Immortal Read Online Free

“It’s about the fact that you aren’t welcome. The last person who slept in that bed was my cousin Laura. She died. I don’t suppose they told you that, did they?”
    “N-no.”
    “You’re only here because her place in the school became free. The idiots who are in charge wanted it to look like they were doing their Christian duty by letting you come to Wyldcliffe. But if Laura hadn’t died, you wouldn’t be here.” Celeste’s voice trembled with anger. “Just looking at you makes me feel sick.”
    “But it wasn’t my fault,” I protested. “I’m really sorry about your cousin, but I think—”
    “I don’t care what you think, Johnson. We don’t want you here, and we’re going to make sure you don’t last long. Don’t forget—you’re sleeping in a dead girl’s bed. And I hope she haunts your every breath.”
    Celeste marched out, followed by her little gang. I felt as though I had been slapped in the face. For a second I stood frozen with shock, then anger welled up inside me.
    “What the—?”
    A bell sounded in the corridor. Helen got up and made for the door, clutching a small bag of toiletries.
    “You’d better get changed. The second bell will ring soon for lights-out.” She avoided my eyes and hurried away.
    Seething with fury, I snatched up the candlesticks and the yards of black stuff and threw them onto Celeste’s bed. But I couldn’t get the photograph down from the wall. Oh, brilliant, I thought, now I have to sleep with a freaky picture of a dead girl staring down at me every night. That was all I needed.
    I couldn’t believe that my first day at Wyldcliffe had been so disastrous. Celeste was being crazily unfair. Oh, I knew that grief did strange things to people, but it still hurt. I took a deep breath and tried to calm down. I could almost hear Frankie’s voice in my head saying, Poor Celeste, we should be very kind to her.
    Frankie knew all about grief. She had lost her only daughter, Clara, fifteen years ago, one cruelly bright spring morning. Clara Johnson. My mother.
    She had drowned when I was a baby, swimming in the dark waves that rolled in from the Atlantic and pounded the shore at home. People who remembered Mom said that I was like her: long red hair, pale skin, and sea-gray eyes. I didn’t have a single memory of her, not even the sound of her voice, so darling Frankie had done everything she could to replace her dead daughter for me. And now I might lose Frankie too. I guess I knew how Celeste felt.
    “I promise,” I said under my breath, “I’ll try to be kind to her.” But my words were empty. However much I might try to sympathize with Celeste, I knew we would never be friends.
    I started to pick up my crumpled clothes. My old blue sweater was still rolled around the bits of glass from Mom’s photo. I unwrapped the bundle, careful not to touch the shattered pieces and stared down in amazement.
    The photograph was in an unbroken frame. The glass was completely flawless, as though it had never been damaged, and the bloodstain on my mother’s face had vanished.
    For one moment I thought I must have imagined the whole thing: the dark lane, the boy, the horse—but I couldn’t have; I was still wearing his handkerchief as a bandage. I tore it off, and there it was: a thin mark of dried blood running across my right palm. That proved it. I really had cut myself. I had seen the broken glass. And now the glass wasn’t broken anymore.
    Impossible.
    Helen walked back into the room. She pulled the drapes all the way around her bed, shutting me and everything else out. I decided to do the same.
    I lay down and heard Celeste and her friends trooping back from the bathroom, giggling and whispering. Then a bell rang out and the lights snapped off. A few more whispers; then everyone settled down to go to sleep. But I couldn’t rest.
    Impossible, impossible, impossible…
    Celeste’s outburst faded into insignificance. It wasn’t her threats that kept me awake, or