And the Soul Moved on.

Chapter 8

Hello!! 

I know I haven't added to this in almost a year, but it's mostly because if I don't get immediate approval then I'm going to think I failed and never wanna write again lol. So for the literal three loyal people who read through all that I had, thank you! I'd like to kind of use this book as a sort of warm up for the actual book im looking to publish, so hopefully we'll start cranking chapters out for this much quicker! 

Hope you all enjoy! 

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By the end of the day, Lora had found an uneasy balance to her emotions. Her poor performance on her English exam left a sour taste in her mouth, and after that she vowed to buckle down on the raging sea of her anxiety.

When the final bell rang, Natalie offered to drive Lora home; the clouds were gathering now, warning of impending rain, but Lora still denied her friend. She needed a moment to walk alone, blow off some steam. It helped that Lora had managed to remove herself from the school's walls quickly enough to not see him, but still. His stare, his presence. The girl that he was with.

Rachel and her posse had successfully created at least five different rumors surrounding the two mysterious students, yet they had seemed unbothered. It had only made Rachel furious, her voice carrying crudely across the parking lot as Lora began her trek back home.

The sky was darkening quickly now, the sound of thunder rumbling in the distance.

Maybe I should have chanced it with Natalie, Lora thought, but instead lengthened her stride, hurriedly leaving the shadows of the school.

Lora had never been bothered by the rain; it was one of her favorite weather patterns, the way the sky drew together on the horizon, building up to torrential and erratic droplets. She smiled a bit as an early warning raindrop fell onto her hair, chilling her scalp. Of course it meant that she should quicken her pace even further, yet she almost wanted to get lost in the rain. Feel it beat down on her, wash away her concerns. She wanted a cleansing of sorts, and the rain never asked for answers; it simply gave.

One drop, then another. Her stomach growled in time to a bout of thunder miles away, and she counted slowly in her head as she reached for the water bottle strapped to her backpack, counting a total of eleven seconds before another clap sounded, closer this time.

For the fiftieth time this week Lora imagined what her mother may have made for dinner. It did little to assuage the grumbling that continued in her torso, at the ache in the back of her skull. Her mind drifted to the boy.

It still unnerved her that he was able to go from one hundred yards away to right behind her in the blink of an eye-- but what worried her even more was that others could see him as well. She had studied psychosis for a while her freshman year, hoping to impress her psychology teacher enough into giving her an early scholarship opportunity. It had worked, of course, but it also meant Lora knew slightly too much about auditory and visual hallucinations. How to treat them. How others liked to hide them. She had been certain she could remove the problem if she didn't give it too much thought, yet here she was, with the same boy haunting her nightmares making friends in her school's halls.

She fell back on the assurance that she had been fooled in some way. Maybe the well water Lora's house pulled from had some sort of foreign bacteria. Maybe the boy was part of a documentary on forced hallucinations or mania. Maybe Lora had just gotten such a terrible fever that she made up an entire horrifying story to go along with the new boy sitting quietly in Leo's coffee shop.

Lora's stomach grumbled again, and she took a deeper pull from her water. Maybe her mother would let them order takeout, something like tacos or orange chicken. Maybe a burger? Nothing sounded good in her worry-addled brain, and she took a deep breath to dissuade the hunger pains growing in her stomach. Nothing ever seemed enough lately.