Good vs. Evil High (3 page)

He fixed his eyes on me as he walked past
everyone to stand beside me. Was it that obvious? He smiled as he
looked me up and down. “This one’s a beauty. I can see why you
would want to be the one here to pick her up, Armstrong.”

Roman ran back to me and threw his chest
against Bane’s. “Back off, vermin.”

Bane’s smile disappeared and was replaced by
pure hatred. “You Northerners always think you’re better than us!
You’re arrogant, self-centered—” he started shouting only a second
before Roman joined in with, “Well, you’re all a bunch of criminals
and lowlifes—” And then they were yelling at each other so loudly
it was impossible to understand what either one was saying. They
just stood there, pressed against each other with their heads
tilted on opposite sides and only inches between them, as they
shouted threats and insults.

It reminded me of two angry dogs, growling
and gnashing teeth, only moments away from breaking into a deadly
fight. I took a step back, just in case.

The Cinders stood back laughing, but Hunter
rushed over to Roman and grabbed him from behind, trying to pull
him away from Bane. “Be quiet! We’re not supposed to draw attention
to ourselves,” I heard him saying over the two voices that were
growing quieter.

Roman stopped and stretched out his arms to
throw Hunter off of him. “You’re a filthy liar, Bane,” he said.
“Come on.” With that, he moved to the front of our group and took
up walking under the dark awnings again. Hunter took his place
behind him and we began moving as we had before.

I twisted my neck around to see if I could
get another look at the Cinders, but they were gone. So I turned
back around, thrilled to have encountered students from a rival
school. And they could appear out of thin air like magic.
Awesome.

It even sounded like they were from some kind
of dark school for troublemakers. Our polar opposite.

Good versus evil high.

Double awesome! Because who doesn’t love a
good school rivalry?

The continued journey across the city took us
through an old neighborhood and then into a forest.

It was hard to keep quiet. I had so many
questions, and every second brought a hundred more with it. But I
kept them all in, somehow.

Roman finally stopped at the edge of an
enormous open field.

My head jerked from side to side and my neck
stretched to its limit as I looked around for a jet. I’d never seen
one up close before. I’d never even been in an airplane, so I
couldn’t wait to get on. But I didn’t see anything.

A silver flying thing like the one Harmony
had shown me in the hospital rose in front of Roman, lighting up
the darkness. When it had assembled itself, the same woman appeared
on the screen. “Hello, Roman. What can I do for you?”

“Call Mr. Westhyme, please.”

“....Calling Mr. Westhyme.”

We only had to wait half a minute or so
before a man with an unusually long pointed nose appeared on the
screen. “Ready, Roman?”

“Yes, sir.”

Mr. Westhyme looked over our faces until he
spotted mine. “So, you managed to convince her to come. Nice to
meet you, Kristine.”

“You, too.”

“All right, make sure you stand back far
enough, now.”

Everyone began walking backwards, deeper into
the trees. Harmony put her arm around me. “We’re going to be
bunkmates. I’ve been waiting to get one forever. Nadine and Sassy
are my roommates, but I’ve never had someone I could lean over the
edge of my bed and whisper with late at night. I’m so glad you
decided to come.”

Her bubbly personality was contagious, making
it impossible not to feel just as happy as she was. “Me, too. I
can’t wait to get there and see it—”

All of a sudden, we heard a deep rumbling.
Then the ground was trembling. “Is that an earthquake?” I asked
nervously.

“It’s just the jet.” Harmony pointed to the
clearing and I saw the whole center of the field begin to sink. It
looked like a hole at first, but something dark began to come out
of the ground. Bright light suddenly poured out around it. It
looked like a street was rising diagonally right out of the giant
black pit. “That’s the runway. We don’t need much of one, just
enough to get going. It has to point up so we don’t crash straight
into the woods, though. Headmaster’s had lots of them put in around
the world. We got lucky that one happened to be right where you
lived.” When it stopped, the end of it reached up about halfway as
tall as the monstrous trees, but I still didn’t see a jet.

