The Forgotten Academy Chapter Two - Evander

The tin cup went flying as a passerby kicked it away from my feet, spilling its meager contents of three old quarters onto the pavement.

“Hey!” Jasper shouted into the crowd, “Watch where you’re going!”

“Leave it be, Jasper. It’s just seventy cents anyway,” I mumbled.

“Seventy-five,” he corrected, reaching over to pick up the coins and replacing them back in the cup, “And it’s the only seventy-five we’ve got.”

Hunter sat on the other side of me, his long, pink tongue lolling out of his mouth. The poor thing. You could probably see every one of his ribs if it wasn’t for that long, matted, yellow fur. I ran my fingers through it, which didn’t last very long as they got tangled up almost instantly.

Clink.

“Hey, looks like things are looking up for us today after all!” Jasper said, leaning forward once again to peer inside the cup, “A whole dollar!”

“Evander!”

His face was a picture of happiness. But I wondered how he could be so happy when everything around him was so awful.

“Evander, wake up!”

My eyes flew open and Jasper’s face faded from my vision. I turned to find Dante standing beside my bed.

“Dude, we slept in! If we don’t hurry up we’ll miss breakfast!” he said urgently, hastily picking up a comb and quickly running it through his messy, brown hair.

I sat up and rubbed my eyes, blinking a few times and hopping down from bed. I pulled on a t-shirt and some shorts, then raced down the stairs with Dante. We dashed down the winding halls to the cafeteria, laughing the whole way even though we both knew that a lecture on punctuality was there waiting for us there. We arrived at the doors just as Lillian was closing them.

“Lillian!” Dante shouted, “Wait!”

She turned around and sighed, flipping her long, reddish-brown hair over her shoulder.

“Boys, what am I going to do with you? I have half a mind to just close the door and see what happens,” she teased.

“Aw, please, Lillian? We’re really sorry,” I said, “And besides, we’re starving!”

Dante hunched over and groaned dramatically. “Please, I haven’t eaten for a full twelve hours! I need sustenance!”

Lillian chuckled and started to reopen the door. “Okay, but you have to promise not to throw anything else through my head.”

“Just for a week,” Dante said, but Lillian shook her head in disagreement.

“Just because I’m a Linger and can’t feel it doesn’t give you the right to constantly be chucking books at me from across the room. If I was still a solid person you wouldn’t do it, would you?”

“Well… no.”

“Promise?”

“It’s a deal.”

Lillian nodded, satisfied, and opened the door for us. “You’d better hurry, or Reeve will have your hide.”

Dante and I scurried in and sat down at a table by some other students, while Lillian took her place inside the door. Reeve, the head of the boys dorm, was standing at the front of the room, ready for morning announcements. He eyed us irritatedly as we shuffled in. Briony, head of the girls, didn’t seem to notice us as we walked in. She was too busy muttering something to a blonde girl I didn’t recognize.

Reeve stepped forward, microphone in hand.

“Welcome to breakfast everyone. I see that Evander and Dante have decided to join us.” Some quiet snickers echoed though the room. “Because of the slight delay, I assume you’re all hungry. So, I’ll make this short. Today, November 12th, we have a total of four birthdays,” he took a paper from his pocket and read off the names, “Chanel Berlin, Echer Horley, Sayer Young, and Temeka Piddle. You four will receive the day off school and cake at lunch today.” There was a whoop from the crowd as Echer celebrated. “And, I think that’s about it.”

Briony leaned over to Reeve and whispered something. He handed her the microphone.

Grinning, she said, “We have a new arrival in the girls’ dorm. Caspienne Quinn!”

A brunette girl wearing a grey fedora hesitantly stepped up to the front next to Briony. The new kids were usually that way. I mean, I remember when I was forgotten and taken to the academy. Boy, was I a little freaked out. Who wouldn’t be?

“I hope you all will be very kind and welcoming to Caspienne. And, that’s all we have for today. Eat up!”

I watched the blonde girl I had seen earlier motion to Caspienne, who gratefully followed her to a seat. Then, my breakfast was set in front of me and I forgot about her, digging in ravenously.

Wait, November 12th?

~-~

“I can’t believe I forgot my test was today!” I said to Dante as we walked down the hall to our first class. “Reeve even said, ‘Today, November 12th’ and I didn’t even notice!”

“Don’t stress it, Ev. It’s just a stupid test. I took mine-” he counted on his fingers, “ten years ago. Woah. I didn’t realize I’d been here that long. But seriously, don’t stress. I’m not supposed to tell you anything, but I think it’s safe to say that it’s nothing to worry about.”

“But I didn’t study or anything! What if I fail?”

“Dude, when I say ‘don’t stress’ I mean it. Calm down. Seriously.”

“Yeah, yeah. Okay. Sorry.”

Dante just laughed and we turned into our classroom. He’s lucky. When you’re six years old you don’t even know what a test is.

As Sayer gave us our lesson in Mathematics, I found myself constantly jumping whenever someone walked past the door. Is that them? Are they coming to take me to the test? Finally, Lillian came to the door of the classroom.

“Evander Grey?” she looked straight at me.

Sayer nodded to me and winked. “Good luck.”

I smiled nervously and stood up. Lillian herded me out the door and we walked down the main hall.

“As you know,” she said, strangely solemn, “when each student at the academy has been enrolled for exactly a full year, they are given a test. I assume you don’t know what the test is for?”

