Anyone mind a midweek posting? I got done my online classes and banged out a few pages: JMG
*s*t*a*r*s
“I need your help,” whispers Spencer to Rylee during English Composition the next morning. Rylee looks around the room, then back at Spencer. This is a turn for the better. Rylee had thought that Spencer would never talk to her again.
“To do what?” asks Rylee in the same whispery tone that Spencer is using with her.
Spencer glances around sheepishly, their professor is moving around the room, out of earshot. “I’m not good with computers; I need your help looking someone up. I’m not really technologically savvy.”
“It’s easy…,” smiles Rylee. Seeing Tegan pointing to them, smiling that Spencer is finally seemingly speaking to someone even if it isn’t herself. If Spencer can open up to someone, it was good. Sydney nods, nudging Abigail who looks up, then her eyes drop back down to the keys of her computer.
“Not because I don’t really know how…,” sighs Spencer. “I’m just not, computers don’t like me. Take, for example, this one. You know how many times I’ve written this opening? Three. Why? Because the screen does a flickering thing, and poof, it’s gone.” Spencer can’t explain what is going on, it is her own personal electric aura that zaps the computer into submission.
Rylee narrows her eyes, leaning over and watching. Spencer makes an opened hand gesture. She begins typing; Rylee is reading the quickly appearing words. Eyes wide as she read Spencer’s opening statement, it is good, rather great actually. Why can’t she be this poetic? Then she sees it, the screen flickers, and she reaches over, slapping the control and the ‘s’ key with nimble fingers. But it is too late, the computer has an error, and rebooted. Rylee’s hand brushes Spencer’s chest, but the girl doesn’t move away as she usually does .
“See.”
“That’s weird,” muses Rylee. She touches the keyboard again, and instantly gets a shock. Yanking her hand back she rubs her fingers together. “That’s even odder.”
“See, I don’t want to fry the system. Meet me in the java café for lunch? Please? If I don’t type it, I might not fry the system, so please?” asks Spencer begging in her own way. The java café is for free periods, where students can email, chat, do research, and find music on the vast library that the Academy has in its data base. The café closed at nine p.m. sharp.
Rylee nods, clearing her throat and whispers to Spencer, “Yeah, just between me and you, right?”
Spencer nods curtly, “If you don’t mind.”
“Naw, I’ll meet you.”
Spencer moves away from Rylee and inwardly, Rylee smiles. Finally, some headway is being made. Watching Spencer walk away, Rylee feels an odd sensation overcome her, flashes of what is to come. A soft gasp from Rylee, and then, a sexy smile graces her lips.
Rylee rubs her fingers together, knowing that most of her visions never come true and the ones that do, never seem to happen the way her visions did.
This one has to be wrong; she’s never gotten any inclination from Spencer before. They have, however, been building in Rylee. Rylee likes mystery and Spencer is all that and more. The vision has been nothing more than a second flash and it rocks Rylee deeply.
*s*t*a*r*s
Rylee makes her way to their room, wanting to take a quick shower before meeting up with Spencer. She is acting as if she is going on a date. How silly is that? Rylee mentally begins to have a conversation with herself about having a crush on a fellow roommate.
Rylee sheds her clothes and steps into the shower, the water is hot and relaxing. Her hand reaches out to adjust the showerhead. A red arch of power connects from her fingertips to the showerhead and Rylee feels the sweep of a vision.
Rylee felt herself being pinned to a warm wall, someone, Rylee couldn’t see who, is ravishing her neck with warm lips. Her hands moved to the thick head of blonde hair and a smiling Spencer looked up at her, electric blue wisps of color peppered her hair.
“Oh my god,” groans Rylee, electric shivers rage through her body. She thuds against the cool tile of the bathroom. “Now I’m having wishful visions,” whispers the young Asian.
Washing and getting out of the shower as quickly as she can, Rylee makes her way into the bedroom.
She’s never been able to control her vision, they come when they want too, but lately, in the last few weeks the control seems to be growing. Mostly they come to her while she sleeps, having vivid déjà vu later when the vision or dream come to be reality. Rylee is sure that there is something missing, practice maybe, she doesn’t know. Mostly it is flashes of the future, and there are many different versions, it is usually all boggled together. Yet, this one is clear, as crystal. Rylee makes a face, going to Spencer’s bed. Kneeling there, she places her hand on Spencer’s pillow, willing her power to work. “Come on,” growls the usually calm Rylee Scott.
This time, the whole pillow is engulfed in a red hued flame. Rylee’s head snaps back, a scream catches in her throat. She is seeing Spencer underwater.
Caught.
Struggling.
Rocks are falling everywhere and Rylee can’t breathe. Falling onto her back, staring up at the ceiling, trying to catch her lost breathe, Rylee’s chest heaved. What had she been thinking about? How Spencer had lost her leg. Now she knows how Spencer had lost her leg. In an accident, pinned underwater, struggling to get free, making the decision to cut off part of her mangled leg to save herself. Rylee’s lungs expand, taking in a clean gulp of air. “I’ll never get used to that,” promises Rylee. She gets up, and rushes from the room to meet Spencer.
*s*t*a*r*s
“Where is Rylee?” asks Tegan. They are outside, relaxing on the always perfectly manicured lawn, next to the sprawling pond. The sky is clear, but the day seems heavy. Two older male students are fishing in the pond, which is stocked with fish. If you caught it, you fried it, or so is the rumor.
