Legends of Mirandis Academy

Chapter 37: Ugliness

No one had seen Iridia Trilliaris the next Monday after the Winter Formal. She wasn't being invisible; she wasn't there. Luna and Iridia didn't have any classes together, but Luna always knew where her friend liked to hide away. Every single place in the school she tucked herself into to make the world forget about her, Luna had found her at one point or another. Every time, she'd found her. But now she couldn't.

The march across campus was a frustrated one, a determined one, an aggravated one. All Luna could think about was the image of Iridia's tensed body marching through the crowded dance floor that Friday night; the face that had once been softly smiling on the drive to the venue had become something unreadable and forcefully neutral. Something had happened that night in the courtyard and she was determined to fix it. But in order to do that, in order to uncover that mystery, she had to find Iridia.

Luna shoved gossiping students out of her way; kids complained at her lack of care as she plowed through. There was nowhere in this school that Iridia could hide from her, nowhere! Iridia's car was in the parking lot, she was obviously somewhere on campus.

So where the fuck was she?!

"Mr. Duval," Luna exclaimed in exasperation as she entered the shop, "I need your help."

"Whatever chaos you are planning, Miss Sower, I will be no part in it, and that includes tool loaning."

She shook her head with genuine distress. "Do you know where Iridia is? I haven't seen her all day. Her car is here so I know she's somewhere, but I have looked everywhere she likes to hide. She's not in any of her places."

Luna peeked over, expecting Mr. Duval to reprimand her as he usually did. Instead, the teacher looked at her with sympathetic eyes. His shoulders sank, visibly deflating. He gestured for her to come closer so they wouldn't be conversing so loudly. As she stood in front of his desk, he spoke again. "She told me not to tell anyone where she is, but I know you mean well, so I'm disobeying her wishes. She's hiding up on the catwalk, and... something has her more broken than I've ever seen her. I can't figure out what can be done about it." He tapped his fingers in a worried pattern on his desk. "She said she thought she would be okay to go to class but she was here by the first bell. And then... straight to the catwalk she fled. Maybe you can talk her down from there."

Luna's mind flashed back to when Brielle had come to talk to her when she had hidden up on the catwalk—though she had been everything but hidden. Now Iridia, a girl used to not being seen when in plain sight, had to actively hole herself away where someone wouldn't look to find her. Unluckily for her, Luna was stubborn.

"Iridia?" Luna called out, letting her projected voice echo into the theatre and giving Iridia the chance to reveal herself. "Where are you?"

Silence.

"Iridia, you're in here somewhere, I know it."

Nope.

"Iridia Trilliaris, I have checked everywhere else on this school's property, this is the only place left you can be. Would you stop hiding and talk to me?"

"Why?" a raspy voice above her called. "It's pointless."

Iridia was now in an almost identical position to where Luna herself had been at the dress rehearsal for her breakdown: curled up on the catwalk, knees to her chest, face hidden. Luna had never seen her so weak, so distressed, so helpless.

"Can I come up there with you?" Luna asked from her viewpoint of the stage far beneath her.

"No. Mr. Duval wasn't supposed to tell you I was in here." She sniffled. Was she... crying? Iridia Trilliaris, crying? "Go away."