One of Us: The City of Secrets by M. L. Roberts

Author:M. L. Roberts [Roberts, M. L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: M. L. Roberts
Published: 2021-04-06T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20. Unsated

Struggling to find an explanation about what had happened at the gym, the school board and police came up with different interpretations. Some called it a high-tech prank; some called it a terrorist attack.

After much speculation, the easiest and most believable explanation was a cyber-attack. If terrorists could knock out a city’s light grid or coordinate a three-way attack the way they did on nine eleven, they could easily cause mayhem at a high school volleyball game.

The ravens, which seemed real enough to me, became drones. The woman in red who summoned the ravens and into whose robes they disappeared became a projected image on a giant multi-dimensional screen, much like the ones at Hollywood Bowl or Dodger Stadium.

However, the big inconsistency was no one saw the same thing. Post-traumatic stress? Possibly. But those who told the strangest versions of what happened, were the ones no one believed.

Curiously, the woman in red had not caused permanent destruction. The gym floor still had burn marks and our mascot was a small pile of charred fleece. The scorch marks were soon repaired, and our mascot replaced.

“I think it was a warning,” I said, as we talked about it on the way home from school.

“You’re still saying it was real?” Mindy looked at me intently. “Everything?”

“I wasn’t imagining it.”

I should have known better than to tell anyone, even Mindy, but at least she had not repeated it to anyone.

“Do you want to end up in a loony bin?” Mindy countered.

She had a point there.

Aside from the fact that if they locked me up, I would never get my driver’s license, it did no good to argue anyway; no one would have believed me.

“Why do you think she did it?” I said. “Hypothetically speaking, I mean.” I stopped short of repeating what the woman had said about “interfering.”

“Think who did what?” Mindy said.

“The woman in red. You know, the one who did the damage and commanded the ravens.”

“You have to stop talking like that,” Mindy said. “I won’t answer. It would add to your . . . delusions.”

Then, because she couldn’t resist, she added thoughtfully, “How would I know? But if everything you say is true, I bet it was a grudge, probably. Did she look like anyone?”

“Not that I know of.”

If she were right and it was a grudge, maybe there was a clue in an old school yearbook: a girl who looked similar, or perhaps a prediction: such as girl most likely to curse the whole school.

As impossible as it seemed, I knew the unexplainable had not only happened, but it might happen again. And, if I was the only one who heard her—and no one else claimed to and I could understand why they wouldn’t—then I had to be the one interfering. But I hadn’t done anything, so why me?

There were only two people I associated with weird happenings.

One was Logan; but I had scared him on Halloween night when I mentioned the fake drowning report and he had been avoiding me.

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