Roman started running toward the runway and
the rest of us followed. When we reached it, I could see that the
runway went down about as far as it went up, and at the bottom was
the jet. It was huge and shiny white with a silver streak across
the middle. Little oval windows lined the side.

“I didn’t think they made jets that big,” I
said in awe as we reached a long flight of stairs that led down to
the underground hangar. The gigantic shelter was the perfect hiding
place for an aircraft they didn’t want anyone to stumble across
while it was waiting for us to return.

Harmony smiled back at me before beginning
her descent. “Take everything you know, and throw it out the
window. Once you get to North Haven High, nothing will ever be the
same.”

It was hard not to laugh out loud with all
the crazy excited feelings welling up inside me. Nothing half this
incredible had ever happened to me. And it just seemed to keep
getting better.

About halfway down the stairs, I recognized
Mr. Westhyme standing at the end of the mobile stairs that led to
an open door on the side of the jet. He was taller than I imagined,
and just as physically fit as the five kids with me were.

I hated to admit it, but I was beginning to
feel out of breath. All the walking and jogging was really getting
to me. And the others were running down the countless stairs at a
ridiculously high speed. I didn’t want them to think I was a wimp,
though, so I chose to ignore my burning lungs and legs and push
myself to keep up with them. But at the bottom, I
had
to
stop and catch my breath.

Roman laughed when he saw me. “Looks like
you’ll need some extra time in fitness training. Coach Beckham’ll
have you in shape well before the Winter Competitions.”

“Wh, what are those?”

“It’s all in the book. We need to hurry and
board. The sooner we get in the sky, the better we’ll all
feel.”

I followed him to the jet, where the other
four were already boarding. Our clothes were turning white again, I
realized.

“Hello, Kristine.” Mr. Westhyme extended a
hand for me to shake. “The newest member of the North Haven family,
such an honor to meet you.”

“Thank you.”

I climbed the few stairs onto the jet in
front of Roman, and all I could think about were the words Mr.
Westhyme had said.

The newest member of the North Haven
family...

Could it be true? Could I have finally found
a home and a family for the first time since my mom died and left
me all alone?

Chapter
Four

~ Two Brothers ~

Wow
. That was all I could think when I
stepped inside. Everything was white. A long row of luxurious sofas
lined each side of the wall under the windows, enough to
comfortably seat a dozen people each at least. At the back of the
room, a glass table was surrounded by eight black chairs with a
small box resting on the floor nearby. A winding staircase led to
an upstairs door to our right.

“If this is a piece of junk, I’d love to see
what those Cinders are flying in,” I said.

Roman walked in behind me. “They’re just
blowing smoke. You can’t listen to a word those guys say.”

“I can take care of your hand real quick,”
Hunter said to me, walking toward the table.

I guessed the box on the floor beside the
table probably contained first aid supplies. A stack of games sat
next to it.

“I can take care of her,” Roman said.

“But I’m halfway through my medical training.
She probably prefers an expert.”

They both looked at me. I simply
shrugged.

A look passed between the guys, and Hunter
went to lie down on one of the long rows of couches. The girls were
already sitting on the other one, chatting away.

Roman took my arm and led me to the glass
table before picking up the box and setting it on the table between
us.

I heard a door close, so I turned around in
my chair to see that Mr. Westhyme had gotten in the jet and was
heading for the stairs. “Everybody in takeoff position, please.
We’ll be out of here in a minute.”

Roman put the box in his lap and scooted back
in his chair. “You better sit back, too.”

I scooted back, wondering why it
mattered.

“Oh, hey, here’s your book.” Roman reached in
the box, which I could now see had only bandages and a blank pearly
white bottle of cream in it, along with the book Roman was handing
me.

A Guide for the North Haven High School
Student, by Trey Veziamo
was printed across the top in silver,
and a gleaming white hallway with smiling teenagers in white suits
filled the rest of the cover. As I opened it to the first page, we
all heard the engine come to life.

