Wuthering high: a bard academy novel Page 2

  That’s when she told us she and Dad were getting a divorce.

  Dad wasn’t there at the time. He’d taken the opportunity while we were away at camp to pack up all his things and move to a condo in downtown Chicago, complete with a lake view and a stainless-steel kitchen for his new life with his twenty - five - year - old secretary, Chloe, who turned out to only hold the title of Mrs. Tate for a nanosecond before Dad took up with Carmen. Mom blames Dad’s midlife crisis, his BMW convertible, and his new hair-growing Propecia prescription. I blame Dad. He could’ve at least had the decency to leave us for true love.

  After a long plane ride, and then a short one on a small plane with propellers, I find myself at a tiny municipal airport somewhere near the coast of Maine. The last mall I saw was somewhere over Boston. I doubt even Gap.com delivers here. I am so not going to be getting any new clothes for a while. The thought seriously depresses me.

  Dad says that if I applied five percent of the time I use to think about clothes and shoes to school, I’d have a 4.0 average. But what fun is a 4.0 if you can’t also look hot? Life is about balance.

  My current “going to boarding school” ensemble involves: torn jeans, army fatigue cabbie hat, and olive green Juicy Couture tunic tank (bought on eBay on the cheap, but still cost me a month’s worth of lunch money and two weekends of babysitting cash). Gold bangles on my wrists and oversize hoop earrings, courtesy of Urban Outfitters.

  I’m average height, though a bit on the lanky side (lanky = no boobs or hips), and I’ve got naturally kind of mouse-brown hair, only it’s not been that color since I learned how to use Clairol in eighth grade. Current color: dark brunette, like all the blondes-turned-brunette this season (Ashlee Simpson, Mary-Kate Olsen, you get the idea).

  The whole wooded area thing is beginning to remind me of camp. Perversely, this gives me hope. I got out of that. I can get out of this.

  On the bus to the ferry, I glance around and see some of my classmates. There are boys wearing eyeliner, one guy with bright green hair, and in front of me, a girl who looks like she ought to be starring in the next sequel of The Ring. Her hair is hanging in her face in greasy strands. I mean, did she ever hear of a comb? Seriously, gross.

  These are my peers. And they are total losers.

  Great.

  I look away, slipping my hand into my backpack and wrapping my hand around my minican of mace. I’ve been carrying mace around ever since Tyler tried that stunt in his Toyota. I’m ready if any of these delinquents tries anything.

  I put on my headphones to my CD player — another great injustice in my life. All I asked for last Christmas was an iPod Nano. Instead, Mom got me a sweater with stuffed Santa Clauses on it (one that I will not wear in public ever as long as I live), and my dad got me an Xbox 360. Yes, I know. An Xbox is cool. But I don’t play video games. I don’t care about blowing up space aliens. All I want is to be able to listen to Death Cab for Cutie without lugging five hundred pounds of CDs around with me everywhere I go.

  Besides, Dad wanted the Xbox for himself, but was too embarrassed to admit it to the store clerk, so he had to say it was for me and my sister. But it was Dad who played Halo for four hours on Christmas Day.

  Even worse, when I tried to sell the Xbox on eBay, Dad grounded me. Sure, it’s a bratty move. But consider this: Dad played the Xbox more than I did. It was clearly a me-to-me gift disguised as a dad-to-daughter gift. I called him on it, and I’m the one who got grounded. How is that fair?

  The bus pulls up to a dock by the ocean, and we’re directed to board a boat that will take us to Alcatraz Academy. The wind whipping off the Atlantic is strong and cold, and the sign on the ferry says TO SHIPWRECK ISLAND.

  Great. The island where I’m going to school is called Shipwreck Island. Why not go ahead and call it Skull Island? Or Dead People Live Here Island? I mean, where am I? A Scooby-Doo cartoon?

  The brochure in the office where we wait for the ferry says that the island is called Shipwreck Island because of its odd ability to pull in ships during storms, when it was usually hidden by fog. Scores of sailors died when their ships hit the island and sunk. Great. I look at the island in the distance. It’s got a bit of fog around it, but I can still tell it’s covered in trees. It’s not exactly Maui.

