Pearl Academy I The Emergence

Chapter 14

I was given sick day and, much to my dismay, Ms. Goudman told Karen what happened. She's called me every hour on the dot since my panic attack early in the morning. It's unfortunate for me because she likes to hover her sick babies. This was the tenth call before the afternoon.

"Have you eaten anything to settle your stomach? I know you're feeling all better now but it will help with your nerves."

I try to reign in my 50th eye roll of the morning. I'm sure it's killing Karen being so far from me when I need her the most. Trust, it's killing me too. I anxiously pick at the skin on my inner arm. I haven't been able to get the dream out of my head. "I promise you, Karen, I am taking care of myself. If only I wasn't I wouldn't be aimlessly walking around the school with nowhere to go." Karen scoffs on the other side of the line. "I'm just saying, Karen! I threw up almost twelve hours ago. I don't think that I should be taken out of my classes for something that only happened once."

"Throwing up is a sign of an illness, Kelly," she sighs into the phone again. As if I was annoying her too much on the topic. "Will you tell me what caused the spontaneous nausea? I know it was more than a stomach bug." I've only been gone for a couple of days and I've forgotten how astute her mother instincts are. I've done my best to hide my nightmares from her for the last few years. Now I'm wondering if I was actually successful in that. "I don't want you to freak out, okay? I need you to promise that you wont pack the car with the herd and drive all the way here."

The moment I started was the moment I knew I had given up all my cards. I had shown her my hand and she pounced. "You're having nightmares again."

That is all she says. "You forgot to promise! And these nightmares are nothing but stressed induced dreams. I'm in a new environment surrounded by new people. Once I get used to this place, it'll all go away." Karen stays silent for a couple of minutes. I feel bad for lying. Because that's exactly what I am doing. I am lying to her! Deep down, I know that my dreams won't go away. Dr. Cale would ask me why I thought that. I wouldn't be able to give her a sane answer.

But the cut on my inner arm from smashing through that glowing white door was still visibly red.

*****

After Karen finally let me go about my day, I decided to take the journal and go down to the Undercroft for some peace. Cassie, no doubt, would be checking up on me in between periods soon. And I'd rather not answer the same exact same questions all over again. This was the only place I could potentially avoid them.

My quiet steps echo quietly as I make my way down to the Undercroft. It hasn't changed since I was last here. The drapes were where I left them. The floor to ceiling window is still as confounding as it was before. I find a place to sit on a bundle of drape right in the middle of the cooling glass. It is extremely dusty but manageable.

I haven't opened the dairy since last night. I hadn't been brave enough to face the cause of that awful nightmare. I rub my thumbs up and down the soft red leather cover of the book. A part of me wants me to put the book back where I found it and let it go, but another, more persistent, part of me wants to keep going. That part obviously won. I flip the book open to the page where I left off and stare at the page in silence.

It's...empty.

I flip to another page. And another and another.

There were no words on any of the pages. Just blank page after page as if it was a new dairy. It was...so frustrating! No, astonishing really. This has to be all a grand scheme to make me go insane. Within all the years of crazy that I've had, this has to be the lose stone that will collapse the walls inside my head. I throw the book unto the floor and place my head in between my hands. What the hell am I doing to myself? The lack of answers hurts my head.

"Write it down."

It was soft. So soft that I had almost thought it was all in my head but the words seem to echo from further down the Undercroft. Goosebumps rose up along my arms as I reach for the red leather bound diary. I wasn't quick with my movements. In fact, the eeriness of this makes me proceed with caution. With another hand, I reach into the nearest box searching for something to write with. My hand closes on a small pen.

A fountain pen. An old one too. The ink is encapsulated with some kind of worn-out silver. It hasn't seen the light in years, I can imagine. I don't think about it too much. I simply open the book and add my first entry to a dairy that's not mine.

I had a nightmare. I saw the end of this school and the end of all my friends. I saw a girl that survived the destruction. She told me that we'd see each other again. Is it bad that a part of me wanted to stay longer? To ask questions, to get answers. In the end, the fear overcame the curiosity. And now I'm stuck. I don't know what to do now. What should I do with this overwhelming feeling that I've crossed a threshold that will lead to something I never wanted to face?

I put the pen down in between the pages and let the tears fall. I hate to admit how good it feels to put the words onto the page. The relief was instant. I close my eyes as the weight falls off my chest. The questions aren't gone but they aren't floating around my mind anymore.

I look back down and reread the words I scribbled down with the blotchy pen. It was like seeing into the mind of someone else. Surely I don't sound this broken in my own head. It actually makes me feel sad as I go through it, sentence by sentence. I should send this to Dr. Cale and have it analyzed. I find myself drawn in to the last sentence that I wrote. The question that has begun to haunt me since the first second that I crossed the state border. I kept looking at it as something began to change on the page.

Words that I didn't write appear underneath. Each letter appeared one by one in a messy script. And the implications of it all intrigued me more than frightened me. I hold up the page closer to my face as it stops with a sharp period at the end of the sole sentence on the page.

If you never wanted to face it, then you wouldn't have crossed the line.

It was a slap to the face...because they were right.