Disclaimer: Pokémon and its related properties are copyrighted to The Pokémon Company and Nintendo, respectively


A Yearning for the Mud
Chapter Forty-Five – Arlette

Only by acceptance of the past, can you alter it. - T.S. Eliot


"Hi, Wallace," Arlette said.

Under the stars and crescent moonlight, she glowed opalescent, the sea air rippling the bottom of her sweater, a soft tan color that allowed the pair of deep pink capri pants she wore to stand out. The wind tousled her hair as well, brushing her white-blonde locks across her shoulders and letting a few stray strands whip her cheeks until she tamed them into place.

Wallace's eyes stretched wide with bewilderment as he internally registered everything around him. The waves were still moving, pushing and pulling against the shore, his heart thumping loudly in the wake of his conversation with Don, the weight of elgyem on his shoulder. Every sign pointed to the fact he wasn't dreaming or imagining the sight of Arlette Bellerose standing yards away from him on the beach.

When she took a step toward him, he tensed and flung his arm out. "Elgy!"

The beach between them exploded in a burst of purple light, sand, and sea spray, shielding his sight of her for a few moments, a time he should have taken to run. As the sand settled, he found Arlette on the other side, smiling.

"You can't be here," Wallace said, his words coming out mumbled.

"Why?" Arlette asked, shrugging. "This beach is beautiful, especially at night." She folded a loose strand of hair behind her ear as she turned to face the sea, her eyes narrowing at the moon's rippled reflection. "Are you waiting for someone?" she asked, inching forward, her bare feet meeting the incoming wave.

Wallace focused on the sand, the footprints she left in her wake, the foam of the sea water lapping around her ankles, moonlight reflecting off her wet feet. "You can't be real," he whispered, unable to ignore the physical proof in front of him. Wallace rubbed his knuckles into his temples, figuring this was all a hallucination brought on from his sleeping pill. Groaning, Wallace pressed the heel of his palm into his eye socket and shook his head, picturing the memorial plaque from the Bellerose Courtyard, his memory providing him with flashes of Arlette's body, broken and bleeding on the stones, her face as she fell from the roof, all of it colliding with what stood before him.

"Well, why not?" he sighed, pinching at the bridge of his nose. "People are vanishing, why can't the dead return?"

A gentle prodding in his jaw brought his attention to elgyem who, with his free arm, pointed toward Arlette, his yellow light flashing every few seconds.

Knowing elgyem's yellow light to mean uncertainty, Wallace watched Arlette for a few seconds, the butter yellow glow illuminating her every few seconds. "Do you see her?" he asked, unblinking, studying the ground behind Arlette as the light lit her again.

Elgyem shook his head, swinging his arm side to side, illuminating different sections of the beach, ultimately focusing on Arlette again, despite the psychic-type not realizing it.

Narrowing his eyes on a stretch of sand, Wallace noticed something missing as the light hit her again. "Arlette," he said, his eyes trailing up her body.

"Hm?" she asked, pulling her attention from the water.

"You don't have a shadow," he said, his eyes darting from her face to the sand again, then back to her face. She didn't reply, only smiled and returned to looking at the water. "Are you in my head?" he asked, dropping his eyes to her feet, unable to find her footprints in the sand anymore. "Or are you something else?"

"Does it matter?" she asked, casting a coy look over her shoulder.

"Yes," he replied instantly. "If you're in my head, then it means I really am going crazy," he said, rubbing his forehead and then his eyes again. "But if you're – a spirit – then, shouldn't other people be able to see you?" he asked, looking to elgyem again, the psychic-type still looking at the sand. He was sure elgyem wasn't faking it or messing around, he really couldn't see her.

Arlette sighed and looked to her palms. "I might be a bit of both," she said.

"How is that possible?" he asked, squinting skeptically at her. "How can spirits exist – if that's what you are – here?"

"Do you know about the spirit world, Wallace?" Arlette asked, closing and opening her fists.

