Separian - Book 1

Chapter 37

We hadn't spoken in weeks. My fault, not hers. Her voice had gotten lost somewhere in the mountain of new memories I had to process through, the majority of which did not even belong to me. She began again, telling me of her studies and new classmates that she'd had to make-nice with, regardless of what she'd heard of them from previous instructors and reputations. Once more, as it look like she were fighting to keep my attention, which she had no chance of losing, the topic changed to one outside of school and to her extracurricular social life. She told me about the night out she'd had with the girls in her dormitory, not two days ago. How some of the girls needed reminding that Amy was not legally allowed to drink and in fact, was more than just a little under the drinking age in relation to them. The next youngest member of their group was 22, multiple years older than Amy. But, surprised as I wasn't, her reputation and charisma did most of the leg work for her when it came to making new friends and moving comfortably into her university life for another year.

"How are you?" I asked, interrupting the beginning of another of her attempts at keeping my attention. "Really."

Amy stopped speaking for a moment and looked me over, I assumed in an effort to read through my intention for such a strange question. Well, not strange, per se, but certainly sudden.

Not long after her silent query, she gave up and answered.

"I'm bored." Not the answer I was expecting, I'll admit. Off to her left was a small nightstand. Her hands release me and entered the drawers, retrieving a small red and white patterned box with the word 'BICYCLE' printed along the top. "I've reached the stage where I don't see the point of it anymore." The box opened and she sat up on the bed, riffling through fifty two already shuffled playing cards. I followed suit and joined her position, opposite on the bed.

Amy shuffled the cards soon after she counted that they were all present and then proceeded to deal me a hand of seven.

"Every day that I'm here, I can't help but wonder what you're doing," she went on, not at all interested in her hand but refusing to look at me because that's not how the game worked. "If I'm supposed to just accept everything that you are, then I also have to accept that there is nothing I can do or not do to prevent what's inevitably coming." I hadn't heard a question so I remained purely attentive until she was finished. "If I spend the next six years of my life studying to become a surgeon or just a regular first aid attendant, it won't matter if everyone's dead." When had she started to approach my life this way? Had a few weeks really warped her thoughts so drastically? She used to think that I was fascinating, like a brand new toy with a hidden secret to share every single day. "And you tell me that the bruises and cuts on your arm are just the results of training but I can see in your eyes that they aren't; hear it in your stories too. Your fighting is no more training than a doctor performing an organ transplant is practicing. You are fighting to kill, and-"

The door to the room burst open with a half-effort knock to join it. "Amy, we're heading out to get some lunch..." Her neighbor's words trailed off, awkwardly. "I'm... sorry, am I interrupting something?"

Amy's cards were on the bed face up a moment later. She always faced them down. Deliberately. So that I could not cheat. "No." That was obviously a lie. Even the girl now standing in the door frame could tell. She looked to me while Amy's back momentarily turned. "You said you're grabbing lunch?"

"Yeah," she went on. "We were wondering if you wanted to join us -both of you." She didn't open the door expecting to see me, evidently.

"We'd love to." Amy was up from the bed and into her wardrobe for a jacket without so much as checking to see if I was even still present, let alone to ask my opinion on the matter.