Academy of the Forgotten Page 3

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m not ready to leave. Something happened to my brother here, and I can’t go until I know where he went.”

  The woman let out a huff. “I’m sure you’re mistaken. If you’ll follow me—”

  “I’m not,” I said firmly. The idea that had tickled up in the back of my head a minute ago reasserted itself. If it was a strange request, oh well. Everyone and everything here was strange enough to handle that. “There’s a spare bed in this room. I’d like to stay, just until I figure out what happened. I’ll pitch in with the chores and everything the students do while I’m here—I can earn my keep.”

  She eyed me for a long moment. “That would require the dean’s permission. Admission at Roseborne comes by invitation only.”

  “I’m not asking to be admitted as a student,” I said. “I can stay out of the way of anything to do with the actual classes.”

  “I’m afraid that wouldn’t be acceptable. Our approach to education only works if all participants are fully committed.”

  The way she said those words sent a shiver over my skin with the memory of how that one group of students had looked as they’d come out of the classroom downstairs. I still wasn’t sure what the hell kind of classes they taught here anyway. What kind of weirdo policy was that—to say anyone staying on the premises had to become a student, whether they were qualified to attend or not?

  But really, how bad could things be? Strangeness aside, it was a college, not a torture dungeon. And in the past nineteen years, I’d survived plenty of torture as it was, not to mention plenty of classes I’d had no plans to get invested in.

  I shrugged. “Let’s go ahead and see if the dean will agree to it, then.”

  If Dean Wainhouse refused to give permission, well, they’d have to drag me off campus kicking and screaming, and then I’d march right back through the gate. I’d clamber over the fucking wall if I had to. I’d come here for a reason, and no amount of haughty stares was going to make me back down from it now.

  Chapter Three

  Jenson

  I’d be lying if I said laundry duty was my least favorite job around Roseborne College, but it couldn’t have been much lower on the list. The ancient machines sputtered and groaned through every load of sheets and towels like a kraken awaking from the deep. It was probably a miracle they worked at all. The fabric came out of the washing machines heavy, wet, and chalky-smelling, and then out of the dryers with a flood of rose scent that must have seeped through the ventilation.

  Everything in this damned place smelled like roses. My nose had adapted enough that I could ignore it most of the time, but the flood that washed over me when I heaved the linens out of the dryers made my gut clench.

  This morning’s duties were worse than usual. This morning, Trix Corbyn was scheduled to the same shift as me, taking turns hauling baskets down from the upper floors and folding the stuff once it’d run through the gauntlet. It seemed like no matter where I looked, her orange hair was blazing at the edge of my vision. It sent a stinging sensation through my chest, as if scraping at a cut inside me that had only just started scabbing over.

  I didn’t want her here. I didn’t want her anywhere near me at all. We’d both be better off if she got the hell out of here and never looked back. She shouldn’t have ended up at Roseborne in the first place, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to get any kinder to her now that she had.

  It would’ve been a lot easier to convince her of that if she hadn’t been so fucking stubborn. Telling her off when I’d first seen her clomping her way toward the school hadn’t done a thing. I’d spent most of my life figuring out what made people tick so I could sway them into doing what I wanted, but this girl was a design all of her own.

  Which maybe was part of the reason my gaze kept sliding to her, garish hair aside.

  I had to take my opportunities when they came. I sidled over to her at the folding table and grabbed a fitted sheet to wrestle with.

  “So, you liked it here so much you decided you’d nab a spot that should be someone else’s?” I said in an offhand way, with just enough edge to needle her.

  She glowered at me for only a second before going back to her stack of towels. “No one was using that bed. And I’m not planning on staying very long.”

  “How do you know the administration wouldn’t have offered it to someone else? And thinking it’s okay to take it when you don’t even care enough to stick around?” I tsked. “Why not save us the trouble and take off now to get on with whatever more important things you have to do?”

  I felt the misstep in my last sentence even as it was coming out and restrained a wince. I’d put on a lot of fronts in my time, but overt asshole wasn’t one I’d ever had much use for. Obviously that persona needed more work.

  “The most important thing I could be doing is what I’m already doing right here,” Trix said tartly, not even bothering to look at me this time.

  So much for getting under her skin. I’d only reminded her of her cause. As if she had any real hope of seeing it through. This place would chew her up before it let her get anywhere with her private mission.

  She dropped the last towel on the top of the pile and moved to heft them off the table. “Of course,” I shot back while I still had the chance, letting my tone go dry with sarcasm. “We’d never survive without your stunning laundry skills.”

  Trix didn’t even bother to respond. She marched over to the bins, set the towels in one, and wheeled that out of the room without a backward glance. But I caught a glimpse of her face as she straightened up, of the twitch of her jaw and the momentary knitting of her brow before it fell away behind her tough-girl façade.

  She wasn’t hard all the way through. Lord only knew how much sadness and confusion lurked under there that even I hadn’t seen. She could put on all the fronts she wanted, but you couldn’t bullshit a bullshitter. I knew every gambit there was.

  “And here I thought we had the privilege of being specially chosen for this fine establishment,” I said to the room at large after she’d left. “Whatever will we do if word gets out that just anyone can wander in and claim one of these golden spots?”

