The Everblooming Flower [Book One of The Dreamers Series]

Chapter Nineteen

I stood outside of my Hass class, keeping my promise, and letting Ciara ramble on about the bubonic plague and how far medicine had come. Fun fact: when I was young, I had wanted to be a doctor. I hadn't really known the difference between a doctor and a nurse for a while, but as soon as I found out I wanted to be one. It was unfortunate, but I had given up on the dream long ago.

After I started getting into fights and wagging to avoid teachers I hated, my parents had started complaining about how I was wasting my life. But you already know that story. The story you don't really know is about my teachers. Some of them had simply creeped me out, but a few of them seemed to hate me with a burning passion.

Mr Revenson for example. Yes, again, some very strong paedo vibes most likely due to my new discovery. But he hated me like I had somehow insulted his whole family. Every time I had a question he would ignore me, literally answered everyone else's questions, and then move on. It was lucky that I was never the only one with that question, otherwise I would have failed his class just because he never tried to teach me. And after that, I began to hate Science. I know, it seems weird to think that I once despised the class, but I did.

Ms Standan had always been there though. Rather than going to Revenson with a question when I wasn't in class, I would usually go to Standan. She seemed to have a glint in her eyes, of knowing. She knew that I wasn't a bad kid, and that I was simply trying to defend myself. That wasn't something I could say about any of my teachers. Even at Nangidon.

Gladiare and Boroong were great, Farsnic was a psychopath, and all of the others didn't seem to regard me with any emotions. I had tried to stay out of fights, or at least keep my quarrels on the down low. I didn't want to have the same sort of reputation and experience there. It was supposed to be a clean slate.

I had tried to contain my anger, like with Connor where I popped one finger out of place and just threatened him. It may not have sounded like much, but for me, that was a drastic improvement.

I was pulled from my thoughts, and the conversation with Ciara, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and saw Gabe, wearing his usual sheepish smile.

"Hey Flora," he started. "You weren't here for a couple of days, and I just wanted to check you were okay."

I smiled lightly, trying to hide the nervousness of what had happened while I was gone. I mean, I had killed myself, came back to life, and then massacred a bunch of Clark Corporation employee's. It wasn't exactly a story I wanted to share, and so I'd have to come up with a convincing lie. I had remembered that Zak said Ciara asked about how we were doing when sick. So, with that bit of information I tried to come up with semblance of a believable story.

"Yeah, nah yeah," I nodded, "just um ... felt off. I wasn't well. Like, cough cough, sneeze sneeze, kind of unwell."

I shifted my weight from foot to foot, hoping it wasn't obvious that I was lying. It was a strange sensation to not know how. I had been doing well at lying to my family about the dreams, and literally everyone about that. Why was this suddenly different? I hadn't gotten clammy and coy when talking about it with Samara.

"Right," Gabe nodded, an unreadable expression on his face.

I jumped back and nearly hit the wall at a loud crashing sound. Glass breaking. Were they there? Were they going to shoot me in front of my whole Hass class? Was I going to have to reveal to everyone that I was some immortal creature with weird dreams about an invisible force trying to murder me? Was this where everything went wrong?

No. No it was not. As it turned out, E had just dropped her glass water bottle and it smashed into tiny pieces on the ground. A few students had made a circle around it, and one of the teachers from the office came out to help with the situation.