Wallace mouthed a few words as he dropped his gaze to his sneakers and the pits in the sand he stood in. "After my mother died – I used to ask my father about what happened when people died. He told me stories about people and their pokémon forming new pokémon if their spirits were close enough. He said he knew someone, they died along with their pokémon and ended up returning to our world as a drifloon. He told me it didn't happen to everyone, and that there were different kinds of spirits and other worlds other than our own."

Arlette nodded and folded her arms across her chest as she turned away from the water. "I don't know how exactly I got here," she said. "Just that I saw a light and felt like it was pulling me, but I've been here for a while, trying to make contact with you."

Wallace's mouth fell open slightly, his brows jumping. "Me?"

Arlette nodded with a small smile. "When I came back you were the first person I saw, you were in Eleanor's room, talking to her about Don."

"You were there?" Wallace asked, his voice growing louder, recalling the night in question. "I didn't know."

"I think that's the point of being dead," Arlette said, winking. "I tried to make contact, I wasn't sure how to do that exactly, they don't give out manuals on the other side. I tried talking to you, following you, running into you, thinking it would trigger something."

Wallace's mind drifted again, dissociating from the scene around him, he thought about the girl's laughter and the sight of wispy light hair he saw in the stairwell. Even as recently as earlier in the night he heard someone calling his name in the Religious Life Center's basement. Wallace snapped back and blinked when elgyem poked him in the jaw again. "Ahh! What?"

Elgyem's eyes narrowed on him, his red lights flashing all around them. "Gee, gee!" he hummed jutting his hands out at the beach.

"He can't see who you're talking to," Arlette said, tilting her head in elgyem's direction.

"Elgyem," Wallace said, softly. "Do you remember Arlette? She's here with us, with me, visiting from – the other side."

"Em..." Elgyem touched a hand to his face and waved his other arm in an arc, his green light flashing like a strobe over the sand.

"Wallace, I don't know how long my connection to this world will last," Arlette said, moving closer, waving back at elgyem. "But I'll stay as long as I can to help you."

"What makes you think I need help?" he asked, his eyes darting between staring at Arlette's discolored eyes, a beautiful feature he hadn't noticed until it was too late.

Arlette laughed, a genuine, throaty laugh and waved him off. "I don't think there's anyone else I have a stronger connection with, Wallace. If I was brought back here, appearing in front of you, it's because you need me."

Wallace frowned at the idea his connection with Arlette was strong, considering he did nothing but lie and butt heads with her, but a memory struck him like a bolt of lightning. Wallace hiccuped back a sob as the thought burned his eyes, tears spilling down his cheeks.

"Wallace!" Arlette gasped, rushing closer. "What is it? Are you alright? Sit down."

"I'm fine," he said, sniffing and wiping his eyes. "I'm fine, I just remembered something." Wallace wiped his nose and palmed his face. "God," he sighed. "Arlette, Andrew's alive."

The blonde's face softened, but her reaction hadn't been the one Wallace imagined. She nodded and closed her eyes for a few seconds before she met his gaze again. "That's good to know," she said, finally.

"My father hid him away, wiped his memory to keep things working in his favor," Wallace said. "I found him, I found the truth, about everything and got him back," he said, stepping away from Arlette and starting to walk a line in the beach. "His memory was messed with, he only remembered what my father wanted him to know, but I was able to make a breakthrough using you, and you," he said, nudging elgyem who clapped his hands. "Andrew gave elgyem to me as a gift, well he wanted to, everything blew up before he got the chance, but I started asking him if he remembered elgyem which didn't lead anywhere until I showed him your picture."

Arlette's eyes widened, shifting from Wallace to elgyem as he spoke. "I – I think I'm lost."

"Andrew didn't remember you right away, but he said he remembered asking you for a favor, to breed an egg for him." Wallace pulled elgyem from his shoulder and pulled the wriggling psychic-type into his arms. "That egg was elgyem and when I connected those dots to him, that he knew you and had you breed him this egg, that he was giving to a friend, he kind of filled in the blanks that it all came around to me. That was his breakthrough and from there he were able to fill in the other gaps."

