The Perfect Hybrid

CHAPTER XXIII

This has been a long awaited chapter. I do apologize for the long wait.

Ella

Despite René's unreasonable warning, not to mention her cryptic promise, I find myself enjoying Ezra's company. I have no idea how he did it but he managed to get my mind off of my nightmares. True, I sometimes still think about the meaning behind those dreams and how René knew about one of them, but somehow those thoughts were easily pushed back from the front of my mind, making Ezra the front and center of all my thoughts and daydreams.

For the next few days, Ezra and I have been getting to know each other better. I am not sure if I will ever admit this but his presence is comforting. Whenever I feel down or need of cheering up, I feel the need to seek his presence. We have been spending a lot of time together and I feel I could not be any happier about it, especially since Skylar has recently been too busy chatting with Hunter or too dazed to even join in our conversation.

It was weird to say the least. It was as if Skylar changed overnight.

After I got home that day René and I had a confrontation, I decided to wait for Skylar's call as to not intrude on their date. While waiting, my thoughts drifted to what happened that afternoon. By the time I got my head back, I realized that it was already late and for some reason, Skylar neither called nor texted me which I found more than unusual since she was the one so excited about knowing and sharing every details of our lives. When I asked her about it the next day, she just said that she forgot about it and that she had a lot of other things going on in her mind. I shrugged, deciding to leave that topic for later and asked her about how her date with Hunter went instead. Upon hearing my question, she became upset and acted weirdly and saying that it's not her fault before walking out.

What does she mean by that?

Throughout that day, she looked shaken and uncharacteristically short-tempered. Her eyes kept looking out the door as if someone would suddenly appear.

I figured that she and Hunter probably argued because surprisingly enough, he was not there on his usual waiting spot when the class ended, and she did not wait for him either. I had to run to catch up to her to try to comfort her but to my shock, she shouted at me to leave her alone.

Too shocked at what happened, I was left frozen on the spot, watching her run away.

When I got home, I tried to remember if I did anything to upset her that day but no logical reason came up that made me the reason for her behavior.

She probably just needed a time to think...

Deciding to give her a space, I didn't call her and try to talk to her. I figured maybe she would eventually come around. And I hoped that the next day would be that day.

The next day cam but Skylar didn't. Her absence distracted me all day. It isn't because she was never absent, hell we were absent for a few weeks, but her being absent in school now is highly unusual. She did not show any signs of illness yesterday. The only thing that she showed was her temper in small things and the way she was acting the whole day. It was too coincidental and strange. Thinking deeply about this made me lose my focus in class. After I got scolded by the teachers, Miss Arisa was not included, one too many times, I resolved myself to paying her a visit once class ended. Ezra kept me company throughout the day until I told him that I would prefer to visit Skylar alone.

Without Ezra's presence on the way there, I was bombarded with different thoughts; from the incident in the woods to Skylar's sudden change in behavior.

Is it really connected or am I just being paranoid?

She was pretty normal before yesterday so the events in the woods and her behavior do not really add up. The only reason I could come up with is that she and Hunter probably got into a fight. After all, he was the last person that she was with that day that I know of.