Afterlife Academy by Jaimie Admans Page A

on.”
    I roll my eyes.
    “Sorry,” he says. “Let’s talk
about something different.”
    “How did you meet all those
people and how come they like you so much?” I ask.
    “Am I really that unlikeable?”
    “It would depend on who you’re
speaking to,” I say. “I can see that you have potential but Wade and Soph might
not agree with me.”
    “Potential, huh?” He winks at
me.
    “Don’t get too full of
yourself.” I grin. “You still have a scientific calculator in your pocket.”
    “Actually, I took your advice
and put it in my bag,” he says, grinning back.
    His smile is kind of cute. How
come I’ve never noticed that before? I suppose because Anthony has never had a
reason to smile at me before.
    “I’m sorry,” I say suddenly.
“For the way I treated you before.”
    “You’ve already said that.”
    “I know, but I really mean it. I
want you to know that. I’m sorry for the way Soph, Wade, and I behaved, and if
we ever get back home, I’m going to make sure it never happens again.”
    “What makes you think we’re
going to get back home?” he asks around a mouthful of his baguette.
    “We will. We have to. Look…” I
glance around to make sure no one is eavesdropping, then I lean in and tell him
about the forum page I found on the Internet. “We have to find the way out. We
can’t stay here forever.”
    “No, we graduate and move on to
something else,” he says like I’ve lost my mind.
    “But don’t you want to go home?”
    He shrugs.
    “Don’t you miss your family?”
    “Look,” he says. “I’m not trying
to be harsh here because I love my gran to bits, but she’s getting old. She was
eighty-six last month. She’s too old to have a teenager around, and what
happens if I get home and then she dies? I’d be on my own again.”
    “No, you wouldn’t,” I say.
“You’d have me.”
    “Oh yeah,” he says. “Because you
really want to be eating lunch with me right now. You’re not just here because
I’m the only option. If Wade or Sophie walked in right now, you wouldn’t go
running over to them and pretend you’d never so much as spoken to me.”
    “I wouldn’t.” I lie. And then I
think about it. “No, I wouldn’t. You’re a really nice guy, and I know that we
never gave you a chance before. If Wade and Soph were here, I’d persuade them
to give you a chance too. I do want to be here eating lunch with you. It’s not
just because no one else will speak to me.”
    “Hmm,” he says.
    Great. He doesn’t believe me.
I’m trying to be nice and he doesn’t believe me.
    “I mean it,” I say.
    “So, what do you think
Visualisation class will be like?” he asks, completely avoiding the
conversation. “Do you think it will be like the pensieve in Harry Potter?”
    I stare at him. “Do you really
think I’ve read Harry Potter?”
    He thinks about that for a moment.
“No,” he says eventually. “Now that I think about it, I’m sure Cosmopolitan is about as complicated as your reading
matter gets.”
    “Hey,” I go to protest, but
honestly he’s right. “Yeah, well, maybe I’ll go up to the library here and get
them out, seeing as there’s nothing better to do.”
     
     

 
     
    CHAPTER 13
     
    Visualisation class is in what used to be the technology
block at our old school. Ghosts probably don’t have much need for technology,
so this must be much more useful. Soph and I always considered Technology a
fairly useless subject anyway.
    I don’t know what I’m expecting
to see when I walk in. Maybe some huge dark room with a lot of crystal balls?
But it looks just like an ordinary classroom. There are desks set out in rows,
the teacher’s desk is at the front of the room, the walls are plain, and there
isn’t much else to see.
    Clearly I was expecting
something more fantastical than this.
    I take a seat next to Anthony
and he stays with me even though when we walk in a boy waves to him and pats
the empty seat at his desk.
    It’s so weird to see