The Blank Books

Chapter 7

I slept for about an hour, or at least that's what Kate told me. When I woke up, I had a bad case of bed head and was hungry. Eating the free peanuts from the plane, I looked around me to see Matt and Lex leaning on each other and asleep. Kate is reading on her way to taking a nap. My mom is sitting next to Anne blabbing away about who knows what. Anne is next to the window and looks bored. Every now and then she'll nod to make it seem like she's listening, but I see her stealing glances out of the window. I look out too, and see that we are above the clouds. The giant cotton balls are blocking my view of the ground, but in the occasional break I can see green.

After a few minutes of staring out of the window, I pull my notebook out of my bag and open it up to where I had left off writing. I am in the middle of writing a novel that Kate says is 'sure to be a bestseller' if I ever get it published. Writing and reading are the only things that I truly excel in. My other subjects are average and in training there is nothing that I'm extraordinary at.

When I write it's like the words come to me without me even thinking about it. Sometimes I feel like someone else is giving me the words and I am just recording it for them. When I read, I don't even really see the words anymore they just seem to appear almost in my head. Like I don't see the words in my head or anything but... I don't know. It's too hard to explain. I've tried to explain it to people before but I can never put it exactly in the words I want to. It's the only thing I can't write about. I've tried.

Going back to writing, I get lost in my own story.

"It's too late for you!" she yelled above the wind. "You were never going to be able to get away with this."

He did not seem shocked or scared as Michelle told him this. Instead he smiled which unnerved her.

"Oh but my dear, don't you know who I am? I am the one who has endured more than anyone else could. I have escaped from more places-including prisons- than anyone else in history. But do you know what the best part of this is? You all haven't seen anything even close to what I am actually capable of. No I'm saving my energy for my biggest project yet." He paused to look right at her. "Of course it is unfortunate that you will not be here to see what it is."

With that she was ready. As he pulled out something that would no doubt end her life, Michelle rolled over and pulled her handgun from where it had been hiding underneath her. She loaded the last bullet she had into it and pointed it at the man who for the first time since she had seen him was surprised. Satisfied, she quickly aimed and pulled the trigger. Time seemed to slow down as the bullet that could save her life went towards her target.

Right before it was to hit him though, he plucked it out of the air. It hadn't just seemed like life was going in slow motion, it actually had been.

"Nice try," he sneered," but I thought I told you that I was so much better than you had ever known. It offends me that you would think I could be taken down by a flimsy thing like that. In any case goodbye Miss Michelle."  Then he pulled the trigger and everything went black.

I set down my pencil on the little pull down tray in front of me and decided that I was done writing for now. I just looked out of the window until I felt a stirring next to me as Kate woke up. She joined me in looking out the window and when she realized how high we were she poked me.

"You know we are really high up right now and flying."

"Yes," I replied not sure where she was going with this.

"Well do you know what I believe?"

"What?"

"I used to think that I could not go on... And life was nothing but an awful song... But now I know the meaning of true love... And I'm leaning on the everlasting arms..." She started to sing somewhat quietly facing me.

"No! Do not start singing Kate!" With every word I said to try to stop her she just smiled and kept singing getting louder and louder. Soon she got to the chorus which she obviously sang almost at the top of her lungs.

"I believe I can fly! I believe I can touch the sky! I think about it every night and day! Spread my wings and fly away!"

I tried in vain to cover her mouth and shush her but she just licked my hand to get it off and sang even louder. I shot apologetic looks to everyone sitting around us then proceeded to hide myself under my jacket. I looked at the other people I was traveling with and saw that they were trying to act like they did not know us. Well everyone except for Matt who was sleeping through all this.

By the end of the flight, she had sang every single song that even mentions the word fly or makes you think of flying. Of course she didn't sing at the top of her lungs the whole time because the flight attendant asked her nicely to please stop singing so loudly because they had had more than one complaint about it. By more than one complaint I was pretty sure she had meant the whole plane. That didn't stop her completely from singing though. Oh of course not. She just sang quietly so that only I could hear her. What a treat.

After the long flight, we finally landed in France. We quickly got our bags and off of the plane. Stepping outside, I could tell that we were not in America anymore. For one, the weather was slightly chillier than where I just had come from but not by much. Also a big giveaway was that everyone was speaking French. Now I really regretted not taking it as my elective.

Anne looked around for a little bit when she found what she had been looking for.

"Anton!" She called.

The person who I assume is Anton turned and waved us over. We walked over to where he had a car with the doors open. He and Anne embraced each other and started to talk very quickly in French. Me not understanding anything they were saying, had to rely on body language to decipher what they were speaking about. From what I could understand, Anne introduced us to him and from the way they acted towards each other, they went way back. Anne translated for us and told us that he said to get in the car.

We all got in with Anton driving and Anne in shotgun. The rest of us piled into the large car, me, my mom, and Kate in the second row, and Matt and Lex in the third. All the luggage was in the trunk. The two friends chatted easily as he drove us to our destination which was their base.

The only thing was that my mom still didn't know that we were here on a mission as I did not generally mix my normal life with whatever you call my other life. So she did not know where exactly we were staying. See, Anne had told her that we were going to be staying with her friend whom my mom had taken a liking to because he seemed nice. As a result, when we pulled up to the base, it probably seemed more ominous than a normal house should.

It was a dark building with some windows, a few of them tinted. It looked to be about two stories high and I could tell it was old from just looking at it. But for an old building, it seemed in pretty good shape. I looked at my mom sideways to see her reaction. She was definitely surprised and I knew she had expected something, well, nicer looking. Fortunately she didn't say anything that would make things awkward and just smiled again.

"This seems like a...um...roomy place," she said,"I'm sure it's really nice and cozy on the inside, Anton."

"Oh..." Anne said but she translated it anyways.

Anton muttered something that caused Anne to laugh a little bit nervously. We walked up to the front door and Anne told us what Anton had just said in French.

"Welcome to my home," she said as he swung open the door.

"Oh my. Well this isn't exactly what I was expecting."

***
A/N: Hi everyone! I'm really excited because this story has a little over 200 reads! I know that for some people this isn't that big of a deal, but this is huge for me because this is my first book on here that I am trying to update more often. So I just wanted to give a HUGE thank you to everyone that is reading this. Every vote or comment and read means so much to me. So yea. Next think is that I am going back to school soon so I won't be able to update as much, but I will try to post a couple more updates before then. That's all for now! ~Julia