“Uh, no. You’re not supposed to talk about it, right?”

“That is correct. None of your friends have told you anything?”

“No.”

“Good, it should be that way,” she looked relieved. We turned into a narrow hall that I had never noticed before. The red walls gave it a creepy feel. Then, she suddenly stopped and turned around, blocking my progress. Well, not really. She was a Linger. But walking straight through her wouldn’t have exactly been polite.

“Ninety-two years ago I took my test. It may seem like a long time ago, but I remember quite clearly. Even then, the school was very old. A Linger, such as myself, who called himself Commodore administered the test in the exact same fashion as I will do to you.” Her hand reached out to me. Even though it looked perfectly solid I knew I couldn’t take it. It would have been like grasping air. But she insisted. “Take ahold of my hand.”

So, I did. What else could I do? I hesitantly reached my own hand out. Instead of passing through her Linger state, it was if she was made of solid matter. But her hand was ice cold, almost metallic. It was like holding the hand of a corpse. Gosh, don’t think that. That’s gross.

I felt a shiver go through my whole body and felt the hair on my arms prickle up with cold. Lillian pulled me forward and she passed through the right side of the wall. I couldn’t do that! I was still alive! But her hand stayed firm and she dragged me with ease closer and closer to the red wallpaper. So close that I could smell it’s musty odor. I prepared myself for the gentle impact, the resistance of atoms against atoms, but it didn’t come. My body glided easily through the wall, hand still grasping Lillian. And, soon, I found myself standing in an old room.

The yellowing paper on the walls was peeling off, dusted with spiderwebs and dirt. The floor was unfinished, just grey, cracked cement. Maybe there was once carpet, but how would I know? It was probably build hundreds of years ago. It was all quite plain and undecorative. In fact, the only piece of furnishing in the whole room was an old mirror on the far wall. My first thought was that it was just a mirror, but as I stayed longer in the room I could almost -and this is going to sound silly- I could almost feel it’s big presence. Lillian let go of my hand and walked over to it. My body stayed cold.

“This,” she gestured to the mirror, “is your test.” She stuck her pale hand into the reflective surface as if it was water, and then she was gone.

Obviously, I was mildly confused. Here I was, alone in a dilapidated room with no idea what I was supposed to do. Well, I take that back. I kinda had the feeling that I was supposed to follow her. But did I want to? Absolutely not.

Timidly, I scooted towards the mirror and peered into it. Tell me, when you look into a mirror, do you usually look straight through your head? ‘Cause that’s what I did. In fact, I couldn’t see myself at all. Quickly, I turned my head away and took a deep breath. Butterflies fluttered around in my stomach.

I reached my finger out and lightly touched the cool surface, shutting my eyes tight, and waited. Huh. I didn’t feel anything happen.

“I see you’ve finally decided to join me.”

My eyes flew open and I spun around, exhaling a sigh of relief when I saw it was only Lillian. She laughed quietly.

“Aw, shut up,” I said, slightly embarrassed.

Still smiling, she explained, “You were taken to The Forgotten Academy when the people who knew you no longer remembered you by name. Well, it’s been a year. Things change. This test is to see if your world has.”

It was then I noticed where we were.

We were… in a bathroom?

Lillian noticed the change in my expression and started laughing again.

“It was the only mirror in the house,” she said, “Well, besides the one in- well, nevermind. I have to stay here. But step outside. I think you’ll be surprised who you see.”

Slowly, I crept out of the tiny room and into a hall. There was a boy walking towards me but who hadn’t seen me yet. He was younger than me, with precisely cut dirty blonde hair and blue eyes. I knew this boy.

“Jasper?”

Jasper whipped his head toward me at the sound of his name, eyes widening.

“Evander?” he said, shocked, “How- what- I thought you were dead! How did you get here? In my house? How did you find me?”

“Oh my gosh Jasper! It’s amazing I-” but then, Jasper and his home were whisked away, and I found myself back in the old room with the mirror. Lillian stood in front of me as disappointment welled up inside of my still cold body. She gaped at me, so I pushed the disappointment down and said,

“What?”

“You’re still here.”

“Well duh.”

“I don’t get it. You’re still here.”

“Um… is that a bad thing?” I asked in confusion.

“No, not necessarily, but,” she said, lowering her voice to a whisper, “he remembered you.”

“Uh, yeah. He was my best friend before I was taken. Of course he remembers me,” I explained.

“But the last time someone was remembered…” she trailed off.

“Yeah?”

Once again her voice changed pitch, this time to an urgent tone. “One-hundred and five years ago, a boy by the name of Atticus Milleton took his test. A young boy, just younger than you. Nobody up to that point had ever been remembered. In fact, nobody up until that point knew why we had the tests. They just saw it as a torture device, one that played with your mind and extinguished your hope. But, as the Linger accounted who administered to Atticus his test, instead of the usual confusion the people expressed when students were placed in front of them, the woman seemed to recognize the boy! And then he disappeared, not a trace of him left.”

She stuck her cold finger out and poked me, proving not only that I was still there but that I was still in my ghostly state.

“So, this Atticus guy, he was the first to be remembered?” I asked.

“The first and the only. No one has been remembered since, except you. And you’re still here.”

“So, what do we do now?” I asked, “Do I get to leave the academy?”

Lillian took my hand and dragged me out the wall, not bothering to answer my question.