Halo Of Fire: An Angel In Trouble

Ophelia 1

The next day Jordan and I made it a point to go check on Ophelia in the early morning before class started. As an international student, she had dorm room privileges which gave her a single bedroom apartment-like room, with no kitchen. We got through the main entrance with our ID bracelets and went up to her floor.

Jordan rapped loudly on the solid wood door of her room. There was a deafening silence we couldn't hear anything that was going on inside.

"Do you think she already got up?"

"No, she'd be at the cafe for breakfast otherwise." Jordan said, knocking again, "Ophelia? Are you in there?"

There was shuffling on the other side and then the door cracked open. Ophelia appeared, she seemed smaller and her usually perfectly curated hair was all over the place in a nasty mess, like she hadn't washed it in a couple of days and had slept on it without brushing.

"We haven't heard from you since break yesterday, we were worried." Jordan pushed the door open and let themself in while I tentatively followed trying not to invade anyone's space.

"Hi Ophelia, how are you?" I said, stopping just over the doorway instead of going into the apartment all the way. The blinds were drawn closed and only a small sliver of light made its way through them allowing me to see just the outline of certain pieces of furniture. It was pitch black otherwise.

Jordan pulled the curtains open and light burst into the room like a firework. Ophelia covered her eyes, "Ugh. What time is it?"

"It's 7 am," I said, looking at my phone.

"That's so early," She groaned.

"You need to shower and get ready for class. We have to get breakfast too," Jordan said authoritatively which Ophelia replied to with another groan but after a bit of back and forth, she went to do so.

Only then did I let my eyes roam around the room. Though it looked like it was expensively furnished, the place was a mess. There were cups and plates piled up on one side of the desk like she hadn't left her room to eat in a week. Books were piled everywhere in the room, at the end of the bed, on the bedside table, on the floor, in the corners, and on any flat surface available. There were papers and notes taped to the wall above and around the desk and more papers covering the desk. Scribbles, pen marks, comments on the edge of photocopies of book pages. Maps of the city and penned homemade maps of the school were scattered here and there across the floor with stickers and Xs crossed out over them.

"What has she been doing?" I asked Jordan as I took in a stack of books regarding secret societies and their inner workings. "What is she researching this for?"

"No idea," they said, pulling out their phone to document the room, "Cecily will never believe us when we tell her."

"That's an invasion of privacy Jordan," I said, suddenly feeling a tingling run down my back and my hands becoming sweaty. "If Ophelia finds you recoding her room we'll both get in a lot of trouble. And I've been in enough trouble this year to last me a lifetime."

"She won't know because we won't tell her. This is just to show Cecily and then I'll delete it. I promise."

I knew I couldn't really make them do anything, so I just listened to the water in the shower so I could tell them when Ophelia was on her way out of the bathroom. I was enabling the behavior and I knew it, but I wasn't sure how else to behave. As soon as the shower noises ended, I waved at Jordan to stop fooling around with the camera on her phone. Shortly after, wrapped in a towel and with wet hair dripping on the floor, Ophelia came out of the bathroom and said she'd meet us right outside in a moment.

"Do you think she's got some sort of paper to write that she's going into so much detail about secret societies?" I whispered to Jordan who was staring at the door handle very intently.

"No clue, but she also had a bunch of books from the library about The Academy itself. I wonder if she's been keeping up with her work because not only did they not seem like fun or easy reads, but they also don't sound like anything any one of the professors I've had so far would teach." They replied in the same low tone.

"What do we do? Should we ask her about it?"

They shook their head, "No, I think that the best way to deal with it is not to say anything at all. It's not our business and she's likely not going to tell us anyway. We might get more information from the teachers."

I nodded my head in understanding, "OK." I couldn't remember the last time I had to keep something to myself that just one other person knew as well. It was probably before Tatiana died. 

After Tatiana, I didn't have any friends at all so I had to stick to myself and my own secrets. Make sure nobody got hurt from being around me. Granted, I was mainly the one getting hurt at that point, but at least nobody else died from it. I bit the inside of my cheek nervously. I wondered if Jordan trusted me? Did they think of me as a friend? How would I ever be a good friend after what I did to Tatiana?

I missed her terribly every day, but I knew that her death was in some way connected to me. To what I could do. And she had been so encouraging of my abilities, she'd even helped me learn how to hone one, but in the end, she died. So I had vowed never to play around with my abilities again. All I had left were the auras that taunted me day in and day out.