was still straining to hear the quiet conversation happening across the room.
“What does it mean?” Mr Anderson asked, his low voice becoming harder and harder to hear. “Was it a mistake? Will he be able to move past it?”
“I’m not certain of anything at the moment,” Min answered.
Their voices sounded miles away now, and my eyelids had started to droop. Chloe guided me through the door, and we made our way down the hall while my exhausted mind struggled to function. Who were they talking about? Move past what?
17
“So, how are you feeling?” Chloe asked me, as we sat in her room eating Pop Tarts the next morning.
“Well, that was the best night’s sleep I’ve ever had, bar none. I don’t know what was in that bottle Min gave me, but sign me up!”
“It certainly didn’t take long to work,” Chloe laughed. “You all but fell asleep on me in the hall! Mr Anderson had to carry you the rest of the way!”
“Yeah, I was wondering how I ended up in bed.”
“You slept like the dead, I’m sure, but that’s not what I meant. I meant how are you feeling with, you know…?” She left her sentence hanging, leaning forward excitedly.
She was referring to my newfound Holderdom, I knew that. I’d known the first time she asked, but had avoided answering, because honestly, I didn’t know what to tell her. Especially considering that I knew she, of course, thought it was great. Chloe would have been thrilled to be in my shoes, finally getting a chance to play with the big boys, and couldn’t imagine why I’d be anything less than ecstatic.
Deliberately avoiding the question again, I asked one of my own, “Have you seen Alex at all today?”
“Alex? No, why?”
“No reason. I just haven’t seen him since last night and was wondering if something might be wrong.”
Worrying would have been closer to the truth, but as it wasn’t a feeling I thought I could do an adequate job of explaining, I didn’t elaborate. There was more than likely no need to worry. Everything was probably fine. Still though, much as I tried to shake it, something felt off.
His disappearance alone wouldn’t have been enough to really concern me if it hadn’t been for the whispered conversation between Min and Mr Anderson I’d half-heard last night. I had no way to prove it, but something deep down told me they had been talking about Alex.
“Hmm,” Chloe mused, pulling me out of my thought bubble, “now that you mention it, he didn’t look well when he got me out of class yesterday, and told me what had happened.”
“Didn’t look well how?”
“Well, he was more than a little shaken up, but knowing now what actually happened in there to you all, that part isn’t surprising. But beyond that, he was a bit pale, and tired-looking. Sick, maybe?”
“Could be,” I supposed. Min had mentioned checking on him, and Mr Anderson had asked if he would be able to “move past it”, so I guess being sick made sense. Still, that wouldn’t explain the rest of the conversation, including the mention of a “mistake”. However, in all fairness, my eavesdropping had occurred while I was more than half-asleep and I could just as easily have misheard.
In any event it didn’t matter because, sick or not, Alex was sure to be at the Order meeting later, where I could ask him myself if anything was wrong. Until then, I had enough to worry about without obsessing over something that would likely turn out to be nothing.
“If you think I haven’t noticed that you’re not answering my question, you’re sadly mistaken, lady,” she said, cocking her eyebrows.
“Sorry, what was it again?” I asked innocently.
“How. Do. You. Feel?”
“OK, I guess,” I admitted with a shrug, looking down at the gold cuff covering the majority of my lower arm – or my Sciath, as I supposed I would need to start calling it, though “embarrassing eyesore” was still more appropriate, as far as I was concerned.
“Only OK? How can you say that? It’s fantastic!”
“Yeah, except it’s really not,” I said, flicking at the chains hanging from my arm.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. What if I can’t do all the things everyone expects me to? What if I totally suck at this? You all have been waiting for this for hundreds of years, and everyone has such high hopes…” I dropped off, and rubbed my hands over my face. “I’m just not used to letting people down.”