Chapter Two: Spence
Dani jolted awake as the bus turned onto the gravel roads that lead off the highway. It was the same turn off as the bus always took, and thanks to Winchester, nearly everyone was thrown up off their seats. The school was a few back roads away, but it involved a lot of weaving and winding through the forgotten country roads, and even then, if you didn’t know where it was, it would appear to be just another empty field.
Everyone else on the bus was slowly coming back to the land of the living, and there were many moans and groans. Being woken up by violently being tossed off your seat was not a pleasant way to wake up, especially if it was from a bus seat. Regularly bus seats weren’t even close to comfortable, but being tossed in the air and landing on them elevated that discomfort to pure agony, and no one on the bus seemed to enjoy the rough landing. Except, well, Winchester, because a couple times Dani had caught her smiling while everyone else was complaining; Winchester was just weird like that.
Only the ones that didn’t know about the gravel roads were seated at the back of the bus, and even after the initial jolt, they were being thrown around because of how unkempt and rough the back roads were. Where to sit was something that you learned over time, and eventually it would be an epic battle over who would sit where on the bus on the way to and from the school as the year went on. Dani had never sat in the back because she always had preferred the middle her entire life, so she had never had to suffer from Winchester’s bad driving habits like other kids had. Plus, for every time that the bus went to and from the school, she was fast to get out and always got a seat of her choice.
For the few hours that they had been driving, the clouds had cleared considerably. The sky was no longer the iron grey that it had been early on in the morning, and the sun had finally risen in the sky. But its brilliance was drowned out by the sight of Spence.
The new kids gaped at the sight of the school, because it was truly astonishing. One second all there was an empty field surrounded by a dense forest, and the next there was a castle-like structure standing in the middle of it, the drive up it packed with dozens of yellow school buses. There were hundreds of students milling around the giant stone structure, waiting to burst through those ancient wooden doors that had guarded the entrance for generations. On the towers the teachers watched the entire procession, making sure that everything was going smoothly from their lofty perches. The only parts of the staff that weren’t up in the spires were Wolfe and Anderson, because someone had to be down on the ground to make sure every one of the students made it inside and were settled in their respective places in the dorms.
Wolfe guided the bus to its spot, more for the sake of the kids that were on the drive way than anything else. Many of them were young and wandering around, totally lost and oblivious to their surroundings. It was the same routine every year, and so far nothing had been done to improve the system, because even though it was unconventional setup, it worked for everyone that attended the school.
The bus that Dani was on was one of the last to arrive, but there was still a few to come before anyone would be allowed to enter the scarred wooden doors at the front of the school. A few years ago some rebellious students had tried to force their way in through those dark oak doors, but instead of giving, they threw the would-be intruders off the front steps and into the flowerbeds. It was a warning to anyone who had even thought about it, and no one had dared touched those doors again before Anderson did to open them for the first time in the year for all the students to enter.
Plus, there was Wolfe to deal with. If anyone got antsy and tried to find another entrance, he was always there watching. Many had tried to sneak away from his watch, but it was impossible. Not one of the ones that tried to get in another entrance had succeeded, and were always caught by Wolfe before they could even get away from the main bulk of the students that waited outside for Anderson to fling open the doors to start a new year at Spence.
Winchester got to her place in the mass of things without running over any of the wandering little ones, and everyone was tense, waiting for the doors on the bus to open onto the driveway. The old lady seemed to be taking her time, but really she was just getting ready for the rush of students that were going to flood out the doors the second she opened them. Her wrinkled hand rested on the handle, and with one final shove, she opened the ancient doors.
The flood gates were open.
Students streamed through the open doors of the bus to reach the grass that laid so close to the paved driveway. Dani got out quickly before she could be shoved out with the rush of people getting out of the bus, and made it out onto the neatly cut grass of Spence. Things always seemed different there, especially in the summer, because the grass always seemed greener, the flowers more vibrant, and the trees bigger and shadier than at home. The place had its own magic to it, and it never ceased to please Dani every year she arrived at the academy, rain or shine.
The group that had just excited the bus was quickly escorted out of the way, and the smaller kids that were gawking at the academy were herded to a safer place to look at the school from. There were still more buses to come, and no one needed a squashed first year on the first day of school. Especially because of the paperwork that was involved with those type things.
