Briar Preparatory Academy

Friends

Celeste POV

I wake up on Tuesday morning and go through the day lost in my thoughts. I can't believe what happened last night. Colleen, Lockharte. I pass through all of my classes, never paying attention to the time. There is way too much going on in my head right now. I barely notice the pair of bright blue eyes right in front of my face at one point.

"Hey. What's up with you today?" Seth asks me as I leave my last class for the day. Leave it to Seth to always see right through my cover for what's really wrong.

Gosh, his eyes. They can be seen from a mile away. They are bright crystal blue and impossible to miss.

"It's...I can't tell you. I promise I will explain later." I tell him. Because you never know who is listening.

"Okay. I will hold you to that." He tells me with a concerned expression on his face.

"Right... I need to get to mentorship. I'm meeting Rory in the library for a little while to catch up with her. See you after?" I ask. He nods in return.

I walk out of the school building and head across campus to the library. Now, when most people think of 'library' they think of a small nook with a window seat and a book. But our library is huge. I'm talking 3 stories, 2 above ground and one underground, and countless halls and corridors. Not to mention all the secret passageways. My favorite is the one built into the huge brick fireplace. My freshman year, I spent all my time in the library, discovering all the secret passageways and trying to find my way around. I missed dinner on several occasions because I was lost in the library.

I push open the door and walk in. I pass the grand entrance and take a left down the hall. I open the first door after providing a retinal scan and it leads me into another corridor. We categorize our library into different rooms based on what you are looking for. But the underground floor is more typical. It has shelves and shelves of books.

The interior of the library is rather intricate. Everything is wooden: wooden chairs, wooden book shelves, wooden floors. Even the arches that separate the hallways and corridors are smoothly cut into designs made out of cedar and oak trees. It makes everything more comfortable, more homely. It's a change from the rest of the Academy, which is made completely out of dull gray stone.

As I walk down the hall I pass all the rooms containing books on foreign language, another room on conspiracy theories, and another on illegal encryption. After that, I provide a fingerprint scan to access the stairs to the bottom level. In case all the twisting hallways and security measures weren't enough hints, we don't keep just any normal books in this library. I can't even begin to describe all the details and theories contained in them.

I descend the long stairs to the underground floor. I push open the heavy doors to see Rory sitting in a window seat in the back corner of the room, her nose buried in an Encryption book. The small area is comprised of large arm chairs and couches which are decorated with delicate cushions and pillows with different designs. Turkish rugs line the floors and a large hearth takes up the majority of the wall to my left. I shrug off my coat and hang it on the coat rack by the door, letting the warmth of the fire from the hearth overwhelm me.

"Hey." I say softly, not wanting to scare her. Despite my best efforts, Rory jumps a little bit.

"Oh! Hey Celeste!" She says, a huge smile spreading across her face. I push all my problems out of my head and smile back. I take a seat across from her in the window seat. Rory dog-ears the page she is on and snaps the book closed. She pulls her knees up to her chest and rests her chin on them.

"So, how are your classes going?" I ask her casually.

"They're good." She says dismissively. She looks at me with her electric green eyes and furrows her brow. "What's wrong Celeste?" She asks me. I am taken aback at first by her sudden question. Did I really look that unsettled? I need to get better at hiding my emotions.