I SURVIVED

I survived my first semester of finals in college, and I'm proud to say that I did very well on them!!! I got a B on my biology final, which is amazing considering I never got higher than maybe a 65% on most of his other exams. I was sooooo happy! And, that's not all! I'm moving out soon! Like in a week. Oh goodness, I didn't think it was that close! AHHH! Hopefully I'll be able to stay on top of Perfect Strangers while I'm there. I don't think it should be too bad! I'm excited, though I don't know any of my roommates. I knew the girl that I bought the contract from, but that's it.

In other news, I had a brilliant idea the other day. I wanted to see what you guys would do. I want to have a little contest thing where anyone that wishes to participate can write me a story about one of Laela's past lives. It can be in any time period, considering she lives for at least 100 years before she dies, and it takes one year for her to be reincarnated. The story can be written in any form you like. A flashback, a dream, even a conversation if you want it like that. It can also be with either Stitch or Vance. I'd love to see what you guys come up with!! The winner will get their story put into Perfect Strangers as it fits in, depending on who the life was spent with. We can have up to two winners since she has shared lives with both Stitch and Vance in the past. If you have any questions you would like answered, facebook me, or leave a comment below! As per submissions, email me or send it on facebook! And now without further adieu, I give you chapter twenty-nine.


Chapter twenty-nine

Rage bubbled up inside me. How could I be so stupid? After my the miscarriage I had vowed never to put myself in that situation again. I stopped taking drugs, for the most part, and quit drinking, again for the most part, so I didn’t put myself in that situation--ever. I swiped my diary off my bed with a shreik, its spine crashing against the wall, flattening the pages from the force before crumbling to the ground. The air was getting thick, almost suffocatingly so, the lights flickering around me. I clamped my teeth together, my thick breaths coming out as hissing sounds, my hands twitching in and out of fists. I grunted again, kicking my bathroom door, bitter tears slipping down my cheeks.

My bedroom door opened and closed. I didn’t bother looking over my shoulder; I knew who it was.

“Are you okay, Laela?” Kitty asked, sitting on the edge of my bed, staring at me. I could feel her nervous smile. But that wasn’t all I could feel.

I turned to her, my cheeks still glistening with tears, eyes wide in wonder. “Kitty, you... you’re like me.” I said, staring at her. The ether in the air was consentrated around her, giving off a soft pink glow. It was her magical aura. Vance had explained it to me. Every sorcerer, or sorceress, had an aura, and each was colored. It was unique to them, and their powers. “You’re a sorceress.”

Her breath hitched, her green eyes widening. “How... like you?” she seemed unable to process the information.

“I’m a sorceress too!” the rage was suddenly gone, replaced by elation that I had a friend besides Vance to share my secrets with.

“How... do you know that?”

My eyebrows pulled together in confusion. I didn’t understand why she wasn’t excited about this. She didn’t have to hide her powers anymore either. We could be ourselves. “How do I know you’re a sorceress? Or how do I know I’m a sorceress?”

“Both.” Her hand twitched to her pocket where I could see the shape of her phone, but she never reached it.

“Well, no thanks to anyone else, I pretty much discovered part of my powers myself... but I had help in getting the rest of them back. Well, most of them. Apparently since I’m supposed to be this super...” I had told Kitty once before about the dreams, and she had suggested that maybe I had lived those other lives before, she even told me she believed in reincarnation, but her conversation with Stitch back in Florida suddenly came to mind and I stopped short. What if she and Stitch were in cahoots? “I’m still working on them. It’s hard getting used to all this power.” I finished.

“How did you know about me?” Her voice shook and I could see her aura quiver nervously.

“I can see it. Your aura, that is. It’s a nice pink color. Ether concentrates around people who can manipulate it, and sorcerers each have their own unique color to their arua. They can’t see their own, so they don’t really know what color it is unless someone tells them... it identifies them to other sorcerers.” I felt as if I were lecturing, but she wasn’t stopping me. “What color is my aura?”

She stared at me for a long time.

She shook her head, not saying a word.

“Oh come on, what color is it?”

She shook her head again. “It’s not there.”

Not there? That couldn’t be right. I rushed to the mirror in the bathroom; I wasn’t hoping to see the color of my aura, but I had seen the way the ether particles in the air had a tendency to concentrate themselves around sorcerers, of course Vance was the only other person I had met until now. But the ehter was always so strong around Vance, his aura was a flaming red, almost as if he were surrounded by vivid fire. What I saw in the mirror made me scream.

My reflection was distorted, as if it were being put through a filter, passing through a grainy television set. My reflection flickered; I leaned forward to inspect my reflection as Kitty came rushing into the bathroom, screaming when she saw my reflection. Nothing was affecting her reflection, so the mirror had no part in this awful sight. It was something about me that was changing the image I saw. But what?

I looked at her, hoping for an answer. She shook her head, her eyes full of fear.

“What have you been doing? Who told you about your powers?” She asked suddenly, her voice taking a rather hostile tone.

“Nothing!” I shouted, my hand flying to my chest. “Vance told me about them! When I found out about Tony I was with Vance and I had a blowout. He explained it to me... so I would understand what had happened and why I felt different, that’s all!”

Her eyes had become slits, her jaw clenched and her top lip quivered. “What did Vance say?”

A thought suddenly burst into my mind as if a switch had been flipped. “You knew,” I was appauled that she hadn’t said anything when she knew all along. She had known I was a sorceress and said nothing. “How could you keep that a secret?!” I felt tears burning the edges of my eyes. I pushed past her into my room, yanking open my drawers and pulling a few pairs of clothes out. “Some friend you are.”

