Academy for an Assassin {A Novel]

AFAA: Chapter 4

Chapter 3

Everyone already knew about the tournament in less than one day.

The next day-more like the next morning-everyone was already talking about it and signing up. Anyone could, and they'd be a mark in their records that would help them if they won their class position. It was spreading like wildfire throughout the school. Sabel was brilliant.

Devin wouldn't stop talking about it today in class. I was glad that he was excited for this, and said that he obviously wanted to go against me. I agreed, but first I would take down Jamila.

I told Sabel my encounters with Jack Houston, (she didn't find his name as funny as I did) and she thought his presence was also strange. I told her my fears of him and his reasons of being here, without actually saying they're my fears, of course.

"You're probably overreacting," she told me as she ate her breakfast. Pancakes with strawberries on top and hot syrup. Yum. "You do that when you're nervous."

"Only sometimes." I corrected.

"Whatever, but don't worry about it. And I'm surprised you didn't know this-but when someone graduates, they get to pick where they want to live. You live there until you get an assignment." she explained to me.

"Who told you that?"

"Hannah," she answered. "She was really close to one of last year's graduates, still calls her in our weekly phone calls to those who don't have cell phones."

"Does she know where the Academy is located?"

"I asked, and so did Hannah. No, they don't even tell graduates where we are located."

When would we know? Did they not tell the assassins, the one who do the dirty job, where the Academy is located? Would it really matter when we're out? We're already away, out, though not in complete freedom.

I didn't allow myself to think much of that. Instead, for most of the day, I thought about the next step in this. Where should I look for an address? Mai? Did we even get mail? Does the mail system even know where we were?

I couldn't ponder much on that either, because at the end of the day, there was another kind of trouble coming my way. On my last period of the day, I was getting in trouble and overly worked by the teacher.

We were supposed to be jogging the track that ran all along the school's perimeter. Before I started to jog, while I was warming up, Coach Tresor came over to me. He was the Coach of those who liked to play sports here at the Academy. We never really competed against other schools, but just played for fun with each other if the teams were big enough. I was in the girl's basketball team.

Coach Trevor was about my height, if not an inch taller. He was balding but in great fit and wore a damn whistle with him everywhere. He always blew it so loud and long it pierced my ears and temper. This was my first year with him as my teacher for combat class, but I had seen him around a lot and even then he seemed to hate me with cold glares and not so nice comments, and my guess was confirmed this year when he over worked me too much for no reason.

"Costana," he barked, in his usually loud voice.

I stopped stretching next to Devin and stood up straight to look at him. He stopped a feet from me and looked down at me. "I'm going to be timing you, you have 7 minutes and 35 seconds to run the 30 laps."

He turned as if to leave, but I stepped forward and stopped him. "What? That's not fair. The whole class is running 15 laps in 7 minutes."

"That's why I'm giving you the extra 35 seconds."