In the crowd surrounding the school there was a buzz of excitement and of things to come, but Dani didn’t pay heed to the loud drone. She was headed elsewhere, away from the main mob. But before she could reach her destination, a voice called her name.
“Dani! Dani Blackbird! Come here!” Dani knew who it was. It was Anderson.
Dani pushed through the crowd towards Anderson, because it was a bad thing to ignore the headmistress, especially one that was pretty darn powerful. When Dani reached her, Anderson bombarded her with questions, because she was, after all, a special case at the school and Anderson had to report on Dani yearly so that she could stay.
“How was your summer?” Anderson asked her, all smiles. The lady seemed to like Dani, even though Anderson was really super intimidating and appeared to not like anyone.
“It was fine.” Dani was super short with her answers, and wanted to get away. She knew what the next question was going to be; it was the same routine every year.
“Did anything happen over the summer? Did you get any developments with your, er, condition?” This wasn’t really a topic Anderson liked talking about, because she felt that it singled out Dani too much for being different, but she had to ask those questions in order to keep the people in charge happy.
“Nothing. I didn’t even get any new visions.”
“Very well then. I’ll talk to you more on this subject later.” Anderson said, and strode towards the front doors. It was almost time for them to be opened, and she was making sure that everything was ready for when the last bus arrived and unloaded.
Dani made sure that Anderson wasn’t watching her, and walked off. It was the same exact thing every year, and Dani knew that before the week was over that she would have to tell Anderson about all of the visions that she’d had over the summer. Dani had been telling the truth about the visions, she didn’t have any new ones over the summer months, but she did have a sharp increase in the amount.
But that was a talk for later.
As Dani walked towards the edge of the group so that she wouldn’t be crushed in the rush to get in the front doors, the last of the busses arrived. She watched Wolfe guide it to its spot, and as the doors opened on it, he corralled all of the stragglers onto the main front field. It would be a terrible thing if anyone was left outside, because it would be difficult to get in if you didn’t walk through the front doors on the first day.
The last of the students made it to the front lawn, and Anderson walked up the steps that lead to the front doors. She waited until the hubbub quieted down before she said anything.
“Welcome students!” Her voice was projected across the crowd very well, despite the size of it. “To most of you this is the beginning of another year at Spence, but to others it is the very first year. It is the goal of all the staff to offer you another safe and productive year, and to make sure that you develop skills that will last you a life time.” Anderson took a step closer to the door. “Good luck students and we hope that this is a year that you’ll remember!” Anderson took another step to the door, put her hands on the welded handles, and swung the heavy doors open. She took one last look behind her, nodded at Wolfe, and disappeared into the shadows within.
Utter chaos broke behind her the second she crossed the threshold, and a wave of students rushed through the doors. Inside, there were desks lined up with registration sheets for everyone in the years, and even though there was a huge amount of people that packed into the front hall in front of the staircase, the process would go by fast.
Dani had hung out near the back for the very reason that she would have been trampled if she had stood at the front, waited her turn to enter the doors instead of pushing like the majority of the student body. She didn’t understand why they pushed so much, but she didn’t feel like being in the middle of all the craziness that was going on farther ahead of her.
Compared to the light outside, the interior of Spence was dim, but it was as grand, if not more, than that outside was. The grand stair case was freshly polished, and it was so shiny you could see your reflection in it, and it matched the newly cleaned floors. With the new year the grime of the old was removed from every surface, but even with that cleanliness the school felt warm and lived in. No one knew exactly how long the school had been open, but it was suspected that the school looked exactly the same as it had as it had opened, but with some updates, like electricity and appliances.
The roar of all the students talking was amplified by the tall ceilings and the large room, and it was nearly deafening. All of the little kids were wandering around aimlessly, confused about what exactly was going on. There was no description available to new students to what was going to happen when they were invited to come to Spence, and it was something that every student had to go through. Spence didn’t want all her secrets revealed at once, and no one that graduated ever knew all of them.
Some of the staff was down on the main floor to help with registration and guide the new students, but there was an immense amount students and there wasn’t enough of them actually down there to help. The order of years went clockwise around the room, starting right by the door, but there were never actually any problems with the doorway getting blocked because the first years usually were awed by the school and wandered around the middle of the room until they were put in the right direction. Eventually the shock of the school would wear off and they’d get used to it, but for now they were now shocked by how the place looked.
