The Cursed Academy

I think better on a full stomach

"Oh my Goddess!! It's burning my eyes!" I yelled at Mo who had turned the bottle of hand sanitizer upside down and was squeezing half of it into her palm.

"Ahh quit your complaining, Sophia.  Would YOU want to eat with these hands after feeding the birds? " She asked as she slathered the gel all over her hands and between her fingers and then waving her hands in the air to  try and get them to dry faster.  

"You did wash them before we left, right?  I asked.

"Yes, Mother!!"  Mo sarcastically answered as she playfully rolled her eyes at me in response. 

The twins were unpacking their identical pink backpacks.  They were decorated with a unicorn character on the back and the message 'Dare to Dream' embroidered across the straps.  Siobhan spread out a blanket on the grass under the large oak at the edge of the clearing behind the gymnasium.  We decided this would be a great place to sit and have some lunch after we finished feeding the birds and touring the rest of the administration building , the gymnasium and the dorm facilities.  Andrea told us all about the bird rescue and rehabilitation center and showed us some of the jobs we could potentially be assigned to work.  She showed us the running trails and the track and I found out that I could still use the gymnasium here in the main building, even though I was living in the older dorms. So, that made the tour totally worthwhile.  Andrea sat on one corner of the blanket, to keep the breeze from blowing it away before Saoirse had a chance to unpack her backpack with the lunch goodies.  Mo plopped down on the other corner and then laid back in the grass, using her skateboard as a makeshift pillow.  

"What can I do to help?" I asked the twins, who sat down next to each other.  Saoirse pointed to the remaining corner and said "Just sit there and keep the blanket from blowing away."  "We've got this." they both added. I watched as they quickly unloaded the basket and made us all some cold cut sandwiches out of the supplies they had been so thoughtful to bring with them. 

 Siobhan passed out the sandwiches and tossed everyone a small bag of chips to go with them.  Saoirse passed around juice boxes and water bottles.  There was not a lot of talk while we silently ate and enjoyed our lunch in the fresh air.  Mo, of course, finished first.  Wiping her hands on her pants and dusting the chip crumbs off of her shirt she asked, "So 'Drea?  What's going on with the sign out front.  I mean you work for the academy, surely you know something."

"I saw that as we were driving in! That is sooo creepy!!  Why is it all blown up looking and why does it say cursed?" I asked. 

Mo excitedly added "Yeah, WHY does it say cursed and WHO put it there??"

"My grandmother told me a little bit about the school when we were driving in.  She said that it was built by a Werewolf Alpha pack leader named Brutus Silverthorne for his pack in the 1500's. They all lived here for a long time. But during the Salem witch trials he donated it in 1692  as a safe place for witches who were fleeing the trials in Salem" I explained.  "After the trials were over in 1693 it was a mutual decision to turn the fortress into a school for both werewolves and witches." 

"She said that there have only been witches for the last couple of hundred years but I don't think that can be right. " I laughed as I started questioning my grandmother's math skills.

"And no boys, either." Andrea added with a disappointed frown.

 "I saw the memorygraphs by Coach Blackclaw's office and there were some boys in some of them that didn't look too ancient. Well, I mean, judging from the clothes they were wearing, that is." said Siobhan as Saoirse nodded in agreement.

"There is a town near the school that is named after after him and supposedly there are descendants from his pack still in the area.  I am thinking that they live a little ways down the mountain in Silverthorne.

"Well, I am sure that having no boys around sucks bad for some people, but is a lack of testosterone in the general vicinity really bad enough to call it a curse?" Mo quizzed us. "Think of it this way.  Who is mad enough to spray paint and blow up the sign?" It is like someone didn't want the name Silverthorne on there at all and that part seems to have been around a while, like it was done a long, long time ago.  But, I did notice one thing. While the blown up part looks really old.  But, the spray paint looks new-ish.  It hasn't even had time to fade with wind and rain.  This is a new addition.  But, who thinks it is cursed and why?  There has got to be someone who knows something about all this craziness.  Seriously though, I don't know if any of this means anything or not but it just seems odd and is not sitting right with me." Mo concluded, crossing her arms in front of her and staring at the ground about ten feet in front of herself, lost in her own thoughts. "I wonder how long the sign has been like that?  Does Mrs. Hallewell know anything? I am betting she does.  I am going to ask her next time I see her. "

"I would like to know why werewolves are no longer admitted to the academy." I said without trying to sound too overly concerned, because honestly, I was "Also, when did they stop admission for werewolves, Andrea.  Do you know the year?  You do the tours here, right?"

"Yes, I do and that is a GREAT question.  I have never been asked that before." Andrea said.  "How about we find out the official answer?" she jokingly added.  "Student Services has an app for its volunteers that allows us to type in commonly asked questions about the campus and its history and it gives us HR approved answers and access to the cloud server where we keep the historical data on the school." She said with a wink. Mo sat up and started listening a little closer when Andrea said she had access to the cloud server.  

I watched Andrea as she typed into the search bar on her phone. "Why are there no hot wolves at Silverthorne"  I read to the others after leaning over to see what she was typing. She started skimming through the search results in the Silverthorne Academy application. 

"There are just pages and pages about Brutus Silverthorne, the founder. Mostly memos about remembrance events or scholarships." she said, swiping her finger up her phone to go further down the results list.  " Hold on...this looks interesting.  It is a transcript of an old academy newspaper. There is a picture here of the original newspaper page with the article. I can barely read it but I think it is dated 1850 and it headline says 'Board of Directors puts student safety ahead of tradition: Big changes to admissions criteria' 

"Grandmother was way off on her timeline of when the school stopped being co-ed." I said excitedly. "Read us the rest of the article, Andrea.  This is getting intriguing!  What were they keeping the students safe from back in 1850??"