Forty-One After Midnight (Completed)

Chapter Six

That night it happened again. I woke up at 12:41am. The same light was dimly lighting up the lawn between the main building and our dorm hall. I sat up and looked around nervously. Everything seemed so different this time now that I knew that something strange was happening, and to be honest, I wasn't even sure what to do. It wasn't like I could leave my room if I wanted to.

I stood up and looked over at Laney to make sure she was asleep and walked over to the window. This time the girl was already there. I waved, thinking maybe she did see me, and to my surprise I saw her hand slowly appear in the window and move back and forth like she was waving. I almost jumped, or screamed, or did something that might have woken Laney up, because I was a little bit shocked. She's watching me, I thought. What a creepy thought.

How on earth could she even see me in the dark room? I couldn't have been a shadow like her. There was no light behind me.

I stood there staring a little longer, but then realized there was nothing more I could do. I went back to bed and closed my eyes. I was sure to have another one of those dreams. I always had them when I woke up in the middle of the night and saw the girl.

Sure enough, I soon fell fast asleep and started dreaming, I was the black haired girl again. I let the dream take me wherever I was meant to go and watched as I began to write yet another note. I guessed I could expect from now on that there would never be talking in these dreams. I watched the words appear on the paper as my dream self wrote them down.

You're learning. 41. Book in library. Please help us.

Now I was utterly confused, and surprised, and creeped out all at once. It was obvious at this point that these dreams were not telling me I needed to head back to the city. I realized that now. They had nothing to do with my personal issues either. These dreams were actually telling me what I needed to do in real life to help whoever it was that was giving me these messages. The black haired girl maybe? I wasn't entirely sure. I wasn't even sure I knew how she would be communicating with me through my dreams in the first place, but at least now I had somewhere to start.

Tomorrow at dinner, Kyle and the rest of us were going to head down to the library to search for this book. A book of what? About what? I really had no clue, and I didn't think they were going to either, but it was worth a shot. It was the only thing that we knew to look for. As simple as it sounded... a book.

-

The next morning I sat through incredibly boring classes. At least they seemed that way to me, probably because I was waiting for them to be over so I could go investigate some strange events happening at our school that no one seemed to want to talk about. Time was stupid that way. It always seemed to drag on when all you wanted was for it to go by faster. If you didn't want it to go by fast though, then it had no problem flying right by.

Laney talked to me more. You know what? I even thought I caught Mark glance at me while we were talking in the hallway. As strange as that was though, weirder things were happening. Was I finally where I wanted to be? People were talking to me, Laney and her friends, Kyle and his, even all the people that worshiped Laney and her brother. They all wanted to know me, just because I knew Laney and Mark. I was technically popular.

I remembered what Courtney had said about them though. This could have easily been a distraction to try and get me not to focus on what was really going on here at night. I tried to remember that as I was having a nice time getting to know everyone and talking about things like clothes, and shopping, and how our parents had sent us here because they wanted the best for us. A lot of these people, I discovered, were not at all like I had made them out to be in previous years.