Dani went straight for the sixth year table, even though she had been at the academy longer than six years. You officially started at Spence when you were eight, but if you were discovered to have abilities before then, you could stay at the school and have some simple lessons on how to control their abilities. There were only a few that left home so young, but they were a lot safer at the school than they would if they hadn’t left to go to the academy.
There was a little bit of line up already, but Dani was part of a smaller year of students in the school and she knew it would go by quickly. Everyone at the table was familiar, and Dani had been with them her entire life, except for the new girl that she had noticed earlier in the day on the bus. It was strange to have someone new come to the school when they were in a more senior year, and Dani had never actually seen someone new come in for a higher year the entire fourteen years that she’d been at Spence. It just didn’t happen, because supers were generally found early on, and by the time they were ten, they were at an academy.
The teacher at the table, Peitsch, knew everyone by name, except the new girl, as expected, but since she was the only unfamiliar name, he only double checked who she was.
“You’re Marys, right?” Peitsch was clearly as surprised as Dani was, but he was really good at hiding it. It was only because Dani had been going to Spence so long that she had learned to read his expressions.
The new girl, Marys, just nodded her head. Peitsch checked off her name, and gathered some papers.
“Here is your schedule,” he said, handing her the papers and an agenda. “You’re upstairs on the south tower…” Peitsch trailed off, suddenly remembering that Marys was new. His eyes flicked over to where Dani was standing. “How about Dani just shows you where you are; you guys are in the same tower.”
Marys turned to Dani, seeing her for the first time. Her eyes seemed to glaze over for a second, but then they cleared. Definitely some type of telepathy going on there. Peitsch reached over and gave Dani everything she needed, and told them to get going.
“C’mon, let’s go.” Dani wasn’t totally sure about Marys, she did not like the idea of someone poking around her head, plus, she didn’t know what Marys was like as a person. Dani had known a few telepaths that were just plain terrible, and they’d done a few bad things to others. She was going to be pretty quick about things.
Spence had a simple set up- if you knew how to get around. The downstairs was set up like a giant number sign, with the central square revolving around the library. But the upstairs was not so simple, and it went in circles and it was easy to get lost if you weren’t careful. The third floor was even worse, and it made it difficult for younger students to get onto the roof, which was a good thing, because some of them were quite stupid when it came to the roof. The dorms were actually hard to get to if you didn’t know where they were, and Marys would be super lost if she didn’t get shown.
As Dani lead Marys up the stair case, Marys walked beside Dani awkwardly. Dani tried to start a conversation, but she knew that it wasn’t going to go well because she was kind of a socially awkward person.
“So, what type of ability do you have?” Dani already knew the answer, but was being polite.
“Telepathy.” Dani was careful not to think about how she knew already. For all she knew, Marys could already be in her head.
“How did you discover it?” Usually when a super discovered their power it was when something harmless happened, like when they found out that ‘wow, I can turn the lights on and off with my mind’, or something along those lines.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Okay, so maybe it wasn’t something harmless. Dani didn’t pry, and when she looked over at Marys, she confirmed that whatever had happened hadn’t been good. “What is your ability?”
Dani continued to go up the stairs, silent for a moment. When she reached the second floor, she answered. “Unless you count being all around awkward as an ability, I don’t have any.” Dani knew that Marys was probably going to ask about why she was at the academy then, but to her surprise she didn’t.
“Hm. This is quite an interesting place, don’t you think?” They were going down the hallway and around the first loop, and amid the crowd some of the older students were showing off in front of the little kids. One of them was pyrokinetic, and was creating an array of things with it. Dani knew that if Anderson was there she’d blow a gasket, but Wolfe was making sure that things were looking okay so that Anderson wouldn’t have a reason to come up there. The hallway was jam packed, and with a word to Marys, she opened a hidden door that she had found by accident one day many years ago.
