Nevermore Academy
Wednesday kept her face blank, but she was seething on the inside. If her mother believed there would be no repercussions for dropping her in this wasteland of human life, then she was quite wrong.
Wednesday was going to rain down levels of hell on her mother’s head that would make the apocalypse look like child’s play.
“And this is the quad!” Enid, the insufferable girl who believed they would be roommates, cried with her hands waving around like a rainbow-bright windmill.
Wednesday slowly let her eyes wander the quad as Enid prattled on about terrible teenage cliched groups of werewolves, stoners, sirens, and vampires. Personally, she thought she might fit in with the vampires. She too had an insatiable bloodlust and preference for dark clothing. Though she would never join a coven- lead one, perhaps, but never join one.
“And what school is complete without our resident tortured artist and oddball?” Enid said. She pointed to two boys- one on the opposite side of the quad who was painting and one who sat alone at a table with his head ducked low.
“What’s his story?” Wednesday demanded, her eyes trained on the head of messy black hair and the ten foot isolated radius that surrounded him. The boy looked small, with his shoulders curled up and his head ducked, but he also seemed to stick out like an amputated finger in a salad bowl, so Wednesday was determined to discover at least a name.
“Xavier? Oh, well he used to date Bianca, but they broke up and nobody knows why,” Enid said in a hushed tone, as if they were sharing secrets.
Wednesday saw that she was still gesturing toward Xavier and she rolled her eyes.
“Not him,” she snapped impatiently. “The oddball, as you said.”
The only person in the quad who also seemed to have no desire to immerse themselves in bonding with their supposed peers.
“Oh.” Enid gave the only rational minded boy in the quad a dismissive look. “That’s Harry, he’s just… odd, even amongst us outcasts.”
Wednesday clenched her jaw in annoyance. “I understood the ‘oddball’ reference, I am asking you why,” she said tersely. It was a pity that Pugsley wasn’t there, he would know almost better than anyone that it was time for Miss Mismatched Pink and Blue hair to run.
“He’s just…” Enid chewed on her lower lip, her eyes flicking uncertainly toward the boy. “Weird,” she finished slowly. “You would probably like him. I heard he killed someone at his last school. Like you,” she tacked on brightly.
Enid had finally said something that Wednesday found quite interesting. If this ‘oddball’ amongst the outcasts had killed someone, then he was quite clearly the person for Wednesday to meet.
*****
Harry quietly loaded in the back seat of the van, his head ducked low, and his eyes on his trainers. Principal Weems didn’t usually drive him to therapy, but Harry had learned a long time ago not to ask questions. Not that the principal chose to follow the same ideals though.
“How are you, Harry?” she asked, her voice warm. She sat in the drivers seat and tried to catch Harry’s eyes on the rearview mirror, but Harry refused to look up. “Have you settled in okay?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Harry lied in a quiet murmur. Truthfully, Harry would never ‘settle’ in the school he’d been dropped off in- Nevermore Academy for Outcasts. His relatives had found it hysterical to send their freak of a nephew to a school for outcasts, and it was loads better than where Harry was before, but Harry wasn’t a fan so far. He had only been at the boarding school for a couple of months, but it was clear that the only true outcast there was Harry.
Harry wasn’t a vampire, he wasn’t a werewolf. He couldn’t sing a song to enchant anyone’s mind. Nobody turned to stone when they looked at him (as much as he wished they would), and Harry didn’t have any psychic abilities that he knew of.
All Harry had was a string of odd events that happened around him that ended with a murder charge and Harry shipped off to Nevermore Academy.
And he was just as lonely as he’d been for the last fifteen years of his life. Sure, Harry probably hadn’t been lonely when he’d been a baby living with his parents, but since that had only been for the first year of his life, he hardly counted it.
Principal Weems hummed, but she didn’t push for anymore answers. She turned her head and swiftly climbed out of the car as another student came storming up to them.
Harry could hear their conversation through his cracked window and he tried to watch them through his fringe.
“Wednesday, I’m so glad you found me,” Principal Weems said in a simpering tone to the girl.
Harry had never seen her before, and he was usually good at remembering faces if nothing else. This girl had a narrow and pale face, hooded eyes, and hair just as black as Harry’s. Though her hair was much neater in two braids that laid on her shoulders than Harry’s hair had ever been in his life. Harry’s lips twitched at the look of undiluted anger in the girl’s dark eyes as she glared down the (admittedly) friendly-seeming principal.
