Origin (Book 2)

Chapter 8

"Up and at 'm!" Sage yanked the bed sheets from over me.

I jerked awake. I really hated being woken up.

A weird feeling of hate washed over me as I looked at Sage, and it took me a second to match the emotion with a reason.

"You lied to me," I said, angry. "I wasn't gone for a few days. I was gone for months." That explained Sage's talking like she had been here a while.

She locked her lips, forming them into a thin line. "Where did you hear that?"

"The TV. Which, by the way, just aired a special report on what happened at our school. Or did I sleep for another month instead of two hours?" I added the jab at the end to drive it in.

"Why was I asleep for that long?" I asked. "And why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't tell you because I didn't think you needed to know that right after waking up. There's a lot you don't know yet, stuff that you need find out. That would've just been one more thing you had to worry about. Cassie, Blink, and I were on that segment, trying to cover up what really happened and protect you. So don't accuse me of being untruthful. I was only doing the wrong thing for the right reason."

I huffed. "Take me to orientation."

"You don't give me orders," she said, but she still got up and led me to where I needed to go.

She took me to another door in the hallway, into a section that branched off into another filled with identical doors. It would be easy to get lost in this maze.

"Go," Sage said curtly, nodding to a door in the back. "You can find your own way back." She headed back the way we came at a fast walk.

I turned the knob and entered the room.

It was surprisingly small compared to cafeteria. Rows of desks filled the back of the room, but there could only been a hundred of them, tops. In the front was a blank screen.

There were some students in the desks. Most of them sat in the front. Which is why I chose to sit in the back.

There was a notebook full of lined paper and a pen resting on my desk. I looked around and saw that everyone else has the same thing. Apparently, I would need to take notes.

The ones in the front talked in shield whispers now that another person was in the room. I caught some of them staring back at me.

"What are you looking at?" I said. Their whispers became quieter and they stopped looking at me.

I slid down in my seat. It was about time for orientation to start, even though I still wasn't sure what orientation was.

A girl came into the room, looked around, and walked back out. I watched the spot where she had disappeared, puzzled, but she reentered right after. She walked to the back of the room and took a seat next to me.

"Hello," she said.

"Uh...hi?" I said, unsure of what to say. Making friends wasn't one of my abilities, unfortunately.

"This is the orientation room, right? It has to be. You don't look like you know what's going on either."

"I don't," I admitted. "But why don't you ask the people up there? In are they know." I waved my pencil in their direction, where a few loud giggles were escaping from the group.