“Yes, yes it is. I couldn’t imagine life without this place.” She didn’t add the last part even though I don’t know why I’m here. Marys didn’t need to know that, telepath or not. They were headed down a dark passage lit by candles instead of the electric lights that were everywhere else in the school. The walls were also rough crumbling stones, and there were cob webs everywhere, so it was obvious that this was not a mapped passage in the school. Dani didn’t know why she had brought Marys down it, but she knew that it wouldn’t appear to Marys ever, because the hidden doors only appeared to whom they wanted to, and Dani was exclusively on some of the doors’ lists. But Marys didn’t need to know that, and it was obvious that she wasn’t going to look through Dani’s thoughts because she was too busy taking in everything.
The passage abruptly ended, and the door appeared for Dani. She heard Marys gasp behind her as she opened it, because all Marys would be able to see was a bunch of dark crumbling stone instead of the wooden door that Dani could. Being at the academy all your life had its advantages. Dani’s eyes adjusted slowly to the brighter lights in the hallway, and from the temperature change she knew that they were getting to the outside of the school. They were still close in, however, and the sixth year dorms were far away from where they were now.
A few younger kids were wandering the halls, looking lost and surprised to see the two of them come out of the wall. Dani ignored them and continued on her way down the hall way towards a small staircase that would take herself and Marys up higher and more away from the main school. They were almost there, and they passed the other year’s dorms before climbing one more staircase to one of the towers. It was a long trek, but being where they were in the school had its advantages.
Once you got to a higher year, you stayed up in the towers of the school, and each year had its own tower. There was no way to get to the towers from the third floor, and unless you knew where to find the doorways and were in that year, you couldn’t even dream of getting in them. No one in the sixth year could get into the fifth, seventh, eighth, ninth or tenth year towers, and vice versa, and it was a good thing because the older kids enjoyed pulling pranks on the younger ones, and if they could get to where they lived all year, they would wreak havoc.
But that never happened, because Anderson and Wolfe made sure of it.
The staircase whirled up above Dani and Marys’ heads, and it was obvious that Marys was getting tired of going up so many stairs. Dani was used to the stairs and the hidden passageways from being at the school so long, but it was obvious that Marys had never climbed so many stairs in her life. Which was to be expected, because with this one trip they had climbed up hundreds of stairs.
“We’re almost there,” Dani called to Marys, who was at least ten steps behind her. “Just about another thirty.”
“How do you do this without dying?” Marys huffed, out of breath. “I’ve never done so many stairs in my life.”
“You’ll get used to it.” In a while. It had taken Dani a couple years to master the stairs at Spence, and even then she couldn’t do all of them all at once, because there was literally thousands of stair cases at the school.
Marys just grunted in response.
When Dani got to the top of the stairs and to the landing that signified the entrance to the sixth year dorms, she waited for Marys. She was quite a ways down the stairs from where Dani was, and she could hear her shoes on the steps as the old wooden stairs creaked and groaned. The steps weren’t going to give out anytime soon, but they certainly enjoyed making it sound like they were going to give out at any second. Another thing that made Spence what it was.
Dani knew it was going to be a while until Marys made it to the top of the stairs, so she looked at her timetable. It wasn’t all too exciting, and to her dismay she had defense classes with everyone in her year all first semester for two blocks. Yippee. It was going to be a bad semester for sure, because while everyone was practicing using their powers, Dani would be left studying tactics that she’s been looking at her entire life and knew by heart. They actually wouldn’t be all that useful come real life, but since she had no powers to practice or use to defend herself with, she was stuck doing that in order to pass the class. She had Math and Social on the first day with one of the defense block along with horticulture. The second day was similar, but with a history class instead of horticulture, and a know-your-friends-and-enemies-course. It was a requirement that they had to learn the same things as regular students in order to be able to get jobs and belong in society outside of the super universe, but it also was annoying at times because all some of the students wanted to do with their time at Spence was practice their abilities. Until you learned to control your powers, you weren’t allowed to practice them anywhere on the school grounds outside of the defense or control class, but it was a school wide rule that you weren’t allowed to use them anywhere off the school grounds, including at home, or harm anyone with them. The system did work, even though there were a few that hated it, and they had always managed to keep the school hidden.
