The Teacher's Girl

Chapter 13 - The Meeting

We finish changing without saying a word to one another, James glancing in my direction every now and then. 

"Come, we have a plane to catch." He grabs his leather bag filled with papers taken from his desk and heads towards the door. He turns around to face me with his hand outstretched for me to take ahold of. We walk the long corridor and head down the stairs into the grand foyer. Three suitcases are waiting for us there along with a butler, a driver, and two maids. The butler steps towards us in a calm manner. 

"Good evening sir and madame." He pauses and faces me, "I'm Charles the head butler and this will be your driver for this evening, David." I smile at them unsure what to do. James nods and smiles.

"Let's get going before we miss our flight," James says with a cool almost annoyed tone. The maids pick up the suitcases and hurry out the door, the driver following. The head butler opens the shinny black door for James. "Thank you, Charles," James says again in the same annoyed tone.

David opens the car door for me and I slide in, acknowledging him with a small smile. The cool leather of the seat soaks into my skin sending chills down my back. James slides next to me warming me as I cuddle close to him. I lean against his shoulder taking in his warmth. He kisses my head softly, wrapping his right arm around me tighter. David gets into the driver's seat and starts the engine and I listen to the gentle hum of the car as I drift off to sleep.

°Gale McNeil°

"Under no circumstances."

The mysterious man's strange demands unsettled me. His arrival was unexpected and brutal.

How can he expect me to comply? Showing up only made me more curious and worried about the situation.

I glance around the gray dim room. Deflated balloons reading 'Get well Soon' barely float next to my bed. I shift my body to the side of the bed swinging my legs over. I just started to be mobile again, now that I have some motivation. It's been a tough few days getting back to my usual self. The doctors still have no idea why it happened, their only conclusion being it was a rapped rush of blood flow to the head or a possible spinal cord detachment. I personally believe I'm fine, but they want to hold me for a few more days. I think it is all surrounds the mysterious man who does not want me to contact Em. 

These two events have to be connected. First I mysteriously have a serious accident landing me in the hospital and now I am told to keep away from my best friend. I don't have enough time to just sit here and think about how they are connected. I need to find Em and soon. 

I slide my hospital-approved slippers and head to the duffle of clothes Em's mom gave me. She's always been so attentive to me. She was so grateful for me being Em's friend, her only friend.

When Em's dad died she pushed everyone away, including me. I came to her house most nights to see them; Em's mom always let me in with a sorrowful smile. There was always something cooking in that house, come to think of it that's all Em's mom did after the funeral. There would be way too much food on the stove or in the fridge just going uneaten. I usually came over from practice starving and ate as much as I could, but the food was still overwhelming. Em would never come out when I was over or at all, she shut herself into her room with the lights off. 

Since I was only in one or two classes with her I was not much help when it came to doing her homework. I used to look at the overwhelming stacks of paperwork and assignments she had to finish and think that it was too much for even a normal person who had not lost their dad to complete. I couldn't imagine Em finishing all of that in the allotted time and figured she would be better off with a bad grade than with no grade at all. Em's mom also pitched in to help complete the work and we used to get the majority of it completed by the due date, but not all. It didn't matter much to Em at the time, but before her dad passed she was on track for the top of our class. Unfortunately, Em's mom and I's work was not good enough for those standards, but she passes and that is all I could manage with double the work.