  The ferry is already full of students who look like the ones on the bus (i.e., delinquents). And they’re waiting for us, apparently, before taking off. Once on the boat, it starts off almost immediately, its bell ringing, as kids of all shapes and sizes mingle around the benches. I lean over the rail and look at the black water lapping against the side, and think about jumping. The water looks cold, though. Cold and deep.

  Twenty minutes later, we come to rest on the shores of Shipwreck Island with a creak and a lurch. There’s no sand on the beach at all — it’s entirely rocks. Near us, there’s a giant white lighthouse, which is dark. There’s only about four feet of rocky beach. After that, it’s nothing but thickly wooded trees.

  At the dock, there’s a shuttle bus waiting for us. It has BARD ACADEMY written on the side. The bald driver — who’s wearing a green sun visor, giant amber-shaded aviator sunglasses, and a cigarette in a holder like Cruella De Ville — gruffly grabs my bags and throws them into the storage compartment by the bus door. He’s wearing shorts and knee socks. Definitely the weirdest bus driver I’ve ever seen. On his jumpsuit uniform, his name patch reads “H. S. Thompson.”

  “You holding?” he asks me in a voice so gruff it sounds as if he’s been smoking since he was born, which from the look of him was a long time ago.

  “Holding what?” I snap.

  He narrows his eyes at me and clenches his teeth around his cigarette holder.

  “Never mind,” he says. “What are you waiting for? Get in.” He mumbles something else under his breath that sounds like “spoiled damn kids. Can’t believe I’m stuck here without quaaludes.”

  Surely, though, I didn’t hear him right.

  Inside the bus, there are two Goth kids in the back who are smoking clove cigarettes. There’s a tough-looking guy who seems ancient — is he like twenty-two? — wearing just a white button-down shirt and plain pants. The shirt has a weird, ruffled collar, like he’s just come off the set of A Christmas Carol, but everything else about him screams tough guy. In fact, he takes away a lighter from one of the Goth kids. He just takes it straight out of the kid’s hand, and starts playing with it himself as if he’s never seen a Zippo lighter before. His facial expression says he wouldn’t mind lighting the whole bus on fire. He watches me as I get on the bus, but I ignore him. I wonder why I didn’t notice him on the ferry.

  I take a seat toward the front of the bus, away from the pyromaniac, and mentally, I imagine the first letter I’m going to write my parents.

  Dear Mom and Dad:

  Thanks for sending me to school with felons and drug dealers. I’m learning all the basic life skills, including setting fire to objects and how to make deadly weapons out of my hairbrush. I’ve met my husband-to-be here. He’s 28, a pyromaniac, and a convicted felon, but we’re in love and we want to get married.

  If I play my cards right, my stay at Bard Academy will be no longer than a week.

  I glance out the bus window and see the ferry leave. There goes my chance for escape, I think.

  Pyro, the guy with the lighter, is staring at me rather intently. Those boots he’s got on are weird. Maybe that’s the trend among gangbangers this year. Dress like Charles Dickens.

  Thompson — the weird driver — slides into his seat, still smoking, and slams the door shut.

  “I’d tell you to fasten your seat belts, but there aren’t any,” he says, grinning mischievously. “So you brats better just hang on to something.”

  He grounds the gears of the bus and takes off with squealing tires, lurching from side to side, nearly flinging me out of my seat. I watch as he blows right past a STOP sign without even slowing down, and nearly careens into the gates by the port.

  Unbelievabl
e. My parents have sent me to Nowhere Island to die. I grab hold of the seat in front of me. The Goth kids blow clove smoke at me and seem unperturbed. Pyro scowls.

  This is so going in the letter. Thompson has broken at least four rules of the road in the last five minutes, not to mention reckless endangerment of minors. I take a picture of Thompson with my camera phone. He’s rummaging around in the glove compartment and not even paying attention to the road. I look at my phone, but his face is all blurred, his features indistinguishable. Odd.

  I look at the signal bars on the phone. I get one every now and then, but it doesn’t stay long enough for me to make a phone call. I am convinced I’m going to die on this bus.

  No one in the bus but me seems at all disturbed by Thompson’s driving. I guess they don’t have anything to live for.

