Cold Tomorrow

[18]

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I take a seat next to Roma the next day in history. Her friend, Tori, is absent. "Sick?" I ask.

She shakes her head, chuckling under her breath. "Nah, she's probably out with her boyfriend somewhere. You can count on Tori to miss at least one day of school a week." She pauses. "Hey, um, can I ask you a question?"

"Yeah, sure. Anything." I straighten my textbooks before meeting her gaze.

Roma takes a breath. "Have you – been listening to the rumours at all?"

I stare at her for a second. "What rumours?"

She examines my face as though she doesn't quite believe me. Then she looks away, waving a hand. "It's nothing."

"No, seriously, tell me. What rumours?"

She sighs. "This thing happened last year between this girl and I. Long story short, shit happened and I had to get new friends because of it. But people aren't done talking about it, it seems. Most of the grade thinks I'm either a bitch or a freak – that's excluding Tori, of course." She fiddles with the sleeve of her navy cardigan. "It hasn't reached you yet?"

I shake my head. "What happened?"

"Nothing really. It wasn't a big deal." She laughs. "Well..."

"What?"

She waves it off, smiling big. "Don't worry about it. It's all good."

I smile. "Whatever it is, I don't believe it. You're not a bad person, and you're certainly not a freak." I look away. "Trust me, I would know," I mumble.

She glances sideways at me, a small frown hovering between her eyebrows. It appears as though she's on the verge of asking me something, but instead she grins. "Thanks."

I nod and pull open my textbook, flipping to the appropriate chapter on the early medieval period.

That's when Kalea walks in, hair hovering about her shoulders as usual. With a sideways smirk, she sits down at the desk directly beside me. I feel a wave of cold and darkness wash over me. "Hello Maya," she says, and my false name leaves her mouth like a taunt, like she knows it's just a lie. Only she couldn't possibly know. Could she?

I shiver. She continues to stare at me and I try to ignore her, focusing on my textbook and on keeping my breathing steady and in control. Roma gives me a nudge with her elbow. She looks at me wide-eyed and mouths, Why is she sitting next to you? I raise my shoulders in a part-shrug, shaking my head in a way that says, I don't know.

All too conscious of Kalea's dark eyes battering against the side of my face, I tear a scrap of paper out of my workbook with shaky fingers and start to write a note to Roma. But I never get past the second word.

A sudden scream rings out in my mind, an image bursting to life: darkness, a black-coated figure, blood. My pen jerks in my grip, extending the end of a letter in a long, harsh line.

Then the rest of the vision rushes in. It's the clearest I've ever seen it.

I stand on the edge of a cold wide room, filled to the brim with darkness. In the centre is a man in a black coat, eyes as dark as his clothing. There's a baptismal font beside him and blue flames flicker in its basin. Instead of creating more light, they just cast even darker shadows.

There's a scream. Suddenly, there's blood pooling by my feet, trickling slowly around my shoes. I sense a fear, a pain that isn't yet my own, and my heart pounds violently against my ribcage. "What have you done?!" I yell. "What have you done?" My cheeks are soaked with tears.