Arlette's eyes opened wider, her jaw falling open as she stepped closer, her hands reaching out toward elgyem before she recoiled back. "This is one of mine?" she breathed and she cupped her mouth. "I feel so stupid," she said, her eyes squeezing shut as she shook her head. "I never put it together, he gave me an elgyem to breed for him and I ended up with about half a dozen eggs. I gave his back and ended up selling the others for money. I was doing so much breeding as freelance work to get money together for school I started to lose track of everything."

"Even when I thought you might be real I didn't think that Andrew's elgyem egg was for you," she said, gazing at him. "You look so different, Wallace," she said, reaching out. "How long as it been since I died?"

Wallace watched Arlette's hand uncoil, her fingers stretching out as they neared his face. The idea chilled him, Alrette looked real, sounded real, but wasn't, and as he waited for her touch to feel real, it never came. He watched her slender fingers stop against his cheek and drag down his face, though felt nothing aside from the sea breeze caressing his face.

"I wish I could touch you, give you a hug," she said, then looked to elgyem. "Give this baby a hug too," she sighed.

"Ten months," Wallace said, his throat dry and his face burning. "You've been gone about ten months."

Arlette blinked, her distraught face clearing away into something akin to shock. "It feels like yesterday, but it also seems like a lifetime ago. I learned a lot on the other side," she said before she lit up with a wide smile. "I found my parents, on the other side."

"That's great," he said, returning her smile, though he didn't feel genuine. If his father was waiting for him on the other side he knew that wouldn't be a reunion he was in a hurry to attend. "Can I show you something?" he asked, nodding toward the direction of campus.

Arlette nodded and they started walking. Leaving behind the beach and lapping waves, the pair made their way back through campus, ending up outside the ICO courtyard. Wallace remained silent as they made their way through the courtyard, letting Arlette take in the sight of the flowers, the new stones, the trees before she saw her memorial dedication.

"This is all for me?" she asked, straightening up from reading her plaque.

"My father paid for your funeral, and for the remodel of the Civet Courtyard," Wallace said.

"Why?" Arlette asked, casting a wary look in his direction as she moved around a group of rose bushes.

"He said that because of Andrew and everything that was happening around that time, his video confession, he thought making an effort of good faith would help," Wallace said. "He also put it together that I something to do with – Arlette," he said, watching her twisting between a path between flower beds.

"Hm?" she asked.

"I'm sorry," he said, the words coming out loud and clumsy in the darkened silence around them. "Really, I'm sorry, for everything. I wish – I could have just – found a way – I wanted..."

"Wallace, stop," Arlette said, walking through the mulch to come to his side again. "Everything between us felt like a roller coaster going too fast for me to get a solid grip on. Every twist and turn made me think I was going to fly out of my seat, but I made it to the end of the ride in one piece. But, you know, they stopped the ride, they unbuckled me, lifted the restraint bar, and as I was stepping out of the car, I tripped and fell. As much as I hated you during that time, you weren't responsible, it was an accident and you tried to help as much as you could at the end."

"Are you happy on the other side?" Wallace asked, whispering to her as their eyes met, not out of fear or someone passing by hearing him talking to himself, but because the moment felt private.

"I'm not sad anymore, that's all I can ask for," she said, smiling.

"Can I ask you another question?" he said, focusing on her lips. "Why don't you stutter anymore?"

Arlette grinned and shrugged it off. "I don't know, death is weird, Wallace. I don't really know why I stuttered to begin with, but I'm not that person anymore. Now, can I ask you something?"

Wallace nodded as he watched her move back through the courtyard toward a small circle of candles on one of the benches.

"What's going on here?" she asked.

Wallace sighed and followed her, staring down at the half-burnt candles. "There's a boy named Julian and he holds séances and says he's been talking to you and about how you were mad at me."