  The wry remark earned me the snickers I’d been aiming for. My life here was a hell of a lot easier if no one else saw me as a total asshole. Self-mockingly charming jerks, on the other hand, got a pass almost every time.

  There’d been a long time when that thought would have brought a satisfied smirk to my face, at least when no one was watching. Now, it poked a deeper hole in the pit of my stomach.

  That was who I was. That was why I was here. What was the point in pretending any differently? It wasn’t as if I could really hurt anyone around me, not anymore.

  “Ugh, I’m so tired of doing this crap,” one of my fellow inmates said, stumbling under the weight of the heap of damp fabric she was attempting to move from one machine to another.

  I tossed the sheet I’d been grappling with aside—someone else could deal with the fitted monstrosities—and caught the mountain of blankets before they tumbled onto the floor. “Tell me about it. Here we go.”

  We hefted it together into the dryer and closed the lid with a clang. The girl I’d rescued smiled at me as she reached for the dial to start the cycle. “Thanks, Jenson.”

  I gave her a jaunty salute. “How can I leave a fair maiden in distress?”

  It’d been way too easy to bring that blush to her cheeks. Another jab of discomfort ran through my stomach as I turned back to the folding table. Michelle was pretty, don’t get me wrong. But my time at the college had drained away most of my lustful spirit like it had so much else. It was hard to look at any of my classmates without seeing the broken soul beneath the surface.

  Hardly anyone liked to talk about why they were here, but after enough classes, you could put together the pieces. Fuck-ups, all of us.

  Except Trix. The school hadn’t claimed her—she’d claimed the school. At least at first. As much as I’d ha
ve liked to see someone saunter out of here giving the brick walls and the fucking roses the middle finger, it’d be hard to believe it was possible until it actually happened.

  And she didn’t seem to be inclined to try just yet. How many kicks in the ass would it take?

  With that question running through my head, I’d girded myself to offer more heckling by the time she ducked back into the basement room, this time with a bin full of towels and cloths from the kitchen. She’d wrinkled her nose—those loads always stunk to high heaven.

  “I’d almost think you like the drudgery,” I said. “Are you so eager to fit in you’ll truck around dirty laundry just to be around us?”

  She shoved the bin over to the washing machine Michelle had just emptied. “I told you, I’ve got something important to do here.”

  “So why are you doing all these other things instead? I think you’re stuck, and you just don’t want to admit this was a dead end.”

  Her gaze jerked to me, startled, but it wasn’t as if word about her search hadn’t spread all over school by now, especially with that dork Ryo championing her cause.

  “You don’t know anything about me,” she snapped, which told me this time I’d landed the blow.

  Hurray for me. I found I couldn’t think of any way to build on my “victory” while she tossed the contents of the bin into the washing machine with brusque movements. Then she was storming right back out of the room, and a few minutes later my shift ended, so it didn’t matter anymore.

  The laundry was only my first housekeeping duty of the day, but my second proved to be mercifully Trix-free. Michelle had ended up on the same music-room maintenance shift as I had, though. As I wiped the dust from a flute and then a French horn, she meandered closer with the clarinet she was polishing.

  “It’s stupid how they make us keep everything in here in perfect shape when no one ever uses the equipment, isn’t it?” she murmured as if she was afraid of being overheard. Which, to be fair, was a legitimate concern in this place.

  “What, you don’t live for wiping down neglected musical instruments?” I said with a teasing arch of my eyebrows.

  She giggled and gave the clarinet another swipe with her cloth. Even while she was complaining about the task, she was still making a thorough job of it. Why risk the potential wrath over something that small?

  “I like the way you talk,” she said, her elbow brushing mine in an unmistakably deliberate motion. “You say what you think—what everyone is thinking, a lot of the time. You’re not afraid to tell it like it is.”

  That statement in combination with the vast number of things she clearly didn’t know about me left me choking on a guffaw. I managed to swallow my sputter of laughter.

  “Yes,” I said, with a dollop of irony that went right over her head. “I absolutely do.”

  “Do you want to hang out sometime later?”

  She glanced at me sideways as she asked, a hint of her previous blush coming back. There wasn’t a whole lot to do for fun at Roseborne College. An invite to hang out was basically an invite to seek out the spot where we were least likely to be interrupted and see how fast we could get each other off.

  Why shouldn’t I, if she was offering that blatantly? I’d enjoy myself at least a little, and she seemed to think she’d enjoy herself a lot, so I’d hardly be using her. No one here expected any encounter to turn into a real relationship.

  But.

  My thoughts slipped back to a recent and yet distant memory of my hands tracing warm skin, of a perfect little gasp of pleasure by my ear, of a smell like fresh clementines and nutmeg wiping away all traces of roses. Desire twanged through me that had nothing to do with the girl in front of me and snuffed out any interest I might have otherwise felt.

  I wasn’t sure I’d even be able to get it up with her. I’d only embarrass myself. So no, what would actually happen was neither of us would enjoy ourselves.

  You had to know how to let people down easy. “Would you believe this just… isn’t a good time?” I said in a meaningful way that left the meaning itself open to interpretation. She could fill in the blank with whatever she most wanted to believe. “Maybe another day.”

