Victorie plus N

Chapter 6: Dreamer Girl

"Sorry about my sister," Teddy says, breaking me out of my thoughts as we round a corner and enter into the 'guest gardens'. "She can be a bit absent-minded. Inuehere."

"Excuse me?" I say.

"Inuehere, it's Latin, it means absent-minded."

"How do you even know that?"

"I study Latin as my second language at school. Even though no one speaks it anymore, it's fun to make the connections."

"Okay..."

Suddenly, I see Ann tearing down the path to us.

"V!" Ann pants when she reaches us. We stop walking. "Where were you?! I just reached the big fountain when I noticed you were missing! Oh my gosh, I thought I lost you forever, this garden is like a maze! I just alerted the servants that you were missing, oh wow, I'm so glad I found you! Thanks, Teddy," she says, grabbing our arms and pulling us to the manor. "Where were you!?"

"I was following you, but then I kind of lost sight of you, and I didn't know where to go," I answer.

"Yeah," Teddy puts in, "She was huddled in a ball freezing when I found her- her umbrella blew away."

Ann looks at me with teary eyes. "I'm so sorry Victorie, I honestly didn't mean to get you lost. I'm so going to be grounded now, I lost the Mistress on her second day here," she says, shaking her head.

"It's really not your fault," I say, feeling bad that she's blaming herself when really, it's the rain's fault. And I doubt she can be grounded, I mean, who's going to ground her? Me? "I'm perfectly fine."

Even though I'm freezing to death, I think in my head.

"Well, that's good, but still..." she trails off.

We reach the patio and enter inside the house where, like, 10 servants are standing there with chairs, towels, hot cocoa, and hot water bottles.

The maids bundle Teddy and me up, fussing over us, handing us a number of hot things, and asking me multiple questions that mostly sound like, "Are you okay?", "What happened!?", "Don't ever go out into the rain again!", and, "Miss!?", as I continually say I'm fine. After it's all over, I hand back Teddy his coat and head up to my room to change into dry clothes. Now I have no clean clothes left.

After I'm done, I meet Ann and Teddy in the library, where Teddy is reading a book and Ann is impatiently waiting. I assume for me to arrive.

"You're here!" she yells when I walk in, which I'm sure if there was a librarian, she would be kicked out because of. This room is probably more of Ann's personal playhouse than a library.

The library is on the fourth floor and takes up most of it. Brown bookshelves are everywhere in neat lines, and I can see couches and reading areas, also large meeting desks shaped like different continents and countries.

Ann runs up to me. "I'm so sorry again about the garden! I feel really bad!"

"I forgive you already, don't feel bad," I laugh, "You did everything you could, I'm fine!"

"Okay," she says doubtfully but restores her usual cheer when she takes my hand and shows me around.

"Here are the science fictions in this section, Uncle John, your Grandfather, was kind of a big science fiction enthusiast," Ann says.

She points to another "section", which you can only distinguish by the signs on the books shelves. "This is fantasy, and down that wing is historical fiction and books from way back when. There are also journals from all of the Beckenridge ancestors down there, too."

"In this section," she says as we pass 8 lines of bookshelves labeled, 'Fiction', "We have modern fiction books, the next is Romance, after that it's instruction manuals and books, then non-fiction, and at the end are graphic novels and manga. And classics are in the right-wing along with horror and mystery."

"Wow, these genres are kind of all over the place," I say.

"Yeah, I guess we Beckenridges aren't great at classifying, or organizing," she laughs.

I smile. "So what's your favorite type of genre?"

"Fantasy."

"Figures. But mine is too."

"Cool!" she tilts her head, "You know, you're a bit of a dapper like Teddy," she says, giving me a comical pouty face, "But that's okay, the more people who can bring me back down to touch base with reality, the better!"

What kind of reality does she live in?

"Good," Teddy says, who has appeared behind us, "Because Ann is slowly floating away from reality, and our other friends are not much of a help. They're all in their own dream worlds."

"Seriously?" I question, "It kind of sounds like you have serious beef with your friends and don't really like them."

"No, they're good, they're just big dreamers, like, really big dreamers. It's fine."

"I thought you liked reading books? Aren't you kind of a dreamer yourself?"

"I do, but it's not like I think I'm going to see a unicorn anywhere. That's what her friend, Kelly, thinks," Teddy says, pointing at Ann.

Ann shrugs. "Don't be mean, Kelly just really likes unicorns, and fantasy creatures, she knows they're not real. I wish they were real, though, I love unicorns!"

Okay, so Ann is definitely strange. Teddy is also kind of weird- I mean, who learns a non-existent language- but, I guess they're weird is okay enough to handle. I have no idea how I'm going to handle their friends' weird, though. There's only so much weird a person can handle in one day!

"Oh!" Ann says, turning to me, breaking me out of my thoughts, "Our friends will actually be coming over tomorrow, so you can meet them! Mrs. King okayed it. They're really nice, you'll love them! Now let's go see you're room!" she announces. I guess I'll find out soon enough how much weird I can handle.

I turn to Teddy."Great. See you," I wave to him while Ann links her arm into mine.

Teddy waves back. "Have fun with dreamer-girl. Make sure she doesn't fly over a rainbow when the rain stops."

(A/N: Thank you so much to everyone reading so far, and for the nice comments and votes on my last chapter! I really appreciate it!)