Winter Fire

Ch. 5 [Notebooks And Memories]

Winter Fire
Ch. 5
Notebooks And Memories

I still didn't have my phone.

Archer left half an hour ago and he didn't have it on him when I watched him go out the door. He thought I was still asleep, but I'd woken minutes ago, not wanting to gain his attention and content enough to watch him fiddle around with his computers and recheck his connection to the school cameras. He left soon after that but I got up only when I was sure he was gone. Then I began searching for my phone.

He didn't have much. A few drawers of clothes. A desk covered so completely in technology I could barely see the paint. A few pictures, one of a dog, a big thing covered entirely in mounds of black fur, and another of Archer, a few years back, with a boy that had light blonde hair, and pretty brilliant blue eyes.

His closet was empty and his nightstand only had a clock that looked like he'd made it himself. A textbook lay open on a chair in one corner, but it looked like it was written in a different language, no--I looked a little closer--it was written in a different language. Then I walked back and forth across the room, slowly and cautiously, searching for creaky floorboards. After Sophia revealed the dorms' intriguing past, I wanted to know exactly what kinds of hidden things could be in here. But I found nothing. If there was any secret compartment it wasn't anywhere on the floor. I sighed and ran my hand through my hair, searching my brain for possible hiding places. My phone had to be in here. Where else would he put it? Surely not my room . . . unless . . . unless he did . . . because it's the one place I wouldn't ever think to check.

I spun back towards the door, but that's when I saw them.

The notebooks. My notebooks.

My face grew ashen. "Oh, no."

They lay in a pile on the foot of his bed, the red one, the grey one, the blue one. All three. The one that was on the top of my duffle bag now on the bottom of the stack.

He read them. He read all of them.

I reached out a tentative hand towards them, but then I snatched it back. I grit my teeth and clutched my hair tightly. I glanced quickly around the room for my duffle but it wasn't here. However, my sketch book was. It lay on top of a scanning machine, the top slightly lifted from being propped open for a long time. My stomach twisted and I covered my face with my hands.

Of all the things he could've snooped through--!

They weren't journals, thank goodness, but they were something just as precious to me, something I'd never, ever, in my entire life, show anybody. Not even Summer.

They were stories, stories about everything, about hope, about the world, about love and dreams and what it meant to be human. They were my relief; whenever I couldn't hold my weight up anymore, I wrote. And then, sometime, they became more than just a coping mechanism. They became my life, my heart. They were everything I held dear, everything I'd ever thought, ever dreamed, ever wished. I poured myself into the pages of the story. I poured my soul into those notebooks.

And he'd read every single word.

I felt like dying right there, right then.

And of course that's the moment Archer decided to reenter the room.

"Are you alright?" That was the first thing he said.

I exhaled sharply and dropped my arms, tense as I slowly turned round to face him. He threw his coat onto the chair with the foreign textbook and kicked the door shut, raising an eyebrow as he glanced over me.