“Is it that hard to believe that I can follow simple instructions?” the girl scoffed. Her eyes moved quickly to the car window, landing on Harry’s. Harry ducked his head with a heavy blush, embarrassed to have been caught snooping.
Curiosity killed the cat and earned the cane.
And Harry had the scars to prove it.
He hummed to himself quietly, trying to block out the rest of the conversation, and was startled when the door beside him was thrown open by the girl, Wednesday.
“Scoot,” she ordered him. “I won’t be riding in your lap.”
Harry blinked at her for a moment before quickly dropping his eyes and scooting to the far side of the car.
The hairs on the back of Harry’s neck prickled uncomfortably while they made the short drive from Nevermore to the small town of Jericho where Dr. Kinbott worked at. Despite the constant uncomfortable questions she asked, Harry rather liked Dr. Kinbott. She was kind and patient and it was one hour a week where Harry felt like he had a friend. It wasn’t going to see her that was making Harry uncomfortable, it was the way that Wednesday was staring so hard at the side of Harry’s head that he worried his head would burst in flames.
It sounded mad, but Harry had seen crazier things happen.
Wednesday didn’t say anything and neither did Harry during the drive. Principal Weems hummed along to the radio, her eyes occasionally flicking to the mirror to check on the two students silently riding along.
“Harry, dear, I hope you don’t mind waiting while Wednesday has her session, do you?” Principal Weems asked when they pulled up. And since it wasn’t like Harry had a choice, considering he was already there, he just nodded.
“Thank you,” Weems said with a soft smile. “Why don’t you go grab a warm drink or a snack or something while you wait?” Harry looked toward the coffee shop Weems pointed toward and nodded again.
He didn’t have any money with him, but Harry would rather sit alone inside the coffee shop for an hour than sit in the car with his principal.
Harry slipped inside the coffee shop, quickly removing his blazer which made him stand out as an ‘outcast’, then sat in an unoccupied booth with his blazer folded neatly on his lap. He sat beside a window which would give him a view of Dr. Kinbott’s office, so he could see when Wednesday left and Harry needed to jog back across the street.
The coffee shop was nice; quiet. There weren’t any other customers in there and Harry could enjoy the soft music playing in the background while he waited. It smelled wonderful too, a rich and warm smell that made Harry regret skipping lunch again. The fact that he could skip lunch was still a revelation to him, as meals had been mandatory at St Brutus’. But at Nevermore, Harry didn’t have to sit by himself and listen to jokes and bullying at his expense, he could hide away in the fencing room and practice by himself.
It was one of the nicer parts of the school.
Harry’s silent ruminations were interrupted by a throat being cleared, causing Harry to snap his head to the side and look up. A boy in an apron, probably the boy working the shop, stood there with a crooked grin on his face.
“So you’re not deaf,” the boy said, still grinning at Harry.
“Er… no, sorry,” Harry said softly, hunching his shoulders up. “Am I bothering you? I can go…”
The boy made a big show of looking around the empty coffee shop before he just slid in the red vinyl booth across from Harry.
“It would be hard to bother me since you aren’t talking or moving or… are you even breathing?” the boy asked, a teasing note in his voice.
Harry wasn’t sure what the boy was getting at, surely he wanted Harry to shoo, but he nodded slowly anyway.
“Yes,” he told him, “I’m breathing.”
The boy laughed, as if Harry had said something hysterical, and with his head thrown back and his straight white teeth gleaming from the sunlight filtering through the window, Harry grinned just a bit as well.
“You’re funny,” the boy said when he finished laughing. He wiped his hand off on his red apron and held it across the table to Harry. “Tyler,” he introduced himself.
Harry quickly, only to be polite, shook Tyler’s hand and then moved his hands back to his lap. “Harry,” he told him.
It was sad, but it was perhaps the longest conversation Harry had carried on with any person besides his therapist in years.
“Well, Harry, can I get you something to drink?” Tyler asked.
