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

say that the Brontë sisters didn’t die? That they somehow faked their deaths and then wound up at Bard?
    I absently kick my foot out, and my shin hits the edge of a drawer that’s out slightly. Ow. I shut the drawer closed with my foot, rub my shin, and then go back to reading.
    I peer at the circled picture in the 1848 catalog, but it’s just another blurred face. There’s no telling if the picture is anything like the painted portrait on the back cover of my copy of Wuthering Heights.
    I swing my foot out and it hits the drawer — again.
    Okay, this time I am not imagining it. I just closed it. Now it’s open again. Something weird is going on here. I look down at the drawer, wondering if it’s broken, when, inside the drawer, I see familiar handwriting. Kate has etched her initials here, too.
    I feel my blood run cold. Is this another haunted closet situation? I guess Kate Shaw isn’t done with me yet.
    I open the drawer. It’s empty. I pull on the drawer and lift it up and out of its track, then inspect it. It seems okay — there’s a little raised piece of wood on each side of it that fits into the groves of the old desk. It doesn’t seem broken or warped or anything. No reason that it would just slip open on its own. I put the drawer down and look into the empty drawer space. I pull down the desk lamp for light and peer in. It’s empty, except for something sticking out at the back of the drawer, hanging from the top. Is it tape?
    I put down the lamp and reach into the back of the drawer. I can’t seem to reach whatever it is, so I lean in farther so that I’m nearly up to my armpit, and that’s when I feel a hand grab my wrist.
    I whip my arm free, and the force of my pulling flings my body several feet back and into Blade’s desk so hard that I knock off her skull candle, which falls straight into my lap, with its two black eye sockets staring up at me and its mouth grinning its lipless grin.
    Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack.
    “Dammit, Blade,” I mutter under my breath, relieved that I am in one piece, and that the skull is made of wax and isn’t real. As if it isn’t enough that I’m living with a girl ghost, I have to have Ms. Halloween as a roommate, too. Why couldn’t I get the girl who loves pink, stuffed Teddy bears? No. I had to get the freak who likes skulls. It’s no wonder I’m seeing ghosts everywhere.
    Blade snorts and rolls over, still asleep.
    I am breathing hard, but I carefully put the skull candle back up on her desk and reach back over to right the lamp I knocked over. Okay. Let’s try this again. It probably wasn’t a creepy skeleton ghost hand (like I imagined in my mind) that grabbed my wrist. I probably just got it caught on something, right? Okay, right. But better safe than sorry.
    “Kate,” I whisper, in a low voice while I look around the room, “if that is you, please stop scaring me half to freaking death, because I am trying to help you, okay?”
    The room is silent.
    “Okay, I’m going to take that as an apology, all right? Now, let’s start again. No more grabbing on the first date. I am not that kind of girl.”
    I put the desk lamp back in front of the drawer and peer in. That’s when I see that there’s some kind of key partly taped to the top of the drawer. It’s now hanging loose, dangling. Either my gyrations or the skeleton hand knocked it part of the way free.
    “I’m putting my hand in here now, but don’t take any liberties. Just chill out.”
    I reach in quickly, grab the key, and yank it free, unmolested.
    “Thank you,” I say to the room. I look at the key. It’s an old, worn brass one that fits into my palm. It has no inscription on it. It’s just a key. But to what?
    The Bard bell tolls, signaling lights out. I slip the key into my backpack pocket and put the drawer back in its rightful place, then switch off our lights.
    I’m just crawling into bed when Ms. W sticks her head in my door.
    “Everything okay in here? No fires, I hope?” she