Dreamjumper

Chapter Seventeen

  Nothing as traumatic as what happened on Monday occurred over the following week. In fact, I found myself having a good time – everything had seemed to balance itself out, little by little.

The first good thing that happened was that I managed to convince Lance and Kim that my story about being blackmailed by Amanda had been a result of an overdose on painkillers. It wasn't that hard to believe, since I had been on some pretty strong ones and the story, in all honesty, made next to no sense.

I had also gotten Lance to accept my carefully constructed explanation concerning Alistair's appearance at Robbinson High. When he came over for our weekly dinner, I sat him down on my bed and told him all about how Alistair's band Diadem, had been formed between him and his childhood friends from New York City. He had a lot of time off, because his family thought he should adjust to living in the city again, so they decided to pass the time playing in a band; that's why he had come to school so late in the year, and why his name was "Alistair" onstage and not his real name "Kai". I also mentioned that the school had called me, not realizing my circumstances, and immediately offered to choose another student – though I insisted on touring the new student around.

Alistair brought me back for more training on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday; and as it happened, my other classes were very calm and involved no nelbis or Kelic dragons whatsoever. I was disappointed when I learned that I couldn't participate in any of them except for Healing yet due to my status as an almost-complete dreamjumper, though I found that Healing was actually a lot of fun.

The objective of the class was to learn how to heal your own wounds faster, as dreamjumpers and luminates have to wait on average 24 hours before they can fully recover from injuries. Once we had mastered that, we could start focusing on healing other people.

"In order to speed up the process, you must make direct skin-to-skin contact with the part of your body that you wish to heal. Then it is just a matter of directing your flow of power to the area," the instructor, Miss Apelli, instructed.

This was easier said than done. By the end of the session, I had managed to only partly heal the small gash I had made on my thumb. I could still feel it stinging on the way home, a reminder of my disappointing failure.

My other two teachers, the flight instructor Mr. Jarvis and the dreamjumping instructor Selene Carmichael, tolerated me for the most part. I could tell they were not too pleased about having somebody in their classroom solely to watch and supposedly scrutinize their lectures. I never actually saw any dreamjumping or flying being done, as the students practiced theory outside on the green instead of in the classroom, though I did learn a lot simply from listening.

"The thing to remember is that when you are beginning flight, you push on the air as if you were climbing a staircase. It is up to you to decide where these stairs are, which makes it virtually impossible to fall as you lift off," Selene explained. "Too many of you are too tentative when you're taking those first steps. And it is only when you're warmed up that you should begin gliding – don't make me tell any of you again, do not perform any tricks unless it is on your own free time."

Jack sniggered at this, and leaned back in his chair. He glanced over at the ever-present Alistair and mouthed "passive aggressive".

Much to Alistair and Luna's chagrin, Genevieve was still teaching ombat in the academy. It was completely out of the question for me to change instructors, so I was required to train with her (though under Alistair's strict supervision, of course). We kept working with the dreaded nelbis, though with each lesson their size increased from the length of a pocketknife to the length of my arm. I didn't have to fight any supernatural creatures anymore, though; Alistair's warning gaze made sure that Genevieve never so much as thought about asking me if I wanted to try again.