School of the Dead

by Avi

  We got to the second floor. She said, “Have to go talk to Bokor. Remind him of our last meeting.”

  Would she tell him I gave her the plans?

  I walked into class. Batalie was at his desk. He looked up at me, fear in his eyes. I understood his fear now.

  “Tony,” Lilly called out in her cheerful way, gesturing for me to sit near her. Her total lack of knowing was a relief. I sat down next to her.

  She said, “Lunchtime, a bunch of us are going to work on plans for Halloween. Games and stuff. You should come.”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you know what you’re going to be yet?”

  “Nope. You?”

  She grinned. “I’ve got a great idea.”

  “What?”

  “Not telling. It’s so much more fun when people don’t know who you are. Did anyone tell you there’s a contest for the best costume?”

  I said, “How come the school makes such a big thing about Halloween?”

  “I suppose because of the Penda Boy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, people always say his ghost is in one of our towers. That he died on a Halloween night. So it’s as if we’re having a birthday party to remember him. Oh my God, a school for the dead. Don’t you love it?”

  Jessica came into the room. Her eyes went right to Lilly and me. She didn’t say a word, just smirked.

  When classes began, I couldn’t pay attention. At recess, I stayed put, doing homework I hadn’t done the night before.

  The only other person in the room was Batalie. He looked up. “No recess, Tony?”

  I said, “Some homework I didn’t do last night.”

  “Always good to plan ahead.”

  For me, everything had extra meanings.

  During lunch, it was a relief to sit with Lilly and her friends. Ian announced, as he had before, that his mother was making him a Penda Boy costume.

  “So lame,” said Philip. “This place is too full of Penda Boys.”

  “Don’t care,” insisted Ian. “My mother made a great velvet suit. Putrid green, like in the painting.”

  Madison asked Lilly about her costume.

  She laughed and said, “It’s a secret.”

  “Do you know?” Mia asked me, as if I should know.

  “Nope.”

  “What are you going to be?” someone asked me.

  “Haven’t made up my mind.”

  For some reason they laughed. I suppose you’ve made friends when you say something normal and people laugh. There it was, I had finally made friends, but I couldn’t tell them what was happening.

  Back in class, it was about two o’clock when Batalie said, “Okay, class. Wednesday club time. You know where you’re going.”

  The kids filed out. I hung back, but Jessica—manila envelope in hand—and Mac stood waiting for me at the door. I understood. They wanted to make sure I went to the meeting.

  The Weird History Club was the only club that met in the cafeteria. No one was working in the kitchen. The air smelled of sour steam and soap. Empty food trays gleamed. A school janitor was swishing a mop over a wet floor, slap, slap.

  “Okay,” Jessica began, “we’re going to review how we’re going to get rid of the Penda Boy and save Tony. He’s the only one who can see the Penda ghost. So Tony has to lead us to him in the towers.”

  “Which tower?” said Barney. He was nervously piling up sunflower-seed husks.

  Jessica pulled out the building plans and laid them on the table. “Okay,” she said, “here are the plans for the Penda School building when it was first built. I’ve been studying them.”

  “Cool,” Mac said, as he chewed on a fingernail.

  “See,” said Jessica, pointing. “All these rooms—where servants lived—in the towers. Over here, passages and steps built into the walls.”

  “Awesome,” said Barney, almost automatically.

  They were all tense, twitchy, constantly sneaking glances at one another.

  “Are they still there?” said Mac, as if reading the lines of a play.

  Jessica pointed to a spot. “Here’s a door right out of our homeroom.”

  “Perfect,” said Barney.

  “I’ll pry it open,” Jessica went on. “With people in costume wandering about, playing stupid games like ducking for apples, no one will know what we’re doing. Soon as I get the door open”—she nodded at me—“you go through—seven o’clock—and since you’ve been studying the hidden passageways, you make your way.”

  I said, “Where am I supposed to go?”

  Mac said, “Find the Penda Boy.”

