We’re celebrating the release day for YA Paranormal novel ‘Afterlife Academy’ today. Come join us to
read an excerpt from this hilarious YA novel by author Jaimie Admans. Purchase your copy of ‘Afterlife
Academy’ here: Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk
Jaimie is also organizing a launch party on Facebook! You can join in the fun here: http://www.facebook.com/events/498255523543345/
Even being dead isn’t enough to get you out of maths class.
Dying wasn’t on sixteen-year-old Riley Richardson’s to-do list. And now, not only is she dead, but she’s stuck in a perpetual high school nightmare. Worse still, she’s stuck there with the geekiest, most annoying boy in the history of the world, ever.
In a school where the geeks are popular
and just about everything is wrong, Riley has become an outcast. She
begins a desperate quest to get back home, but her once-perfect life
starts to unravel into something not nearly as great as she thought it
was. And maybe death isn’t really that bad after all…
Read an excerpt:
CHAPTER 2
“You remember,” Anthony says, his
voice snapping me out of my reverie.
“We killed you.”
“That is…
quite possible,” he says after a pause.
I don’t know
what to say to that. “I’m sorry,” I mumble eventually, even
though that doesn’t even begin to cover it. “It was an accident.”
He shrugs. “You
told him to slow down. I heard you. It’s not your fault.”
“Wade didn’t
mean to hurt you. I know he can be a bit cruel sometimes but he
didn’t mean to get physical.”
“I think we’re
a little past physical by now, don’t you, Riley?”
I pause for a
while and look around. “How did we get here?” I ask, feeling more
than a little sick. Shouldn’t we be in hospital or something?
Perhaps a morgue, in Anthony’s case?
It’s a dream. It
has to be a dream. I must have fallen asleep during history class
again. Any minute now I’ll wake up and it will be time to sneak out
the back and meet Wade for a drive.
It will. I swear
it will.
“I know it’s a
stupid question,” Anthony says. “But where do you think all the
houses went? And the cars? And the shop?”
“I don’t
know,” I say. “I think this is some kind of freakish dream. Maybe
an experiment in one of your beloved science classes. But we’re
going to wake up any minute and everything will be fine.”
“This is a
frigging nightmare,” he says. “If it was a dream I wouldn’t be
stuck here with you.”
“Well, thank
you,” I mutter. “I can think of more interesting people to be
with than you too.”
“Yeah well, why
don’t you and Sophie steal my glasses during maths again? That was
a fun afternoon.”
I blush at the
memory. “Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I didn’t realise the
teacher would write to your gran. You could’ve just grassed us up,
you know.”
“Oh yeah,
because you wouldn’t have had your minions backing you up. You
wouldn’t have had ten girls willing to do anything to be part of
your gang. No one would have hidden my glasses to get you off the
hook and me into even more trouble.”
“I am sorry,”
I say.
“Whatev… Hey,
has that always been there?”
He points to a
sign on the grass a few feet in front of us.
“Yeah,” I
glance towards it. “It’s just the name of the school so people
don’t—”
Welcome
to Afterlife Academy. A prefect will be along shortly.
I stare at it.
Then I look at Anthony and then I look back at the sign.
“It’s never
said that before… has it?”
“What the hell
is Afterlife Academy?” he says. “That isn’t our school.”
I think about that
for a minute.
“Well, it’s
kind of grey,” I say. “Our school doesn’t look like this.”
“It’s the
mist,” Anthony says. “It’s not really that grey. It’s just
the mist playing tricks with the light.”
I nod but I don’t
really believe him. Mist doesn’t make red bricks grey. It doesn’t
make every surrounding object grey. It just makes things misty.
“Maybe someone
will be along in a minute. We should wait, like the sign says.”
Anthony looks up
at the sky.
You can see that
it’s still daytime through the fog.
“So where is
everyone? This place should be swarming with students. Maybe we
should go inside.”
“The gate’s
locked.”
“We could climb
it.”
“Hang on a
minute,” I tell him. “Firstly, this skirt was not made for
climbing. And secondly, the gate is locked and we are on the outside
of it. Maybe there’s a reason for that.”
