The Academy

Chapter Twenty-Seven

                   

"Thank you, Kayleigh."

         I spun around, only seeing darkness. I could hear a high-pitched voice, but didn't see a single thing.           

         "Who are you?" I asked, reaching out to grab whomever was talking to me, but my fingers felt nothing.

         I blinked and then everything was illuminated to a plain white. Everything around me was white. I couldn't tell where the floor met the wall, or where exactly I was going with each step I took, but I did recognize the person in front of me. Ivy.

         "Please tell me you haven't forgotten already," she said with a smirk. "Thanks for what you said at my funeral."

         "No," I said, rubbing my eyes that felt strained from all the white. "Thank you. Where are we?"       

         "Well," Ivy squeaked, sitting criss-crossed on the floor. Or what seemed to be the floor. Everything blended together. "This is a dream. If we're being technical, you're in your bed. You collapsed on it right after you came into your dorm room after the funeral. Didn't even bother to take off your makeup or dress. But I'm in heaven, and I had to talk to you."

         "Are you going to talk to the other girls, too?"
    She shrugged and spun a piece of white hair around her index finger. "Probably not. You listen better than the rest of them, Kayleigh. It's easier to talk to you than the other four."

         Understandable. The rest of them were probably still awake, anyway.

         "Forget about Rosterford, okay?" Ivy said to me, her eyes staring intently into mine. "Completely forget about him. I couldn't, and look where I am now."

"Dead?"

         "Exactly. I don't want to see any of you here for a very long time, so listen. Act like it never happened, and hopefully everything will be okay. But you never know what he knows. Just pray, Kayleigh. Pray that he doesn't know yet."

         "What if he does?" I asked, feeling the familiar sting of salty tears on my eyes. "What if he already knows?"

         "Then there isn't anything you can do," she said. "You're a great person, Kayleigh. You really are. I know that you aren't aware of your worth. I know that you don't think that you don't matter in the grand scheme of things. But I can't promise you this enough. You matter so much."
     Tears began to flow down my face uncontrollably. I started to rub my eyes raw.

         "I see such a light in you." Ivy smiled, stood up, and brushed a piece of light-brown hair away from my face. "Imagine that life is a book, and everyone is a page. If a page is missing, the whole book won't be completely understood. You're a page, Kayleigh. An important one, at that. Without your contributions, everything would be blurry."

"You know that Rosterford tore out the pages," I said to her. The metaphor obviously had to do with Vivienne Aldridge's journal. "You know what he's done with the pages about him."

         "He's still got them," she told me, running a hand through her hair. "He would do anything for them to be safe."

         "Do you know where they are?" I asked.

         "Of course. They're always with him. And I'm always with you."

         Ivy began to get fuzzy. The outline of her grew blurry and my eyes felt even more strained trying to keep watching her. Eventually, I had to close my eyes. When I opened them back up, I was no longer with Ivy, in an area filled with white. I was in my dorm room with Marisol in the other bed, texting someone on her cell phone.

            I'malways with you.