Marys finally reached the landing, exhausted. Dani turned, grabbed the wrought iron handle on the door that looked like a smaller copy of the front door, but it had one difference: There was a number six inlaid in the wood in dark metal. The door swung open, and revealed the sixth year sitting room that was hidden behind the scarred door, and as per usual, it looked different from the other years’ dorms. The sixth year sitting room was circular in shape, a stark contrast from the square one of the fifth. A wall of curved windows lined the wall across from the door, and it offered a huge view of the school grounds and the forest that lined and guarded it, and it ended on each end then it met the bookshelves and staircases that lead to the girls’ dorms and the boys’ dorms. Somehow they had managed to get curved bookcases into the room that matched seamlessly with the circumference of the room, and only stopped once the ones on the left met a fireplace and on the right some portraits of some long forgotten headmasters and headmistresses of Spence. The room somehow managed to be dark like the rest of the school despite the large window, but the decorations were different. Instead of the burgundy and other colours that went with it, this room was a navy blue.
Without a word Dani went up the left staircase that led to the girls’ dorms, and she heard Marys audibly sigh behind her. Marys had a lot to get used to, and Dani could tell that it was going to take some time because she had come to the school in such a senior year. These stairs were still the worn dark chestnut colour of all the wood in the school, and they were as creaky as could be. As the year went on the old stairs would stop complaining so much, but for now they were as loud as could be, and for the stairs that was their welcome to a new year at the school.
The door at the top of the stairs was unmarked by anything that would distinguish it from the other door that lead to the boys’ dorm. Unless you knew which side lead to what, it was hard to know which was which unless you followed someone of the same gender to it, or learned it the hard way. It was something that made Spence unique, and it was like the school enjoyed playing tricks on the students.
Dani pushed open the heavy door, and held it open for Marys as she got to the landing. She turned left with the curve of the hallway, and it popped out into another sitting room with a kitchen attached, and Dani smiled knowing that the boys wouldn’t have something like this in their part of the dorm. It was another circular room with a large window, and yet another staircase led up to the top of the tower, and Dani knew that at every landing there would be an individual room. Since Dani’s last name started with a B, she would be near the top of the tower, and farther away from the main heat source of the school. At least she wouldn’t be at the very top where it was coldest, but she didn’t feel sorry for Denise Allensen because she had ice powers and the cold didn’t bother her at all, which was an advantage when you were up on the top of the school and the heating sucked.
Before Dani started up the stairs, she turned to Marys. “What’s your last name?”
“O’Brien,” She had a quizzical expression on her face. “Why?”
“You’ll be near the bottom of the top part of the tower then.”
“Thank God,” Marys breathed a sigh of relief. “If I had to go up anymore stairs I would die.”
“Well, come on then.”
Dani started up the spiraling staircase, Marys following closely behind. A blue light filtered down to them at the bottom of the ginormous staircase, but they were too far down to see what was causing the light to be blue. The rooms started a ways up, on top of the private library that was exclusive to the girls’ dorms, so even though Marys was almost done with Spence’s insane amount of stairs, there was still a good amount to go. Once they got above the library, the private rooms that all the girls got started, and the first name to appear was Isla Zureski’s, because her last name was the last one every class list. All of the rooms were labeled with a name so you knew who was in which room for the first while, but after a few months at the school those plaques had a bad habit of going missing.
Up and up they went, the wooden stairs stopping at every landing for a moment before continuing on their way up towards the very top. Since Marys’ name was near the bottom, she reached her room quickly, and Dani and Marys said their goodbyes, even though there wasn’t much to say because they didn’t really know each other at all. Dani continued upwards on her own, and as she got higher up in the tower stained glass windows started to appear one by one, until the entire wall was the stained glass. At first they didn’t depict anything, but as she got farther up they started to show some images. Dani knew that with every season and event the pictures would change, but for now they were showing her summer things, like flowers and leaves. The stained glass windows were something that she’d never seen in her other accommodations, and it was a nice addition.
As she neared the top, she saw what the source of the blue light was, and discovered it to be stained glass that was on the roof that let in all the light. There were a few purple panes in there, but they were few and far between and there was predominately blue light that was cast around. From her vantage point a few landings below the glass, Dani could make out the trees in the blue, and in the purple there seemed to be birds flying through the air.
I have always taken comfort in the birds…
She caught a phrase this time, instead of a full out vision. She had never gotten that phrase before, and she wondered what exactly it meant. Dani had never been able to figure out what any of her visions meant her entire life, but they only ever appeared when something related to them came up. Often she only got phrases and fragments of conversations that echoed through her head like some long forgotten memory that she just remembered, but these weren’t memories of her own. They were someone else’s all together, only she had no idea who’s they were or why they were coming through on Dani’s receiving end of it. The whole thing was strange, but Dani put it out of her head. It was just something else that she’d have to tell Anderson soon.
