Page 33 of Sweet Nightmare

Nothing gets my mother more on edge than when a strange power surge happens and one of the students manifests their magic despite the school’s most stringent efforts. Today it was Ember bursting into flames, but it’s been other students and their magic in the past. We may have state-of-the-art technology combined with some really strong spells to lock powers down, but accidents do happen. Especially during power surges.

This makes me think of Serena and her powers and how she died because she never learned to control them.

Another wave of grief knocks the air out of me. This one nearly flattens me, and I slap back at my mother and her ridiculous words before I even make the conscious decision to do so. “And here I thought keeping them alive was the way to keep them—and the school—on an even keel.”

The moment my words hit, she reels back like I’ve physically slapped her, but I’m not sorry for saying them. Not in the slightest. Because focusing on dress codes and rules and the status quo seems pretty ridiculous to me when the status quo isn’t preparing Calder Academy graduates for the real world—it’s getting them killed, again and again and again.

My mom, however, doesn’t see things the same way I do—not if the way her jaw snaps shut is any indication. And though the look she shoots me warns me that now would be a really good time to close my mouth, I can’t do it. Not now. Not this time.

But I do lower my voice, making it more conciliatory than accusatory as I continue, “Is it really any wonder so many students die when they graduate from here when we give them absolutely no life skills?”

At first my mother looks like she wants to just ignore my attempt at actual discussion, but then she just sighs heavily. “I assume this little tirade means you’ve heard about Serena.”

“You make it sound like she’s a weather report. ‘I assume you’ve heard about the storm moving in?’” An extra-loud burst of thunder picks that moment to rumble across the sky, as if underscoring my words—and anger.

“That isn’t my intention.”

“Maybe not, but it feels like it is—not just with Serena, but with all of them,” I tell her.

She shakes her head, sighs again. “We did the best we could to turn their lives around. We kept them safe while they were here. But what happens after they graduate is totally out of our control, Clementine. Do I feel bad that Serena’s dead? Of course I do. Do I feel bad about the other former students who have died? Of course I do. But you have to understand that their deaths are what they are—sad, unfortunate accidents.”

“And that doesn’t bother you? How can you possibly think it’s okay that students from this school that you’re in charge of, this school that you keep reminding me is our family’s legacy, can’t live outside its walls?”

“Now you’re being overly dramatic.” Another round of thunder—this one low and long—shakes the building, but my mother ignores it. “First of all, many of our students go on to live very fulfilling lives. And secondly, you’re putting words in my mouth. I have never discounted the sadness nor the import of their deaths—”

“You just said their deaths ‘are what they are,’ just another unpleasant fact of life we have to accept. What is that if not discounting it?”

“It’s being realistic!” she snaps. “The students who come here are troubled, Clementine. Very, very troubled. They have burned down buildings. They have blown things up. They have killed people in terrible, terrible ways. We do our absolute best to rehabilitate and help them while they’re here. We give them a place away from some of the darker consequences of their powers. We give them a chance to avoid prison, a chance to breathe, to heal—if they take us up on it—as they come to grips with who they are and what they can do. We give them anger management and therapy and choice mitigation. But none of it negates the fact that when they leave here, away from our close supervision, bad things can happen to them no matter how much we try to prevent it.”

“Dying is a little more than just bad, don’t you think?” I ask incredulously. “There has to be a better way to help these kids than what we’re doing. You know Grandma and Grandpa wouldn’t want this to—”

“Don’t you dare try to tell me what my mother and father would want when you’ve never even met them!” The reasonableness has left her tone, and all that’s left is cold fury. “You think because you were born on this island that you know how things work here. But the truth is you don’t have a damn clue.”

I don’t argue with her about having met my grandparents— there are some things I know better than to bring up, and my ability to see ghosts is one of them—so I focus on the rest instead.

“If I don’t know, tell me!” I implore. “Explain to me why you think this is the only way—”

“It is the only way! If you’d stop daydreaming for a second about leaving the island, you might just figure that out.”

“And why do you think I’m so desperate to leave, Mom? Could it be because you keep me prisoner here, too, just like everyone else? I’ve never even been off the island! Do you know how bizarre that is? And then you tell me I can’t go to college, that none of us fourth gens can. And I find out that’s a lie, too, that Caspian’s getting out of here as soon as he possibly can. And going to my dream college. How do you expect me not to be frustrated?”

Her face, already closed, shuts down completely. “I’m not going to discuss this with you right now, Clementine.”

“Because you don’t have an answer?” I ask caustically. “Because you know you’re wrong?”

“I am not wrong!”

“But you are. What’s so wrong with me wanting to see what it’s like out there? To feel what it is to actually be a manticore? The students are all missing out on that experience, that core part of who they are, and it’s literally killing them, Mom.”

“We’ve tried it your way, Clementine. We did. And it didn’t work. You think things are scary now? You should have seen it before. Students died regularly while under our care, and we couldn’t stop it until we tried this. It works. They’re safe, and that’s what matters.”

“You mean they’re safe for now. That’s not the same thing.”

“You—” She breaks off as her phone notifications suddenly go wild. “I need to go handle this. And you need to drop all this talk of changing things here. It’s not going to happen. Things are the way they are because they have to be, whether you like it or not. We already had several students get hurt today in that power surge. There’s no way we can let them have their powers back permanently.”

“I don’t believe that—”

“It doesn’t matter what you believe!” Her voice snaps like a rubber band that’s been stretched too far. “It only matters what is. Now knock it off, Clementine!”

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