“And that reason
would be?”
I shrug. “Maybe
there was an explosion in chemistry class. Maybe something went
wrong. Somehow we got out. And we should stay out.”
“Don’t you
think we would remember an explosion in chemistry class?”
“Well, you
would,” I snap. “Given the amount of notes you take.”
“Notes help you
study,” he responds.
“There are more
important things in life than studying.”
“Like joyriding
with your boyfriend?”
“It was not…
Hey, have you seen Wade anywhere?”
“You mean since
he hit me with his car? No.”
“How weird is
that? We were together. We were together like ten minutes ago. And
now he’s disappeared.”
“Riley,
everything has disappeared. Look at this street. Where are we? We’re
in the driveway of our school, but we’re on a different street.
This is too weird.”
“So there’s
been some kind of noxious gas leak. Some other kind of natural
disaster that somehow we’ve escaped from.”
“What’s the
last thing you remember?” He stares at me intently. “The very
last thing?”
I think for a
moment.
“You,” I tell
him. “Your body. On the windscreen. And a lot of blood. And then we
hit something. I couldn’t see anything because there was so much
blood, but there was a huge crash and—”
“And now we’re
in a place called Afterlife Academy. What does that say to you?”
“Are you kidding
me? You think we’re dead? You think we’re ghosts or something?”
He shrugs.
“You really are
a nutjob. I mean, I always thought you were a nutjob, but in an
I-enjoy-maths kind of way. Not in an I-am-actually-a-complete-nutjob
kind of way.”
He doesn’t
respond.
“So, where’s
Wade?” I ask. “He was in the accident too and he’s not here.”
“I don’t know,
okay, Riley?” Anthony suddenly snaps at me. “I don’t know. The
last thing I remember is pain. A lot of pain. And being flung across
the bonnet of your car. And now I’m standing outside my school,
except everything is wrong about it, and I’m with the biggest bitch
in my year.”
“I am not a
bitch,” I snarl at him.
“You are to me,”
he says simply. “Somewhere inside you must be nice because so many
people like you. But I’ve never seen anything other than a complete
bitch.”
“That is so
unfair,” I say. “Okay, we tease you sometimes. But you have to
admit you’re an easy target.”
“Why does anyone
need to be a target? Why do you need to put someone else down to make
yourself feel better?”
“Hey, I resent
that. I do not—”
“Could you two
shut the hell up for one
bloody minute?”
We both jump out
of our skins and spin in the direction of the voice.
There is a boy
about our age standing inside the gate watching us. When the hell did
he get there? I look over at Anthony and he looks as shocked as I am.
Neither of us saw him approach.
“Who are you?”
I ask.
I don’t
recognise him. I know pretty much everyone in this school, and I’ve
never seen him before. He’s weird-looking enough that I’d
remember him. He’s young, but his hair is slicked back like
something out of the 1940s. And he’s almost completely grey. His
skin is grey. His clothes are grey and seriously old-fashioned. His
hair is a dark, ashy colour. Everything about him is grey.
Everything about
this whole place is grey.
“Riley
Richardson and Anthony Marsden?” the strange boy asks.
“Who are you?”
I ask him again.
“Please report
to the principal’s office immediately.”
And with that he
is gone.
Literally gone.
Not walked away.
Just vanished. Into thin air.
But now the gates
are open.
“Okay,” I
stutter, looking at Anthony. “Did you just see that? Please tell me
you just saw that.”
“I saw it,” he
says. “You still think I’m a nutjob?”
“Always,” I
tell him. “But we can’t be dead. We can’t be. I’m sixteen. I
can’t die at sixteen.”
“People can die
at any age, Riley,” he says. “If you paid more attention in class
you would know that.”
“Do not lecture
me,” I growl. “I pay plenty of attention in class. My grades are
very good, I’ll have you know. Not that my grades have anything to
do with you anyway.”
“I don’t see
how,” he says. “All you do is gossip or text on the phone you’re
not supposed to have or torment people who are actually listening.
