Sweet Dreams

Sweet Dreams- Chapter Two

Chapter Two- What Stares Back

Isla Barnes kicked her door shut with her boot. She was a curious girl in more way than one. She was an extremely inquisitive 17 year old and she was also an extremely fascinating 17 year old. 

She stood on the threshold and stared at her room. It wasn’t bad she supposed after a long moment. A small double bed was pushed into a windowed alcove in the corner. The wood floor was striped with silver glows from the moonlight that filtered through the gaps in the vaneeshan blinds. She dropped her duffle bag by the door and stepped further into the room. It was reasonably sized. A long desk was pushed against the pale blue wall opposite the bed. The wall adjacent homed the closet and wall shelves above a wooden chest. Standing in the middle of the room, Isla did a full 360, slowly taking in the whole room. This was all hers- This was all she had. A dorm room at the end of a corridor full of identical dorm rooms in a school thousands of miles from everything she’d ever known. She sighed and walked to the bed where the rest of her luggage was- A suitcase of clothes, and two boxes of her only worldly possessions.

She picked up her suitcase and hauled it over to the closet. The suitcase wasn’t big, but her little frame struggled to lug it across the room. She ditched it on the floor and unzipped it, flipping the lid back and standing up to open the closet doors. The closet was reasonably sized, a lot of hanging space, an overhead shelf and a full length mirror attached to the back of the door. Isla stared at the thing that stared back. In the blue-grey light of the moon her raven eyes looked eerie and hollow. She had blonde hair that fell well below her bust and skin so pale it looked like water drenched paper, she would look ill if it weren’t for the healthy blush of her rosy cheeks. The only signs of her true state were the sleep deprived bruises below her fathomless eyes.

Isla stared at herself for a long time in the darkness of her room. She searched for something familiar in the person that stared back. She stared until her eyes went blurry, she blinked away the haze and took a step back, busying herself by unpacking her suitcase. She hung up all her clothes, put her shoes in the away in the bottom of the closet and found sheets in the wooden chest to make her bed. She unloaded the two boxes, placed her books on the wall shelves, and set up her laptop on the desk. Just as she finnished, the music kicked in.

She’d heard her classmates talking about the dorm party that was taking place in the seniors common room. From what she had heard, it was gunna be quite the party. Someone’s father apparently owned a club and they had stolen an extra crate of spirits that wouldn’t be missed.

Turning around and perching on her desk, Isla considered going to the party. Just to investigate more than anything. Everything was so different from everything she had ever known; The school system, the cliques, the people, the attitudes, Everything. Isla came from a completely different world- well, a different continent. Isla Ainsley Barnes was born in Surrey, England. A place Famous for overpaid, premiership football players and good natured farmers. Isla didn’t know where she came on that scale. She couldn’t fit herself anywhere, and she wasn’t willing to go back to find out. It was an abandoned place to her now. She didn’t miss her house or her bedroom or bed, she didn’t miss the people that didn’t miss her but the thought of where she came from still haunted her.

Promptly brushing the memories away before something too close to home sprung to mind, Isla settled on the distraction of going to the party. The music had gotten louder and now pumped through the gap at the bottom of Isla’s door and was enticing her out to the common room where at least one crate of alcohol anxiously awaited her. She crossed the room again to her closet. She pulled out a tube skirt and a chunky knit cardigan. She wriggled out her shorts and changed into her clean clothes. She volumized her hair with her fingers and stared at herself in the mirror again.