Winter's Academy

Chapter Five: A Long Day

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

- Annie Dillard

I went back to my room, this time realising things are starting to fall into place. The process of elimination will start tomorrow, we'll be able to list names and not only that, we now had the perfect allies. Why they were the perfect allies, they were on the other side of the school, the one place we are not allowed to be. Suddenly my mobile rang. It was the Mental Institute. They had to call me at least once everyone two months to ask me personally if I was doing okay - what type of things I was thinking about and what I did in my spare time. The best part was, the only one I allowed to call me was also a good friend of mine. Jenny Princess. It was always funny when I heard someone call her 'princess' - I often teased her about it.

"Hey." I said quietly,

"Hey, are you going okay?" She replied.

"Yeah."

"Anything interesting happening?" The good part is, she never asks all the questions - she just gets straight to the point, if you don't mention it, she wont ask about it.

"Six students have been murdered," I told her,

"No way! What happened, are you okay?" Always concerned about health and well-being of the younger generation. She'd make a good teacher.

"I'm fine. I'm investigating it."

"Are you sure that's a good idea, shouldn't you leave that to the authorities, that's serious, six, really?" I answered all her questions with my usual in depth reply,

"Yep..... Listen, it's going to be a long day tomorrow, mind if I call you back in a couple of days?"

"Sure, no problem, just be careful." She hung up and I fell onto my bed once again. I glanced at the clock, 4:53pm. At least if I fall asleep now, I'll be wide awake tomorrow, but I had to take my medication first - I don't want to dream, I never want to dream.

When I woke up the clock said 5:29 am. I slept for about 12 hours. Plenty of rest. I took a shower, got dressed in a black sleeveless top, dark jeans and two bands that went from my wrist to my elbow. I left my hair down for now, so I ended up sitting on it when I sat down at my desk. I logged onto my computer, opening Microsoft Excel. I named three columns, Name - Power - Suspect? Very easy, it took all of 40 seconds, that includes turning the computer on and waiting for everything to load. I stood up and put my hair into a pony tail - I really needed to get it cut. I checked the clock again, 6:48am. Perfect, the elimination process would begin at 7:30, so I had plenty of time. I walked out with my laptop, looking around to see if there were people gathered or crying or something. There wasn't - a death free day. I walked outside, the Chairman was there with the janitor, discussing something and pointing to a few random places. He always talked through his hands - waving them around like a mad man.

"Oh, Eva. Lucida, Max and you can sit here. Is that alright? I don't have much else to help you with on such short notice." I nodded, all we needed were three chairs, a table, my computer and just over 4000 students to line up and show us their gifts. What could go wrong? Max came up behind me,

"You ready? The first class will be down soon." I nodded again, that's when Lucida reached us too.

"We'll have to explain ourselves a lot today, otherwise people will start spreading rumours about why we're doing this," she said,

"No worries girls." The Chairman smiled as he walked over to us, "I explained to each of the classes why they were doing this today, so you won't have to worry about repeating yourselves."