Page 18 of Bound By Fury

EIGHT

NARROW, WINDING ROADS CLIMB TREACHEROUS hills up the side of the mountain, but the people here know them like the backs of their hands. Tucked into the eastern face of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Black Mountain Academy sticks out like a sore thumb. Beautiful, but all wrong here.

In the bowl at the bottom of the mountain, downtown Earnest is known as the Village and hosts quaint shops and local eateries and mountain-themed tourist traps. There are ghost tours and archery classes and randomly placed cemeteries, the tombstones overrun with kudzu.

Beyond that the road branches off into neighborhoods, and about thirty minutes downriver, the mountains are slowly fighting against a suburban, capitalistic hellscape: Walmart and Golden Corral and a combination KFC-Pizza Hut-Taco Bell.

Above the Village the road turns to brick and hulking oaks lean, their branches intertwining to create a canopy. At the entrance of the school, the gates—which open to the town in the summer—have been closed for the school year. Except for church on Sundays.

Debris from a string of summer storms crunches beneath us as we roll past the security box and through the slowly opening iron bars, a murder of crows taking flight from the road, circling above our car before disappearing into the forest.

“Creepy,” my mother mutters from the driver’s seat.

I say nothing because I’m too preoccupied with the scene before me.

I haven’t stepped foot past the gates all summer. Not since last year’s art bazaar.

My cheeks pinken at the memory. Malachi was still at football training camp, and the disastrous way we’d left things was still weighing on me. The morose, lovesick paintings were too emo to sell well to the vacation crowd.

Lucas had opted out of the camp, which hadn’t surprised me. He had never taken sports as seriously. I always figured he played because Malachi did.

Alone for the summer, Lucas and I grew closer than ever. Maybe that’s how we found ourselves scarfing down Kona Ice in the shade of the poplar trees on Main Street, Lucas’s legs dangling as he sat perched atop my table. By late July his skin had deepened to a rich, dark golden brown with just a hint of red across his nose. His frayed Topsail Island cap was turned backward, his shades obscuring his crystal blue eyes.

As dusk settled in and his lips stretched into a lazy, sun-tired smile, I finally saw it—the thing other girls always seemed to see in him.

Ohhhh, I’d thought, feeling like an idiot. He’s beautiful.

But in that moment I had no idea the trouble that simple realization would bring me.

Now the bronze crest inlaid in the brick pillars on either side of us taunt me, and the pendant at my throat grows warm as dread hums quietly in my chest.

“We can still turn around if you want,” my mother says, glancing at me quickly, assessing my profile as the gate yawns open its gaping maw and swallows us whole.

In the end it didn’t take much to convince her. After the funeral and the cleanup, facing the community my grandmother left behind and picking up the pieces my father abandoned, she had no fight left. And honestly, there’s a part of me that wonders if she’s glad to be rid of me. If she’s relieved that she can haunt the house alone. Relieved that she doesn’t have to pretend to be better, and I don’t have to pretend not to notice.

I fight the urge to roll my eyes. I know she tries. I know she does.

Her hand plops onto my knee. “I just want you to be okay.”

“I know,” I huff, frustrated.

“I’ll never understand how you do it—how you did it. Dealing with her, with this town. Your dad, he—” She covers her mouth, her eyes wide. She never talks about Dad. She shakes her head and cranes her neck, looking for a parking spot outside Biltmore Hall, the administration building where we’re supposed to pick up my dorm assignment and uniforms. “Anyway, I just don’t feel quite right when I’m here.”

What isn’t said, and what I don’t ask, is does she feel it too? The electric current. The humming like she’s charging for a battle she never knew existed?

Despite the sinister view of campus nestled into the summit, it’s filled with quiet beauty. When we step out of the car, I’m nearly bowled over. Crisp, clean, floral, it’s just like I remember. It’s serene, even as students mill about, in and out of the dorm buildings with carts full of stuff. Sparrows chirp in the trees and the bushes are equidistant and perfectly squared.

But the longer I stand admiring the campus, the more something begins to feel off. Underneath the serenity, a cloyingly sweet smell, just strange enough to set me on edge. And besides that, a thin thread of dread winding itself around my throat.

“This place is huge,” my mom murmurs as we begin ascending the stone steps. “Nothing like the high school I went to, that’s for sure.”

I can’t tell if there’s resentment in her voice or not.

Inside Biltmore Hall, twin staircases wind from the floor and meet in the middle with ornate wooden balustrades the same color as the freshly waxed wood floors. Deep burgundy rugs soften our steps and climb the stairs. Lush, plentiful plants line the walls, and vines hang from the balcony leading to the second-story hallway.

In the center of the room two thick oak tables sit adorned with welcome banners.

“Swanky,” I mumble under my breath, tugging the bottom of my oversized T-shirt.