Field Investigations

Chapter 28:

The next few days were a blur. Despite the strange circumstances in which I arrived and my rocky first day, I felt like I was getting used to this place. And that was a good thing, because my escape plan from earlier was looking less and less plausible. I learned about hybrid materials in my Field Studies class, objects that could be interacted with by people in the Field and out of it. While nobody had said it, I could only assume that they used hybrid materials for the building walls. After all, the people in charge of the AFS could hardly be idiots, so it wouldn't make sense for them not to think that people might use the Field to escape.

I had Field Studies coming up in a few hours, actually, so hopefully I could test that theory for myself later. In my last two Field Studies classes, we had only gone into the Field for a few seconds, and the instructor had kept a close eye on us using his Field Interface at all times. Yesterday, though, he'd promised that today we'd take a longer trip into the Field today.

On my first day, at dinner, I found an empty table in the cafeteria. I couldn't explain why, but I didn't feel welcome at Andrea's table now that I wasn't completely new. When I sat down, carefully balancing my not-too-full bowl of soup (I've learned from experience, don't ask) on one arm and a plate of french fries on the other, I was surprised to see the girl from earlier, the one who sat in front of me at orientation, walking towards my table. Her dazed look had faded, replaced by a narrow-eyed alertness that made me think she was angry at me, although I wasn't sure why. She walked quickly, purposefully, up to the table, setting down an empty plate and resting her elbows beside it.

We ate in silence for a minute. Well, I ate. She just watched me, glancing away whenever she caught my eyes. The silence was awkward, but breaking it would be even worse. I wasn't sure why she was sitting with me, and that, combined with her grim expression, definitely made me nervous.

Finally, she spoke. "Melanie," she asserted.

"What?"

"Melanie. My name. What's yours?"

"Oh. Um... Isa."

She nodded, returning to the silence from earlier. Neither of us spoke again, and I was relieved when dinner ended and I could get up from the table. I was quiet because I was shy, too nervous to talk even if I wanted to. Melanie, though... She was the opposite. She chose to be quiet, but she wasn't shy.

She sat with me at every meal after that, but we didn't say a word to each other since.

I was walking over to my table in the cafeteria as I thought about this, carrying nothing but a plate of salad. The cafeteria food was okay, but they didn't have many vegetarian options most days.

I could picture my mom's reaction if she saw me right then. Or at least the way she would have reacted before she stopped reacting. "What'd I tell you?" I could almost hear her saying. "Look at yourself, piles and piles of real food right over there and yet you're eating this rabbit food."

I missed my mom, and not just in the sense that I was far from home then. No, I missed the way she used to be, when it felt like she actually cared. The things she said got on my nerves back then, but at least she said anything at all.

Melanie was already sitting at the table, this time with no plate at all. Instead, she seemed to be reading off of a small, white piece of paper. When she heard me approach, she glanced upwards for a fraction of a second, her eyes quickly returning to whatever she was reading. I sat down at the opposite end of the table, eating silently as usual. Not as usual, though, after a few minutes of trying to figure out what she was looking at, my curiosity got the better of me and I decided to ask.

I wasn't sure what to say. "Um... w-what are you reading?"

She didn't seem to hear, her eyes still fixed down on the paper.

I spoke again, louder this time. "What are you reading?"

"I heard you," was her annoyed reply. "I'm concentrating."

A few minutes later, without even looking up, she told me what it was. "It's a Field Interface," she whispered across the table so quietly that I barely understood what she'd said.

"A - a Field Interface? But... where'd you get it?"

She held up a finger to her lips. Oh. I hadn't thought to whisper, but now I understood: she didn't want to get in trouble, and if someone overheard our conversation, she probably would.

"Where'd you get it?" I whispered to her under my breath.

"I didn't return it," she explained. "I left a small, white, cardboard square in the box at the end of class and took it out with me."

"Won't they notice, though?" I asked, worried. "It won't be long before they realize that it's just a piece of cardboard."

"They'll notice," she agreed, "but I don't think they'll realize it was me. And even if they did, I'm not afraid. You saw what happened the last time, didn't you?"

"The... the last time?" What was she talking about?

She looked frustrated. "On the first day," she reminded me. I still had no idea what she meant. "Don't you remember? You felt drowsy. Dazed, like you didn't know what was going on. Everyone felt that."

I remembered sitting up during orientation, not sure where I was. And the people around me... they all looked just as confused as I did. Was that what she was talking about?

"I... I remember that," I admitted. "I don't know what you mean, though. How was that "the last time"? The last time of what?"

"Don't you understand? It can't be that I'm the only one who remembers before."

I stared at her blankly. Understand what?

"I was asking Ms. Gardener-"

"Abby," I corrected.

"Alright, Abby. Anyway, I was asking her questions she didn't want to answer, questions about the AFS. And that's when the world faded out, and I was just in this room, and this man told me to head over to the classroom, that I was late. That wasn't true, though, because I knew I was just in the classroom a minute before then. I didn't say anything, though. I just walked back over to the class."

What she said... I wasn't sure I believed her. The way I remembered the class, nobody had spoken at all. She had walked in late; that part was true. And I didn't remember that much from before all that drowsiness. But if she was right, what did that mean? That the people here somehow caused our memories to blur? It seemed a little far fetched, but so did the concept of turning invisible.

"So, what do you-"

"Wait - I'm not finished. Something else happened, too. You remember what Ms. Gardener-"

"Abby," I corrected again.

"Fine, but do you remember what she said?"

"She was talking about the Field, right?"

"No, no, other than that. Don't you remember her comment about a movie on Netflix?"

I nodded. I did remember. Not only that, I remembered how strange I thought it was, how out of character that comment seemed to be for her.

"You know why she said that?" I asked.

"No," Melanie admitted, "but I want to find out."

And with that, we both returned to our usual silence.