Catastrophic

Chapter Eleven

    The drill runs itself, flying through the unknown and landing in the same bathroom. White tile floors? Check. Four gray stalls speckled with white dots. Silence that rattles your bones and darkness that banishes all light.

    Deep Kassie. Real deep.

Without thinking, I leap off the Throne and spin on my heels. With furious venom, I slam my pointer finger down on the red button, and send the Throne on its way back. Maybe I want somebody to come and tell me it’s alright, they believe me, and they want to apologize. Maybe I want that person to be Ryan. There’s no guarantees though…

I take a deep intake of breath and exit the stall. The bathroom door swings open and a girl my age storms in. Disregarding the angry expression on her face, you can tell she is unfairly beautiful. Her light caramel eyes compliment her dark complexion, and her wavy hair cascades down her back. She has an oval face that brings out her high cheekbones, and all in all, I’d like to run over to her, somehow get her face off her, and paste it on mine.

Anyways, her beauty mixed with her angry expression makes her seem powerful, and I immediately back up a step.

“You are Kassandra Talm. And you are downright stupid,” she barks. She has a slight accent, but I can’t tell what. In the midst of trying to place the origin, she walks over to me and slaps me. Hard. So hard, that it leaves my head looking over my shoulder.

“Dang that hurts like a…well a…female dog,” I wince, and she stands there with her hands on her hips like I did something bad.

“Well you deserved it! How could you just leave the Storm Society like that?” she scolds with her hands still on her hips.

I whip my head towards her with an incredulous expression. “How do you know about the Storm Society?” What I see now as I study her more thoroughly than I did before is that she is uncommonly wise for a teenager, and even as the situation is a bit alarming, I have this feeling that I can trust her. I ease up a bit and let some tension loose, but I still want to seem mad enough so she’ll tell me what her connection is, and if she can help me.

“It’s a long story, but I think we can spare some time,” she eventually tells. She has a gentler tone now, and although she’s wise, she may be a bit bipolar too. Without any word said, she turns on her heels and walks to the door. The halls are streaming with students and gossip, and not many see me, which is most likely a good thing. I’m not in the mood for questions. I want answers.

We wind up two flights of stairs, turn left two times down the hall and make another right. She leads me into an empty classroom and locks the door.

“What I’m about to tell you,” she informs, “is very, very classified, and the only reason I’m telling you is because I know you mean good, and I know you will go back with this information and stop the evil growing there.”

My anticipation rises and I look at her with a steady and formal gaze.

“I was once part of the Storm Society. In fact, I was born into it, as Ryan was as well. Ryan and I grew up together, we were inseparable. At one point, we were so close that if we weren’t holding hands, we would start to bawl.” She chuckles with no humor as she looks at the good old days in the midst of evilness.

“As we grew older, we had developed a trust so strong that we could basically read each other’s mind and tell what they were thinking. Both of us had loved stopping storms and saving the Earth, but we wanted something more. Being heroes didn’t fulfill us, it ended us. We wanted to save people among the people, and we were tired of being moved around like weaklings!

“One day, as part of our training, we went on one of the food runs under loose supervision. When we arrived, my dad showed us the way and stayed outside to let us be the grown-ups, and he said he’d meet us in the bathroom. We climbed up the stairs and met Wenona, who was, believe it or not, 40. She had an imaginative mind, and we were enthralled by her stories as we loaded the boxes onto a rolling cart, and we listened to every word she said with eagerness. Little did we know, she had not only an imaginative mind, but a cunning and sneaky mind, and she would do whatever it takes to get what she wanted.