Within [Rewriting. Please don't read.]

Chapter Five

Kate came here from London, and Alice did as well. Except she grew up in Vancouver and moved to the UK to attend Oxford.

Sam lived in Dublin before arriving here while Matt lived in Melbourne.

Adanna grew up in Kumasi, a fairly large city in Ghana, and decided to move here and help out because she wanted to contribute to her country.

We talked a bit more about other things before Alex, Sam, Brian and Matt excused themselves to set up their classrooms before school started.

Emily, Kate and Evan excused themselves as well to start making the more than one hundred sandwiches required for all the students to eat lunch. I offered to wash the dishes along with Harry while the rest of the boys and Adanna left to help out Kate, Emily and Evan.

A comfortable silence settled over Harry and me as the sink became filled with soap and water. I took up the task of scrubbing while Harry dried off the now clean bowls and spoons and put them on the dish rack to dry.

We were finished within ten minutes. I decided to go meet Alice while Haz went back to our cabin.

I managed to find the small hut with a sign that said "Music" on it after only five minutes of wandering around aimlessly. Not too bad for someone who got lost in a kiddy maze when they were sixteen. (Long story).

I opened the door slowly and quietly and found a girl seated cross legged on the floor, guitar in hand.

She was strumming it idly, pausing every so often to make some indentations on a stray paper lying on her lap, with a dull pencil that she kept tucking and untucking behind her ear.

I found it strange that Alice wasn't aware of my being in the room, even though her eyes were wide open and I was basically right in front of her.

After a few minutes of watching her curiously, I decided that enough was enough and cleared my throat in an attempt to make my presence known.

Alice jumped as soon as she heard me, her paper and pencil clattering to the floor. She was obviously quite startled. She swivelled around to face me, but made no attempt at getting up to introduce herself. Strange.

"Who's there?" She questioned.

"Oh sorry. Hi, I'm Liam, your temporary assistant. And I'm assuming you're Alice."

"Yep, the one and only. But please call me Al. And it's nice to meet you Liam." She replied with a smile.

"Mind helping me up and bringing me to my desk? I don't really feel like tripping on anything." She questioned, holding out her arm.

The bizarre thing was, there wasn't anything close enough to her that she could possibly trip on, and I couldn't comprehend why she wasn't able to walk over to her desk by herself.

I grabbed her arm and pulled her up anyway, trying to keep an open mind, even though I was secretly questioning this girl's sanity.

Once she was seated at her desk and I had pulled up a chair so I could sit next to her, she started explaining what tasks I was supposed to help her with.

My eyes were instantly drawn to hers. There was something off about them, but I couldn't pinpoint it just yet. Since she didn't seem to notice that I was shamelessly staring into her eyes, I decided to take advantage of that until I figured out what exactly was going on.

They didn't seem to be focused on anything and were slightly cloudy. Her eyes were dull, lacking the usual sparkle most contain. They seemed dead, but not a kind of dead that had once lived. No, a dead that had never really been alive. I was getting the impression that she I was looking, but not seeing.