She watched me as I shoved the clothes into a small bag and grabbed a few other esential belongings before storming away from her into the living room where I had left my phone. It was dark, but the twins were watching a movie on the couch. They both looked up at me as I banged into the room, grabbing my phone and charger off the bar and shoving it into my bag. I pressed one button and walked out the door, holding the phone to my ear. It rang a few times before he answered.

“Laela, why are you still up? Shouldn’t you be sleeping, you have class in the morning?” Hearing Vance’s voice was calming.

“I need you. I need to be away from Kitty right now. She... she’s in with Stitch. They’re working together.” I felt the tears I had been holding back start streaming down my face. “I can’t... I just can’t right now.”

There was a loud crash from somewhere behind Vance and a deep guttural snarl. “As mch as I wish I could be with you , or come to get you, I’m a little tied up at the moment.” There was another snarl, followed by what sounded like a muffled scream. “Can you go stay with Cam for the night?”

“No... we aren’t allowed in the boys rooms after ten. If I get caught I could be expelled.” I explained, feeling suddenly lost and without direction or purpose.

He sighed. “No one will catch you. I’ll let Cam know you’re on your way up. He’s on the eighth floor. Room two-oh-seven. I’ll pick you up after school tomorrow and you can stay the weekend.”

I wanted to complain, but Vance quickly said ‘I love you’ and hung up the phone. My heart was pounding out of my chest. Had he just said those words? Was I imagining it because I needed to hear them again, to hear those words from a boy...? I had lost Tony. I had lost that constant, and now I was imagining people telling me that to fill the gaps. Stumbling into the elevator I braced myself against the cold wall as the car lurched upward, and that’s when the tears began. I don’t know what I was crying about, if it was Tony, or Kitty, or even something else, but the tears came hard and fast, and they didn’t let up as I stumbled blindly out of the elevator. I ran the back of my hand over my cheeks, but no matter how many times I did, the tears kept flowing, drowning my skin. Dark shadows moved up and down the walls, blurred from my tears. I don’t know how I managed to make it to Cam’s door, but I was in his dorm, being rushed into his room before I realized what was happening. He drew back the covers on his bed and helped me in. My body was quaking with sobs, quiet though they were, I felt as if I were making noise enough to wake his roommates.

I felt his hand gently stroking my hair; he was saying something to me, but I couldn’t quite make it out through the noise my thoughts were making. For quite some time I just lie there, curled into a ball, with him stroking my hair before my body felt heavy and my eyelids began to sag. I tried to fight it, but sleep’s dark tendrils crawled across my vision drawing me into the black.

I woke the next morning to find Cam sleeping on the floor sprawled out like a jumper on the pavement, the blanket he had been using tangled around his feet. His t-shirt was bunched around his chest, exposing his well toned stomach. I had never noticed before just how sculpted he looked; each line was clearly defined on his stomach making his abs look incredible. I sat up, brushing my curls out of my face as the door handle turned slowly. My throat tightened as terror choked me and a sudden rush of adrenaline kicked in. I darted off the bed, hopping over Cam, and hid myself behind the door to his closet. With my hand on my chest I listened as the door creaked open and someone entered the room. I kept my breathing light, despite the urge to pant from the sudden burst of movement as my vision began to be clouded with stars.

“Cam, you really need to learn how to sleep in a bed mate.” I didn’t recognize the voice. It must have been one of Cam’s other roommates. “You’re doing it all wrong.”

The was a chuckle and another voice added, “How’d ya ge’ so fur away frum yer bed, mate?”

Cam groaned and rolled over from what I could see through the crack in the closet door.  “Shuddup. Go away... it’s too early.” he muttered.

“It’s tha same time we go runnin’ every mornin’. Ge’ up ye lazy ting.”

“Fine, get out of my room.” He grumbled, pulling himself into a sitting position, the muscles in his stomach contracting beautifully. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

The door closed and Cam stood up, looking around the room. He pulled his shirt off and made his way to the closet. When he opened the door, he jumped back, startled. I blushed; here I was hiding in Cam’s closet with him half naked in front of me. A smirk crawled across his lips, making his blue eyes sparkle.

“Good morning to you too, beautiful.” he said leaning toward me. “I wondered where you went.”

I drew away from him, “I wasn’t about to be caught by your roommates in your bed.” I whispered.

“You move quickly, that, or they just open the door really slow.” I glared at him. “We’re going out for a run. All my roommates will be gone for the next hour. Shower and get yourself ready. You can wait in the living room. I’ll make sure we don’t lock the door so it doesn’t look suspicious.” He leaned in and kissed my forehead, grabbing a sweatshirt from a shelf and walking back across the room for his shoes. “Don’t come out until you hear the front door close. Wait a couple minutes just to be safe before you shower.”

I nodded and he stepped out of his room, being greeted loudly by a chorus of ‘It’s about time’s then the front door opened and closed. I stepped out of his closet and slowly made my way across his room. I hadn’t noticed all the papers scattered across the floor last night, but it was certainly a cause for mess. I bent down to look at a paper and noticed they were lyrics. Cam writes songs, huh? I looked over the page, reading the words carefully. They were amazing. I would have to ask him to play me one sometime.

Walking into the bathroom I laughed. This was definitely a boy’s bathroom; there were clothes lying on the floor, the counter was a mess and it smelled like way too much cologne. I wrinkled my nose, grabbing a towel off the wall and hanging it over the top of the shower curtain. As I began to peel off my clothes, I remembered the mirror. My chest contracted, tightening in response to the building dread in the back of my mind. Slowly, I turned my head to look at myself over my shoulder. I screamed, nearly falling backward into the shower. The reflection was worse now than it was last night. My whole form had been consumed by a dark mass, red pinpoints where my eyes should be.

Something was wrong. Very wrong.