Freaks

9 • missing

"Well..."

Mom was going to win this argument. And the twinkle in her eyes showed she knew it too.

"Emmy, honey," she says, addressing me. "Isn't Daddy being a worry-wart?"

I'm not quite sure what one is but I agree anyway.

"Yeah, Daddy's being a worry-wart." After a second, I add. "And he won't give me my nose back."

Mom looks confused. Her eyebrows furrow for a second but it quickly smoothens out, and soon she breaks into a full fledged grin.

Sauntering over to Dad, she whispers something too quiet for me to hear, then takes something out of his palm to my delight.

"There," she says, poking my now returned nose. "All better."

❧

My eyes flutter open. I wince slightly at the bright sunlight streaming into the room. For a few seconds, I feel disorientated. It takes me a while to remember why my bed felt different, why I was not in my old room and most importantly, why on earth my alarm had woken me up before 9am on a Saturday. I didn't even have alarms on Saturdays, period.

Moments later, all the memories come flushing in and I'm suddenly thrown back into the events of yesterday. There was still some parts I didn't want to think about. Like the results of the 'testing'...

Shaking away my negative thoughts, I look around the room to distract myself. Thankfully, the room hadn't changed colour schemes again. I quite liked the eggshell blue theme. It made the room look more... homely, I guess. What was missing however, was my roommate, Cass.

My eyes zero in on her bed at the other side of the room. It looked tidy, but like it had recently been slept in. I decide to assume she must have already left for the morning.

Besides our initial meeting, Cass and I haven't really spoken much. Thinking back to last night, she seemed more subdued than she had been earlier on that day, though perhaps it was just our mutual exhaustion. From what I remember, our chat had consisted of her telling me they were handing out sandwiches and other snacks downstairs for anyone who was hungry, and me replying I had lost my appetite for anything that night and going straight to bed. Not exactly the most riveting of conversations.

Somewhere at the back of my mind, I recall Redmond telling me that on Saturdays most of the students preferred to spend their mornings in the dining hall. The breakfast bar was apparently open from from 8 to 11am, and then afterwards, Morgana liked to give a little speech to start off the semester. I wonder what it's going to be about.

A frown suddenly forms on my face.

Morgana.

She had been in my dream. Or at least, her name had. I furrow my eyebrows as I try to remember the already slipping details from my dream. It felt like it was more than a dream, more so a memory.

I sit up straighter in my bed.

I never had memory dreams, much less ones from when I was around three or four. So why? And why now? Was it something about being here at the school that was resurfacing old memories I had spent years with a therapist trying to suppress?