The Garden of What Once Was

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Ember's hand twitched as she gradually woke up in the infirmary room. She fumbled around blindly for Reed, her eyes were still closed shut. After not brushing against his head or arm, she forced herself to get up. Her eyebrows furrowed together in confusion when she saw that she was alone. At first, she thought that she had dreamt about Reed visiting her last night, but the blanket on the floor told her otherwise. His absence made her a bit disappointed. He probably went to Aiko, she thought. Quickly, she filled her mind with other thoughts, not wanting to get hung up on such a silly matter.

"I don't care who he's with. I don't care that he left me to go see Aiko. I don't care, not at all," She grumbled.

She scratched her stomach as she stumbled out of her infirmary room, a scowl present on her face. After almost two days in the infirmary, she's had about enough of looking at corny posters plastered across the walls. The horrid smell of alcohol swabs was starting to get to her as well. In fact, everything in the infirmary was pissing her off. She just wanted to get out of it as soon as possible. If the nurse decided to keep her, she already devised a plan where she escaped through the window in her room. Putting on her best smile, Ember walked up to the counter that Zahara was sitting behind.

"I'm feeling much better now. Thank you for taking care of me," Ember expressed her gratitude.

Zahara still hadn't looked up to see who exactly was talking to her as she typed away on her computer, "It's not a problem, honey. Just sign yourself out, and I'll write you a pass."

Thankful that the nurse didn't give her any trouble, she eagerly went to write her name on the sign-out column next to room 10. She paused, realizing that there was no pen beside the log. Without a pen, she couldn't do much, except stand there awkwardly. Carefully, Ember leaned forward, trying to grab a pen that was on Zahara's desk. She accidentally banged her head into the plexiglass separating the nurse and her. Startled, Zahara whirled the spinny chair around so that the back of it was now facing the computer and blocking Ember's view.

Ember fumbled for an excuse as to why she just headbutted the plexiglass, "Sorry, I was just, um, trying to a pen to sign myself out with."

Zahara's face visibly paled as she continued staring at Ember. After realizing she had been staring far too long, she scanned the desk for a pen. Letting out a shaky breath of relief, Zahara picked up a pen that was nestled under a few pieces of paper, then handed it to Ember. The wary, almost closed-off attitude of Zahara went unnoticed by Ember as Ember focused on signing out. Only when she went to say goodbye to Zahara did she see the tinge of fear in the nurse's eyes. Weird, she thought before leaving off in a hurry. Strangely enough, she was quite excited to be returning to school. Of course, she wasn't looking forward to hearing her teachers blab about this and that. Her excitement came from the fact that she would be able to return to the gardens again. She only had time to do so during seventh period though, which was almost halfway finished. If she wanted to at least get through the annuals and perennials, she had to hustle.

... ... ...

After spending the last thirty minutes of seventh period in what Ember called Heaven on Earth, she sluggishly dragged herself to her last class of the day, Physics. She may have been able to avoid it because of her fever yesterday, but now she had no excuse to escape from the hellish class. As soon as she walked into the classroom, all eyes were on her, including the teacher's. Some people smiled mockingly while others laughed openly at her. She simply sat down in her seat at the back of the classroom, choosing to ignore the rude gazes of her teacher and classmate. If they wanted to stare at her, then they could stare to their hearts' content. It was much better than having to listen to them whisper about her. Her physics teacher moved from the front of the class, eventually walking over to Ember. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, something he does one too many times throughout the period.