Night School by Caroline B. Cooney Read Free Book Online Page B

club, thought Autumn, just as she passed through the library walls. She had always wanted to be in a club with passwords and secrets. Julie-Brooke-Autumn-Danielle did everything in public so as to be noticed and admired. But she, Autumn, would do things in the dark. It was so strange, to have no body. She who admired her body and its clothing, her body and its lovely hair, her body and its beautiful face—she had no body right now. She was not even a voice.
    And yet, the SC knew she was there.
    The SC wet his lips and began mouth-breathing, already too frightened to get enough air. Autumn could not get over how much like a little animal the SC was now: panting heaving chest, darting eyes, helpless surrender even before anything had happened. And he went on trying to look normal, still correcting papers, still moving his pencil, still hunched down close to the desk surface.
    But every primitive response in his body—for the SC still had his body—had gone into high gear. His body knew while his mind was still rejecting it. There’s no evidence, his mind and his eyes were saying, calm down. But his body knew.
    Autumn, too, knew.
    She was comfortable in a tight group, had been part of a tight group for a long, long time. She liked the spread of groups: the way you were included in the action yet excluded from the blame.
    If she let the SC’s name enter her mind, if she pictured his actual function, if she remembered him failing in front of a class, she felt sorry for him.
    But as SC, he was merely a set of initials.
    He wasn’t somebody. He didn’t matter.
    Andrew zoomed in close, enlarging the SC’s frightened features. Shadows moved around the SC like smoke in the wind. The eyes of the SC scrambled, looking for an answer, and yet wanting none.
    He thinks if he doesn’t really move, nothing will really be here, Andrew decided. Guess what, SC. We’re really here.
    A single ceiling light had been enough for Mr. Phillips to work by, but now it was too dim, broken by the shadows crossing beneath it. The Scare Choice shrank, hunching into his ill-fitting cardigan. He pressed his lips tightly together and forced himself to look left and right. But he saw nothing, because there was nothing to see.
    Andrew circled the victim. He had no idea what was going to happen to the SC, but he wanted to get it from the right angle. He had to improvise, and it brought out the best in him.
    The instructor turned a page in a book. It was a distinctive sound. Paper against paper. Only fingers leafing pages could have made that sound. But the SC was the only person there. The SC gasped a little and whirled to see who had turned that page.
    But of course nobody had. The library remained empty.
    Silence gathered. The SC twitched. He rubbed sweaty palms against his trousers. Once again he picked up his marking pencil.
    The instructor coughed.
    The SC leaped to his feet, stumbling twice in a circle, struggling to catch a glimpse of who was behind him, coughing. Of course, nobody was behind him. Nobody was in front of him, either. He braced trembling fingertips against the table rim and looked back and form so often and so quickly he must have gotten dizzy from it.
    The shadows swirled, but nobody existed to cast those shadows. The SC whimpered, “Who’s there?” His voice was strangled, though nothing had touched his throat.
    Yet.
    A chair scraped.
    “Who’s there?” said the SC desperately. His eyes flitted toward the only exit. He was terrified of standing still and terrified of moving. How thick the dark was between him and the way out.
    Andrew was riveted. If fear kept accelerating at this rate, it would be like filming the collapse of a building. It would be classic. He could hardly go on filming for thinking of what he had already captured on film.
    Mariah thought of the times she had been alone in the dark. Lying rigid in bed when her parents were out, listening to the creaks and groans of her own house as if there were goblins and