Chapter 19 (redone)

Kyle and I are silent as we walk down the hall. Finally, Kyle can’t take the silence any more. He grabs my wrist, stopping me in my tracks. “What is up with you?” he asks. To anyone else, he looks angry, but I know that he’s just frustrated and worried. Definitely worried.

I take a deep breath. I don’t know how to explain what happened. I’m not even sure I know what happened.

“I’m sorry, Kyle. I don’t know. I mean, I think I know, but it’s hard to explain,” I fumble. Kyle sighs, even more frustrated. “Are you…you know? Uh…that time?” he asks in a desperate attempt to understand what my problem is. I chuckle a little, amused at his embarrassment in asking the question. He knows me well enough, but I guess boys are like that.

“No, Ky, it’s not that. I just flipped, okay?” It comes out a little harshly, but Kyle knows how I meant it. That is a benefit of the mind connection. I reach over and squeeze his hand, and he returns the pressure. “Well, I hope you have a better explanation than that for Lorik.” My cheeks are cold, my hands go limp. “He’ll kill me, won’t he?”

“Nah. Probably put you on kitchen duty for the rest of the semester. He did say no breaking the connection.”

The thought of kitchen duty for all those people is a distasteful one. “Why is it such a big deal, anyway? It’s my mind, right?”

Kyle nods. “Yeah. It’s not such a big deal that you broke it, as it is that you broke it really suddenly, and without asking. And he’s not really mad at you. You got to learn how he is.” He pauses and looks to make sure I’m listening. I’ve been known to zone out in the middle of a conversation. “He really cares about you, you know.”

“That’s a surprise. You’d think he hates everyone.”

“Nope. That’s just how he is. You’ll get used to it,” he assures me. “I hated him when I first started. But, my mom always said good things about him, so I figured he couldn’t be too bad.”

I grunt. “He’s so cold. I don’t see how your mom ever made friends with him.”

“To be honest, I didn’t either. But he’s actually pretty cool once you get to know him. Now, when we go back home for Weekends, I miss him.”

“We’re not going home until the weekend? My mom’s going to be ticked if I show up after this.”

Kyle’s face falls a little. “No she won’t.”

I stop walking and glower at my friend. We’re almost to the end of the hall. No one else is here.

“Sorry, Krys. You won’t be going back home.”

I can’t think of anything to say, so I let him continue. “There was no way we could have convinced your parents to let you come here, and leaving you untrained until you turn 18 wasn’t an option.”

I look at him quizzically. “It’s normal for people to run off and leave home without telling anyone when they’re 18,” he explains. “If you were a normal case, they could have just provided reasons for your parents to send you to a mysterious boarding school.”

“Let me guess: I’m not a normal case.”

“Good, you’re catching on fast. Since you’re so special, we had to stage…your death.”

“My what?”

Kyle takes an involuntary step backward. “That way no one’s looking for you. I’m sorry, but you can’t go back home now,” he says quietly, trying to gauge my reaction.
I try to laugh, but it comes out as more of a choke. Really, I ought to be happy that I’ve finally managed to escape all the bad things at school and at home. I should be excited to start over, somewhere people might actually like me. Still, there’s a sadness that I can’t explain.

“So, that’s what the Bigfoot thing was for?” I ask as soon as I can trust my voice to talk.

“What? Oh, right. That’s, um…classified.”

I look up, angry that Kyle would play around at a time like this. After telling me that I can’t go home again. But his eyes are dead serious. I stare into them, as if by doing so, I can see what he’s not allowed to tell me. He looks away quickly, apologetically.

“We got to get to class. Come on,” he says, offering his hand, palm up. I place mine in it, and he guides my hand to his arm. We always walk like this, my hand on his arm.

It started a few years ago when I got to play Katherine in “The Taming of the Shrew”. My school was putting the play on. Most girls tried out to be Bianca, since she’s the one all the boys want. It probably helped that Xander was trying out to be Lucentio, Bianca’s lover.
There was really no competition to be Katherine, even though she’s the star of the play. For the entire time we rehearsed, I adopted Katherine’s “shrew” attitude, and made Kyle open doors for me, and “escort” me down the street. Just playing around, of course. Kyle had embraced my idea, and carried on his gentlemanly behavior even after we ran the play.