The Promised School

Knock

~Time Skip [1 week]~

She loved it here. İn here, she could be alone with her thoughts, and also alone with her rubber duck which was floating around somewhere over to the left...

Emma yawned. The  thing was, she hardly got any time to have a long bath, since she was keeping her scores high, looking after the little ones, helping out with making the food.

Being a good girl.

She loved the feeling of the drops of water falling on her face, like rain. İt had rained last week. She had stayed inside.

Like a good girl.

She had seen Ray out there, standing and staring at the tree they had sat under, that day.She had turned away when he looked straight at her. 

"Come on, you should enjoy this!"

She tried to smile to herself, but she couldn't.

She sat up. There was a lot of foam on the surface, but the water underneath was clear. Nice.  

Emma took a few deep breaths, breathing in her mango bubble bath. Then she lay back, and closed her eyes. İt was warm. İt was lovely.

"Ahhhh..." She  found herself smiling. She loved it, the bath was bigger than the one in the room she used to be in. The whole spare room must have belonged to a teacher before, because there was a large bathroom, and even something that may have past as a half kitchen.

She stretched her legs and stared at the ceiling. İt was dripping drops of water on her cheeks. Everything was so quiet, except for the shower which she had left on. 

She closed her eyes again. Suddenley she wondered how long she could stay underwater.

Emma used to do this when she was seven, and she and Norman and Ray went paddling. She would always crouch in the water and dip her head in the steam, and stay like that until Ray pulled her out and forced her to show Norman she was still alive. Norman always panicked and thought the worst in situations like this. Ray was the opposite. He loved situations like this, and assumed the worst at any other given time. 

Now, Emma dipped her head underwater, eyes wide. Her vision was blurry, orange hair swirling around her vision. She  screwed her eyes shut and they stung like hell.

İt was quiet down here. İt was blurry, warm, and quiet. İt was amazing. This was heaven, if heaven existed.

She wanted to stay here for ever. Stay here, have no worries... Why not? After a few seconds, she liked it even more. She loved it.

Emma opened her mouth to laugh, and water immediately rushed down her throat, choking her. She surfaced, coughing and gasping for breath. There was a time, she remembered, when she was about 5 years old, a few weeks after they came to the school. Miss İsabella had tried letting Emma have a bath on her own for the first time ever. 

Emma wore her swimming costume and pretended to be a diver. The first thing she did was almost choke, and start coughing. Then she could hear Norman screaming for Miss İsabella in that highly childish voice, and Ray telling him to shut up.

Emma wasn't allowed to take a bath on her own for year then, only a shower. And which diver dived in a shower?

Norman still panicked when he heard her coughing when she swallowed water, even now. Well, a few weeks ago. He had still called Miss İsabella, before he had found she was a murderer. She half expected Norman to start yelling outside the door, Ray trying to shut him up by clamping a hand over his mouth.