Fight With Fire

9

I walk into the nurse's office the morning after Adrian saved me. The cuts on my hands had stopped bleeding sometime in the night but they had swelled up a bit making it hard to do anything with my hands. My head had also started hurting again and the sun was hurting my eyes when I woke up.

"Yep, definitely a concussion." The nurse says after stepping away from me. She gave me some sort of herb mixture that tasted horrible but did make my head feel a little better. "Now let me look at those hands." I hold out my hands for her to examine. The nurse cringes at the sight. "What did you do to them?"

"If you think this is bad, you should see the other guy." I try to joke but the nurse doesn't find this funny.

"Honey, what could someone have done to deserve this?" She shakes her head genuinely disappointed.

"They called me 'honey'." The nurse seems very unimpressed with my behavior. She gives up on conversation and silently applies cream to my hands.

She looks at me from under her eyelashes. "You need to get some sleep."

"There are a lot of things I need right now and that isn't at the top of the list."

She looks at me worriedly, "Stressed about testing?"

"Others are but I have nothing to worry about. I am pretty likable if you haven't noticed." I give her a toothy grin while the corners of her mouth turn down.

She sighs are looks apologetically. "I would give you something to help you sleep but I can't subscribe anything before testing, it could affect your performance." I start to get up to leave but she continues. "I am supposed to put it in your file so your examiner will see and take this into account. All of it."

"No no, you don't have to do that-"

"Actually I do, it's my job." She pats me on the shoulder when she walks by and continues talking with her back to me. "You Oaris need every advantage over the Tefras you can get."

I storm out and go straight into the lunch room. I'm at the side of the room with the smaller kids. I scan the tables until my eyes land on a head of messy brown hair. I walk over to Amy staying behind her so she can't see me. Then I put my hands on her shoulders and yell, "BOO!" She shrieks in surprise and turns around laughing. I hold my hand out to her. "You ready to go?"

"Born ready." She takes my hand and skips to the elites table.

I turn to her. "So if you want to impress them then you should show them what you can do. But don't say anything right away. Wait until you learn something that no one knows about and then ask the person about it. It'll make it more impressive."

She nods excitedly and starts skipping again beside me. When we walk to the table everyone looks over to me. Some seem excited themselves thinking that I'm going to do the same to her as I did with Charlie. They will be surprised today.

Amy's grasp on my hand becomes tightened and the smile drops from her face. She is trying to hide it but I can tell she is overwhelmed. Of course I should have seen this coming. She just walked through the lunch room holding my hand so everyone is bound to think about her.

It's okay Amy, just calm down. Focus on my thoughts. Just focus on me. No one else's thoughts for now. Just me.

Amy seems to relax a little and I continue feeding her thoughts until she is completely calm. "Everyone, this is Amy. She is going to be sitting with us today." Two people near me get up from their seats giving us space to sit. I ignore the questioning glances and sit down with Amy.