  “Alone?” I said, though I had no doubt they would all be waiting for me somewhere.

  The others looked to Jessica.

  “I’ll be totally with you,” she said.

  Eyes shifted. I felt queasy.

  “Cool,” said Mac. He patted her arm.

  “Well then,” said Jessica, “that’s the plan.”

  “But . . . ,” I said, feeling I had to ask, “when—if—I find the Penda Boy, how . . . how do I deal with him before he . . . gets . . . me?”

  “Good question,” muttered Mac. No one spoke. We all turned to Jessica.

  She said, “I googled ‘How do you get rid of a ghost.’”

  I couldn’t believe she’d say something so stupid.

  “It says you shine strong light on the ghost and point up. Or,” she added, “burn sage leaves.”

  “What are sage leaves?” said Barney.

  “Some kind of herb.”

  It was so idiotic I almost laughed.

  Mac said, “The Halloween party goes from five thirty in the afternoon till eight.”

  “It’ll be the best Weird History Club meeting ever,” said Barney.

  Jessica said, “I’ll bring a chisel or a knife . . . for the door.”

  And for me, I thought.

  Jessica said, “Does everyone have a way to tell the time?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Great. Let’s meet at the door at seven.”

  Mac said, “Wait! We have to know what costumes we’re wearing, so we know how to find each other. I’m going to be a goblin.”

  “Troll monster,” said Barney.

  Jessica said, “Thought I’d be Mrs. Penda. You know, like that picture of her in the front office.”

  The hair at the back of my neck prickled.

  Mac grinned and said, “I like that.”

  They all looked at me. Jessica said, “What are you going to be?”

  “Not sure yet.”

  Jessica said, “Come on, Tony, you have to decide. We need to know what you’ll look like. Otherwise things won’t work.”

  “I’ll get something,” I said.

  “Make it quick,” Jessica snapped. “You’ve only got two days.”

  There was some uneasy talk about past Halloweens and what people wore. Happily, it wasn’t long before the end-of-school bell rang.

  “Good,” said Jessica. “We’re set. We’re going to get rid of the Penda Boy.”

  She folded up the plans, put them in an envelope, and handed it to me. “Study them. You have to know the secret passages by heart. That way you’ll know where to go.”

  When we got back to the classroom, though kids were there, Batalie was not. I assumed that too was planned, because Jessica went right to the back wall. She called Mac and me to come over.

  “See?” she said, pointing.

  I could see the faint outline of an old door.

  She whispered, “It’ll be easy to open.”

  “Any knife would do,” said Mac.

  Kids had already started to gather up their stuff and were leaving for the day. As Mac and Jessica drifted toward the door, I took my time.

  From the doorway, Jessica called, “Tony, go work out your costume.”

  I said, “I will.”

  She gave me a thumbs-up and they left.

  I waited a bit and then followed, determined to see w
here she went.

  When I came out of school looking for Jessica, the morning’s fog had thickened. The air was dank, the light ashen. Street colors were muted, the sharp edges of things blunted. The world out of focus. The combination of poor light and kids milling about on the sidewalk meant I couldn’t spot Jessica at first. It was her height, black hair, and slight limp that allowed me to catch sight of her moving along the street. She was alone.

  I ran across the street and, keeping back, followed. At the first corner, she made a right turn and then headed down the steep hill. I stayed behind, keeping to the left side of the street, behind the parked cars. She didn’t seem to be in any great hurry, but she held a steady pace. It was easy enough to keep her in sight. Nor did she give the slightest sign to suggest she knew I was there.

  The farther downhill we went, the thicker the fog. From the bay, foghorns began to moan. Hearing them, my dad had said, “The dead will soon rise.”

  How right he was.

  When Jessica reached Lombard Street, six blocks down and at the base of the hill, I held back to see if she would get on a bus. A lumbering one arrived, then left, spewing black exhaust into the gloom. When it went on, Jessica crossed the street and kept walking, moving into the flat Marina District, toward the bay.

