Frostbitten Past

V

ANDORRA WASN'T sure how to handle what had happened, so she did what anyone would do: research. She holed herself up in the school library during lunch and even during her study hall, trying to figure out what had happened to her.

She had googled King Lark. Nothing, not a single website or bit of history linked to that name. Had she made it all up, then? She had spent a little too much time down a rabbit hole of others admitting their own hallucinations where they were forced into different realities, but their stories sounded a little bit like lucid dreaming.

Andorra couldn't seem to make sense of it all. One link had suggested drugs, but the only thing Andorra had eaten that morning had come from the school cafeteria, straight from the hands of a lunch lady.

Had she been drugged? Or had she been so stressed about the other things happening in her life that she had taken a nosedive off of the deep end?

The other reason Andorra refused to eat in the cafeteria had everything to do with the laughter that was following her every move. By mid morning, it seemed as though every student had heard about what had happened in the hallway. Andorra had been screaming. Pressing herself into the lockers. Wailing at the top of her lungs.

She's crazy, she had overheard a few times that morning.

She was inclined to believe them.

After her research had yielded nothing of significant consequence, Andorra headed home on the bus, head held low. She was hoping no one would even notice her cramped up against the bus window, but she wasn't that lucky.

Someone swung into the seat behind her. "Hey, crazy girl. Heard they're gonna admit you into a mental hospital."

There were laughs behind her. The soft thud of someone hitting another person. "Stop, you're so bad. My god."

Andorra held back her tears. She could feel them in the throat, warm and aching, and she only hoped that no one would notice. She wanted to go home and lay in her bed, never to come back up for air. Embarrassment sat heavy on her chest.

The rest of the bus ride was full of laughter and hushed whispers aimed at her. Andorra pretended not to hear them. She pretended none of it existed. When she stood up at her bus stop, someone tried to trip her, and Andorra ignored that too.

The walk up the driveway provided little relief as the tears began to fall, freezing against her cheeks.

Her entire body felt like a chunk of ice by the time she had taken off her boots and jacket in the entrance of the house. Her parents wouldn't be home for another few hours, and something about the empty farmhouse had Andorra's body tensing. She could feel eyes on her as she moved up the stairs to her bedroom.

She dumped her backpack by her desk and burrowed under her blankets. She closed her eyes, trying hard to erase the image of the melting walls from her brain. The more she tried to erase it, the more it burned behind her eyes.

There was a soft knocking at her window. A click click click that had Andorra going stiff under the blankets. She edged her head out from under the bedding, peeking out to see a bird at the window, tapping its beak over and over again.

It was rather large. Andorra moved from her bed to get a closer look, identifying it immediately as a hawk. As soon as she stood there, staring at the bird, it looped away from the window and soared down towards the woods behind her house. It disappeared into the trees, but Andorra watched with interest as it came back from the woods, flying close to her window, and making the loop again.

It did this three times, over and over, before it came back to her window to tap against the glass once again. It let out a squawk, looking Andorra right in the eyes.