Centre of the Storm

Chapter Sixteen: New Friends

A/N: I posted a video on tik tok asking people so submit their names, pronouns, personalities and so forth, and I might add them as new characters. I have chosen three, and the characters will be in this chapter.

Usually, when I would see things like that, I would tell myself it was because I was sleep deprived and paranoid. But I had been sleeping almost well lately, so I knew that wasn't the case. And I knew what I had seen was real. As terrifying as it was, I couldn't ignore my problems, not this time.

I turned around and ran towards the building the person had ducked behind. I arrived in a few seconds, only to see that they had disappeared. But I wasn't giving up that easily. I spun around, trying to catch sight of anyone, but there was no one around. Where could they have gone?

Then I saw a tall metal fence. On the other side of it was a tall, half finished building. There was no one around. At first I didn't think the person was on the other side of the fence, since it was impossible to climb over, since there was barbed wire at the top. Then I saw the hole in the fence.

I made a split-second decision, and bent down to climb through the hole. I winced as the metal scraped my cheek, but kept climbing through. Then I stood up, relieved to see that none of my clothes had been ripped. Then I looked around. Once again, there was no one around. I sighed, and leaned against the fence.

It couldn't have been Cashlin, she was hundreds of miles away at the orphanage. So my mind instantly went to Alyssa.

She's dead. I told myself. You saw her body. Her spine was broken. Even if she had somehow survived that, she would have drowned in the river. She's dead.

I tugged at my necklace anxiously. I knew it wasn't physically Alyssa, but what if she was haunting me? Or maybe I was just crazy.I wasn't sure which was worse.

Then I heard a scuffling noise coming from the direction of some trees I hadn't noticed. I turned to look. There were a few trees to my right, and beside them, a large rock. I saw three people carrying bags and what looked like iced coffee, climbing up the rock. Intrigued, I started walking over.

When I got closer, I realized that they were my age. One of the girls turned and saw me, our eyes met. Her dark brown hair was long and curly, and her eyes were like cinnamon. She looked a bit like myself but with daintier features, like a baby bunny. Her face broke into a smile, and she beckoned me over. Slightly confused, I went over to her and the two others, hoping I wasn't about to get jumped. This wasn't the best neighbourhood.

"Hey!" she said. "We're going to hang out under the rock, wanna join us?"

"Olivia!" the other girl said in exasperation. "You can't keep inviting strangers to hang out with us! You're weirding people out." Olivia just shrugged.

The other girl turned to me. "I'm sorry about her."

I laughed a little. "It's fine. But how can you hang out under a rock?"

Olivia beckoned me to follow them. "You'll see."

I didn't want to go back to the motel but I didn't want to be alone either now that I was half convinced that Alyssa's ghost was haunting me, so I followed them and we climbed up the rock. When we got to the top, I saw there was an open underside you could climb into. "It's hollow," Olivia explained. "You can climb in there and hang out."

We climbed down to the part where the hole was, and I saw that there were already blankets on the ground in there, and fairy lights hung up.

"That's really cool," I said. We climbed inside the hole one by one, until we were all sitting inside the rock. It was quite cozy in there. They opened their plastic bags, and I saw drinks and junk food in there.