  We drive for what feels like days down a winding, two-lane road. Luckily, we pass no other cars because Thompson is weaving in and out of his lane like my paternal grandma after she’s had one too many Amaretto sours. We nearly avoid careening off a cliff when one side of the road crawls up a mountain, giving the guardrail a slight dusting. I’m beginning to feel very car sick. I don’t know if it’s Thompson’s driving or the fact that I’m frantically writing down every new near-death experience in my letter to Mom.

  I take a break from writing and watch as tree after tree whizzes by my window. The forest is so thick that it’s grown out past the side of the road, over the guardrails, and a few branches are so long that they whip against the windows of the bus.

  I don’t know where we’re going, but I’m pretty sure it’s a filming location for one of the Friday the 13th movies. Some crazy people would say that forests and mountains are beautiful, but to me the outdoors are just plain creepy. I see forests and I think of maniacs wielding chainsaws. You never hear of psychotic, crazed killers in movies striking at the mall. No. The freaky killers who turn their victims into wax do it way out in the country somewhere far away from Banana Republic.

  After I’m pretty sure that the bus is going to be attacked by ax-wielding psycho killers, we turn off the main street onto a dirt road. You heard me. Dirt road. As in — no pavement. Lovely. My parents are blowing my college tuition on some delinquent academy, and they can’t even cough up enough cash for asphalt. I glance at my phone again. Still no reception. Where are we? Even at Camp Poison Ivy, I had two bars on my phone.

  We’re bounced around enough to give us whiplash (and for Pyro to drop his lighted lighter three times), and just when I’m pretty sure I’m going to hurl, we reach the Bard Academy gate — a black metal archway with the Bard Academy logo painted in silver on top. The campus beyond looks like some sort of college brochure. That is, if it was the Crypt Keeper University.

  All the buildings are old and Gothic, made of white stone and decorated with gargoyles. God, who designed this place? The Addams Family?

  We speed by some groups of students who are wearing the Bard Academy uniform — pleated, navy blue skirts for the girls, navy pants for the boys, both wearing navy blue sweaters with Bard Academy patches on the arm. It’s less prep school chic and more military school blech. The pants look like they’re made of polyester. I am so not wearing man-made fabrics. Mom, who changes clothes as often as I do, wouldn’t approve of artificial fibers, either. There are some things you can sacrifice in the name of personal growth. Breathable fibers isn’t one of them.

  Thompson comes to a skidding halt in the middle of the neatly kept lawn, two heavy tire marks marring the otherwise pristine commons. The sudden stop sends my backpack skidding forward, and my CD player flies out, along with the battery lid and two Duracells. As Thompson gets up, he steps on the cover, breaking it.

  “Hey,” I shout at him. “What are you doing!”

  “You can’t use it here, anyway,” he tells me. “Now out with you, you brats.”

  After I step off the bus, I hear Thompson ask the Goth kids if “they’re holding.” They hand over a couple of little white pills. Drugs! Our bus driver had been asking if I had any drugs! I don’t believe it. Then it dawns on me.

  This is awesome.

  This is my ticket out of this little horror movie. I am not going to spend even a week here when Dad hears about this. He may not win any Father of the Year awards, but he’s got a thing about drugs. In fact, one of his only attempts at parenting involved sitting me down when I was twelve and telling me that alcoholism runs in our family and that I shouldn’t try alcohol or drugs because I could get addicted easily.

  He told me this as if I didn’t notice that Grandma Colleen was always drunk at Christmas, or how she shook before she had her morning cocktail — vodka and orange juice.

  I tried to tell Dad he doesn’t have to worry about me. I may have tried alcohol, but the key word there is “tried,” and given the whole Tyler fiasco, I’m not going back for another round of Everclear anytime soon, thanks. And I’m not going to try any drugs. People on drugs act stupid.

  I step off the bus and see what has to be a teacher standing in front of what looks like the campus chapel. He’s a burly guy with a white beard wearing what looks like a coach’s uniform, complete with cap and whistle. Something about the shape of his head and shoulders reminds me of my dad. I decide instantly that I don’t like him. While I watch, he lights up a cigarette, takes a big drag, and then slips his hand into his pocket and takes out a silver flask, which he un-screws and swigs. Wow. Breakfast of Champions, Grandma Colleen style. And he’s this school’s coach? What next? The school nurse is hooked on crystal meth?

