IT WAS THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL, WHICH MEANT it was my last chance to escape.
I didn't have a backpack full of surviving gear, a wallet thick with cash that I could buy myself a plane ticket somewher, or a friend waiting for me down the road in a getaway car. Basically, I didn't have what most sane people would call "a plan."
But it didnt matter. There was no way I was going to remain at EverNight Academy.
The muted morning morning light was still new in the sky as I wriggled into my jeans and grabbed a warm black sweater----
this early morning, and this high in the hills, even October felt cold. I knotted my long red hair into a make-shift bun and stepped into my hiking boots.
It felt important to be very quiet, even though I didn't have to worry about my parents waking. They weren't morning people, to say the least.They'd sleep like the dead until the alarm clock woke them, and that wouldn't be for another couple of hours.
That's what give me a good head start.
Outside my bedroom window, the stone gargoyle i'm glared at me, fangs framing his open grimace. I grabbed mine denim jacket and stuck my tongue out to him. "Maybe like hanging out with the fortress of the damned," I nurtured. "You're welcome to it."Before I left, I made my bed. Usually it took a lot of nagging to get me to do that, but I wanted to. I knew I was going to see freak my parents out badly enough today, so straightening the covers felt like I was making it up to them a little.
Probably they wouldn't see it that way, but I went ahead. As I plumped up the pillows, I had a sudden strange flash of something I'd dreamed the night before, as vivid and immediately as though I were still dreaming:A flower the colour of blood.
Wind howled through the trees all around me, I whipping the branches in every direction. The sky overhead churned, thick with roiling clouds. I brushed my windswept hair from my face. I only to look at the flower.
Each rain-beaded petal was vividly red, slender, and blade-like the way some tropical orchids are. Yet the flower was lush and full, too, and it clung close to the branch like rose. The flower was the most exotic, mesmerizing thing I'd ever seen. It had to be mine.
*End of dream*
Why did that memory make me shiver? It was only a dream. I took a deep breath and focused. It was time to go.My messenger bag; I'd loaded it up the night before. Just a few things ---a book, sunglasses, a little cash in case I needed to go all the way to Riverton, which was the closest thing to human civilization in the area. That would keep me occupied for the day.
See, I wasn't running away. Not for real, where you make a break and assume a new identity and, I don't know, join the circus or something. No, I was making a statement. Ever since my parents first suggested that we come to Everynight Academy ___ them as teachers, me as a student___ I'd been against it. We'd lived in the same small town my wholelife, and I'd attended the same school with the same people since I was five years old. That was just the way I wanted it. There are people who enjoy meeting strangers, who can strike up conversations and make friendsquickly, but I'd never been one of those people. Anything but.
It's funny when people call you "shy," they ussually smile. Like it's cute, some funny little habit you'll grow out of when you're older, like the gaps in your grim when your baby teeth fall out. If they knew how it felt ___ really being shy, not just unsure at first ___ they wouldn't smile. Not if they knew how the feelings knots up your stomach or makes your palms sweat or robs you of the ability to say anything that makes sense. It's not cute at all.
My parents never smiled when they said it. They were smarter than that, and I always felt they understood, until yhtu decided that age sixteen was the right time for me to get past it somehow. What better starting place than a boarding school____ particularly with them along for the ride?
I could see where they were coming from, sort of. Still, that was theory. The first moment we'd come up the drive at Evernight Academy __ I'd seen this huge, hulking, Gothic stone monstrosity ____ I'd known that therewas no way I could possibly go to school here. Mom and Dad hadn't listened. I would have to make them listen.
On tiptoe, I eased my way through the small faculty apartment my family had shared for the past month. Behind the closed door of my parent's bedroom, I could hear my mother snoring lightly. I shouldered my bag, slowly turned the door-knob, and started downstairs. We lived at the very top of Evernight's towers, which sounds cooler than it is. This meant I had to make my way down steps that had been carved out of rock more than two centuries ago, long enough to be worn and uneven. The long spiral staircase had few Windows and the lights weren't yet on, making for a dark, difficult trip.
As I reached out for the flower, the hedge rustled. The wind, I thought, but it wasn't the wind. No, the hedge was growing ___ growing so quickly that I could see it happening. Vines and brambles pushed from the leaves in a tangled snarl. Before I could run, the hedge had almost surrounded me, walking me in behind sticks and leaves and thorns.
The last thing I needed was to start flashing back to my nightmares . I took a deep breath and kept going downstairs until I reached the great hall on the ground floor. It was a majestic space, built to inspire or at least impress: marble-tiled floor, high arched ceiling, and stained glass windows that stretched from floor to rafter, each in a different kaleidoscope pattern___ save one, right in the center, which was a clear glass. Set-up for the day's events must have been completed the night before, because a podium stood ready for the headmistress to greet the students who were arriving later today. Nobody else seemed to be awake yet, which meant that there was no one to stop me. A hard tug opened the heavy, carved outside door, and then I was free.
Early morning fog blanketed the world in bluish-Gray as I walked across the grounds. When the built Evernight Academy in the 1700s, this country had been wilderness. Even though small towns now dotted the distant countryside, none of them were very close to Evernight; and despite the hillside views a s thick forests, nobody had ever built a house nearby. Who could blame them for not wanting to be anywhere near that place? I glanced behind me at the school's tall stone towers, both of them coiled with the twisted forms of gargoyles, and shivered. Within a few more steps, they began to fade into the fog.
Evernight boomed behind me, the stone walls of its high towers the only barrier the throns couldn't break. I should have run for the school, but I didn't. Evernight was more dangerous than the throns, and besides, I wasn't going to leave the flower behind.
My nightmare was starting to feel more real than reality. Uneasy, I turned from the school and started to jog, fleeing the grounds and vanishing into the forest.