THE STATIC

Fourteen-year-old Leo Vance was sent to St. Jude's Academy to cure his "too loud" imagination. But the grim boarding school-built of dark stone and surrounded by a suffocating, unnatural fog-is no ordinary academy. It is an exile camp for misfits, dreamers, and teenagers who notice the things the rest of the world ignores.Leo wants nothing more than to keep his head down and hide his own dark secret: an unexplainable sensitivity to static electricity and shifting shadows. But his new roommate, a brilliant and cynical tinkerer named Evie, shatters his plans for a quiet semester. Hidden beneath the peeling wallpaper of their dorm room is a panicked message gouged into the wood: The fog does not breathe. It watches.When Leo touches the carving, a jolt of raw energy surges through his veins, shorting out the school's power and triggering Evie's bizarre brass compass to spin out of control. Something ancient is awake inside the academy. The forbidden West Wing holds dangerous secrets, a hidden network of symbols connects the school's dark past, and outside, the thick white mist is no longer just drifting-it is rising up, pressing against the window glass, trying to get in.To survive the semester, Leo and Evie must team up to decode the academy's hidden frequencies. But the clock is ticking, the fog is creeping closer, and at St. Jude's, some mysteries will swallow you whole before you can ever solve them.