Love Lines

5: Things of My Nightmares

Chapter Five

After they finished fixing me up at the infirmary, I was led to where I could change into something a bit more presentable. Unlike the Agora, the rooms here were pretty bare. There were no flourishes or special touches. There was a twin size bed in a tiny room which also had a dresser and a desk sharing the space.

"You can fix it up however you want," Andrzej commented.

I'd walked in, feeling completely disconnected. I don't know how my mother did it. Everyone here was...cold, distant. It wasn't that they were unfriendly per say, it was more like they just had no interest in me. There was nothing wrong with that but after the welcome I'd received at the Greek version, this one just seem blasé.

"So this is the room my mother stayed in?"

"Yep."

I nodded and looked around, half afraid of spending any kind of alone time in here. I didn't want to think what she imagined when she looked at the walls, the ceiling, the floor. Anything. My mother was now as foreign to me as this room. I didn't like that feeling. I didn't like knowing there was a side of her I didn't know anything about, that my father didn't know about. How do you keep something that massive a secret for so long from the people you loved? Did she not love us enough to tell us? I knew it was a life she left behind to be with my father but I didn't understand why she left, why she didn't tell. It wouldn't have mattered, not to my father or to me. It was a part of who she was. Why didn't she want to share that with us?

"It's...neat."

"How else did you expect it to be?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. My expectations thus far have been made null and void."

"Well don't sound so sad about it. Being here isn't that bad. You'll learn to like it."

"That's the thing." I turned to look at him. "I don't want to have to learn to like anything. It should just come naturally and this..." I waved around indicating the room "...this does not come naturally, not at all. There's nothing here that says 'This is definitely Natalie's room'. This is supposed to be home, a safe place and yet it feels like I've gone away to camp." I sank down on the bed, staring at the dresser that wasn't even four feet away. "There's nothing connecting me to this place. I want to feel connected and I just don't."

I looked at him, hoping he would understand but instead he just stood a smidgen in the room since I invited him in, and a look of complete frustration graced his face.

"Well, I know it's not the Ritz. I know it's not that house you live in over there. But this is still as good as any."

"I'm not saying it's not." I stared at him pleadingly. "This place...my mother...they are completely unknown to me. When I was at Agora...I don't know what it was. There was just this feeling that told me I belonged there, that I would be safe and I don't feel that here. How am I supposed to stay somewhere that doesn't feel safe to me?"

"I hate to break it to you, rakli, but your idea of safe is about to be blown out of the water. Everything you've experienced thus far in life will seem like a cake walk after your first week here."

"Why do you have to upstage everything I say? Why can't you just understand that I don't feel at home here?"

"Maybe because this is my home. Maybe because unlike you, some of us have nowhere else to go so we've made do with what we have here. I would give anything to be back in the two bedroom trailer I shared with my parents and younger sister but the situation is what it is. You need to get off that pedestal your father and whoever else in your life put you on and deal with life. The Schola is your safe place now. Deal with it." He unfolded his arms from his chest and walked out, hand on the doorknob. "I'll be waiting out here for you, your highness."