Red Pointe Shoes

Chapter 6

A/N Another update on time ^^ it's shorter than the rest though :/ I'm sorry! I was away at Outward Bound camp from Monday till Thursday, so I didn't have enough time to write a long chapter :/ not edited, so autocorrect took the liberty of doing it, so ignore any weird words you see.

Chapter Six

Speak of the devil and he shall come. How I hate Nat right now. The moment the words leave her mouth, the doors of the cafeteria open and none other than James Loyer walks in. It is to be expected as both the Dancers and the Trainees share that same cafeteria. So why does my heart jump? Why is the blood rushing from my face? Why do I feel so terrified? I have no reason to be, and yet my hands are trembling. I am Sentenial, the Champion of the Underground. I can fend him off if he were to attack. Then I realize, as if a lightning bolt from above came and thwacked me in the head, that if he were to unmask me as Sentenial right here, in front of everybody, I would be doomed. The scorn of the Dancers, the jeers of the Trainees, and Nat. She will feel so betrayed that I- her best friend, has kept something like this from her.

I will lose everything.

But how can I lose Nat's friendship? A part of me wants to naively believe that she will support me, but the logical side of brain whispers that she will not. How it makes horrendous, perfect sense. Have I been blind to the way she scorns the Trainees? Detest their violent ways? And when she did go to watch the Championships, it was only truly for the 'hot guys'. Her words, not mine. Her description of it later was, to put it simply, nothing short of scathing. At the time when she ranted to me about how everyone was masked so she couldn't see the faces , she had some not so nice things to say about the fighters.

Oh gosh. I don't even want to think about it.

I am brought out of my thoughts when Nat nudges me sharply with her elbow. Her eyes are wide and curious, maybe even a little bit shocked. "He's coming over to the Dancer's side! What is he doing?" I turn my head and true enough, he is only but a few tables away, steadily heading towards us. To my everlasting relief, his eyes slide over us briefly before moving on. "I don't know," I murmur, lying. I know he is looking for me. Why else would he be doing this? "I'm going to the toilet," I mutter, shoving my chair back. This is too much to handle.

When I step out of the cafeteria, I immediately lean against the wall, massaging my temples. How am I going to handle a year of this?

"Headache?" A sympathetic voice asks. Toilet boy.

"Like you wouldn't believe," I grumble, too stressed out to even attempt sarcasm. I feel a gentle touch around my shoulder that steers me away from the wall and down the corridor. "You don't look so well, let me get you to the nurse's." I don't even protest.

***

I wake to the feeling of someone laying me down onto my bed. Groggily, I reach out a hand and feel my fingers encircle a warm wrist. "What happened?" I mutter, yawning as I do.

"You fell asleep at the nurse's, so I carried you back." Toilet boy says, sounding quite sheepish.

"Oh, thanks." I mumble, already feeling my eyes closing again. Somewhere in the realm of sleep and half alertness, I hear him say as he closes the door, "Get well soon, Avery."

It does not occur to me that I never told him my name.