Where I Belong

Don't look at them. Don't look at them.

The words swirled in my head for hours until the meeting. This meeting would decide my life, and I couldn't mess it up this time... I wouldn't. I glanced around the huge auditorium, empty, dark, and misty. A massive cloud of sanitizing mist was fanned in every inch of the auditorium, making it hard to see to the other side. Nobody else was in the room except me. I inhaled deeply, only to find I had ingested sanitizing mist... I coughed as quietly as I could, but it still echoed across the huge room. After all of the mist was out of my system, I checked my wrist watch. 9:01 AM. It was still almost an hour until the meeting began. I groaned and got up from my seat. It softly folded back into place and settled.

My skirt was starting to get wrinkled, and my black blouse started attracting fuzz like a magnet. Great. I decided I would make the trek to the bathroom so I could clean myself up a bit. As I walked, I started seeing more professors enter the building to get ready for the meeting in a hour. They politely nodded their heads at me, but in their eyes I saw confusion. 'What in the world is a student doing here?' they probably thought. I continued on to the bathroom quickly, so I didn't run into anymore people. The bathroom was bigger than it should have been, with a slightly vaulted ceiling and oversized stalls and huge mirrors lining the walls. I admired the bathroom when I should have been admiring the highly decorated hallways and the humongous auditorium. Instead, my mouth was stupidly dropped open in awe of the beautifully designed mural on the wall and the shimmering mirrors that went all the way to the ceiling.

I shyly shuffled into one of the stalls and swung the marble door closed. After I was through going to the bathroom, I stepped out of the stall and found that all of the mirrors had been fogged up. I gasped in confusion. I was only in the stall for two minutes! I squirted hand sanitizer quickly into my hand and rushed out, forgetting about my ruined skirt and blouse. I ran down the grand hallway, ignoring the confused stares in my direction, and into the audirorium. I checked my watch. 10:35 AM?! How was that even possible?! I was only gone for ten minutes! I pushed the weird experiences to the side and focused on the meeting. The Meeting! I was late!!

I burst through the doors, not meaning to draw attention to myself, and stood in the doorway. The professor speaking at the podium looked up from his notes and cast a piercing stare in my direction. He gripped the side of the podium, looking like he was going to burst into a string of curse and yelling, but he just simply said in a booming voice, "Miss Anastasia, is it? Take your seat." I straightened myself up and proceeded to an empty seat in the back. His name was Gerald McIntyre. He was the head of the community. If you disappointed him, he would always remember you as "That Boy Who Knocked Over My Tea" or... "That Girl Who Was Late For the Meeting"... the most important meeting of my life.. the meeting that decided who I was and where I belonged.