Jisoo pov

'Freshmen.' Dr. Hewett says the word like an insult.

 He stands in the aisle, bracing himself with one hand on the seatback. He breathes heavily into the bus's microphone. 'This weekend's trials will be very different from what you might be expecting.' 

This gets our attention. Everybody fixes their eyes on Hewett. The professor is shaped like a diving bell – narrow shoulders tapering down to a wide waist, where his rumpled dress shirt is half untucked from his slacks. His frazzled grey hair and sad, watery eyes make him look like AlbertEinstein after a night of running failed calculations.

Next to me, Lisa's eyes are closed while she leans on Roseanne, but I know she's listening. Roseanne shuffles through her index cards. Next to me, Jennie tenses. I don't know why she doesn't like Hewett, but I interlace our fingers. Hank rests his head in my lap. His tail thumps softly against my thigh.

 'In thirty minutes,' Hewett continues, 'We will arrive in San Alejandro.'He waits for our whispering to die down. We associate San Alejandro with shopping, movies, and Saturday-night karaoke, not end-of-year trials. But I suppose it makes sense we would start there. The school's boat is usually moored in the harbor.

'We will proceed directly to the docks,' Hewett continues. 'No detours, no side trips to buy refreshments. You will keep your phones off.'

 A few kids grumble. Harding-Pencroft strictly controls all communication through the school intranet. The campus is a cellular dead zone. You want to look up the breeding habits of jellyfish? No problem. You want to watch youtube? Good luck with that. 

The teachers say this is to keep us focused on our work. I suspect it's yet another security precaution, like the underwater grid, or the armed guards, or the drone surveillance. I don't understand it, but it's a fact of life.

Typically, when we get into town, we're like dehydrated cattle at a watering hole. We stampede to the first place with free Wi-Fi and drink it in. 

'I will have further instructions once we're at sea,' Hewett says. 'Suffice to say, today you'll find out what the academy is truly about. And the academy will find out whether you can survive its requirements.' 

 I want to think Hewett is just trying to scare us. The problem is, he never makes idle threats. If he says we'll have extra weekend homework, we do. If he predicts ninety percent of us will fail his next exam, we do. 

Theoretical Marine Science should be a fun fluff class. We spend most of our time contemplating what ocean technology might look like in one or two hundred years. Or if science had taken a different course, what might have happened? What if Leonardo da Vinci had done more to develop sonar when he discovered it in 1490? What if the plans for Drebbel's 'diving boat' hadn't been lost in the 1600s, or if Monturiol's anaerobic steam-powered submarine hadn't been scrapped for lack of funding in 1867? Would our technology today be more advanced?

It's cool stuff to think about, but also ... not so practical? Hewett acts as if his questions have right answers. Like, it's theoretical. How can you give somebody a B minus on their essay just because their guess is different than yours? 

Anyway, I wish Colonel Giselle, our military-tactics professor, were chaperoning this trip. Or Dr. Karina, our physical-fitness teacher. Hewett can barely shuffle a few feet without getting winded. I don't see how he's going to judge what I imagine will be intensely physical underwater trials. 

He turns over the microphone to Hwasa, who's standing in the front of her Shark room-mates. Hwasa has made our group assignments for the weekend. We'll be divided into five teams of four, one member from each house. But first, she has a few rules to tell us about.

Of course, she does. She is such a Shark. You could put her in charge of a toddler soccer team and she'd get delusions of grandeur. She'd have the kids marching in perfect unison within a week. Then she'd declare war on a neighboring toddler team. As much as I hate to say it, she does have that leader aura around her.

She rattles off a list of her favorite regulations and then hands it to Solar. My attention wanders from rules to far more important things, such as the fly that's been buzzing around me for the last second. Next to me, Jennie has discreetly fallen asleep on my shoulder. I look out of the window.

The highway winds from switchback to switchback, hugging the cliffs.

 One moment, you can't see anything but trees.  The next, you can trace the entire coastline all the way back to HP. When the school is in full view, I spot something strange in the bay. A thin line of wake heads towards the base of the cliffs, just where my siblings and I were diving this morning. I can't see what's making it. There's no boat. It's moving too fast and too straight to be a sea animal. Something underwater, under propulsion.

The pit of my stomach feels like I'm free-falling again.

 The wake line splits into three segments. It looks like a trident, its prongs racing to jab the coastline beneath the school.

'Hey!' I tell my friends. 'Hey, look!'

By the time my roommates get to the window, the view has disappeared behind trees and cliffs.

 'What was it?' Roseanne frowns, pressing her hands to the glass

Then the shock wave hits us. The bus shudders. Boulders topple into the road.

 'Earthquake!' Hwasa drops the mic, literally, grabbing the nearest seatback to steady herself. Dr. Hewett is thrown hard against the window.

"Everyone, grab something!." Solar shouts.

Cracks splinter the asphalt as we skid towards the guardrail. All twenty of us, well-trained juniors, scream like kindergarteners.

Somehow, Bernie regains control of the bus.

He slows, looking for a place to pull over. We round another bend, and HPcomes into view, except now ... 

Roseanne screams, which starts Top whimpering in her lap. Lisa presses her hands against the glass. 'No. No way. No.'

I yell, 'Bernie, stop! Stop here!'

Bernie pulls into one of the scenic overlooks where tourists can snap pictures of the Pacific. The view is clear all the way back to HP, but there's nothing scenic about it now.

Teenagers are crying. Their faces press against the windows. My insides twist with disbelief. 

A second shock wave hits us. We watch in horror as another massive wedge of earth calves into the bay, taking the last of those beautiful sugarcubes with it.

 I shove my way down the aisle, Jennie following close behind. I hammer on the doors until Bernie opens them. I run to the edge of the cliff and grip the cold steel guardrail.

My brother was on that campus. So were 150 other people and an aquarium full of marine animals. A square mile of the California coast crumbled into the ocean. 

Harding-Pencroft Academy is gone.