  I walked faster, drawing as close as I dared. That slight limp told me I was following the right person. A good thing too, because this was new territory to me, and the fog had intensified.

  After six more long blocks, she reached what was called Marina Boulevard. She crossed it. Signs told me this was something called Marina Green. After some grass, there was a long waterside walkway with benches that faced the bay. Off to the left was a boat anchorage. The fog hung so low all I could see were lots of white hulls, which looked like the bellies of dead fish. Gulls, invisible in the overhead murk, squawked as if calling for help. Somewhere out in the bay was Alcatraz, but I couldn’t see it.

  I held back and saw Jessica—the only person there—sit down on one of the benches. Was this where she’d been going that time I saw her come out of the school? Why here?

  As veils of gray mist whisked about her, she appeared to be doing nothing other than sitting and staring out at the water. Was she intending to do anything? I had no idea. But when a nearby foghorn suddenly bleated, she turned her head, as if curious to know where the sound came from. The roiling fog hid her briefly, then thinned, just enough for me to see her face.

  The face I saw was not Jessica’s face.

  It was an old woman’s face, long, narrow, and wrinkled, with jutting chin, high cheekbones, and thin lips.

  I was furious with myself. I had followed the wrong person. Frustrated, I turned away, only to hesitate. Something was familiar about the old woman.

  Retreating some steps, I tried to see the woman through the fluid, fluctuating fog. Gradually, I realized who I had followed: the woman in the painting, Mrs. Penda. In other words, it was just as the Penda Boy had told me: Mrs. Penda and Jessica were one.

  If she had turned in my direction, she would have seen me standing there, frozen with amazement. Fortunately, she shifted the other way.

  Waking from my stupor, I backed off, going up the street only to stop, asking myself if what I had seen was really true. Perhaps this woman was someone else. Perhaps Jessica was wearing a mask she’d made for Halloween.

  I turned around and crept back. She was still on the bench, her face sometimes visible, sometimes not. Motionless, hardly daring to breathe, I stood in place, watching, waiting—I didn’t know for what.

  It grew darker. Foghorns growled with increasing frequency, giving warnings. The mist turned to a cold drizzle. My fingers grew numb. Though I began to shiver, I remained where I was, staring. I had to be sure that what I was seeing was true.

  The woman stood. I scurried across the boulevard, spying a bulky blue mailbox near the curb. I squatted behind it and peeked around, hoping she would not see me.

  Mrs. Penda emerged out of the fog, limping the way Jessica did. As I watched, her old, wrinkled face began to twitch, shift, and alter, as if unseen hands were molding clay. All of a sudden I was looking at Jessica Richards, the young, pretty Jessica.

  It was as if that youthful face was a mask, and she had come to take it off and let the cool, moist air soothe her real and ancient face, much the way I, with relief, took off my tie when I left school. She even—in that gesture I knew so well—pushed her black hair back behind an ear before going on. I had no doubt who she was.

  She went past me, across Union Street, up Pacific Heights. I remained behind, darting from car to car, keeping her in view. Upon reaching the school, she opened the doors and disappeared inside. I remained on the sidewalk, gazing at the building, imagining her going into Ms. Foxton’s office, stepping into the chest, descending those narrow steps into that awful room, lying on that decrepit bed.

  I gazed up at the high tower. It was hidden in the fog the way everything in the Penda School was hidden.

  I tore home, shot into my apartment, locked the front door, double-locked it, went to my room, and sat at my desk, my head resting in my arms. It took a long time to calm down, to absorb what I had seen.

  I was horrified.

  I suppose it was thinking about her going to that room that gave me a new thought: When we had finished our Weird History Club meeting, Jessica had urged me to study the building plans, to learn them so I could know my way around. Since it was she and Bokor who had found a way to get the plans to me, I asked myself, were the plans accurate? Jessica assumed I had no knowledge of the private steps and rooms. Except I had learned something about them.

