Surviving Year One (Grim Reaper Academy 1)

“You were saying that the secret is to focus on the blade and visualize how it tears through the energy field of the one whose soul we’re reaping, cutting the connection between the soul and the main transmitter.”

“And what is the main transmitter?” Mrs. Charon turned to me, her red gaze pinning me in place. Our PE professor was one scary demoness.

“Err… mmm…” I could feel drops of sweat forming at the roots of my hair. God, I’d never been caught unprepared before. Not in kindergarten, not at school, not in high school. This was a first, and it sucked.

“...rain,” Paz whispered in my general direction, trying to move his lips as little as possible. I stole a glance at him, which made Mrs. Charon cock an eyebrow and position her scythe between us. “...ain,” he tried again, but for the life of me, I couldn’t understand what he was trying to say. The other students started giggling, subtly at first, then louder and bolder when they saw Mrs. Charon wasn’t going to admonish them. Pandora had a satisfied smirk on her face.

“I… I’m sorry, Mrs. Charon. I don’t know.”

“The brain, Ms. Lazarov! The brain is the biotech machine that acts as the transmitter between the energy field, the aura, the soul of the person – call it what you will – and the physical body. A Grim Reaper must sever that connection to reap the soul. You disappoint me, Ms. Lazarov. That’s minus 30 worth points.” Then, she turned to Paz. “Ten points for you.”

She walked away. I followed her with my gaze, and when I was sure she was out of earshot, I turned to Paz. My face must have been red with embarrassment, because he could barely contain his laughter.

“What are worth points?”

“Oh, you don’t know? Dearie, did you even read your orientation manual?”

I rolled my eyes. “It’s a manual! It should have been a brochure. And no, I didn’t have time to go through all of it. I’m only halfway through.”

It was his turn to roll his eyes at me. “Worth points are like a mix of conduct grades and effort grades. You do well, they award you whatever number of worth points they feel like it. You do… not so well, or you break the rules, they take a random number of worth points away. We all start the year with 100 worth points as a reward for passing the test.”

I bit my lower lip. Great! As if going to a new, supernatural school where I was the only human wasn’t hard enough, now I also had to worry about worth points! Who’d come up with the idea to call them worth points, anyway? So, if you had a lot of them, you were worthy, and if not, you were unworthy? That could fuck with someone’s mind…

“How much do they count?”

“Oh, a lot! There are one hundred students at the Academy, and only twenty-two will become Grim Reapers after graduation. If you haven’t noticed yet, we’re all smart, and some of us have prepared for this since we were kids, hoping we’d one day get an invitation to apply to the Academy. When more than half of the students have perfect grades at the end of year three, worth points get the final say.”

“Shit. And I’m already 30 points short. Where are they displayed?”

“In the two chapels.”

“The… what now? There are two chapels?”

“One for God, one for my dad.”

I shook my head to clear it. It didn’t quite work.

“And you’re telling me now?!”

He sighed, slightly annoyed with me. I guessed I had too many questions, and the whole thing had started to bore him since Mrs. Charon had stopped him from… Well, I had no idea what he was about to do before she attempted to chop his hand off.

“Read your orientation manual, dearie. I’m not your student guide.”

With that, he walked off, leaving me alone and exposed for the rest of the class. What had happened to “you’d better stick with me, so you don’t get decapitated by accident”?! Whatever. I could take care of myself. Lucky me that Mrs. Charon wasn’t someone to be messed with, and she kept the other students in check pretty well. The second the bell rang, I made a run for my room to leave my scythe before the next class. I hoped I’d have some time to find one of the chapels before Anthropology, but no such luck.

Mrs. Po was a lovely lady. She was soft spoken, always had a smile on her face, and made you feel like her class was a safe space where no opinion was wrong, and no question was stupid. She wore a beautifully colored silk kimono, and she was the first one to properly introduce herself before we started the lesson. She was born in the ancient city of Peking in China, was a Grim Reaper in her youth, and mortals used to call her Meng Po, the Lady of Forgetfulness, believing she was the goddess who, after death, made sure people forgot their life before they reincarnated in a new body and a new life. She was a false goddess, and I couldn’t be more fascinated. I looked at GC, who was sitting in the front, and for the first time, I felt like I could understand him better. I could understand where he was coming from and why he was so starved for attention. Meng Po was nobody now. The ancient Chinese had worshipped her for a while, then she’d

been replaced by other gods, other figures that had captured their short attention. GC was the same. Who was he in a world where humans had moved on from the world religions? Nobody. Unless… unless he became a Grim Reaper.

Sariel, Francis, and Paz were in this class, too. Since PE, Paz had ignored me. Pandora was sitting next to him again, and they were both pretending like nothing had ever happened. That was fine. Everyone was entranced by Mrs. Po’s stories, and for once, I was glad no one was paying attention to me. They hadn’t even noticed me in the back.

Anthropology was a fascinating subject. Unlike History, where we learned about famous Grim Reapers, and Mythology where we learned about the supernaturals that mortals thought were gods and goddesses of death, Anthropology was all about studying how different cultures all over the world saw death. Religions, traditions, rituals… Ways of embracing death, or raging against it.

“Mabon will soon be upon us,” Mrs. Po said in her soft, melodious voice. “The autumn equinox is a time of balance and reflection. It is mostly celebrated my mages and fays, but I see no reason for us not to celebrate it, too. While we give thanks for the harvest, we also honor death as nature prepares to go dormant for the long winter.” She smiled almost mischievously. “Of course, I’m talking about a metaphorical death. Grim Reapers don’t go around reaping plants, bushes, and the leaves from the trees.”

It all sounded interesting until she told us what our assignment was. For Mabon, which was two weeks from now, we were to prepare something personal to share with our classmates, something from our life before coming to the Academy. There would be a celebration in the forest, and we were all expected to talk about ourselves, tell a story about who we were before we were invited to apply to the Academy, and share a hobby, or a project, or simply something that we used to do before.

I let my head fall into my hands and released a long, pained sigh. Shit. The last thing I wanted was to play the let’s-know-each-other-better game.