Wuthering high: a bard academy novel Read Free Page B

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