She passed the C’s, and was into the B’s, and since there was only two of them in the year that had a last name that started with B, she was getting close to her room. Cornelia’s room passed beside Dani, and before she knew it, she was standing on the landing in front of her room. Dani looked at the door for some time, knowing that this was going to be her home for the year, and if anything happened, it was a long way down from here. The door looked the same as all the rest in the school; its dark wood had a slightly purple tinge to it because it was underneath a purple pane of glass, and beside the door on the plaque was her name, Dani Blackbird, but there was a space beside it because she had no abilities. Dani slowly extended her hand and took the cold door handle in her even colder hands, and pushed the door open.
The door to the new year was open, and anything could happen.
Dani smiled as she saw what her room was to look like for the rest of the school year, because it was unlike any of her other rooms that she’d had at Spence before. The room was painted a light gray with one icy blue wall to match the colour scheme of the sixth year tower, and like the rest of the tower it was circular with one large curved window. The difference with this one was that it had a window seat instead of chairs, but Dani was fine with that. There was an empty bookshelf lining part of one wall heading into the corner of the crescent moon shaped room, and going closer to the window was the bed. Across from the bed on the wall that curved outward surrounding the bathroom was a fireplace and Dani was instantly grateful because it would help through the long winter ahead. A dresser and a closet lined the wall that curved outward because of the staircase, and Dani was glad, because last year there hadn’t been enough room for her things since everything got smaller as it got to the top in the fifth year tower.
Her trunk and suitcase sat at the foot of her bed, one of the only angular things in the room, and she began to unpack. She unlatched her trunk that Spence had given her the first year that she had officially started schooling at the academy, and the trunk was stamped with the black outline of a bird because her last name was Blackbird. It was something that they did at Spence, and it was something that distinguished each trunk from another easily, and usually the image depicted was something that had to do with each person’s ability and their name, but in Dani’s case it was just the bird because she had no abilities. Inside the trunk she had made sure to bring a lot of things like spare blankets, some boots and other shoes, a bunch of coats, her books, hats and mittens, snow pants for when they would have to be outside in the winter, all her school supplies, a few things to make the room seem more like home, and if she had any leftover room she put in a bunch of her clothes and toiletries. This year she had a lot of room in her trunk because she had learned not to over pack, and her suitcase was mostly empty because of it, but that was fine because bags had a bad habit of becoming fuller as the school year went on.
There weren’t going to be any classes on the first day because it was a huge shock to new kids at first, and most of the kids that came from the academy were from far away and it took a while to settle in the dorms. Dani was glad for that, because she was not in the mood to do anything but set herself up in her new room, and it gave everyone time to reconnect with the people they hadn’t seen for a few months.
She took her alarm clock that she’d brought with her out first, and put it on the bedside table before plugging it in. Even though there was electricity, there were only so many sockets, and if you were one of those people that had a million things that needed to be plugged in, you were out of luck unless you brought a power bar. They generally didn’t like you bringing power bars into the school because of the possibility of it overloading, but a select few managed to sneak them in, including Dani, but she was going to keep it in her bag until she actually needed it. With the alarm clock/docking station plugged in, Dani resumed with the rest of her un-packing, starting with her books to put in the book shelf.
She had brought quite a few books, but not enough to fill all of the shelves, because she would need the extra room later for textbooks and such. Dani wasn’t picky about the order of them like other people, because if she made them alphabetical it bothered her because in her way of thinking, wherever the book was put in the shelf was where it stayed for the rest of the year until she had to pack them up again and take them back home. There was a wide variety of genres that she had brought this year, and she hoped that the new selections would make her through until Christmas when she would have some new ones arriving from home. They probably wouldn’t, but there was only so much you could bring until you couldn’t get it down the staircase, plus, if the trunk was too heavy there was always the possibility that it would be left in the lobby for you to bring up yourself, and Dani knew from experience when she’d brought a few too many rocks from home when she’d had a rock collection.
