A Slave to Love

Chapter 5: My Spidey Senses are Tingling

"Wow, this place is huge!" I exclaimed, looking around at the large campus of my new boarding school. The school was about four hours away from home by plane so I was going to actually be living here in a dorm with roommates and everything. I'd never been away from home like this before and while it did make me nervous, I was more excited than anything else. 

It'd had been two months since that week I had disappeared and I still couldn't remember what happened. I was still having nightmares and was so anxious I could hardly think straight, but hopefully now that I was here things would change. And if they didn't? Well, I was out of ideas.

I hadn't been able to hide my tattoo for very long unfortunately, in the summer heat it was hard to wear long sleeves, but Mom didn't get too upset. She did ask if I wanted to have it removed though, and made me get it checked by a doctor in case of some kind of infection, but I told her that I actually quite liked it and that I wanted to keep it, and since I'd gotten the all clear from the doctors, she let it go.

"Yeah, that was my first thought too," Reena, one of the school prefects, said to me. She was in charge of helping people around the school on the first day of school, mostly first years but since I was new she helped me out, despite being a senior.

"Am I going to get lost a lot?" I asked as my mom and I followed Reena into the brown brick dorm building which was filled with kids around my age, all moving in with their families and friends helping drag their stuff inside.

Reena laughed. "Probably. On my first day I only succeeded on making it to one class on time while the rest of my classes I was super late."

"Lovely," I groaned as we ascended stairs.

"Since you're a fifth year student your room is on the fifth floor," she explained. "No elevator I'm afraid, it's only for handicapped students and you need a permission slip, but at least you'll be really fit by the end of the year."

"Fun," I said, as we started to walk up five big flights of stairs, dodging in and out of the way of kids and parents and people with instruments and luggage and sorts of things. Maybe I ran track at my old school, but that didn't mean doing five flights of stairs several times a day every day sounded like a good time. 

We finally got to the top floor, my poor mom desperately trying to hide how winded she was while I tried not to laugh, and then turned down the right hand hallway. There seemed to be hundreds of hallways all branching off from the main one with doors lining each one. It was like one big maze, one I was sure I'd get lost in frequently. 

"Down that hallway is a lounge area and it has vending machines and couches and stuff where people from this floor, and others, can hang out," Reena said, pointing down one of the hallways. "There are a couple of lounges per floor and you can hang out in whichever you want. But most people hang out on the one that's on their floor."

We walked for a while longer, still having to dodge out of the way of people. Some doors were open and had people in them unpacking or talking or hugging or whatever, reuniting with their fellow classmates. For the first time, a prickle of nerves at this sudden move hit me. I was starting over completely in a new school and I was going to be completely on my own.

What if I didn't make any friends or horrified my room mates with my nightmares? What if something happened to me again but this time I wouldn't have my mom or Peter or my friends to search for me and worry about me? Who would even notice I was gone?

"This is your dorm room," Reena said, knocking on the door. She waited a moment, but when no one answered before she produced a key and opened the door.

"Here's your key, please don't lose it," Reena said, "It's hell to have to get it replaced and it takes a while before you can get a new one, and I doubt you'd want to have to depend on your dorm mate to open the door for you all the time."