Forty-One After Midnight (Completed)

Chapter Eleven

Things started to look a little better for me again the next day. Laney talked to me again, actually, Mark even talked to me, and this meant that I was no longer being ignored by the rest of the student body.

We acted like absolutely nothing had happened last night, and it didn't appear as though anybody knew any different. That was definitely a relief. While I was in some of my classes, particularly math and Environmental Science, which was my sixth hour, I tuned out whatever the teacher was dragging on about and opened up Helena's journal to see if there were any more people I could discover. I figured part of our little group had to be involved in some sort of way.

Maybe this was why Jane needed them too, why they said weird things happened to them as well. I mean, we somehow needed forty-one people now, so I knew I wasn't the only important one involved anymore. The weird thing though was that unlike Laney and Mark, the rest of us didn't seem to know anything about who we might have been in our past lives.

Today I skipped eating lunch. I know lately I have been tired and I need to eat, but I am upset. Instead of eating I walk around the school. That's when I see her. My own mother. She sees me too, and I am tempted to run after her, but she keeps walking. She completely ignores me and walks into Mr. Williams's office. I walk down the hallway and lean softly against the door. I can just make out what they are saying. I will write it out.

My mother: "Hello John. Long time no see."

Mr. Williams: "Well well... Emily Madison. Did not think I would be seeing you around here. Come to get your daughter?"

At that point my mother laughed. I felt crushed.

My Mother: "Of course not. I came here for something else you have that belongs to me."

Mr. Williams: "Well you cannot have it. I have not finished yet. I need more people."

My Mother: "If I agree to help you out will I get it back faster?"

Mr. Williams: "Of course. That would be terrific. You help me then the bo..."

I could not hear the rest. A teacher caught me listening in. He grabbed my shirt and dragged me away from the door, shooing me and telling me to stop being such a nosey little witch. I cried. All I wanted to do was see my mother or at least hear the sound of her voice. How heartbreaking to realize that she didn't even want to see me.

I had to admit, I felt terrible for her, but at least I knew there was one more person helping John Williams and her name was Emily Madison. Also, she was Helena's mother so whoever Helena was, maybe they were related.

I wished I could contact Jane during the day. There were all these questions I wanted so badly to ask her, like which one of the kids walking around at night was Helena. That might have just given something away. After all, now that I really thought about it, Laney and Mark had this strange resemblance to their past lives. I thought of that when I remembered the two from my dream. They were both blonde haired and blue eyed, just like Laney and Mark.

I flipped a few more pages, skimming for anything that looked remotely interesting and came across another name.

Daniel Lewis is the most handsome boy I have ever laid eyes one. He has got black hair that shines like the night sky and big, brown eyes that just make you want to melt. There is one sad thing about him though. He has got bruises all over his body and he almost never smiles. I bet if he smiled he would be even more handsome.

I feel pain when I look at him. Such a handsome boy should not be so sad. I tried to ask him about his bruises once. That was a dumb idea. He got just a little bit defensive and left me by myself while he stomped off into one of his classes. I think I heard some rumors about him getting beaten. Kids were even saying that one of the teachers, whose name was Stanley Burke, liked to mess around with the boys at this school, and he once tried something with Daniel, but Daniel got mad and hurt him real bad. After that, Daniel was not allowed out of his room unless he was supervised and in handcuffs.

This helped a lot. I now knew that Daniel Lewis was the boy mentioned in the book I read. He was also the same boy that Jane had mentioned in her letter. Stanley Burke was a teacher. He may have just been a terrible man, but he also could have been involved. Every name we found as we continued our investigation I started to write down. This was going to be a long list of people and I needed to remember them.

I closed the journal at the end of the hour and stuck it back in my bag. I would have to wait until later to read more. I had creative writing next, and we were kind of forced to pay attention and participate in that class.

After, when classes were over, I went straight to my dorm. Laney was there waiting for me.

"Hey," she said, "I talked to Mark earlier. I think I got him to agree to help you guys out."

"That's great. I take it you're on board too?" I asked. She nodded. "Okay, well I found two more names. One of them was a kid and the other was an adult. I don't know who they are, but I'm writing them down just in case. We need everything we can get. I'm going to ask Mrs. Reeves to look for the kid's records."

"Who was the other guy?" She asked.

"He was a teacher. I'm not sure how we would find out if he's connected."

"Leave that to me and Mark. Sometimes if we get information about people and places from the past it will show up in our dreams. So we might see if he was connected."

I took her advice and left that information to them. I had more important things to focus on.