Forty-One After Midnight (Completed)

Chapter Two

The café was packed. I was still surprised at the size of the room and the amount of long dining tables it held. Oak Ridge Academy was a lot larger than I had originally thought it was. It was definitely larger than any other school I had been to.

I walked over to a line that appeared to be serving the most normal looking food and grabbed a tray. The women behind the counter piled on mashed potatoes, corn, chicken, and some kind of fruit I had never seen before as I walked by. When I got to the end I pulled out my wallet and handed the guy behind the register $6.25, the standard for dinner. Now all I had to do was find somewhere to sit, and it didn't really look like there were any empty tables.

"Nicole!"

I looked to my right and saw Kyle jogging over to me. His face was red like he had just been outside and his short brown hair was flaked with slowly melting snow. He smiled at me.

"Glad to see a familiar face?" he asked excitedly. "I was hoping we could sit together for dinner. Please? You'll meet some great people and we have room for just one more."

I sighed and nodded my head. I didn't want to sit alone again. That had been boring. Kyle looped his arm through mine and dragged me all the way over to their table on the other side of the room. I had to turn, weave, and practically squeeze through the people still walking around to make sure I didn't bump anyone and lose my tray. When we got to the table all eyes were on me.

Kyle started going around the table introducing people. I tried to keep track of names, but there were just too many people. When he finally got to the end I looked around at everyone, unsure of what else to do. I smiled politely.

"Hi."

I waved at them all. Everyone started saying hi and talking at once. It was almost too overwhelming. Kyle hushed them all and they fell silent at once. The rest of the room was still noisy though. All of the other tables were filled with conversations and laughter. I set my tray down and took a seat in the middle next to Kyle.

"So where are you from?" one girl asked.

Her name was Kelsey Cook. She was really friendly and easy to get along with. She didn't appear to be overly preppy, actually; no one at Kyle's table did. They stood out. They were more unique and liked to express some individuality by redecorating parts of their otherwise boring uniforms. I started to think that maybe I could actually get along with this group.

"I'm from North Carolina," I told her.

"Oh cool."

Everyone else started firing off questions of their own and after a while I started to feel like I was some sort of celebrity in the middle of an important interview. It was actually kind of nice. It seemed weird to me though, the people at Oak Ridge Academy sure wanted to know more about me than any of the kids at the other schools I went to. Looking back, I couldn't remember anyone ever really talking to me much, or asking me about where I was from and why I moved, at least not until we got paired together and they absolutely had to.

I ate dinner with Kyle and all of his friends and afterward we went on a little tour around the campus. Yes, I ended up letting him show me around. I had to hand it to him, he was determined. He wouldn't take no for an answer.

The building looked bigger at night with nobody in it, and with the lights dimmed and nothing but the sound of late night janitors cleaning the rooms, it felt a little creepy. We were walking down every hallway, around every corner, and up and down every set of stairs. It took us a couple hours and my feet were starting to hurt pretty badly by the end. Kyle would tell funny stories about teachers and past students and sometimes that would take the pain away and make me laugh.

I was shocked. Once while he was telling me a story, I simply looked over at him not really listening to his words, but thinking about how, for the first time in a very long time, I was actually acquiring a true friend. I smiled when he finished and we moved on to the next place.

I didn't end up getting back to my dorm until around 9:30pm. Kyle said we absolutely had to be back before 10:00pm and he didn't want me to be even a minute late. When I got back I collapsed onto my bed and waited for a while until Laney came back. She, of course, came back with only a minute to spare before we were supposed to be in for the night. I had to give her some credit though, I had expected her to be late.

"Everyone seems so nice here. Are they always like this?" I asked.

She went into our small bathroom with some clothing but left the door open a crack.

"I don't know. I don't talk to most of them," she replied.

"Oh."

I picked up one of my books and began reading the required chapter until I fell asleep. Why did I even ask her that? What other answer could I possibly expect from someone who barely seemed to pay attention to anyone other than herself?

-

I woke back up later. I was still fully dressed and laying with the book open on my chest. I sat up and looked around the room for a bit, slightly confused. I shut the book, marking my place with a little self-made bookmark, and set it down on the floor next to my bed.

The lights were off and Laney was fast asleep. My alarm clock said that it was 12:41am and I rubbed at my eyes just to make sure I was seeing it correctly. I was. I sighed. I had been hoping that it was closer to when we would have to get up for school so I could just get ready early, but I guess I needed to get in some pajamas and go back to bed instead.

I had them neatly folded in my side of our big dresser that was for some reason on Laney's side of the room entirely. I pulled them out and headed for the bathroom and as I walked across the room I happened to glance out our small window. I could see light coming from the direction of the school and decided to go take a look.

When I looked out the window I saw that all the lights in the main building were very dimly lit. If I looked hard enough, I thought I could see shadows of people walking by the windows every now and then. One time, a girl stopped and stared out a window directly across from mine for a short while before disappearing farther in. I thought for a moment that she might have actually seen me, but then I remembered it wouldn't be as easy for her, because in our room it was completely dark. There would be no shadow. I relaxed a little and went to the bathroom to get dressed.

It didn't take me very long to fall back asleep and that night I had a rather interesting dream about a girl wandering the halls of the school. It wasn't me though, which I thought was weird. Seemed to me like people always had dreams about themselves, but in this dream, I was someone else. I didn't know my name or what I really looked like. The only thing I noticed was that when I looked down, black, wavy curls fell in front of my face and my hands were so pale they could blend in with a sheet of paper.

At some point in the dream I tried to write a letter, oddly enough to myself. This is what it said:

I saw you. Help me. Please. We need you.

That was all. Seemed weird to write something like that to yourself. Maybe my inner self thought that I needed help in some way. Maybe, and this seemed highly possible at the time, it knew that I needed to be saved and brought back to the city, far, far away from this prison out in the middle of the deep, dark woods