Forty-One After Midnight (Completed)

Chapter Twenty-Six

In the end everything was normal again. Kids were no longer locked in rooms after 10:00pm although they weren't allowed out past 11:00pm just because that would be getting kind of late.

I set an alarm on my phone one night for 12:41am, just because, and set it next to my pillow. It was weird when I woke up in the middle of the night and saw that there was no longer a light shining outside from the main building.

I even got up to go look out my window and actually felt a little sad that there was no longer going to be a girl sitting in a window staring back out at me. When I waved, no one was going to wave back. All I saw was darkness.

-

I had to admit that I felt a little different than when I had first arrived here. Actually, I felt different than I had my whole life. I wondered if anyone else in the room with me felt that same way.

My whole life growing up I never seemed to be genuinely happy about much. In fact, as I had mentioned earlier, I took things for granted all the time and people could never please me. I gave my parents a hard time for moving around all the time, but looking back, all they ever wanted was to make sure that I was successful in life and I had everything I ever needed.

It made me realize that I probably could have just talked to them if I didn't think they were going about it in the best way. That would have been better than turning into the snobby rich kid I at one time believed I wasn't. I was just like them though. I was like everyone else that went to this school. The only difference was that now I could see that. Now I felt whole again.

I could finally be happy and just relax. Why? Because of everything that had happened. I had a past life that was way worse than I ever would have imagined, but guess what... I only cared about what was going on in my life now.

I always blamed my parents and everyone else in my life for what I thought was unfair, but I never thought that maybe somewhere in the world, or at some point in time, another person could be dealing with something much worse than what I was going through.

People tend to be selfish like that. I think it's human nature, especially when you're a teenager. At that point in your life everything just has to be about you. People don't tend to realize that there are actually other things more important in the world than whether or not they have that new designer jacket everyone wants so badly.

Unfortunately, I didn't realize this until I came to Oak Ridge and met Jane. I guess in a way, I feel bad for saying I hated history at the start of all of this. I learned about the history of Oak Ridge academy and the kids that used to go there. I learned about the history of individual and seemingly insignificant people who all played a part in one major event. I learned about how things aren't always how they seem to be and that you should never just assume everything was once perfect and normal.

If I learned anything from looking into the past it's that things may seem like they aren't going your way, but you don't have to let that bring you down all the time. You may be upset now, but you have the option to change that if you really want to.

I was always a negative thinker and in all honesty that was nobody else's fault. I chose to believe that this year was going to suck and that I was going to hate it here. I chose to be mad that it was out in the woods and that I was forced to take classes like history and math. One of the biggest things though, was that I chose to believe I wasn't like everyone here and we would never get along because that's how it always was in the past for me.

In all honesty, I was not locked up in a school for poorly behaved kids. I was not beaten or treated badly, or even teased and made fun of. I didn't have people that wanted to hurt me and I most certainly was not a half spirit trapped in a building to suffer for two hundred years. Maybe that's not your average comparison, but it's definitely one that's true. I simply had parents that wanted the best for me. If living in Oak Ridge is how they planned on making that a reality well... it could have been worse.