Free Wuthering high: a bard academy novel by Cara Lockwood

feel something cold in the pit of my stomach. This is not the kind of coincidence I was prepared for.
    “Whoa, she was hot,” Samir says. “How come that wasn’t in the campus legend?” He grabs the yearbook from me and turns the picture around so he can see it better. “Actually, you know, she looks an awful lot like…”
    “Don’t say it,” I say.
    “You,” he finishes. “Wow, that’s kind of weird.”
    “Tell me about it.”
    We could practically be sisters.
    I look at the picture again. She is smiling, which is weird because very few of her classmates are. The yearbook as a whole has a feeling of mug shots from prison. But Kate seems different. She seems perky, even happy, which is weird considering she was sent here. But then I think back to her signature with the heart.
    I flip through other parts of the yearbook, but find no more pictures of Kate. “I wonder what Ms. W looked like fifteen years ago,” I ask. “Or Headmaster B! That I would pay to see. You think they were here then?”
    I flip through, but there are no pictures of faculty. None. Not even standing around in the background of a campus shot.
    “No teachers — that’s weird,” I say.
    “What’s weird is that a place like Bard has yearbooks at all. Can you imagine wanting anybody here to sign it?”
    Samir has a point.
    “Found it,” Hana says, carrying an old bound volume of newspaper clippings. It’s a local town newspaper, called the Maine Township Globe . Hana has it open to an issue dated November 5, 1990. The headline reads “Student Still Missing.”
    “You know what’s weird,” Hana adds, “this girl looks like…”
    “Miranda? Yeah, we know already,” Samir says, showing Hana the yearbook.
    While the two of them draw similarities, I start to read the newspaper article:
Kate Shaw, a sophomore at the local boarding school Bard Academy, is still missing and police fear the worst. Shaw, 15, disappeared from her room Halloween night and police have called for an intensive search of the area. Her backpack was found in the woods near the campus three days ago, and police say traces of blood on the backpack point to foul play.
    “Wow, the story is real,” Samir says, whistling. “I wonder what other campus legends are true. Maybe this means it’s true that Bard is a secret psychology experiment. Or that the cafeteria gravy is actually made from dead students.”
    “Wait, does this say she went missing on Halloween?” I ask, rereading the story. “That’s the date that’s carved into my closet floor. It’s October 31, 1990.” I reread the story and something strikes me as odd. “They don’t mention her family at all. No parents or siblings or anything.”
    “Weird,” Hana says, shifting the big book in her arms. As she does so, a small, thin book slides out of the bound volume.
    “Hey, what’s this?” Samir asks, stooping to pick it up. It’s an old book, with tiny gold print on the outside. It says “Bard Academy for Boys, 1855.” Inside, there’s a large picture of an old class.
    It is a yearbook, but not like any I’ve seen. There’s just one picture in it, and a lot of typed words, spelling out the school’s classes and facilities. I suppose it’s less like a yearbook and more like a publicity brochure, circa 1855.
    The one picture shows some students standing in front of the old chapel. It looks exactly the same, even though the students are dressed in old-fashioned clothes. The boys are wearing knickers and newsboy caps. It’s just one photo, the students in rows, and sitting in chairs, with the teachers standing behind them. It’s grainy and old, but definitely a photograph.
    “Wow, read this,” Hana says, of the paragraph at the bottom of the page.
    “Does it say the academy was built on an ancient Indian burial ground?” Samir asks.
    “Not exactly. But the school was built on top of an old colonial school that burned to the ground in 1847. Thirty students died in that fire. The