Arlette cocked a brow up and shook her head. "This is the first communication I've had with the living world."

"He must have told me that to get under my skin," Wallace said, rubbing his arm, feeling a little dirty and simple for believing Julian at all.

"Wallace, have you been with him when he's doing those séances?" Arlette asked.

"No," Wallace said. "He's invited me and I've passed by, but," Wallace crossed his arms and eyed the candles and their set up skeptically, now that he'd made a real connection with the other side, he couldn't help but think Julian was a phony, "I was never interested. So he really wasn't talking to you?"

"Definitely not," Arlette said. "I needed a connection, you, to tether myself here, but I've seen other spirits attempting to contact this side and pull themselves through. Instead of seeking out connections they just look for humans who are messing around with the dark side of things and wait for an opening."

Wallace grimaced, his eyes still focused on the candles as he thought about what might have been communicating with Julian if not Arlette, or if he'd ever made connections with a spirit or if it was all a hoax.

"So, what's been on your mind, I was brought to you for a reason," Arlette asked.

Wallace sighed and squeezed elgyem to his chest, unsure of where to start exactly, or which one of his many problems was paramount. "There are some students missing," he said, hoping to explain everything without his own paranoia getting in the way. "And I think I'm the only one that remembers them, everyone else I talk to doesn't remember who the missing students are. Don's oldest brother is missing and he said he had no clue who he was."

Arlette asked, furrowing her brows. "Who's all missing?"

Wallace sucked in a quick breath as he moved to sit at the bench, opposite the forgotten candles and let elgyem out of his arms. The psychic-type took to flying above the courtyard and between the trees, odd spurts of purple light indicating his location while out of sight.

"There were two maintenance workers, Nat, Ben, Kit, and Marie-Jeanne," Wallace said, holding his hands out and folding down fingers for each missing person. "Those are only the people that I know about." Wallace shrugged and looked over his shoulder and then forward up the face of the ICO. Many rooms along the front sides of the building had their windows lit up while others were dark and he wondered if it was because students weren't around to turn on the lights or had just simply left them off.

"No one else remembers these people?"

"No one I've talked to," he said. "And I'm worried that if I forget them, without anyone to remember them, how can they come back? Not like I have a way to bring them back regardless."

The thought took root in his brain, he only knew of five people, but what were the odds that those were the only ones gone? What if students, or professors, Wallace had never met were gone and no one around remembered them, could they return? What if remembering someone, being their relic as Cole claimed, wasn't enough? Wallace jammed his knuckles into his temples and started to work them in circles in an effort to spin the thoughts away, if only for a moment of relief.

"Wallace?"

Wallace dragged his hands down the sides of his face, pulling the skin under his eyes down as he looked toward Arlette. "Yes?" he asked, finding the blonde staring up into one of the trees. He turned, expecting to find elgyem up to something silly, but instead, he saw a colorfully winged pokémon perched on an extended branch.

With both sets of eyes on it, the pokémon's tail fluttered and its head tipped from side to side as it let out a sing-song chirping cry. "Cha-tot!" With twitching movements the chatot pecked at one of its wings and hopped over on the branch, making space on the branch as elgyem floated out of the leaves and landed beside it.

"What happened to my pokémon?" Arlette asked.

"There were some relatives at the memorial service," Wallace said, getting to his feet. "An older man and woman, and a young girl with pink hair, your cousin? She took them, your aunt I guess took an egg you had, your cousin said she would take them to raise them or release them."

Arlette pressed her lips together but didn't say anything at first. She tipped her head and started to twist a strand of her hair around her middle finger. "Oh, Alita," she said, smiling before she dabbed at her eyes and frowned. "I guess if I was alive I might start crying."

"Why?"

"Oh nothing," Arlette said, her smile widening. "I just thought about what kind of love and attention my cousin would give my pokémon. I'm a little sad I'm not here to do it for her, or thank her."

