𝓟𝐫𝗼𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝓢𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐮𝐧𝐞

Chapter #9 - Sophie

Chapter #9 - Sophie

"Are you okay?" Edaline asked Sophie as she leaped back to Havenfield. She had called Amy— explained everything— and felt so emotionally exhausted, all she wanted to do was plop on her bed and sob herself to sleep.

Sophie just walked past her, pretending to be oblivious. She didn't have the energy or patience to explain it to another person. She didn't have the energy or patience for anything.

Because the truth had hit her. Hard.

But as Sophie scrambled up to her bedroom— a disgruntled Sandor and an uncharacteristically slow-paced Flori following— she realized she was out of luck.

Grady was in there, staring at Iggy's cage.

Then it hit her. "You knew?"

"Ro warned me that she thought Keefe was coming here, and I came in when he just dropped off the letter. I begged him to stay but... eventually, I had no choice but to let him go." He looked down, the gaze of his bright blue eyes fixated on the ground. "Please, Sophie. Please don't do anything reckless to find him." Sophie didn't say anything, just internally hoped that calling Amy and having her find him was the right thing to do. At the moment, it had seemed like the ideal decision, but Sophie knew better than anyone that it only takes one wrong move— one mistake, one bad decision— to make things a million times worse.

Finally, she let out two words, "I won't."

"Good," said Grady, kissing her on the cheek.

And as Sophie lay in bed, knowing she was never going to sleep, she realized for the first time that Grady hadn't called Keefe "That Boy".

***

The next couple days flew by so quickly, it was honestly strange.

A pattern seemed to arise in Sophie's life. Wake up, ask Amy about where things stood with going to Cambridge on her imparter, get told that the code in the scrolls still needed decoding, talk to Amy again, and wish things would get better. Time slowed down, but it also sped up. And through it all, she had to keep reminding herself one thing.

Don't think about Keefe.

The more she thought about him, the more she worried, the more she sulked, and the more time she wasted. She couldn't deal with the pain. Just... couldn't.

And so the pattern continued. There were only two times where it was broken.

The first time was the morning right after the eventful day when she had received the letter and learned about Lady Gisela being a Descryer. Biana had told her she would leap to Havenfield that morning.

Sophie had assumed this meant she'd be learning about what Dex knew.

Naturally, she braced for the worst.

Biana walked into her room, "Uh, hi. So... you wanna know what Dex knows?"

"Yeah."

"Well... Keefe can, well, sense other people's abilities."

Sophie's worn-with-exhaustion eyes widened, "Continue?" So Biana told her everything— and Sophie's heart sank deeper and deeper with every word, especially the part about Rex. That was just... terrible.

Poor Rex. He must be going through so much.

And poor, poor Keefe. It suddenly made sense why he ran away. There were so many ways his mom could exploit this— and they probably were only looking at the tip of the iceberg.

Don't think about Keefe.

"...and then I hung up," Biana finished, "I think they needed a private moment."

"That was the right call."

She nodded, "Yeah, I think so too. Now, didn't Mr. Forkle say that they had just discovered something big in the Neverseen's scrolls? What was that about?"

Sophie felt like facepalming in annoyance with herself. She hadn't even remembered or considered that Biana didn't know about this— and definitely hadn't made a plan for how she would tell her. "There was a scroll... and it implied Lady Gisela has a second ability as a Descryer."

This time it was Biana's turn for her eyes to widen.

When Sophie was done telling her exactly what it said, Biana noted, "You know, the new aspect of Keefe's new ability is kind of Descryer-ish. I mean, he can sense other people's potential of manifesting."

"That's true." Sophie felt my facepalming once again for not noticing that.

"It's like he has a mishmash of his parents' abilities, now." Both girls agreed this seemed to be the case, but Sophie was sure they were thinking the same thing. Did this really matter, for bringing Keefe back and stopping Lady Gisela? Were little observations like that really going to help?

Don't think about Keefe.

The second time when Sophie broke her repetitive, depressing pattern in her life was four days after the conversation with Biana.

She had gotten a hail from Amy.

This wasn't unusual— they were hailing each other every day at first. So Sophie knew that spring break had just begun, and her human family had just arrived in Cambridge (though Amy refused to say what their new names were). But what made this hail different is what her sister had said. Amy was out on a street, huddling up to the imparter to make sure no one saw it.

"My parents are looking in a store right now. I... I think I see Keefe in the restaurant next to me."

Sophie's heart skipped a beat, and she forgot to be quiet, "REALLY?!"

"He has ice blue eyes and styled blonde hair, correct?"

"Yeah..."

"And he's really cute, right?"

Sophie blushed, "I never said that."

"Nope. Just implied it."

She rolled her eyes, "Do you think you guys can get in the restaurant?"

"It's close to lunchtime, so yeah." It was early morning for Sophie, so she assumed Amy was in a different time zone. Now that she thought of it, she wasn't really sure where Havenfield was on the planet in proportion to Cambridge and all the human cities.

"Here," Sophie's sister said, "I'll put the imparter in my pocket so you should be able to hear everything, but no one will see that you're there."

"Okay."

The imparter screen suddenly went black. "Can you still hear me?" Amy asked.

"Loud and clear." As Sophie heard Amy have a quick conversation with her parents— asking to go to the restaurant— her heart had a swell of hope. If she could just convince Keefe to come back...

Then she heard Amy and her parents sit down to order some food. She heard the waiter respond. She heard Keefe notice Amy and yell, "Amy! Sophie must've sent you! You can't bring me back! STOP!"

Then everything went silent— except for Keefe's soft mumbling.

That's when she realized: He had just numbed everyone.

At that moment, the imparter rustled around for a second, and the image flickered back on to a face she had wanted to see for a long time.

Keefe must've noticed the imparter and taken it out of Amy's pocket while she was numbed.

"FOSTER! Why did you have to send her?"