Eternity (23 page)

“I’m fine,”
Jack claimed, but his voice was slightly higher pitched than
normal. “Why wouldn’t I be? It’s not like we’ve never watched a
movie before.”

“Okay,” I said.
I didn’t want to push him. I figured that if something was going on
he wanted me to know about he’d just tell me. He usually did
anyway, since he wasn’t very good at keeping things to himself.

After we had
the popcorn sufficiently cleaned up, we sat back down to watch the
rest of the movie, which I had a hard time paying attention to. I
looked around the room a bit, and saw that there were only a couple
of other people in the room, and they were playing cards in a
corner. I assumed they were playing poker, since there was money on
the table, which was against the rules. There weren’t any teachers
around to point that out though.

When I looked
back at Jack, I saw that he was watching me. “Do you not like the
movie?” he asked.

“Not exactly,”
I answered. “I prefer movies that have more interesting story lines
and fewer ridiculous attempts at humour. You know I hate romantic
comedies. I thought you did too.”

“I don’t
usually like them, but I thought I’d give this one a try at least.
It is pretty bad though,” he admitted.

“Why did you
want to watch it in the first place? Surely there are better movies
around here somewhere.”

“I don’t know.
I guess I just wanted to try something new,” Jack said, but he
wasn’t looking at me when he said it. He was lying, and he was
hiding something, but I couldn’t figure out why.

“Are you sure
you’re alright?” I asked, starting to get suspicious.

“Yes, Jules,
I’m fine,” he said, sounding a little annoyed. “Can we at least
finish watching the movie?”

I shrugged. “If
you really want to,” I said.

We watched the
rest of the movie, which was only slightly better than the
beginning. Jack had his arm behind me again, and he was still
sitting close even though I didn’t have the popcorn anymore. I
wasn’t too concerned, since I was accustomed to his presence.

Near the end of
the movie, which involved a very mushy scene with people running
towards each other in an airport, I felt Jack shifting beside me,
which resulted in his leg touching mine. I moved my leg over to put
a little more space in between us. Then, after the mushy scene was
over, he did something I was not expecting at all. He leaned over
and kissed me, right on the lips.

I pushed him
away immediately. “Jack! What the hell are you doing?!” I
exclaimed.

He looked
embarrassed, and hurt. Instead of answering me, he stood up and
started pacing in front of the couch, like he was trying to sort
out his thoughts. I waited impatiently until he spoke, still
feeling shocked.

“Juliet, you
know how I feel about you. I know you think you like Adrian, but I
know you care about me. We can be together, Jules. It would be so
easy, since we’ve always been close. It’s just another step in our
relationship, and I think it would be really good for both of
us.”

“Jack!” I
exclaimed again, appalled. “You are my best friend, and that’s all
I want! Of course I care about you, probably more than anything,
but I’m not in love with you. I already told you that, and I
thought you understood.”

“Adrian’s no
good for you! You should know that by now! I can’t believe you
would choose a guy who actually physically hurt you over me. What
have I done that was so bad? I’ve never been anything but good to
you, and I’m always there when you need me. Don’t I deserve the
same in return?”

I could feel
tears falling down my cheeks from the pain I heard in his voice;
the pain that I had caused. “Jack, you know I’d do almost anything
for you, but I can’t lose our friendship, and I can’t be in a
relationship with you. I don’t feel that way about you, and it has
nothing to do with Adrian.”

“Fine,” Jack
said. I could tell he was close to tears himself, but he was more
angry than upset, which scared me. He walked away from me and
headed out of the west wing. I called after him, but he didn’t turn
around. I stood up to go after him, but I collapsed back onto the
couch, deciding that it wasn’t a good idea.

I was still
sitting there crying a few minutes later, and I was stunned by what
had happened. It was something that I’d been afraid of for a long
time, though I’d never really expected it to happen because things
had been going so well. I wasn’t sure how things would be between
us anymore, and it scared me. It broke my heart to think of losing
my best and oldest friend over something I couldn’t control.