Wallace frowned a little, saddened by the same thought as he looked up to elgyem. Like his mother, her pokémon were left behind when she died and his father was left to raise an inconsolable roster of pokémon that missed their trainer. For better or worse, his father's main team remained in storage, none of which he'd bothered to take out. Even his father's beheeyem, the abomination that it was, after saving it from a fiery death in the cabin, Wallace deposited its ball into his father's safe and never looked back.

"Maybe we can go see her?" he asked. "If you're able to hang around, we can go visit her, you know where she lives right?"

"Last I heard she was attending a trainer school, somewhere not too far from here," Arlette said, shaking her head. "Don't worry about me, Wallace, seeing my team, or her, won't make leaving this world any easier. Let's focus on what's going on in front of us."

"I got it," Wallace said, clenching his jaw. "Where do we start?"

Arlette shrugged and shook her head. "Do you have anyone you can trust with this stuff? Like someone you can talk to about this that will take it seriously?"

"Cole," Wallace said, finding a form of solace in saying his name. "I've talked to a few people about this, but he's the only one that hasn't written me off as crazy, yet. Mostly because whenever I talk to someone about it I'm an incoherent mess and probably don't make sense. I talk to Eleanor a lot, but she didn't believe me. I have roommates, but one of them has a lot going on and the other, well, I can never tell if the other one likes me or not."

"Anyone else?" Arlette asked.

Wallace shook his head and bit the inside of his cheek. "After you died the truth about me came out and everyone kind of – despised me," he said. "I took last semester off and when I came back I came back to almost no one's favor," he said as a name came to him. "Carl. Carl might believe me, or at least be willing to listen."

"Let's go find Carl," Arlette said, shrugging. "Which way?"

"I think he's in my building," he said, nodding to Rose-Absolute Hall. "Let's go, Elgy."

With a burst of purple energy that sent the chatot squawking and flapping away, elgyem shot off the tree and soared over Wallace's head, leading the charge toward the dorm hall. They crossed the turn-around walkway and Wallace flashed his badge to let himself in, followed by Arlette, though he wondered if she even needed doors opened for her anymore, but thought asking her to try walking through a wall would be rude.

"Do you know which room is his?" Arlette asked as she climbed the steps to the empty lobby. She wandered around, glancing down the two hallways to their sides and peered around into coffee shop attached to the lobby.

"No clue," Wallace said, with a sigh. "I don't have his number either, maybe Eleanor can help us," he said, heading toward the hall, only to realize Arlette was still looking into the coffee shop. "See something?"

"It's empty," she said.

Wallace felt something drop into the pit of his stomach, his heart maybe, as he backed up and moved around Arlette. Through the glass doors of the shop, Wallace could see the nearly vacant interior of the Café Rose.

For the most part, the usually bustling café was quiet, the only activity centered on four beige armchairs in the middle of the main level where three girls sat laughing. He recognized them instantly, the two2 facing him where Azalea and Alina, the last time he'd seen either them was in the exact same location, inside the café where his attempt at playing nice went over as all his other attempts. The other girl, without facing him, was recognizable by her pale pink waves and strands of medium brown roots.

A nameless worker from the café and obviously a student, judging by her presence in the student dorm, the pink-haired girl had confronted him in his booth and babbled on about Andrew and the three of them forming some kind of Trinity. She claimed that fate had brought them together on campus, the meaning of which he hadn't figured out, nor cared to think about past their initial meeting.

"Who are they?" Arlette asked in a low tone.

Wallace jerked his neck out, grinning at her. "Why are you whispering? They can't hear you."

Arlette smiled and laughed, the thought of her ghostly existence having apparently slipped her mind. "Right, sorry."

"The girl with the blue tips in her hair," Wallace said, pointing to Azalea. "She was in our year, she – "

"She blew up my window!" Arlette gasped, bouncing from foot to foot. "I almost didn't recognize her. Tempest told me about her and what the Roses did to her, I remember now," she said, palming her forehead.

