even spent a summer in some mental hospital somewhere. There wasn’t a tier of popularity low enough to signal where he belonged. And he was laughing at me?
Killian looked away quickly, hunching his shoulders in his sweatshirt and staring at the ground, his usual antisocial, psycho-in-training behavior.
Wait … wait. Something about that …
I frowned, even though I was pretty sure my mouth was gone, and my thoughts were getting fuzzy. If he was laughing at me, that could only mean that he could see me. And that meant …
2
Will Killian
Laughing at the dead is never a good idea. But I couldn’t help it. The great Alona Dare, reduced to a crying, runny-nosed bobblehead? How often do you get to see stuff like that?
Not often. Unless, of course, you’re me. Lucky, lucky me.
But it was also me who, above anyone else, should have understood that laughing at someone else’s expense always comes with a karmic price.
“Mr. Killian.” Principal Robert “Sonny” Brewster greeted me as soon as my foot crossed over the threshold into the school. “Glad you could join us today. Though you seem to be running late … again.”
“I’m not—” I protested.
Brewster pointed at the ceiling, and, as if he’d willed it, the bell rang.
“Late,” I muttered.
Behind me, Erickson and Joonie scrambled to get through the door and to class, leaving me to deal with Brewster again. Joonie gave me an apologetic look over her shoulder, but I didn’t blame her or Erickson. They were just glad he’d decided to focus on me and leave them alone. After all, they were just as late as me, but apparently, they didn’t set off Brewster’s “freak-detector,” as he called it, like I did. I found that a little hard to believe, considering the number of piercings Joonie wore in her face and how bloodshot Erickson’s eyes were. But, for whatever reason, I was just Brewster’s favorite.
Brewster smiled, an expression that did nothing to soften the hardness of his face and the brutal line of his buzz cut. Former military all the way, that was Brewster. Oh, and don’t forget barely repressed homophobia, testosterone driven violence sprees, and a hard-on for following rules because they are RULES.
“I think it’s time we have another conversation about your future, Mr. Killian.” He caught his hands behind his back and rocked back on his heels.
“Again? People are starting to talk.”
His hand snapped out, snatching the shoulder of my sweatshirt and crushing the cloth in his fist. I stumbled toward him under the force of his grab. His dark eyes gleamed with fury and eagerness.
“Go ahead,” I said. If he hit me, he’d be fired. He knew it. Everyone knew it. There’d already been a couple of complaints against him for his temper. So what if I helped him along a little? My life would be so much easier with him gone.
He released me and wiped his hand down his suit coat, like touching me had covered him in slime. “My office, now.”
He stalked across the main hall toward the administrative offices without even checking to see if I followed. It was tempting to ditch and leave him sitting there alone, but I only had a few weeks left. Just twenty-eight more days, and I’d be eighteen and a high school graduate, both conditions for accessing the little bit of money my father and grandmother left me. Once I had that, I’d be out of here, bound for someplace with only a few people and, therefore, even fewer ghosts. Like some deserted island … or Idaho.
If Brewster suspended me, that would be the end of that plan.
So, I followed him, as he’d instructed. I just took my own sweet time about it.
See, here’s the bullshit about high school, and believe me, I’ve had plenty of time to think about this. Teachers, parents, guidance counselors … all of them are always pushing this crap about how it’s okay to be different, just be yourself. Don’t give in to peer pressure, blah, blah, blah. The truth is, it’s really only okay to be yourself if that self is within an accepted range of “normal.” You like soccer instead of basketball, Johnny? Well, okay, I guess, so long as you still like sports. What’s that, Susie, you want to wear the blue sweater instead of the red? You know we’re all about expressing individuality here … so long as it’s still a sweater.
How can you expect any of us to believe that it’s okay to be different when even the adults don’t believe it? Just because the popular, so-called first-tier kids look “normal” and say the “right” things, no one even looks twice at them. Ben Rogers supplies weed for most of the school, but has he ever been searched? This year alone, I’ve been called to Brewster’s office twelve times and had my locker searched once a week.
Brewster was waiting at the door of his personal office when I finally made it to the secretary’s desk. I could see his jaw muscle twitching from where I stood.
I nodded at Mrs. Piaget, the school secretary, who smiled in return but quickly looked away. She always had a soft spot for me, probably seeing all the notes over the years for various doctor appointments and illnesses, but even she knew better than to challenge Brewster.
Brewster slammed his office door shut as soon as I stepped inside, nearly clipping my shoulder in the process.
“Backpack,” he demanded, his hand out.
Oh, please. I resisted the urge, barely, to laugh at him. I’d learned a long time ago that backpacks were, for all intents and purposes, seen as school property. You’d never find anything illegal in mine.
I slid the pack off my shoulders and handed it to him, and then I dropped into one of the blue plastic visitor chairs in front of his desk.
“Who said you could sit?” he demanded.
I shrugged and didn’t move. He’d be far too interested in catching me with something in my backpack than to force the sitting issue right away. I’d been through this routine enough times to know that.
Brewster unzipped the bag and dumped its contents on the immaculate and polished surface of his wooden desk. From the shine on that sucker, Brewster had been working off some serious sexual frustration.
I leaned back in my chair, tilting it back up on two legs. “Do you polish it yourself? That must take a lot of wrist action.”
His gaze jerked up from the now untidy pile of folders, papers, and books to gauge my expression.
I opened my eyes wide, the very picture of innocence. “What?” I’d long ago mastered the art of keeping my true feelings to myself. Trust me, you see the dead walking around, you learn not to scream, laugh, or piss yourself pretty quickly.
“You think you’re clever, Mr. Killian?”
I shrugged. “Not particularly.” I knew it irked him, though, because he’d seen my test scores. Thirty-two out of thirty-six on the ACT last year, and I’d totally blown the curve on all the standardized tests they could offer. I couldn’t help it — just one of the few, very few, benefits of my gift. After all, it wasn’t hard to remember history when I was surrounded by people who’d lived it, and the ghosts who hung around the school all the time were often bored enough to read over your shoulder and do the homework aloud with you, even if no one could hear them. No one, except me, of course.
“You’ve only got a month left here, and then you’re out in the world, far beyond my reach.” He began shuffling through my stuff, like he was looking for something. Dude, there’s nothing to find, I could have told him. “And yet, Mr. Killian, I’ll feel like a failure as an educator—”
“Hey, don’t be so hard on yourself, Mr. B., everybody fails sometimes.” I couldn’t believe he was handing this to me. “Some people more than others, though, I guess.”
He gritted his teeth, and the knuckles on the hand gripping my physics book turned white. “I’ll feel like a failure if you don’t leave here without at least one lesson learned.” He dropped the book back on his desk and dug into my backpack again, this time the small pocket in the front. “Ah, here we are.”
He dropped my iPod nano on the desk with a careless clatter, the tiny headphones trailing after it.
“Hey, watch it!” I set my chair on all four legs again with a thump. The nano (I’d nicknamed her Marcie after
