Lost Girls (Book One in the Academy Series)

Chapter One: Missing

Saturday

November 5th

The second time Sheila goes missing, I don't tell anyone.

My Wonder Woman nightlight throws its small ruby circle toward the doorway. Red digits glowing over my nightstand say 3:47 a.m. A faint lilac scent lingers in the room –– Sheila's body spray. But she's not here.

For nearly three months, Sheila's tiny snores and deep breaths shifted from annoyance to background. They became as familiar as my mom's air machine, the one she carted around during Dad's tours, plugging it in with the cell phones.

Sheila's nighttime breathing is gone. It's why I woke up.

"Sheila?" I whisper. 

Nothing.

I stretch. Sheets fall away from my black cami and blue tartan pj pants. Gingerly, I set bare feet onto frigid oak floor. I wonder why my mother still hasn't sent me the wool socks and thermals I begged for weeks ago. When I arrived, I was sleeping in shorts. Now winter's cold promise has slipped over campus.

Other than my parents, Sheila is the first person I've ever shared a room with. The placement was no accident. The Northeast Kingdom Academy of Music & Art wants to make sure Julius Barnes' daughter doesn't tank another audition at Manhattan Conservatory. A school that reserved a spot for my roommate around the time she traded diapers for Pull-ups and graciously offered me a second chance this year.

I'm gifted.

Sheila is a prodigy.

I jump a bit at a loud creak from down the hall. Girls' Dorm A has been expanded and modified half a dozen times since The Academy opened, but there's no disguising its age. Lincoln was alive when its foundation was poured. Ancient wood screams every time the wind picks up.

It's barely November.

Barefoot and sleepy, I open the door. Hinges squeak.

I have just a moment to wonder why the noisy hinges didn't wake me when Sheila left, to notice for the one-hundredth time how off-kilter the diffused hallway lights are, how the carpeting frays along its edges before surrendering to rough floorboards.

Then someone says my name and I spin like I've been stabbed.

It's Winter Haddenton.

My first week here, Sheila told me our housemom graduated from Juilliard when she was 17. But instead of symphonies, she made money in cheesy piano bars and dying malls. She probably thought the job here was a lifeline, a temporary gig while she figured out her future.

That was ten years ago.

Winter's red-rimmed eyes and blotchy face are a post-bawling look I only share with the mirror. 

"Hey, are you all right?" I ask.

"I'm fine." Her tone is dismissive. Whatever she's been crying over isn't my business.

"I uh... I have to spend a penny," I say, falling back on an expression my dad used to drop.

"Get that from London, did we?" Winter asks in a put-on Cockney accent that only makes me feel more embarrassed. "You don't need permission to use the bathroom."

"I know." And then I let my door shut behind me, because the lie is now the truth. I really, really have to pee.