Harry ducked his head and shook it. He wasn’t like his classmates, or like his roommate Ajax anyway. The others all had families who sent them allowances to spend on outings, Harry only had a part time job helping Miss Thornhill tend for the flowers in the botany greenhouses. It gave him fifty a week, but he was saving for the day he’d be an adult and free to go wherever his heart led him. Every cent he earned had to go to that goal because Harry had to eventually find happiness.
Eventually.
He wouldn’t go back to Surrey. Probably not back to England at all. Maybe Italy, Harry figured he would have a decent grasp on the language by the time he finished school.
“What if I said it’s on the house?” Tyler ducked his head and inexplicably grinned at Harry again. “Come on, it’s good.”
Harry felt his refusal begin to melt in the face of what seemed to be a genuine offer- and the scent of coffee was lovely, really -but they were interrupted by the bell dinging above the entrance. Harry didn’t turn to look behind him at whoever came in, but Tyler did.
“Oh, here comes your friend,” Tyler said. Harry did spin around then, since he didn’t have any friends, and he blinked behind his glasses to see Wednesday stalking straight to him. It hadn’t been an hour… it hadn’t even been thirty minutes…
“We’re leaving,” Wednesday told Harry firmly when she reached his booth. She turned to Tyler and raised a challenging brow at him. “I need you to call us a taxi.”
As mildly terrified of this brisk, bossy, and angry girl as Harry was, the curiosity that St Brutus’ never managed to fully beat from him, reared its head.
“I’m sorry,” Harry said, drawing Wednesday’s attention back to himself, “but where are we going?”
Harry could still see Principal Weems’ vehicle across the street, perhaps she’d broken down?
“Far, far, away,” Wednesday told Harry. “I will not be returning to that insipid school for mythical beings and students with a penchant for dark clothes. Now, are you coming with me or not?”
Harry hesitated while Wednesday stared him down and Tyler watched their interaction with a pinched brow and a frown on his previously grinning face. It wasn’t that Harry didn’t dream about running away, being free, almost every moment of every day, it was that it was pointless. Eventually, Harry would accidentally do something odd and someone would show up and return him to the Dursleys then the Dursleys would drop him right back off at Nevermore. Or, even worse, Harry would have to do another sentence at a detention center that made St Brutus’ look like summer camp (not that Harry was sure what that experience would be like, but Dudley had always seemed happy when he went there).
Also, Harry wanted to see Dr. Kinbott. She was friendly and kind and gave Harry good advice that he never followed. And she would probably be really pleased with him, he’d talked more to people his own age in one day than in the last five years.
“I can’t,” Harry told her. He carefully got to his feet, edging out of his seat and then dodging around where Wednesday stood with a dark look on her pale face, a privately amusing paradox. “I have to go.” Harry tested out a small smile for Tyler, who had been rather friendly before Wednesday burst in. “It was nice to meet you,” he said truthfully. “Bye.”
Harry jogged across the road and bypassed Principal Weems to go in the therapist’s office. It was odd that Wednesday wanted to run away with Harry, but really he was flattered just a bit as well. Nobody ever wanted to do anything with him and now someone had wanted to talk to him and then someone wanted to runaway together.
Perhaps Harry was more friendly than he thought.
*****
Wednesday had added multiple new names to her hit list since leaving the school two hours ago.
Doctor Kinbott, for one. Principal Weems, undoubtedly. The coffee shop kid with the sandy hair and police officer father were two more. And then the three town boys that ruined Wednesday’s plans to kidnap Harry and force him to leave Nevermore with her.
Poor Harry, he had obviously been brainwashed to believe that he enjoyed therapy and Nevermore. It wasn’t his fault anymore for refusing to leave when offered than it was the kicked dog’s fault for cowering around humans. Harry was the kicked dog in the scenario, of course. It was a mystery why Harry had killed a boy and why he seemed to interact with nobody aside from a rude barista and a therapist who likely got her degree from a community college.
When Wednesday saw Harry’s eyes before she climbed in Weems’ car, she saw a well of loneliness so deep she nearly drowned in it. Wednesday could see his inner misery and curiosity as well; they were obviously kindred spirits in that way. Even if Harry had a small smile on his lips while they returned to the school after his session, Wednesday wasn’t fooled.
Wednesday knew that they must have been destined to meet in some manner. Wednesday was sent like the protagonist in every novel who would save the hero from the misery of a meager life while she saved herself from it as well.
Of that she was absolutely certain.