  “Sure,” she said, blinking with sudden compassion based on whatever she’d imagined. “I’m sorry.”

  I waved off her unnecessary concern. “Think nothing of it.”

  The jangle of strummed strings brought both our heads up. We stared at the other student on music-room duty, a kid who didn’t look a day over eighteen who’d turned up only a couple of months ago.

  Apparently that hadn’t been long enough for him to have learned the ropes. He’d tucked the banjo he’d been wiping down under his arm and, as we watched, strummed another chord. I cleared my throat in warning, even though it was almost definitely too late already.

  None of us were allowed to play. I always left the area with the guitars to someone else to avoid any temptation. And here was this guy shifting his fingers over the frets with a goofy smile on his naïve face—

  The smile snapped away an instant later as his entire expression stiffened. He wrenched his hand away from the strings, his fingers splaying rigidly. His thumb stuttered backward with a crack of bone. A cry burst out of him.

  Professor Filch swept into the room a moment later to survey the room. He motioned briskly to the new guy. “It seems you forgot our policies about the instruments. Set it in its place, please, carefully. Excellent. Now come along and get that break set before it turns into something worse.”

  “Y-y-yes, sir,” the guy stammered, and hurried after the professor when he turned on his heel, clutching his disfigured hand to his chest.

  Chapter Four

  Trix

  I might have been used to having to share a room with no privacy, but that didn’t mean I liked it. In some ways, the dorms in Roseborne College were the worst accommodations I’d dealt with yet. The sheets were scratchy, and the night was punctuated by one girl’s rattling snores and another’s periodic whimpers. At least once an hour, someone sucked in a sharp breath that spoke of wordless pain.

  I’d been relieved and kind of disbelieving when Dean Wainhouse had grudgingly agreed to let me stay on as long as I “pulled my weight.” Now I was starting to wonder if my supposed enrollment at the college was more a way of teaching me a lesson about the dangers of getting what you asked for. Did he figure I’d come running to his office to say I’d changed my mind over a few days of discomfort? Not a chance.

  Each of the dorm rooms had a tiny bathroom with a single toilet, but the four shower stalls that the nearly thirty of us girls had to share were located in a bathroom at the bottom of the stairs. After the first day I’d learned to be strategic. Since I wasn’t sleeping all that well anyway, I got up while dawn was only just creeping through the window and took my turn under the water that sputtered between hot and cold no matter where I set the dial.

  My third morning, I snuck down even earlier than the morning before. The dawn hadn’t even started to glow on the horizon yet. I slipped through the dark past the bathroom and down the next flight of stairs to the main floor.

  No one was stirring there either. I’d figured the staff would all still be asleep at this hour too. I went straight to the hall with the portraits and lifted Cade’s off the wall.

  This was the only object I’d found here that had any definite connection to him. Maybe it held more answers if I looked carefully enough.

  I sat down on the floor and dug my fingers into the back of the frame. With several increasingly forceful tugs, I finally managed to detach the backing that held the painting in place. It came away in my hand.

  I squinted at the rectangular piece in the dim light and then turned my attention to the frame and the back of the painting itself. Some part of me had been hoping for a message, a map, a diagram that would chart out the answers I needed. What I got was a whole lot of blank board and a little painted doodle near the top right corner.

  A lump filled m
y throat as I peered closer at the casual sketch. It was a girl, captured in hasty strokes from head to waist, her wayward hair a vivid purple. Like mine had been dyed all those months ago when Cade had left. He’d doodled me.

  Knowing that wasn’t going to help me find him, but even if it was selfish, I couldn’t help feeling a pang of relieved satisfaction that he’d been thinking of me even while we were so far apart.

  The rest of the board was completely blank. I scanned it for a few minutes longer before fitting the pieces of the frame back together. As I turned it over, meaning to examine the main painting up close in case there was more to it than I’d deciphered before, a door squeaked across the way in the professors’ hall.

  My pulse hiccupped. I leapt to my feet, hung the painting in place as quickly as I could, and darted up the stairs. Better if none of them realized I understood that piece of art was connected to my brother.

  I ducked into the bathroom, because I did still need my shower. By the time I got back upstairs, the other five girls in my room were just getting out of bed and dressing, just as I’d found them yesterday. They woke up a lot more slowly than I did.

  I knew how to school my eyes away from other people’s private business, but I’d still been unable to help noticing yesterday that the one girl’s scars weren’t limited to her face. They ran down her whole side, dappling and puckering her skin from shoulder to mid-calf and halfway down that arm. From the way she held herself as she pulled on her clothes, I had to wonder if she was the one who made those pained gasps in the night.

  Shouldn’t the college staff be doing something for her if she had injuries that weren’t fully healed? Even painkillers to help get her through the night? But asking that would mean openly acknowledging that I’d noticed, and sating my curiosity wasn’t worth the additional discomfort I’d probably cause her.

  That morning, only three of us were left by the time she finished getting dressed. She stepped into her sneakers, and a breath hissed through her teeth so abruptly that my gaze jerked to her of its own accord.