Whitethorn Academy

Chapter Twenty-One

"Selene? Are you even listening?"

I snapped to attention, meeting Naomi's eyes over the breakfast table. Her green eyes, typically friendly, seemed a little irritated this morning. Probably because I'd been spacing on her all morning.

"I'm sorry," I told her, for what was probably the tenth time this morning. "I'm listening."

Naomi looked like she didn't believe me. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"Yeah," I told her, shrugging my shoulders in an attempt to seem nonchalant. "Just didn't get a whole lot of sleep, you know?"

"Are you still freaked because of the mirror thing?"

I'd told Naomi about the message written on my mirror yesterday at dinner. It felt nice to open up to her about it, like I wasn't alone here.

"A little," I admitted. And it wasn't a lie, but the current thought running through my head was the letter, tucked away under a stack of homework papers in my desk. While I'd told Naomi about the mirror, I hadn't told her about the conversation I'd overheard between Inara and Ms. Rose, or about the letter from my mother.

"I know Inara is taking it seriously," Naomi said as she poked at her food. "She installed a security camera. And she hates those things."

"Yeah, I know. You told me about how she'd taken down all the cameras the previous headmaster had installed around the campus."

Naomi nodded her head, her red curls bouncing as she did. "And there were a lot of cameras. Like a lot. Think 'Big Brother is watching you' level of cameras."

"Why was he so invested in cameras?"

She shrugged her shoulders as she took a bite of her food. "I guess he just liked the thrill of exerting his power over students. And the cameras gave him full access to knowing who was misbehaving and when."

A power-tripped headmaster. That sounds like a blast, I thought to myself.

"Anyway," Naomi continued. "Inara won't let something like that happen again. And Ms. Rose is constantly keeping her eye on you. Whoever played that nasty prank won't be able to do it again. And I'm sure they'll be caught soon."

I wanted desperately to believe Naomi and to have complete faith in Inara and her system. But I wasn't sure that I could. The letter in my gym locker had been bad enough. Someone breaking into my room undetected was worse.

And there were a few people I thought were capable of something like that. Mari, for one. She hated my guts, for whatever reasons she validated in her warped mind. Alek, who also hated my guts.

Even Inara, who I'd overheard telling Ms. Rose that she'd needed me to invite my mother to Parent's Day. Had she been desperate enough to put that letter in my gym locker? Or had she had someone else do it for her?

The thought didn't sit well with me, and I pushed my plate away, nauseated.

"Not hungry?"

I shook my head. "Not really."

"If you wait a bit, I can walk with you to class."

"It's a little early, isn't it?" I'd arrived much too early to the dining hall this morning, sitting down at a table before they'd officially started serving breakfast.

I'd earned some odd looks from the chefs as I'd sat down at the table. But I couldn't take sitting in my dorm any longer. The restlessness had settled in after I'd read the letter from my mother a million times.