  With the plans spread on my desk, it was easy to identify the front of the school, the reception hall. I was able to trace which old rooms had become the school office. That included Ms. Foxton’s office.

  I checked the spot where the chest stood.

  No indication of steps leading down.

  The room below, where I believed Jessica lived under Ms. Foxton’s office, was not in the plans either.

  Nor was there any suggestion of that meeting room, the hallway, or the spiral steps that had led me up to the Penda Boy.

  In other words, since the places I did know were not on the plans, I was sure the plans they had given me had been altered. No matter how much I studied them, once I walked through the door at the back of Batalie’s room, I would be lost and at the mercy of Mrs. Penda and her friends. The best thing I could do was not study these plans.

  Then I remembered: I still needed to tell the Penda Boy which door I would be going through. And the time. Otherwise, I would be going into those hidden passageways alone.

  At dinner that night, Dad said, “Figure out your Halloween costume yet?”

  “I’d like to be the Invisible Man.”

  Dad laughed. “That novel by H. G. Wells, The Invisible Man, was published the same year your school was founded.”

  I said, “I need a costume for the Halloween party. Can I have some money for that?”

  Dad said, “Twenty bucks work?”

  “Thanks.”

  Sitting at my desk, I reminded myself that I had promised to do two things—contrary things: I’d told the Penda Boy I would help him. I had told Jessica I would do what she and her Weird History Club wanted me to do.

  My phone rang. Thinking it might be Jessica, I hesitated. When the ringing persisted, I couldn’t resist.

  “Hello . . .”

  “Tony?”

  To my relief, it was Lilly. “Hi.”

  “You’ll never guess who called me.”

  “Who?”

  “Jessica.”

  “What . . . what did she want?”

  “She was being friendly. Said since she knew you and I were friends, and since she likes you a lot—said you were totally cool—that she and I should be friends too. That we, you know, should hang out together and do stuff at the Halloween party.”

  “Oh.”

  “I mean, I guess I wa
sn’t being all that friendly to her, but I’m going to try to be nice. Just wanted you to know.”

  “Thanks.”

  “See you.”

  “Yeah.”

  I turned off the phone. I was sure Lilly hadn’t understood, but the way I took it, it meant that if Jessica couldn’t rip out my soul, she’d use Lilly. Did that mean Jessica suspected I knew more than I was saying? Or only that she had a backup plan?

  I got on my slackline and tried to clear my head. When I kept falling, I got out that slackline book Uncle Charlie had given me and reread the first page of the book:

  WARNING

  Slackline can be dangerous, resulting in injury or possibly death.

  I remembered Uncle Charlie saying: “When you walk the slackline, you’re not in the air; you’re not on the ground. Sort of half alive, half dead. Good practice for being a ghost.”

  I had to accept it: My becoming a ghost was what he’d been planning for me all along.

  I had said, “I don’t believe in ghosts.”

  He had laughed. “You will, someday.”

  “Someday?”

  “When people say someday, it’s like making a wish.”

  His wish.

  I considered doing an Austin: quitting school. Only, if I did, they’d get Lilly. Lilly and me—not a romance, but she was my friend. If I skipped, they’d get her. The idea of Lilly being Jessica’s servant horrified me. I didn’t want that to happen, but the only way to prevent it was to have Jessica come after me.

  I slept badly. I didn’t mind the nightmares. At least when I woke up, they were gone. My problem was that the nightmares I faced when I awoke did not go away.

  Thursday, the day before Halloween. I felt I was walking the line. The deadline. The line of the dead.

  When I got up, my first thought was that I had to tell the Penda Boy about Jessica’s plans. Only I couldn’t face going to school. I had to think things out. So when I heard my folks move around the kitchen, I slumped to where they were, my pajamas still on.

  Mom looked around. “What’s the matter?”

  “I feel sick.”

  She put her hand to my forehead. “You are a bit warm.”