“She said she has something to do,” yawns Abigail. “God, I’m so tired. What time are you up at this morning, Syd? I got up and you were gone.”
“Early, I went for a jog,” states the young blonde. Her having to be tested has freaked out Sydney more than she is willing to admit.
“Jog? What, are you crazy?” asks Tegan. “I can bounce quarters off your abs, girl!”
Sydney rolls her eyes. She likes keeping her body in order, like a well-oiled machine. There are things she’s yet to tell her roommates. Like the fact that she is HIV positive and she isn’t ready to do that, at least not yet. And that at five a.m. every morning, she jogs, and stops in at the Doctor’s station to take her daily medications.
“I’m not crazy,” smiles Sydney.
“Naw, ya just likes keeping that hot body nice and toned,” laughs Abigail. Feeling for the bottle of pills that resides in her pocket, the oxycodone isn’t overly strong, but it does the trick. It is just enough to keep her mental pain at bay, but her mind lucid enough to keep up her good grades.
“Noticing her body, now are we?” hints Tegan. Eyes narrow, Tegan sees Spencer limping to one of the newly built sections of the castle school that houses the java café. “Spencer must be putting some extra time in at the computer screen.”
“Hey, isn’t that Rylee?” points Abigail. They watch Rylee rushing up behind Spencer, the two walk through the door together.
“Well, if Rylee isn’t breaking her down,” smiles Tegan. Tegan remembers the day she’d met Rylee, the very fun and bubbly Rylee had made Tegan laugh like she hadn’t laughed before. So if anyone can get Spencer to open up, it might well be Rylee Scott.
“About time,” agrees Abby.
*s*t*a*r*s
“So,” smiles Rylee. “Who are we looking for?”
“Um, my mom, Jo,” begins Spencer. Finding it hard to say her mother’s name for some reason, the pain of hot regret shoots through her. Knowing that if she’d been strong enough, Spencer might have been able to save her when her mother had needed her most, if only’s are not the way to live. But the decision haunts her daily. Spencer had abandoned her.
“Right, Jo Andrews…,” types Rylee.
“No,” mutters Spencer as she watches what looks like a thousand hits flash across the computer screen. “Wheaton, my mom’s name was Wheaton. Andrews is my dad’s name. My mom is Jo Wheaton.”
Rylee’s fingers hover over the keys – frozen. Jo, I knew Jo Wheaton from when I was about a new born. Rylee hears her mother’s voice echoing in her head. “Did you say, Jo Wheaton?” asks Rylee. Rolling the chair back and swiveling to look at Spencer. A knife twists in her gut as she says the name. A bevy of things begin to slide into place for Rylee all of them send her mind reeling.
“What’s wrong? Look, our lovely little dorm mistress says she knows my mom, says that I couldn’t stare her down like my mom used too,” Spencer says hotly. “I wanna know how they knew each other. There is a connection, there has to be, nothing is coincidence.”
The connection between Natalie and her mother tries on Spencer, because everyone who was connected with Jo is either pure evil, or dead. How has this woman survived? How had she known Jo? Why is it that someone with the initials NS had been at the bottom of her mother’s hunt list? Spencer wants and needs answers to those questions. Is NS Natalie Summers?
Rylee edges back to the computer screen and slowly types in the name, then pulls up a second window and adds Natalie Summer’s name to the search. She then accesses a third window, her fingers quick on the mouse, and even quicker on the keypad. Rylee isn’t using google, she is using a website that her grandfather had told her about a long time ago. One that he used to check sources, if someone delete a webpage or picture, this search engine, called Webmember.com, keeps a ghost copy of it. It also told her if someone had erased it. It was sort of like a tracking device for the internet. “Getting past the Academy firewall was easy,” mutters Rylee.
“How fast do you type?” asks Spencer in awe.
“Ninety words a minute, no mistakes,” rattles back Rylee. “This is odd,” comments Rylee. “It’s like, well, your mom is wiped from the ‘net. That’s not possible, is it? I mean every single article pertaining to your mom is wiped out…. About eleven years ago, someone, I can’t see who, went in and completely obliterated her from the web.”
“Kindred,” sighs Spencer. “Thanks,” adds Spencer. Spencer gets up, quickly moving away before Rylee can say any more, or to ask anything.
Rylee quickly opens yet another window, cross-referencing, Jo Wheaton, Natalie Summers and then adds the word Kindred to the mix, what she comes up with astonishes her. The hits don’t include Jo, but they certainly include Natalie Summers. Spending a long time at the computer, Rylee looks up to find she is missing English class, but this is far more important.
“Fuck me,” mutters Rylee. She slams the print button down on the keyboard and goes to collect the items.
After a few moments, Rylee rushs to the printer, gathering the papers and leaving the room, hugging the pages close.
Rylee makes her way to the large oak trees that over looked the ocean, sitting under them. She begins to read about her own mother’s history, the same history that is intertwined with all of her dorm mates.
Rylee sits down. She spreads the papers out and turns one page over and begins to scribble a crude time line. Wishing she had a laptop to be able to sit and research all day, Rylee shuffles through the papers to find what she is looking for.
The facts, the truth, are this: Their mother’s had been best friends. Their mother had been J*A*D*E*S. Rylee knows Jo Wheaton, she was the woman who had washed up on the shores when she’d been surfing. Jo Wheaton was Spencer Andrews mother.