Wallace nodded and pointed to the girl at her side, laughing with her mouth wide open, her long hair swaying as she bounced in her seat. "Alina," he said. "I don't know much about her, but she's friends with Azalea, who hates me now, so she's not a friend either."

"And the pink-haired girl with her roots showing?" Arlette asked, bobbing her head at the girl's back.

Wallace curled up the corners of his mouth as he watched Arlette eyeing the girl. "Was that an insult?"

"No!" Arlette gasped, her bright eyes focusing on him. "Just – facts," she said with a slow shrug. "I wasn't trying to be mean or anything."

"Sure," Wallace said, laughing. "I actually don't know her name, only met her once in the café, I think she's – maybe dangerous."

"Oh!" Arlette gasped as she swung back around the corner and pressed herself to the wall. "Pink hair looked at me!"

"I'm the only one who can see you," Wallace reminded her until something dawned on him. The pink-haired girl hadn't looked Arlette, she couldn't see her, but she could see him. Looking back into the café, the laughs had stopped. Azalea and Alina were staring at him and the pink-haired girl was up and approaching the doors. Wallace backed up to avoid being smacked as she swung the door open.

"Spying on us?" she asked, clinging to the door, her blue and green eyelids batting at him. "Interesting, we were just talking about you. The AAA Girls were discussing your presence on campus and how it kind of sours the mood and destroys school spirit."

"AAA girls?" he asked, glancing to Arlette who stood still against the wall, eyes wide. Surely she'd forgotten she couldn't be seen, again.

The pink-haired girl smiled and snapped over her shoulder. After a shuffling of feet, Azalea and Alina appeared at her side, each leaning into the other. Going down the line, each girl seemed like a less made-up version of the girl to their right. From a full face of make-up and pink hair to Azalea's bare face and blue-tipped hair to Alina, who stood bare-faced with her less than spectacular blonde hair hanging down her back. He guessed this made the pink-haired girl the leader of the pack.

"Alina, Azalea, and I am Alice," the pink-haired girl said, flipping a strand of her hair back. "Together we're the AAA Girls, a terrifyingly beautiful threesome of coordination and appeal."

"Oh – okay."

"Now that Serena Saint-Mars is off her little throne of roses, it's time for the school to have some new leadership," Alina scoffed.

"Hasn't the school had enough from students thinking they run everything?" he asked, shooting a look to Azalea who scowled back.

"Some of us don't have to think we run anything," Alice said. "We just do it."

"Okay?" Wallace said, surrendering his point, and backed up, desperately wanting to get far away from the energy he felt radiating off the girls, bitchy.

"Where do you think you're going?" Alice asked, stepping away from her pack and shuffling into the pathway of the hall Wallace headed for. "As the leader of the AAA Girls – "

"Who said you were the leader?" Alina asked, sticking her neck out, physically and metaphorically.

Alice rolled her eyes and her neck to face Alina. "Who said you could talk?"

From the corner of his eyes, Wallace watched Alina shrink back into line beside Azalea as Alice approached him and grabbed his face, her nails digging into his cheeks.

"As I was saying, as leader of the AAA Girls, my first order of business is to put the strays in their place," Alice said, smiling like a predator. "Starting with everyone associated with the Roses to pay back what they've done to the student body."

"What's it matter to you?" he asked through gritted teeth.

"Because I said it does," Alice said, her nails cutting harder into his cheeks to the point he wasn't sure she would let go.

"Elgy."

Wallace closed his eyes as a purple light brewed between him and Alice. Seconds later, a force like a storm wind knocked him backward and freed him from Alice's grip. He heard the sounds of girls gasping, followed by a pained grunt. When he opened his eyes Azalea and Alina had backed into the café while Alice stood pressed against the wall, kneeling as if she'd lost her balance.

"Wallace!" Arlette gasped.

He heard Arlette but didn't take his eyes off Alice as she straightened up.