Something reached across my chest and pressed
me against the back of the chair. It scared me enough that I
screamed and looked around desperately for who was doing it.

“It’s only the safety belts,” Roman said,
taking my good hand in his.

I barely had a chance to look at the two
black belts crisscrossing their way over my torso before the jet
shot forward and we were all leaning dangerously to the side, as we
climbed upward at a steep incline.

My book slid off of my lap. I yanked my hand
away from Roman to grab it, but I didn’t reach out in time. It slid
against the wall, where it would have to wait for me until I could
get out of my chair. The table and chairs must have been bolted to
the floor, I realized, because if they hadn’t been, everything
would have been sliding across the floor with my book.

“We’ll level out in a couple of minutes and
the belts’ll come off,” Roman said.

“Good.” I leaned my head back and tried to
calm down. “So, North Haven High’s kind of like boarding school,
right?”

“I guess you could say that.”

“Do kids go home to their parents for the
holidays or summer or something?”

“No...only teenagers with no family at all
get recruited. The school’s got to be kept secret. And the
headmaster’s an orphan, so I think he wants to give other ones a
better life than he had...You’ll find all the answers in the
handbook.”

The precious handbook...If I could just reach
it...But it would have to wait.

As soon as the jet began straightening its
course and my seatbelt came off, I went after it, banging my hand
agonizingly against the side of the table on the way. It had been
hurting since I woke up, but now it was unbearable. I held my
breath until I was back in my seat, trying not to cry for all the
pain I was in.

“Can I take care of your hand now?” Roman
asked me.

“Will it hurt?” I couldn’t take any more
pain.

“It’ll stop the hurting, actually. The stuff
they use in hospitals is good, but not like this. In a week it’ll
be like it never even happened.”

“Okay.” I held out my hand and let him start
unrolling the bandages. I gasped when the air hit and the burning
really got bad. The inside of my hand was red and blistered with
seeping black and yellow spots. It made me wonder if it would scar
up and I would be deformed forever.

I looked up to see if Roman was as disgusted
by it as I was, but his dark eyes, dusted with bits of blue, seemed
unaffected.

Time seemed to slow down as I waited for
Roman to hurry up and open the darn bottle of cream and get some of
it out for my hand. Then he held my wrist and slowly rubbed the
cream all over my burnt skin...and the burning stopped
completely.

“Thank you. That’s much better,” I said.

“
You’re welcome. Put it on every night
before you go to bed and you should be fine.”

“How long was I asleep?”

“Seventeen hours, maybe. You got to the
hospital at about six a.m. and we got to you at eleven p.m.”

“Seventeen hours? Well, I should be good on
sleep for awhile.”

“Yeah, you probably want to sleep if you can,
though. You’ve been through a lot and we’ll be home by morning.
Headmaster will want to meet you.”

That got me thinking. Meeting the headmaster
was a big deal. I figured it might look good if I read as much of
the guide as I could before I met him.

Realizing the room was silent, I looked over
at the sofas and saw the other four lying on them. “Would you mind
if I went to lie down too, then?” I asked Roman.

“Or course not. I could use some rest
myself.”

So we went to lie on the side Hunter was on,
with me on the opposite end and Roman in the middle. But instead of
sleeping, I opened my book to page one.

Two Brothers: The Establishment of
our Schools

On February 18, 1957, in a small Italian
village, two very different brothers were born, Trey and Tobias
Veziamo. By the age of three, they were left orphans when a deadly
strain of the flu virus took their parents from them. Luckily, the
villagers kept Trey and Tobias together, moving them around between
families every few months.

Never had two brothers been known to be so
competitive. It seemed that if they weren’t putting every effort
and spare minute of their time into becoming better than the other
at whatever he did, they weren’t happy. Over time, one brother set
his heart firmly on darkness and seclusion, while the other set his
on all that is good and right.