Lainey and the Magicians (First Draft)

Chapter 25

 Lainey woke up. Why had she been outside the door to Codebreaker's enclave? She couldn't believe how she hadn't gone back to her own room in the middle of the night. Her head had hit the hard floor. Her bladder was about to storm out without her permission. Her powers. They had come out without her permission back when she'd tried to steal the memory-erasing device from Codebreaker's room. She had seen Emerald last night. I will always be in your head.

 He was in front of her again while she lay on the floor like a slave who had just been whipped. She stood up. Her heart fluttered. Why was she feeling this way? She didn't want to feel this way. This world was unfair. Why couldn't Emerald be on her side in this war? How did he get into David's house? David had high-security. What if the Anti-Magicians was an entirely staged operation for the sake of the Magicians taking over the entire world?

 "You've fallen far," Emerald said.

 "You grabbed me by the throat last night in Codebreaker's room. Why did you do that?" Lainey asked. Emerald had taken out a band-aid and handed it to Lainey. She didn't want to think right now. This man had inspired all sorts of both positive and negative thinking over the years, but her mind had grown too stressed out. Right now, she had to wake up and then she would get onto her task. Why had Emerald handed her a band-aid?

 "I wanted you to know I was there and I wanted to be nice to you. Some immoral methods are necessary to accomplish good goals. I see you now. This band-aid represents how babyish you are now sulking on the floor and sleeping in corners. You were once rich, famous, and you had friends. You had family. We aren't evil, Lainey. Evil is just another word for different. It is a word for people societies' leaders haven't approved of so they make up words to describe them. All words are made up in one way or another, from another language like Latin or Greek, or by making random noises to form words," Emerald turned his head away.

 Why did he have to do this to her? She wanted to reach out to Emerald. No. She couldn't. He had attacked people, staged raids, and he was into anarchy beliefs. He was a maestro of chaos and turned families against each other. He had turned her against her family without them even knowing it. All her values had been destroyed. Even before that, she was sinking into the deep of the world's darkness with some of the music in her Alternative Club and she had even gone down a darker path when Carla had forced her to hand over the funds of the Alternative Club's treasury members to her. Lainey's mind was back at the scene of them eating Chinese food in the Spice Mall with two of Carla's other friends, Traci and Lacey. They were both shrews and they had no self-control. Traci had shown Lacey a picture of a guy on Instagram and they passed it to Carla underneath the table even though they weren't in school.

 Nothing was shown more than a bare chest, but Lainey didn't want to see it. When she saw those kinds of pictures, she sunk into lustful thoughts and her cheeks were red all over. She wanted more of those pictures if she saw them so she had closed her eyes when they passed it to her. She didn't want to end up watching inappropriate adult stuff. In comparison to a lot of stuff out there, a bare chest was nothing compared to some of the jokes and pictures she'd seen in the halls of school. In a small town in Arizona in Antonia County, you would expect the kids at the school in this suburban town to be clean cut kids who filled up the church pews every Sunday, but these kids could be raunchy & abrasive. When the teachers did Magician related drills in case the Magicians stormed through the school, they even let the kids yell nasty words during the drills. They didn't make them shove soap into their mouths or promise to say sorry afterward. Desperate times called for desperate measures, but Salt wasn't that desperate of a town. It wasn't as bad as towns like Oak Ridge, Rhode Island, which was high in criminal activity and one of the lowest school ratings in the entire country. A long time ago back in the early 2000s, Emerald had staged a raid in Oak Ridge, Rhode Island.

 Before she could respond, Emerald faded away.