Watching Melissa by Nicole France

Author:Nicole France
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
Published: 2022-02-07T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

In the lower level of the academy, surrounded by old sandstone bricks and dim hallway lights, we ask to speak with the restless spirits of the school. Despite my better judgement, I continue with these encounters. Even when I begin to jump at every noise and avoid every shadow; I continue. I know how much this means to Eliza – plus it’s nice to be away from everyone else, especially the Sents – even for a short while.

Eliza is dreadful at hiding her unseen encounters. She talks to them now; like real people. She carries on conversations with the walls while I stare perplexedly at the back of her head. I see dried blood on her dark shirtsleeve but keep quiet. I can’t exactly talk, given that beneath my shirt is a torso of bruises I might as well be self-inflicting. Still, it is concerning, even to me; the girl close to power failure, but I would never throw her under the bus and report her to the Sents. She’s having enough trouble.

One of the janitors eventually discovers our Ouija board, and the Sents dispose of it with a generalised supper-time warning to the entire school about avoiding occult practices. They know it’s ours. We are the ones who spend most of our time down there, alone. Yet, somehow, like the graffiti incident, we are not punished. They don’t separate us or give painful tutorials on the dangers of the spirit world. They let us go until Jane finds us downstairs again, and Eliza is deep in discussion with the air.

“Lize?” she approaches her tentatively, furrowing her brow in my direction. Jane looks incredibly unsure of herself. She wears her inexperience like a badge. She is clearly baffled by Eliza’s behaviour. Jane repeatedly asks if she’s all right, expecting a coherent response from an obviously deranged person. She asks me to retrieve another Sentinel, and I find myself glued to the spot, unable to follow orders that might get my friend in trouble. In the end, Jane retrieves reinforcements herself, and Eliza finally snaps out of it. She decides to make eye contact, looking side to side as if searching for the return of her invisible friend.

“Jane was here,” I watch her expression for a reaction, but she doesn’t seem to care. Her black hair is growing, it’s almost to her shoulders now. She doesn’t even roll her eyes when Jane returns with Dane, Michael and Lisa. She assures them she is fine, but is taken away nevertheless, sleeves rolled up and checked, leaving me with Michael and a lengthy made-up explanation, plus a punishment for failing to listen to a Sentinel, which has me running laps outside until dark.

The weekly school meeting has Adam telling us that we need to follow the orders of all Sentinels, including the trainees. I feel my cheeks burn under his gaze. I regret making Jane feel inferior, but there was more than disobedience on my mind at the time. I’m sure she knows I would rather stand by Eliza than give in to any sort of authority figure.

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