Intrinsical - Lani Woodland [69]
“Maybe she changed rooms,” Brent suggested, flicking the room lights off and on.
My thoughts spun out of control. Is she okay? If she switched schools, will I ever see her again? And my family, had they come to the school and I missed them? Will I ever get to see them again? I’m alone. I’m going to be alone forever.
All the grief, pain, and anger I had been repressing hit like a tidal wave. I felt knocked off my feet, awash in a current that pushed, pulled, and spun me around like a feather, drowning me in an emotional flood I couldn’t swim through. The room tilted and veered like a carnival ride leaving me gasping for air as my chest constricted. I doubled over, clasping my knees. “I . . . I . . . can’t breathe . . .”
Brent was beside me again, caressing my back, whispering in my ear, “You aren’t alone, Yara. I’m with you. Breathe with me.”
I tried, but small, desperate gulps were all I could manage. Brent pulled me close, holding my head to his chest. “Let’s try that again. Breathe.” He radiated calm, sharing it with me, battling the grief that attacked me with his touch like an antidote that soaked in through my skin. My ribcage shuddered as I forced my breathing to slow, Brent helping me gain control.
“Good,” he said, pressing a kiss to my temple. “Good.”
“I waited too long to say good-bye. Now it’s too late.” Tears welled up in my eyes again, then watered down my cheeks, down my nose and onto Brent’s white shirt.
“Shh . . . shh,” he soothed running his hands through my hair, massaging my scalp. “It’s never too late. Did I tell you I said goodbye to Steve? It wasn’t the ending I wanted either. Steve was ticked at me because the hijacker pretending to be me picked a fight with him. It’s hard to say your goodbyes when your friend is cursing your name. He doesn’t even know I’m gone. Still, it helped.”
“I just wish I hadn’t been such a coward and done it before.” The purple fabric of my dress flowed around my feet as I tucked my legs beside me. “I knew the world would go on without me, but I didn’t know it would be so soon.”
“It has to,” Brent informed me, winding one of my curls around his finger. “Look, there’s something there.” My eyes followed the thrust of his chin toward the ceiling. There spelled out, in glow-inthe-dark stickers, the number 774.
I jumped to my feet so fast I felt a little dizzy, or maybe I was just giddy. “That’s her room number. She’s still here. She left it for me in case I came back as a ghost to tell me how to find her.” I grabbed Brent’s hand, pulling him up. “Let’s go see her right now!”
****
After climbing to the seventh floor, we quickly found the right room. Brent opened the door but let me stick my head in first to make sure she was decent.
“She isn’t here,” I said glumly, motioning for him to come in.
“Was she always this messy?” Brent asked, taking in the paper-littered floor and the wall adorned with pictures of students surrounded by hastily written Post-It notes.
“Not to this degree . . . not unless there’s some project that she’s urgently working on.” I took the time to look at her wall and realized there was actually an order to the chaos. It looked like a timeline, the older-looking portraits to the left and Phil Lawson’s to the right. My own face was below his with a sticky note question mark attached. I climbed up on her bed to examine the first two pictures on the left, stacked one on top of the other. The first, a pale, freckled, red-haired boy was labeled Dennis Parker. The other was olive-skinned with beautiful green eyes. The name “Weld” under his picture had me reaching out to grab Brent’s hand. “That’s T.J. Weld.”
Brent had been examining the papers piled on Cherie’s bed and shrugged, not looking up. “Who?”
“He was the writer of the article that led me to astral project.” I looked closely at his name and gasped. “The T stands for Thomas. Could it be the same person?”
That got Brent’s attention, and he stood up, coming beside me, examining all the little notes Cherie had scribbled under their names. “He’s one of the two