Spookygirl - Paranormal Investigator Read Online Free PDF Page B

I was never, ever going back in that locker room. Whatever was in there, it couldn’t have been a ghost. Mom had taught me when I was little that ghosts might be scary, but they were never threatening or just plain evil. That thing in there, though? Totally evil. The lead cannonball in my stomach grew roots and became an anchor.
    I was still catching my breath when the class filed back in, chased by Coach Frucile.
    “Addison!” she said when she saw me. “I don’tappreciate you leaving in the middle of orientation.”
    “Asthma attack,” I lied. “My inhaler was in my bag.” I hoped she wouldn’t ask to see the inhaler as proof, since I didn’t have one.
    “Don’t think you’ll be able to use that as an excuse in my class without a doctor’s note,” she said. Then she clapped her hands and went back to yelling at everyone instead of just me. “Get back in your lines. These are your teams for the semester. We have just enough time for a volleyball intro before the bell rings.”
    The anchor grew big enough to ground a cruise ship.
    “Addison! You serve.” Coach Frucile lobbed a volleyball at me. I screamed and jumped aside to avoid another collision; my left sneaker skidded on the freshly varnished floor, and I fell backward onto my butt.
    “That’s why I require proper sneakers,” Coach Frucile told the class.
    Screw this. It wasn’t like I was staying in the class, so I didn’t need to play nice with Coach Frucile, especially since she was so hell-bent on picking on me. Embarrassed tears pricked my eyes as I grabbed my bag and left—through the side entrance this time. I ducked into a nearby restroom and waited until the bell rang; it took me that long to stop shaking.
    I had Algebra II second period, but I was only in classfor ten minutes before a student aide from the guidance office showed up with a slip of paper bearing my name. Sweet. Meanwhile, poor Emerson Bean, Esq., sat in a classroom somewhere, miserably waiting to be summoned.
    I was ushered into the office of Mrs. Ortiz, the sophomore guidance counselor. Mrs. Ortiz already had my transcript and schedule pulled up on her computer; she smiled pleasantly but blankly across her desk, giving no sign that she remembered me from when I’d registered the week before. She had tired eyes with dark bags underneath.
    “Hi, Violet. What seems to be the trouble?”
    “I’m in the wrong class,” I said, sitting down.
    Her eyes darted back and forth as she skimmed my schedule on her monitor. “I’m not seeing a problem. Which class?”
    “Beginning Gym.” I shivered, still shaken from my freaky locker-room experience. “I was supposed to have Intro to Film.”
    “Hmm.” She hit a few keys. “Nope. Intro to Film is full. We had to place you elsewhere.”
    “I picked alternates, too. Intro to Poetry. Pottery.”
    “I’m afraid those are full as well.”
    I tried to remember the other choices. “I’ll take anything that isn’t gym. Home Ec? Chorus? Drama? Intro to Basket Weaving?”
    Mrs. Ortiz chuckled but shook her head. “I don’t see any alternatives that’ll fit your schedule. Stick with gym for now. It’s a requirement for graduation anyway, so you might as well get it out of the way.”
    Ohhhh, no. No way. “I took a semester of gym last year at Lakewood; I already have that credit.”
    She looked at my records again. “I don’t…Oh, okay. Personal Fitness. A Personal Fitness credit from the Brevard County school system can’t be transferred as a gym credit here. They’re categorized differently.”
    “But it was a gym class! With awful gym clothes and grumpy coaches and basketballs hitting me in the head, just like here!”
    “I understand that, but the system won’t let me reclassify the credit on your transcript.”
    “So I’m stuck?”
    “It’s just a semester, Violet.”
    Yeah, a semester of drowning in horror in that locker room.
    “Coach Frucile and I don’t get along. I already left today’s class early