With all the books lining the top shelves because the bottom ones were bigger and good for storage, she dug around in her trunk until she found the one thing she was looking for. It was a stone carving of a whale that she’d had as long as she could remember, and it went everywhere with Dani. She carefully placed it in a gap between her books and the shelves, and she was finally satisfied with how it looked. The only issue now was all of the school books lying around, but she’d find a place for those later.
Through her wall that faced the staircase, she could hear someone banging up the old stairs. It was evident that their trunk had been left downstairs, and Dani could only imagine the troubles they had been having dragging that thing up all of the stairs. Knowing everyone in her year well except for Marys, she thought that it might be Georgie, because since she had the ability to manipulate things that had to deal with earth, she had a bond with rocks, which she always packed in her trunk. Georgie had probably overdone it on the rocks this year, and now she was paying the price, which was unfortunate because she really had a thing for rocks and could never leave any behind. Dani decided not to take a look outside her door because it would be a huge topic for everyone in the dorm later, and she would be able to find out who it was then.
Moving onto her suitcase, Dani began to pull out her clothes to put in the dresser and closet that her room had. Last year in the fifth year tower there had been little room for things because that one got smaller as it got to the top, and Dani was grateful that the sixth year tower didn’t do the same thing. It was a pain when you had to store your clothes on the book shelves because there was no room anywhere else, but this year the options were nowhere near as limited.
The dresser was a big one with many drawers, and Dani began to organize her clothes into their respective places. She always liked having each group of clothing having their own drawers, and it helped keep things organized and easy to find. In previous years the drawers in the dressers hadn’t been very deep, but this year they were, and Dani was finding it easy to fit her wardrobe into it without having to cram it all in and hope for the best. With her suitcase becoming rapidly lighter and empty, Dani was nearly done with moving into the dorm for the year.
As a final touch she took out all of her extra blankets and put them on the bed and the window bench, and she stowed her trunk and suitcase under her bed for storage and was pretty much done with moving in. She looked out her large curved window that looked out onto the back field and the forest, and she knew that this year was going to be different than the others. It wasn’t going to be a repeat of everything like all the years before, and she had a good feeling about it. The school could get tedious at times when everything remained static and never changed, but often change was a good thing. It was something that kept things interesting and new, and everyone needed some change in their lives at some point.
Dani didn’t stay looking out the window long because it was nearly lunch, and if you missed the meal you were out of luck until supper, so she decided to head back down to the main sixth year sitting room. She opened the heavy door that guarded her room for the year, closed it softly behind her because they made quite a loud noise when they were allowed to slam closed, and started down the creaky old staircase, the blue light illuminating the way down. Below her she could see a few classmates on their way down, but they were spaced apart and there was no other sound in the lofty tower other than the complaints of the wooden stairs.
Going down the stairs was indefinitely easier than going up them, and it didn’t take long for Dani to make it most of the way down before she remembered Marys. Marys probably wouldn’t know about having to be down for lunch yet because the official schedule wasn’t out yet, so Dani decided to check and see whether anyone had told her or not.
Since Dani had went past where Marys’ room was, she had to trek back up a couple storeys, but it wasn’t that big of a deal for her because she’d been doing all the stairs at Spence her entire life. All the doors to the rooms looked exactly the same as each other, and Dani knew that the interiors were identical as well from living in so many different dorms. When she arrived at Marys’ door, she knocked three times and waited for an answer.
As predicted, Marys answered.
“Oh. Hello.” Marys seemed a tad bit surprised to see Dani there on her doorstep.
“Hi. Lunch starts in a little and I thought you might want to know, because if you miss it you don’t get to eat until supper.”
“Oh. Okay.” Marys didn’t seem too excited about lunch, obviously thinking that it was going to be pre-packaged freezer food that the school was going to be serving, which was not true because in the kitchen everything was made fresh.
“Well, come on then. If we don’t get down there fast enough there won’t be anywhere to sit.” This was true, because if you showed up late you either had to squish into a spot on the benches that lined the tables or had to sit on the floor and scavenge for food off of the tables, and neither of those options were fun.
Marys walked out of her door way and shut it. “Is there any way to lock the doors?”
“Nope,” Dani answered, starting down the stairs. “But you are the only person that can let anyone in through that door.”
“Hm. Cool.”
It was just one of many of Spence’s quirks, but at least you didn’t have to worry about losing a key somewhere.