Wuthering high: a bard academy novel by Cara Lockwood Page B

year ahead of me. He was a sophomore at my school last year, until he had that car accident. His girlfriend was killed and he dropped out of school. Rumor had it he finished up his sophomore year at some private school in the Northeast. Looks like that school is Bard Academy.
    I did not just get so lucky. This changes everything. I’m going to have to rethink my guyatus.
    “Ryan Kent,” I exclaim, without meaning to. Both Samir and Hana look at me.
    “You know him?” she says.
    “Uh-huh,” I mutter, unable to stop staring. Even in his Bard uniform, you can just make out the outline of his state-championship triceps. It’s not possible for him to be more gorgeous. And if that’s not enough, he’s also an honors student. Brains and brawn. Things are definitely looking up. This is the first good news I’ve gotten since landing at Bard.
    “Parker always does snatch up the best-looking boys,” Hana says, just as Parker leans in and whispers something into Ryan’s ear.
    Okay, maybe I spoke too soon about things looking up.
    “They can’t be dating,” I say, as my eyes slide back to Ryan and Parker.
    “Why not?”
    “I don’t know,” I say, watching Parker rub Ryan’s arm possessively. “They just can’t be.”

Seven
    After dinner, I find Blade asleep in our dorm room. She’s found my stash of pretzels from the plane in my backpack and chowed down on them because there are empty wrappers on my bed. Nice. She’s laid out on her back and snoring. Apparently, stealing my stuff has really worn her out. I take the wrappers from my bed and toss them onto her chest. One of them flitters near her face. She swats at it, then rolls over and starts snoring soundly again.
    I slip into my pajamas and crawl into bed, too. I stare at my photos for a while. I keep looking at Dad’s picture, although I don’t know why. It’s like I’m trying to figure him out. What about this day made him smile, when he never smiles any other time? I wonder how he found out about this place? Maybe it was one of his annoying golf buddies, like Mr. Lorgan who stares at my butt when he thinks I don’t see. Perv.
    The bell outside starts tolling, signaling lights out. It’s then that I notice that my closet light is on again. I slip out of bed, and turn it off, then climb back into bed and switch off my desk lamp. The room feels suddenly colder than it did before, now that it’s nearly completely dark. I pull the covers high up to my chin and stare at the ceiling. I’m acutely aware of the weird sounds in my room. There’s the snoring from Blade, a kind of wheezing whine, and the eerie creaks and groans of the floorboards above my head. It sounds like someone is walking above me, but they shouldn’t be, since we’re all supposed to be in bed.
    The furthest thing from my mind is sleep. The wind howls against my window and every so often a tree branch outside hits it just right so that I think someone is out there tapping on it. I’ve never felt so out of place and alone before. I would probably have better luck sleeping in a deserted and haunted mineshaft or maybe a cursed Indian burial ground. Not that I’m the sort of person who believes in ghosts, but it’s hard not to think something is weird about this place. If there is such a thing as spirits, this is the place they’d be.
    I have got to find a way out of here.
    But even if I did manage to escape, where would I go? My parents think I’m a delinquent. Especially Dad. God, he’s so clueless. If he spent five minutes with me he might actually know something about me. If you quizzed him on my friends’ names, I bet he couldn’t come up with a single one.
    When he and Mom were still married, at least Mom would tell him things about me, so he’d know something. I miss those days, I guess, even though it wasn’t all a big Disney movie or anything. They fought all the time, and usually Dad traveled a lot for work and wasn’t around much, but at least back then Mom wasn’t