After a while I
got up and turned the movie off, which was in the middle of the
credits. Some of the people playing poker in the corner were
watching me, and I wiped my tears away, though they kept coming
back. It took me another five minutes to calm down enough to go
back to my room in the south wing. I managed to keep my tears in
check while I walked through the halls, but by the time I sat down
on my bed I was sobbing. Rhea, who was the only other person in the
room, asked me what was wrong, but I didn’t have the strength to
answer. She hugged me but let me continue crying, which I did for a
good hour after that.

By the time
Heather and Melissa came in I had calmed down some, and I had
stopped crying. I felt cold and empty instead, and I didn’t want to
think about Jack at all. When Heather asked me what was wrong, I
told her I’d had a fight with Jack, and I wasn’t sure what I was
going to do, which was pretty much the truth. I didn’t let her see
how deeply I was hurt.

After the
lights were turned off, I tried to sleep, but I kept shifting
around. I couldn’t stop my thoughts from running freely in my head,
and I couldn’t get comfortable. I didn’t want to stay in bed like
that, so I got up and went to the desk in the corner of the room
that was usually stocked with paper and pens. It wasn’t too hard to
see because of the light of the nearly full moon shining through
the open curtains at the window. Not knowing what else to do, I
grabbed a sheet of paper and a pencil and started drawing. It was a
good thing I didn’t have to see in order to draw.

The drawing
took almost ten minutes to complete even though my hand seemed to
be flying across the page. I couldn’t see it well enough to be able
to tell what it was about, but I could tell that there were two
figures in the drawing. I went over to the window so I could see it
more clearly. When I looked at it in the light of the moon, my
blood felt like it had turned to ice.

The drawing was
of Heather and Melissa, and they were outside in the woods. I
didn’t recognize the area, so it wasn’t anywhere I had been before.
I could tell it was at night because I could see the moon hanging
over the trees. When I compared it to the moon outside my window,
they looked exactly the same. None of that was what scared me
though. What bothered me was the way the girls looked, which was
even more frightening than the drawing I had done of Michael.
Melissa was staring straight ahead with eyes that were open wide,
and her hand was held up to her open mouth. It was an expression of
pure shock and horror, not fear. It was too late for fear. Heather
was clinging to Melissa like she could barely stand. Her eyes were
closed, but I could see tears glistening on her cheeks.

They looked
like they had just seen someone die. I started to panic.

The first thing
I did was wake Heather up. She took her time with opening her eyes,
and she tried to bat my hand away because I was shaking her. When
she did open her eyes, she saw something in my expression that made
them go wide, and she pulled the covers off and got up and gripped
my shoulders.

“Juliet, what’s
wrong?” she asked. I could hear fear in her voice, but it was
nothing like the fear that I was feeling. I shoved my drawing at
her, and she immediately tried to make it out, but after squinting
at it for a minute she gave up and went to the light switch. When
the room was bathed in light I heard grumbles coming from the two
occupied beds in the room. Rhea rolled over and put her head under
her pillow, but Melissa sat up.

“What’s going
on?” she asked in a groggy voice.

“Oh my
goodness,” Heather said when she looked at the picture, and her
eyes went wider. “Do you know when this is?”

I shook my
head, but I pointed out the similarities between the moon in the
picture and the moon outside presently, and I also realized that
she was wearing exactly the same pyjamas as the ones she was
wearing in the drawing. Melissa came over to take a look at the
drawing as well, and her reaction was similar.

“That does not
look good at all,” she said, serious for once. “I don’t think I’ve
ever looked like that before in my entire life.”

“We have to do
something,” I said. I felt anxious, and I had a gut feeling that
something bad was going to happen, and it was going to happen soon.
The problem was that I didn’t have a clue as to what it was.

“We need more
information,” Heather pointed out. “It’s not like I plan on going
for a stroll in the woods tonight. Do you think you can try drawing
something else that will tell us what this means?”

