Sage Hill and the Stones of Power

Chapter 3

When I got back to my cabin everyone was quiet and looking at me with varying degrees of pity or sympathy. I didn't want to talk at that moment so I tossed some clothes into a bag before heading out without a word.

I sat on the steps of our cabin. I needed to think. Again.

Fact: I need to find Cynthia and therefore my stones within two weeks. Fact: She's said to be as elusive as a ray of sunlight during a thunderstorm. Fact: I can't even use my powers until I find her. Another fact: I've decided that facts really don't like me. Out of habit I reached up to toy with my necklace, my fingers found only a sharp reminder of what wasn't there. I'd always worn necklaces, even before here, before the power, and before the stones that kept me alive, but now my bare neck held more weight than an anvil.

"Hey," Izzy came to sit beside me.

"Hey," I said back.

"You okay?" She asked. That was probably the stupidest thing I ever heard, and growing up with two brothers, I'd heard some pretty stupid stuff.

"Oh, I'm fantastic."

"Look, I get that this is horrific for you and I'm not downplaying that, at all, but being that I was one of the few here when both Cecilia and Cynthia were here, I feel like I need to tell you, this is not easy for Cecilia either." I was unnerving to hear Izzy so serious, she was always quick to a joke and pretty chill, but today it was like she was someone else. I remembered the tension that had radiated off the two of them yesterday, something made what happend personal between them, but I had no idea what it was.

"Why does she hate Cecillia so much anyways?"

"No one told you? They're twins. A lot of people blamed Cecilia for what happen, stopped trusting her, wouldn't talk to her, she was practically in exile, her closest friends even turned their back on her. Some still hate her. Cecilia hates Cynthia for it, and she should, it wasn't a good year for any of us."

"Oh," I said. "I wish I could do something, but what can I do?"

"There's nothing you can do, it's what you can't do. Don't push for answers, don't bring up the topic unless she wants to talk about it. You can't lean on Cecilia too much, as much as she doesn't want to admit it she's still fragile."

"How do you know all this? If you don't mind my asking."

"We were a small cabin, most of the girls were old enough to leave, they did. Cecilia and I were almost as new as you are now, we had no clue what we were doing. We didn't know what to say or how to act, we got to be pretty close. But that's enough about this depressing topic, you need a milkshake."

"It's not even eight o'clock!"

"It's never for early for a milkshake." With that we went up to the kitchen and made two chocolate milkshakes. Izzy told me every funny and probably very humiliating story she could. Until Zack found us I was actually laughing, like, I can't breath, laughing. Which I didn't think was possible but with Izzy it was.

Until Zack found us.

"Sage, is it true? People keep saying that..." His eyes dropped from mine to my neckline and back again. All I could see was the panic that clouded his bright, beautiful green eyes. Panic, that was because of me. I opened my mouth to say something, anything, but before I could form a sentence Zack had crossed the room and wrapped his arms around me. The words died in my throat. "How could this have happened?" He whispered. I heard Izzy walk away awkwardly. This made it real, before if I was like I was watching through a lens, I hadn't really processed that this was actually happening to me. Now I did. Now the one who always had answers, the one who had always been optimistic, the one who got me to laugh even when Izzy couldn't, was being dead serious.

Something shifts when the person you rely on most to keep reality away, at least for a little bit, suddenly can't escape the worst of this world. That lens shatters. As quick and irreversible as lightning. Something makes you go: "Now it's real." And I have fourteen days.