Page 21 of Darkened Wings
Evil was all around me in the form of bullies and name-calling and peer-bashing.
Chapter Twelve
I still managed to make it to my third class on time. This was held in an ordinary room with no stadium seating, so I was able to hide in the back.
“Ms. Bellamina?” the professor said, holding up a note. “You are to proceed to the office as per this note. You are dismissed.”
Not wanting to cause any more of a spectacle than I did just by breathing and being alive, I gathered my things and took the note from his hand, scooting in to the hallway as soon as possible.
The note said I had to report to the academy testing office.
What the hell was the academy testing office?
Of course, I had to consult my map to locate the office. As I made my way down stairs and through halls, I decided the academy must be built over a cave system. The hallways went on forever, but soon the marble floors beneath me became hardwood. This was the first time I’d seen anything other than marble make up the floor under my feet, at least outside my dorm room.
Strange. This part of the school must be older.
A large wooden door took up the entire wall at the end of the dark hall. The sconce candles in this part of the school weren’t lit. They had summoned me to the dungeon.
They were finally going to get rid of me.
They could’ve just told me instead of pretending to send me to some elusive testing office, for goodness’ sake.
Despite my trepidation about this whole thing, even the note with the embossed raven at the bottom, I knocked on the door, reeling back when the knock hurt my knuckles.
The door opened. A woman who was a messier version of Professor Pike answered. Her glasses were crooked on her face. Her red lipstick was smudged on one side, and she almost tripped over the elongated phone cord coming from her outdated telephone. She held one finger up to me as she talked into the receiver, placating some parent about their child’s test results and telling them their daughter desperately needed a tutor.
The tragedy. I could hear the mom crying on the other end of the line.
She used the same finger to point to a chair with torn leather. Clearly, none of the school funding had been reserved for redoing the testing office. This part of the building was forgotten.
While the woman continued to listen to the parent, I looked around the place. The wooden shelves were filled with guides to mental health and goal setting. All the self-help section of the library, the bookstore, and even the used bookstore were contained right here in this musty-smelling office. The woman was one of those people who stacked things all over her desk, but I would bet one of my feathers she knew exactly what was in those stacks. Managed chaos.
Finally, the woman got off the phone and let out a long, feminine sigh of relief. She tried and failed to straighten her glasses and plopped down in her chair, blowing a hair out of her face in the process.
“Gwendoline, why are you here?”
I cleared my throat. “It’s Gwen, please. And I got this note.” I reached across the desk, handing her the note on extra-thick paper.
Her eyebrows furrowed. “They sent you in for testing.” Her tone told me the whole thing was a surprise to her as well.
“On my second day of classes.”
She looked at me over the top of the note. “Well, no time like the present, I suppose. You should’ve had these tests performed a long time ago.”
I almost rolled my eyes but restrained myself—barely. “I didn’t even know where this place was so…”
“Let’s begin. At least we will know where you are with your raven knowledge. You can’t move forward until you know where you are.”
Fifty bucks, she got that quote from one of her self-help books, or she had a plaque with it in her bathroom. And I didn’t even have fifty bucks to bet.
Ms. Leighton—I learned her name after seeing it on her desk—placed me in an adjoining room by myself. Just me, a desk, a chair, and a computer screen.
“Can I fail these tests?” I asked. “I mean, what happens if my score is too low?”
Ms. Leighton pushed up her glasses and screwed up her lips. “Let’s think positively. You’re here. You’re a raven. You come from a line of strong ravens. You can do this.”
Didn’t answer my question, but okay.
