are such a child,” Anna said, zipping up her coat. Anything to put another layer between her and the man-baby.
“A sexy child,” Nick replied, only realizing what he’d said after he’d said it. “Wait, no, that’s not right.”
“Goodbye, Nick,” Anna said as she rolled her eyes and strode away down the hallway.
“Hey, come on, don’t be like that.”
Nick chased after her, running ahead to stop her in her tracks. Anna did her best to look unimpressed. Another person in this town who only ever let her down. But she had to admit, he was cute. A complete and utter idiot, it turned out, but seriously fit. Tall, handsome, with caramel skin and cheekbones that could slice bread. She almost wavered when she stared up into his bright blue eyes.
“Look,” he said, fixing her with those very same eyes and gently stroking her arm. “It’s almost Christmas, that’s when you’re supposed to forgive people, yeah? Can’t we be friends?”
She took a deep breath in. Maybe they could be friends again. She was sure stranger things had happened, but none that she could think of in that moment. Maybe that sheep they cloned that time.
“And,” Nick went on. “If you want to hook up over the holidays, then—”
“Oh God.” Anna shoved him out of her way. When would she learn? People did not change.
“Oi, skip off!”
Over her shoulder, Anna heard her dad’s voice. Giving her a quick sleazy wink, Nick scarpered in the other direction, leaving them alone. She looked over at her dad, who gave her a tentative smile. If he had any idea what had happened between her and Nick in October, he’d have more to say to him than “Skip off.” In fact, Nick would have been lucky if he’d ever be able to skip anywhere, ever again.
“All right?” Tony said.
Anna and the Apocalypse Page 2