Barbara's Book of Fire

Chapter 30

"Y-yeah, how about transferring to the house of Mantis, Barbara? You...*sniff... can be a diviner there rather than a scout." Said Lia—pleading even. "You don't have to be there to do something about it, right...? Barbara? I'm scared—"

"No!" I didn't know what took over me, but when the blood rushed wildly into my head, I snapped at her—And worse yet, I couldn't even control the impulse afoot. "Why are you guys deciding things for me!? I'm right here, still alive and breathing. Who gives you the right to do it!?"

Lia gasped and choked breathless as she stared at me in disbelief. I heard in my head what I had said after that, but the arrow had been shot already, and it pierced something I didn't mean it to pierce. My friends' looks that day were something I would never forget for the rest of my life.

"Who gives us the right!? Are you seriously saying that you bitch!!?" Anya screamed and shouted her lungs out. If it were not for Rebecca and Freya, she would've come flying and punched me in the face for sure.

Cued by Lia's exit, Freya and Anya went after her. Leaving me with the mother and daughter duo alone in the room.

"I did mention for you to not get friendly with people here," Rebecca's low voice pounded hard on my heart. "But then I believed it was wrong of me to say that—no, you and Lia made me believe that, despite the short days we have spent together...But maybe, we were mistaken to think of ourselves as friends to you..."

Warm tears began pouring out when I saw Rebecca's figure leave the room. Her words and my friends' expressions kept resurfacing, again and again, crushing my guilt-ridden heart to the bitter end. 

But the torture didn't end there. The memories when Lance and Macie left us and the night of my last goodbye with Pa and Ma came out from an unknown vortex of dread, harrowing both the mind and soul alike.

And before I knew it, I was wailing bitterly in Hilda's arms.

I cried and cried to vent out something into the merciless world—As if I was trying to find some answer to all that plagued my muddled soul. I remember that day as the one where I cried myself a bucket in Hilda's embrace and the one thing I never got the courage to say in front of my friends.

'I'm sorry...'

***

Two weeks had almost passed since I was told to sit and wait for the news from above the ground. Hilda told me she would not keep anything away and be honest with me. Her genuine tones didn't waver even when I practically became a regular in her office, so I reckoned she ain't messing around.

Being awkward with the girls played a huge role in how I became a frequent visitor to Hilda's office, though. The esteemed headmaster herself apparently knew it too, yet she didn't gloss over it as if to spare me from the depressing interrogation that I would love to avoid.

Lia still continued the morning exercise, but instead of doing it with us as we agreed on when it started, she did it separately. No, to be perfectly honest—It was us that did it separately from her. I got no excuse—because it was awkward as hell, I woke up earlier and exercised on the far end of the training ground, away from her.

Anya still talked to me, such as reminding me to do laundry and small greetings when we caught each other's eyes, but that was it. I guess that was how she coped with me, trying to distance myself away from them.

I oftentimes see Freya in the class and the dining hall. Still, I never again saw the four girls sitting at the same table and eating like the last time I remembered us doing. Five people with five different tables, that was how we spent breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the two weeks that brewed a teeth-grating amount of guilt within me.