Fourteen hours later, my car was driving through downtown Lost Nation, the city in the valley below Kepler Academy. Or, at least, below where the academy used to be.
A woman’s voice with a British accent said I was five minutes away from my sequel – the new Kepler Academy.
Over the summer, I got a letter stating that the school had burned down. The building was a giant log cabin ski lodge, so it was basically made out of firewood. Nobody was hurt, but the building was beyond repair.
And after all I did to save it from destruction last year.
Go figure.
The letter also said that ninety-five-year-old Headmaster Donald Kepler had stepped down because of health reasons and that Vice Principal Raymond Archer would replace him.
I mean, those aren’t tiny changes, like a new paint job or something. Those were King Kong–size changes.
It almost felt like starting over again.
So that’s where I was headed – to the new Kepler Academy, which was apparently somewhere in the butt of Lost Nation.
My car turned corner after corner, each street darker than the last, until I was finally on a brick road with flickering streetlamps and some shady-looking people.
An old lady was pushing a grocery cart full of live chickens, a small group of punk rockers was break-dancing on cardboard, and a short dude wearing an Elvis Presley mask while taking a Polaroid selfie was on a staircase outside a dive called ‘Campion’s Cafe’.
The GPS said I still had about six kilometres until my destination. Each kilometre that passed grew bleaker and bleaker.
Finally, my car pulled up to a metal garage door on a warehouse that looked abandoned. Actually, all the buildings on the street looked abandoned.
The garage door opened automatically, and my car drove forward, passing a long line of other parked Beetles, until coming to a full stop in front of a goat that stared at me with creepy horizontal eyes.
There are so many ‘what the heck?’ moments in my life – surprisingly, this wasn’t one of them.
My car door unlocked, and I stepped out with my backpack. ‘S’up, man?’
The goat bobbed his head. ‘S’up.’
He was a friend from last year. His name was Totes, and he was a graduate of Kepler Academy. His superpower was that he transformed into a goat, full time–style.
Not everyone develops useful powers.
Totes went to the boot and swung my bags onto his back, then he took the lead. ‘Follow me.’
We went to a lift in a dark corner of the warehouse.
‘Is the school on the second floor?’ I asked.
‘Nope. We’re not goin’ up,’ Totes said. ‘We’re goin’ down.’
‘Underground?’ I sighed.
The goat pushed the basement button with his snout. The doors closed, and the lift dropped.
A life without windows.
A life of canned food.
A life of concrete walls.
At the end of the year, I’ll climb out of a hole squinting because I forgot what the sun looks like.
The lift jerked to a stop. The doors opened a few centimetres and got stuck, but it was enough to let the sound of screaming kids seep in.
The horror!
Students were in agony!
Pain and suffering!
I tried to peek through the slit, but Totes got in the way.
‘Dumb doors,’ he said, pushing his head against them. ‘Every! Single! Time! Today!’
The goat leaped forward, ramming his horns against the metal.
The doors clunked and then slid wide open.
A blast of cold air pushed into the lift. My jaw dropped, and I couldn’t believe my eyes.
‘… What the junk?’ I whispered.