"Are you out of your mind?" she snapped, brushing back some of her hair that had fallen into her face. "That really hurt!" Alice shoved a hand into her pocket and fished out a poké ball, enlarging it. Alice raised the ball overhead and swung her arm down, but before the ball left her hand the sound of someone clearing their throat caused the girl to freeze.

All eyes in the lobby shifted to the entry steps where an annoyed looking Eleanor stood with her egg in her arms. Behind her, Neo stood in her shadow, a large box in his arms that looked too heavy for him judging by the way his arms sagged and his knees bent.

"Ladies," Eleanor said, crossing the lobby and stopping between Alice and Wallace. "Is there something else you should be doing with your night?" she asked before she nodded to the café doors. "Azalea, Café Rose doesn't close for a few more hours, why aren't you at your register?"

"You're not my boss," Azalea said, shakily, as she flicked her eyes between Alina and Alice. Neither girl returned her glance, both were focused on Eleanor, and once Azalea failed to get the backup she seemed to need she darted back inside the café like an eevee fleeing from battle.

"I don't believe we've met," Eleanor said, shifting her egg into one arm and extending a hand to Alice. "Eleanor Ampora, I'm the resident advisor for this dorm hall, and battling inside is against school policy."

"Alice Civet, fifth generation Civet to attend Radix," Alice said as she weakly took Eleanor's hand.

"Civet?" Eleanor asked.

"Yes," she said, smugly. "Civet, as in the Civet Complex," she said, aiming a manicured nail in the general direction of the ICO dorm hall. "That's my family's name on the building. What has your family done for the University?" she asked, batting her eyes at Eleanor who dropped her hand. "I've heard about you, Eleanor. Your arcanine attacked someone in the safari and they had to ban it from campus, right?" Alice started moving her body from side to side, her dangerous eyes sizing Eleanor up. "I guess they'll let anyone be in charge around here, I'll have to change that. The Civet family is still heavily involved with the school and I don't think they'd be happy to find out someone like you is in charge of the wellbeing of students while their parents aren't around."

"Enough!" Neo said, trudging up the steps, the light of his tablet casting shadows across the lobby. "You don't talk to her like that," he said, huffing.

Wallace swallowed hard watching Neo come to Eleanor's defense, and despite feeling the same type of anger brewing inside him over Alice's words, for some reason he hadn't thought of jumping in. Something about Alice made him shrink away from the scene.

"Ooh, look a sweaty night in cheap armor," Alice said, which earned a laugh from Alina. "Let's go," she said, waving off Eleanor and Neo as she ushered Alina back into the café. "Bye, Wallace," she said, in a teasingly sweet tone, twiddling her fingers at him as she vanished inside.

As the energy level and tension in the lobby dissipated, Wallace felt able to breathe again and scanned the room for Arlette, finding her just inside the hall leading to one of the dorm halls.

"Neo, can you take that stuff up?" Eleanor asked, nodding to the box in his arms. "I'll meet you in a bit."

"Sure," he said, glancing to Wallace before making his exit.

Eleanor waited until Neo was out of sight and through the door down the hall before she turned to him and sighed, dropping her head in the process. "Are you okay?" she asked, reaching out and rubbing elgyem's head to which the psychic-type lit her up in green light.

"I'm fine," he said. "Thanks for showing up when you did."

"No problem," Eleanor said, looking to the doors of the café. "Neo and I just got back from shopping in Coumarine. What are you doing out here?"

"Actually, looking for you," he said, an idea forming. "Do you know where Carl lives? Or if he's even in this building? His last name is Valrek, I think. I forgot to give him back some class notes, we have a test coming up and I think he'll need them to review." Though lying to Eleanor wasn't something he ever wanted to do again, he had only started to rattle off an explanation to make his request sound believable.

"I mean, I know most of the students in the building, though some slip my mind, but," Eleanor pursed her lips and looked to the ceiling, slowly shaking her head as she eyes fell back onto Wallace. "I don't think I know a Carl."