Or—”
“My phone!” I
interrupt. “My bag! My stuff! Where is everything? I had a bag with
me just now. It was in the back of the car.”
“Mine’s gone
too,” Anthony says.
“Great. Not only
has there been some kind of freakish gas leak but we’ve been mugged
as well.”
“I don’t think
this is a gas leak,” he says. “And I don’t think we’ve been
mugged.”
“No, you think
we’re both bloody dead. That’s a much more viable option.”
“Look,” he
says, “I’m not ruling anything out. I’m just saying that the
last thing either of us remembers is a car accident. And now we’re
back at school, but everything looks wrong and a very strange guy
just vanished into thin air right in front of us.”
“Who was that
guy?” I ask.
“How am I
supposed to know that?”
I shrug.
“The sign says a
prefect will be here. Maybe he was a prefect.”
“Weird-looking
prefect. Not that everything isn’t looking a bit strange at the
moment,” I mutter.
“Yeah, well,
maybe we should do what he said.”
“We should
report to the principal’s office?”
He shrugs. “He
told us to. And he knew our names.”
“You know, this
is reminding me of that movie where the guy wakes up from a coma and
the whole world has been infested with zombies.”
“I could be
wrong, but I don’t think there’s been a zombie outbreak,” he
says.
“So where is
everyone? And everything?”
“Look, let’s
just go and see the principal. If anyone can explain what’s going
on, it will be him.”
“Yeah? Because I
vote that we run away.”
“To where,
Riley? Look at this street. It’s the right street but it’s wrong.
There should be a roundabout and a railway bridge just up there, but
there’s nothing but fog. Where do you think we’re going to get
to?”
“I don’t
know,” I admit. “But we should do something.”
“That guy didn’t
ask us our names. He already knew them. What does that tell you?”
“This is a
really creepy situation and we should get the hell out of here?”
“It tells me
that they were expecting us. It tells me that the principal is
waiting for us.”
“Yeah, to eat
us. Because he’s a zombie.”
Anthony rolls his
eyes but his lips twitch up into a smile.
“We don’t even
know where the principal’s office is,” I counter.
“This is our
school. The principal’s office is in the same place it always is.”
“So why is it
called—” I read the sign on the grass and grab Anthony’s arm.
“Do you see that?” I ask him.
“Welcome
to Afterlife Academy,” he reads. “Please
report to the principal’s office immediately.”
“Okay, now
that’s just plain weird. That sign used to say that a prefect would
come along, and now it says something different. When on earth did
they have time to paint the sign without us noticing?”
“I don’t think
they did,” he says slowly.
“So what, it’s
a magic sign now?”
“For God’s
sake, Riley. The sign said that a prefect would come along. The
prefect came and told us to go see the principal. Now the sign is
telling us to go and see him because so far all we’ve done is stand
here and argue.”
“But how did it
change?” I whine. “This just proves that this is a nightmare and
we should both just stand here until we wake up.”
“Riley…”
“No,” I snap.
“Signs don’t just change of their own accord. That sign is solid
metal. It’s been there for years. It says ‘Welcome to Bellfield
Comprehensive School. You are here.’ And there’s a map. So this
is either a nightmare or a really sick joke. Oh my god, that’s it!
Wade was really pissed off with me for telling him not to be cruel to
you. He’s done something to us. Probably drugged us or something.
This is some kind of weird drug trip.”
“Whatever it is,
I think we should do what we’ve been told.”
“Oh, you’re
always such a goody two-shoes. Always doing what the teachers tell
you.”
“Insult me all
you like. I’m going to see the principal and get this whole mess
straightened out. You can stay here if you want.”
“You know, Wade
is probably hiding somewhere laughing at us right now.”
“Whatever,”
Anthony says and he begins to walk away.
The thought of
standing here by myself fills me with dread, so even though he’s
the class geek and clearly a complete loon, I run after him anyway.
Afterlife Academy is her third novel and she hopes you enjoy it. There are plenty more on the way!
Website: http://www.jaimieadmans.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/be_the_spark
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