The Last Academy by Anne Applegate Read Free Book Online Page A

in the sea of people, scaring Jessie somehow.
    I did the rest of my homework with every light in the room on.
     
    That night, when check-in was done and Tamara was sitting at her desk, reading over her homework, I said, “No more guys in our room in the middle of the night, OK?”
    Tamara’s mouth dropped open and the bridge of her nose squinched up. For once she didn’t seem half-asleep. She looked like she was somewhere between sneezing and laughing. “What are you even talking about?” she asked.
    “Come on, Tamara. I saw them. We could get in serious trouble for that kind of thing.”
    “I don’t even know what you’re saying.” Tamara flew out of her chair, throwing her hands in the air as she huffedinto bed. Like she thought I was crazy. Her bald-faced lying pushed me over the edge.
    “One of them sat on my bed!” I yelled at her.
    “No one was in our room!” Tamara shouted, jumping up.
    “Shut up!” someone yelled from far away.
    I stood, too. We were like two gunslingers ready to draw. After a moment, Tamara lost the standoff. Her face crumpled, and she gave me a scared glance, not at all like herself.
    “Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, but not like she meant it. Instead, it was like she was pleading with me not to make her admit those boys had been there.
    I didn’t understand. I wasn’t even sure Tamara understood. But it was clear I’d won. “Fine,” I muttered. Uneasy relief flooded through me. She slumped onto her bed. I grabbed my toothbrush and stomped off to the bathroom. When I came back, Tamara was burrowed under her covers. Our fight hung heavy in the air, like high humidity. Nobody said anything. I crawled into bed and stared at the ceiling, unable to sleep.

I might have won the big showdown about the presence of boys in our room, but after that, Tamara began conducting a series of guerilla attacks to even the score between us. I came back to our room once to find my dirty underwear not in my hamper, but hanging out on our patio, sunny-side up.
    Yanking them down made my face burn — an admission in front of everybody that they were mine. A pack of passing sophomore boys howled with laughter. Stuff like that made it a lot easier to just spend more time in Nora and Jessie’s room.
    Nora had this wild confidence I totally coveted. Once, I heard these two mean girls say, “Nice hair,” as they passed her. Of course, these two girls had perfect hair. Of course, Nora looked like she’d stuck her finger in a light socket.
    “Nice face.” Nora laughed, not a stumble in her step as she walked by. She was smart, too. If you asked her a question about a homework assignment, she would say, “Check out page ninety-five.” Sure enough, you’d find a bold heading and a paragraph with the answer. The best part about her was she wasn’t the type to brag about all the stuff her brain knew.
    One morning, when I showed up at her room, she said, “Wanna see something cool?” It was Sunday, which meant campus was pretty much deserted. It was amazing how a boarding school could become a ghost town on the weekend. People got up early and hitched rides down to town, or they slept late.
    “Sure,” I said. Nora loped off without another word. I had to jog a little to keep up with those supermodel-long legs of hers. She’d already been scouted for the spring track team.
    She took me to the theater. The place was a giant cavity of dark emptiness. The drama class had been rehearsing for the winter play, and a bunch of sets were scattered on the stage. I’d been helping paint them after school, so I was pretty familiar with the place. Nora got up on the stage, turned, and pointed at the lights hanging off the ceiling,about two and a half stories up from where we stood. A control room was also hidden up there.
    “That’s where we’re going,” she said.
    The curtains hid a narrow doorway, and behind it, a spindly flight of stairs. We went up maybe fifty steps to a