Bording School Sucks

Chapter Five

The room was silent today. Silent and empty. Adrian had taken his previous seat, near the door, and away from the head of the table, while I sat across from him again. Neither of us said anything as we waited for our companions to join us once more.

After a moment, the tension in the room had grown too great and I had run out of songs to sing in my head. I looked over at the boy who, just moments before had been laughing with me. Now, his face seemed slightly worried and overall miserable.

“Hey Adrian?” I waited until he turned to me.

“Who's Adeline and why was she crying?” Adrian took a deep breath.

“Well,” He started, “Adeline was my best friend. Everyone assumed she had taken your place in the whole arranged marriage bit, so we started dating. I didn't feel anything other than friendship towards her. She on the other hand seems pretty in love with me. Her parents were looking forward to grand kids already and she wanted the wedding to come as fast as possible. Everything was moving fast and at that rate I would probably have been a dad at eighteen. Adeline likes to know she's in charge of people. She likes to know she has power over them and with the crown she would have that,” Adrian hesitated “But, now that you're back,” His voice trailed off leaving me to finish.

“She's never going to get the crown.”

His gaze left my face and froze on the table in front of him. Something clicked inside my head and I sat up straight.

“Oh God. Mason.” Adrian left his trance to stare at me. Now it was his turn to be confused.

“Mason? Who's Mason?”

“Mason's my best friend in the world. I love him more than I love my own blood and he's probably worried sick right now.”

Adrian's face went pale. Before I could think he was in front of my now pushed out chair, arms on either side of me locking me in, his face so close I could smell his toothpaste from earlier.

“Mason who? What's his last name?”

“Fulton. His name's Mason Fulton. Why does it mat-”

My words were silenced as Adrian took my hand and pulled me down the now empty hall once more. Quickly, we walked, through the shadows cast by the setting sun and into the dusk awaiting outside the school's closed doors.

I soon found myself keeping up with the boy leading my at an unnatural pace. Adrian led me to what looked like a small shed, far away from the imposing building we had just stepped foot out of, just inside the woods surrounding the grounds.

“What ar-” His finger found my mouth, keeping me quiet yet again. I was close enough to him that every breathe I took meant inhaling his scent.

He smells really good! I could see Adrian smirk slightly as I thought. Oh my God Sa- Victoria. That's your name now, you're Victoria. After mentally correcting myself, I was pulled into the pitch darkness the shed held. It was a small, dusty, structure and once the door shut, I was closer to the boy I was expected to marry than I had ever been since our first meeting.

Adrian's hand whistled through the air before hitting the side of the wall three times. His leg raised and stomped onto the floor, making the boards seemingly drop into nothingness. My arms reached for him, my voice not reacting to the sudden plunge into darkness. He began to slowly slip beneath me, further into the black.

I expected my feet to continue falling under me. My hope, however, was that I would land on the cool packed dirt that ended the nightmare I was living. Ni ether came though. Just as I felt one or the other would, I landed cradled a warm, strong, chest, in arms that I knew could trust anywhere. Adrian dropped my feet down first, and held my waist as I steadied myself.

“Keep my hand and you'll be fine.” His voice was soft in my ear as his fingers intertwined with mine.

If I'd been with anyone else in the world, my free hand would be trailing the opposite wall, my feet unresistingly shuffling along beside them. No though, with Adrian, my feet walked unhesitating to where ever he chose to lead me. Normal caution thrown to the wind as I blindly followed this boy into deeper and deeper into the dark.

Our small hallway soon opened up, and as it did Adrian's hand left mine for a moment as he darted around in the darkness, a blur of color. One by one the small lanterns hanging on the walls burst to life, illuminating every corner of the large cave-like structure.

The room I found myself in was fairly bare. A couple of small chairs sat in the center, a wooden box between them a make-shift table. Two small hooks had been pound into the hard packed earth walls, a few photos were pinned up in scattered ways, contrasting the stark, dark, brown of dirt. I soon realized that all of the pictures, were of the boy sharing the small space with me at this moment. All of them were Adrian. As a toddler, holding hands with a smaller blond girl in diapers, at what looked like a school dance with a group of people hanging from each others' shoulders, the carnival, a mall, an empty football field under gleaming lights. The strangest thing was that all of the pictures, excluding the selected few, held a common subject other than the boy now watching me with dark, curious, searching, eyes. Mason. Always at Adrian's side. Even on the lone football you could see the shadow cast by the photographer's body. I turned to Adrian as my brain raced itself to comprehend what it has just learn.

“You- you know Mason?"