Everything Starts

CH: 10, FAUCET

The following morning I woke up with a massive headache. I hadn't been able to sleep that night after what happened with Wesley. I was wondering if he would want to talk about the kiss. If he did what would I say? I wasn't regretting the kiss but I was certainly making my decision harder.

I swung my legs over the side of my bed but just that small movement made my brain feel like it would fall out of my ear. I grabbed a cup and filled it using the water from the bathroom sink not caring about anything other than drinking water. I turned the faucet but nothing happened. Then I remembered my last night in New York. The same thing had happened. Not having the energy to wonder if I was going insane or not I put the cup down and headed back to my room. Before I could leave I heard the water turn on.

I could've sworn I had turned it off.

I spun around but the handles were straight across. The faucet was off but the water was on. I turned on the faucet and the water stream got heavier and then I turned it off again. This time it shut off. I glanced at the clock on my nightstand and realized I was late for breakfast. Even though it was the weekend the school still had set times for meals. I quickly threw on some joggers and a T-shirt and finished getting ready before I headed out the door completely forgetting about my fiasco with the faucet.

I was almost running through the halls trying to get to my friends before they left the cafeteria. I had nearly rounded the last corner when I almost ran right into Ethan.

"You look like you were hit by a truck," George described.

"I feel like it too."

"Well maybe you shouldn't have stayed up so late," reminded Zena.

"Don't remind me. How are you guys?"

"We're good. Are you good? You normally aren't this late to breakfast," Wesley asked concerningly.

"Yeah, I accidentally turned off my alarm."
"Yikes, I've done that before too."

"So what are we going to do today?"

"We could always go back to the library and do more research on this Snowdrop thing?" suggested Ethan.

"I guess we have nothing better to do so I'm fine with that," Fay agreed.

The rest of us agreed too so we made our way to the school library. We found an empty table at the back of the library and started pulling books we thought were relevant and putting them on the table. When we each had a couple of books we sat and started flipping through them. Stuck between two pages was an old newspaper article. A woman and kid had gone missing. When I read the date I was shocked. It was the same year I was born. I thought I remembered the same date appearing in another book so I stood to reach across the table when Adrian appeared again.

"Jezz you have got to stop doing that!" I hollered earning a glare from someone browsing nearby. "How are you doing that?" I asked, lowering my voice multiple octaves.

And how had I completely forgotten about our previous encounter?

The rest of my friends looked up.

"Where did he come from?" Zena asked.

"He's tall," George said, looking him up and down.

I noticed Wesley looked almost... jealous.

"He's not that tall," he said, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Alora, could I speak to you in private for a moment?" Adrian asked.

"Whatever you are going to say you can say here. These are my friends-" my voice cracked when I met Wesley's gaze, but quickly looked away.

"Well the thing is, the topic I would like to discuss is very..." he paused looking down at the books on the table. "Sensitive."

"Does this 'sensitive topic' have anything to do with Snowdrop flowers?" Ethan asked.

Zena elbowed him in the side, "Ethan! Shush! The chances of these things being connected are slim and-"

"Actually that is exactly what I wanted to discuss with Alora here."

"I knew it! Finally, being the conspiracy theorist has paid off," Ethan bellowed.

"If you don't mind me asking, how do you all know about Project Snowdrop?" Adrian asked.

"Well we were walking through the halls one day and we overheard a few teachers talking about it and there was a librarian who noticed my necklace-"

"What necklace?"

I showed him my necklace.

"Okay, go on."

"We heard the teachers and there is artwork all over the school and if you look at them the right way you can see snowdrops. Things just weren't adding up so we decided to do some research," Wesley explained.

"Yeah and for some reason snowdrops keep coming up when we do research. There's not a lot to go on but what's there mentions snowdrops almost every time and a couple of days ago one of the library ladies saw her necklace and freaked out and mentioned a Percy-something," added Willa.

"Percy Undergrove?" Adrian asked.

"Yeah..." I replied hesitantly.

"You know more than you should," he said almost silently. "Have you told anyone about anything you've found out?"

"No," I responded.

"Good."