“Yeah, that’s
pretty much all we can do at this point, though maybe we should
tell someone else, like a teacher,” Melissa added.

“Okay, I’ll try
drawing another picture. I don’t think we should tell someone else
until we have more information,” I said. I let them hold onto the
drawing while I went to the desk and got out some more paper.
Starting a new drawing was easy, like my hand had something that it
needed to get out. It only took about five minutes to complete the
second drawing, and I knew right away that it was related in some
way to the first because it was even more horrible and much more
specific. The location was different, but that didn’t tell me much.
I motioned for Heather and Melissa to come over to look at the
picture, and they both gasped.

The second
drawing was in a room that I knew well. I had left that room
earlier in the day after what had happened there. It was clearly
the common room in the west wing, and it looked pretty much the
same as it did when I left it. The movie I’d been watching with
Jack was still sitting on a table where I’d left it that was barely
in view, and the empty bowl that had contained popcorn was beside
it. In the center of the drawing were two wolves, and they looked
like they were running at each other with bared teeth. I recognized
Adrian instantly, and he was the bigger of the two. I had no doubt
in my mind that the other wolf was Jack, and he was at a
disadvantage.

Once the
initial shock wore off and I was able to move I left immediately. I
didn’t even bother to change or put on shoes, so I was still in my
thin white nightgown with my feet bare as I ran through the halls.
Mrs. Espenas, who was monitoring the hallways in the south wing
that night shouted out for me to stop, but I ignored her and kept
going. I was aware of Heather and Melissa running behind me, though
Melissa stopped to tell Mrs. Espenas what was going on.

My heart felt
like it was out of control, but I kept going. I didn’t pass anyone
else as I ran down the stairs and then out of the south wing. I was
halfway down the hall when I realized that I was going the wrong
way. I was heading toward the east wing instead of the west wing,
and I cursed myself for the silly mistake, which I assumed was
caused by my disorientation from being in the halls in the
dark.

I was about to
turn around and go back, which would have been faster than going
all the way around the school, but I heard something coming from
the hall past the east wing. I slowed, and Heather caught up to me,
and she was breathing hard.

“Why are you
going this way?” she asked between breaths. “The west wing was in
the other direction.”

“Yeah, I
realized that,” I said. My voice sounded remarkably calm compared
to how I felt. “I hear something though, don’t you?”

We stood there
in silence for a minute, and the sounds became clearer. There were
people shouting and running, and I could see the light from
flashlights moving over the walls as the people holding them moved
quickly. There was definitely something going on down that hall,
and I almost fainted when I realized where the voices were
centered. The infirmary was down that hallway.

“Oh my god,” I
said, and my voice no longer sounded the slightest bit calm. “We’re
too late.”

Chapter
30

Whites spots
danced in my field of vision, and my legs gave out underneath me. I
landed on my knees, and I lost all sense of sight and sound for a
moment. I wasn’t even aware of Heather trying to pull me up until
she slapped me across the face. The sharp pain brought me back, and
I realized that Melissa had caught up and she was asking why we’d
gone the wrong way.

“Come on,”
Heather was saying to me. She put my arm around her shoulder and
pulled me to my feet, which were remarkably unsteady. “We don’t
know what’s going on. We have to go find out. It might be something
else.”

“No,” I
whispered. “It’s him. We’re too late.” I didn’t know how, but I
could feel it.

Heather almost
had to drag me around the corner so we could see what was
happening. The people were definitely running around the infirmary,
and I could see that they were just bringing a stretcher in. Even
from a distance I could see the trail of blood on the floor behind
the stretcher. The people carrying it were running and someone was
running alongside it with something white that looked like gauze
bandages. As soon as I saw that it was really Jack I broke away
from Heather and started running, having somehow regained the
strength in my legs. Some of the teachers looked up and saw us
approaching. Someone tried to hold me back before I could see him,
but I pushed them away without looking to see who it was. Others
stood aside and let me pass because they could tell I needed to see
him.