Free The Last Academy by Anne Applegate Page B

someone for the first time since I had fought with Tamara. At least, until Nora turned around. Her face was pale and worried. I stopped. Nora never worried about anything. When she saw me, she gave me half a smile and rushed over. Compared to her usual bounding stride, rushed walking made her look pinched and weird.
    “Hey, you snag those keys yet?” Nora asked, peering over my shoulder.
    At first I didn’t even know what she was talking about. Then I remembered her plan to lock up the secret room.
    “No. What’s up? How you been?”
    I was kind of shocked by how she deflated, like she’d been counting on me having something I had completely forgotten about. It made me squirmy. I still wasn’t sure about the whole thing — she was asking me to do something that might get me kicked out if we got caught. Thenshe wiped the look off her face, leaving nothing but determination there.
    “Come with me.” Nora grabbed my wrist and led me over to her and Jessie’s patio. She gave a quick, obligatory knock and yanked the door open.
    The room was dark. I stood there, waiting for my eyes to adjust. Jessie was slumped on the bed, like a battered piece of luggage forgotten on a claims carousel. Her pretty green eyes, unfocused. I thought: Just like Tamara-poison-Golden-Mummy-Girl. What’s wrong with everybody?
    “Jessie?”
    Her rib cage expanded as she breathed, but that was it for movement.
    “She’s been like that all day now. Even yesterday it wasn’t this bad.” Nora sounded somewhere between annoyed and concerned.
    “Tell Miss Andersen.” I said it out of the corner of my mouth, because it felt weird to be talking about Jessie when she was right there.
    “Jessie said not to. She’s been practically comatose since that séance. But last night, she would at least talk to me. Now nothing.” Nora reached over and poked Jessiewith one finger. No response. Nora frowned at me like Jessie was a weird bug she had never seen before.
    “The séance?” I asked. That felt like a million years ago. And then I knew.
    I’d been focused on scaring Tamara, not even considering how I might have frightened someone I actually liked. My insides sank. Jessie had been in that chapel, waiting for a sign from the dead. And now she was sitting in front of me like she’d swallowed cement.
    I got down on my knees so I could see her face. “Jessie, it was me. I knocked on the chapel wall. As a joke. I didn’t mean to scare you.” Behind us, Nora took the opportunity to kick me in my butt. I didn’t care.
    Jessie’s eyes cleared and she saw me. “Everything shook, the glass broke, and the lights went out. I wasn’t in the chapel, I was in that car.”
    “No. We just …” I thought: Why get Rachel in trouble? “I shook the stained-glass wall. That’s what the noise was.” I cringed, remembering the sound of shattering glass, seeing Jessie again in my head, her mouth open in surprise.
    She reached out so slowly I didn’t know what she wasgoing to do until she grabbed the collar of my T-shirt and twisted it around her fist. She pulled me close.
    “My brother told me things. Good, terrible things. You brought him … thank you.” She stared past me, like she was speaking to someone else behind me. Dread prickled its way up my spine. What had I done?
    I put my hand on Jessie’s fist. We were practically nose to nose. I could smell her, but she didn’t smell like poison or anything. Just like she hadn’t showered in a couple of days.
    “It was only a prank,” I said.
    She let go of my shirt and smiled weirdly. “It was my brother. No one could know that stuff except him.”
    Jessie hadn’t stuttered once. I glanced up at Nora. She looked at me with one eyebrow raised.
    “Umm. Ohh … kay. What did your brother say?” Nora asked.
    Jessie shook her head and mashed her lips together until they were nothing but a white crease. Then she muttered into the front of her shirt, “He told me he was sorry, that it wasn’t my