  He catches me staring at him, and he momentarily lowers his flask. He looks like he recognizes me, but I don’t see how that’s possible. We’ve never met.

  He stares at me for a beat, taking another drag of his cigarette. He smokes it down to a nub and then drops it underfoot and crushes it.

  “Well? What are you waiting for? Inside,” he tells me, ushering me toward the church door.

  Three

  Inside the chapel, it feels colder than outside, which is strange. The walls are covered with stained glass windows, except instead of Christian scenes, they look like scenes from famous books. I recognize the Romeo and Juliet balcony scene, because our school did that play last year. But the others are sort of lost on me. A lot of them have people dying in sword fights. There’s serious impaling going on. I’m sure some of the Goth students are in freaky-freak heaven in here.

  I’m trying to figure out what religion the chapel is supposed to represent, but as near as I can tell it represents none of them. There aren’t any holy symbols, just ones of literature. In fact, above the altar, there’s a giant stained glass quill pen picture. Weird. Below the pen, there’s a quote from Shakespeare. It says, “I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.”

  What does that even mean?

  I look around at the other students sitting in the pews. They’re all in street clothes, and none are in uniforms. There are plenty of Goths and Pyros and Well Girls, but also a surprising number of preps and normal-looking kids. I wonder what they did. Mentally, I try to tick off their offenses. Guy in Red Izod Shirt and Baseball Cap = drug runner because he keeps rubbing his nose and looking around nervously. Thick-necked Jock in Cut-off Tee = date rape. Goth Contingent on the Right = drugs. Christina Aguilera Wannabes with Their Hair Extensions and Too Much Makeup = klepto shoplifters.

  I take a seat in a back pew, and Pyro from the bus sits right next to me, completely uninvited. He nods his head in my direction, but says nothing.

  I look away from him, a bit unnerved. He has “rebel without a cause” written all over him, despite his weird clothes. Now that I’m closer, I can see that he’s definitely older than most of the boys I know. I’m not sure how old, but he seems like he should be in college, not in high school. Look at those sideburns, for heaven’s sake. Boys of sixteen don’t grow sideburns like that.

  Also, now that I’m closer, I notice he’s been in a fight. At least, he has a black eye, and a little cut o
ver his eyebrow. Nice. I guess he wanted one last brawl before he was shipped off to reform school.

  He’s exactly the sort of guy that Dad would freak about — an OMDB Boy. Over My Dead Body Boy.

  I’m sure Pyro is only one of many Bad Boys in this boarding school. It would serve Dad right if Pyro and I ended up dating. He’s not that bad looking, actually. He’s got dark, spiky hair, jet-black eyes, and the beginnings of serious stubble.

  The door slams shut then, and beefy guys with Bard Academy T-shirts line the exits. They look like bouncers, or reject college football players, it’s hard to say which. Pyro, next to me, gives them all a scowl.

  I get the feeling that Pyro likes me for some reason. I try not to judge him on looks alone. When it comes to my peers, I like to think of myself as the secretary general of the United Nations. I don’t belong to one group, exactly, but many. At my old school, I had friends in all the cliques — rich kids, smart kids, jock types, geeks — you name it, I know people there. I think it’s because I change my look so often. I can go from blonde prep to brunette punk in just about five minutes flat.

  I’m not the prettiest girl in my school, or the ugliest, but I do seem to have a sixth sense for trends. You know — what to wear and what not to wear. It’s like I can look at a person and make them over — just like Trinny and Susannah — which I did for half the cheerleading squad last year when word got out that I helped Bailey, head cheerleader and prom queen, find the perfect semi-formal dress. It just so happened that we ran into each other in the changing room at Nordstorm. I like to help people, okay? And Bailey, despite her popularity, desperately needed an intervention. I helped her move past sequined mock turtlenecks. Within weeks of the Bailey incident, everybody started asking me for advice. Overnight, I became chief of our campus fashion police.