From the background, Arlette gasped, and Wallace steeled himself to the floor. While he hoped Eleanor was just misinformed, or that Carl didn't live in the building and she didn't have to know every student by name, he couldn't help the encroaching feeling that Eleanor was telling him what he didn't want to hear and the truth was that Carl was gone.

"Tell you what," Eleanor said, winking as she motioned for Wallace to follow her. "As long as you don't tell anyone I did this, I'll let you look at my layout map of the building. It lists all the rooms and who's in them from when everyone filled out their rooming requests at the end of last year."

Wallace stayed quiet as he followed Eleanor down the left hall and stopped at a simple wooden door, adorned with paper cut-out signs that said Eleanor's name in different fonts and colors. Eleanor pulled a key from her pocket and let herself in, flicking on a light inside before beckoning Wallace to follow.

Inside was an office, small and sparse with only a wooden desk surrounded by three chairs and a wilting plant in the corner. Aside from that, a few pokémon beds were littered in front of two filing cabinets.

"This is a little workroom the school gave me, but it's so far from my actual room that if I stay here too late I get too tired to walk upstairs," Eleanor said, resting her egg into a glass incubator case on her desk. "So I usually just work from my room." From the top of the filing cabinets, Eleanor pulled off a dark blue folder and plucked a stapled packet out and handed it off to Wallace.

He took the packet with greedy hands, feeling as if he'd been given the key to the building, but as he tried to take it, Eleanor's grip tightened.

"I mean it," she said, her blue eyes boring into him. "If you tell anyone I gave you this I could lose my job and then the benefits of my dorm room being paid for go away and I really count on that to make ends meet."

Wallace nodded as he gently pulled the packet to his chest. "If you need help with money I can always – "

"Oh no you don't!" Eleanor hollered as she grabbed her egg and shooed Wallace out. "I could never take your money, Wallace. Bring that packet to my room when you're done, okay?"

"Done," he said, returning her smile as she headed off down the hall and vanished through the security door, no doubt to meet Neo.


"Elgy, look for Carl, C-A-R-L," he said as he and Arlette climbed to the second floor.

"Can elgyem spell?" Arlette asked, looking past Wallace to find elgyem gliding in pace with them, the packet floating ahead of him, the pages turning by the aid of invisible hands as elgyem scanned the pages.

"Kind of," Wallace said, watching elgyem's saucer eyes skim each page before he used his powers to flip to the next. "I found out he likes to draw, so I started having him do circles and straight lines, which is really all the alphabet is, and I would read them off to him and show him how to connect circles and lines to make letters."

"Wow," Arlette breathed.

"I mean, he can't write like a person, but he – he surprises me," Wallace said, welling up at the thought. He was sure, after watching how far Garret had come in a year that he'd never be the top of his class when it came to his team's strength. He hadn't even gotten spinarak to evolve over the summer despite bug-types apparently being easy to evolve, but he knew his team was special in other, more practical, ways.

With Eleanor's packet detailing the boarding assignments, Wallace felt all-knowing as he, Arlette, elgyem strolled the halls. Though he didn't know the faces belonging to most of the names within the pages of the packet, names were almost enough to make assessments about who lived inside the rooms he passed.

The trio rounded a corner when elgyem's green light lit up the hall and his excited beeping filled Wallace's ears. Before Wallace could react, elgyem hurled the packet at him and flew off down the hall, stopping halfway down beside a door.

"I think he found it," Arlette said, picking up her pace.

Wallace smoothed out the pages of the packet and tried to pinpoint their location based off the turns they'd made since getting to the second floor. Dragging his finger along the page he counted off room until he found one with Carl's name written neatly inside a computerized drawing of the room. Under Carl, another name was written, less neatly, Calvin.

Stopping in the doorway, Wallace took in the sight of the room, one in the same shape of his own. A wooden closet and dresser set sat to the left side while beds and desks were stationed against adjacent walls, giving each occupant the same furniture options. But as Wallace watched Calvin, with the same effort he himself put into lifting a pillow, lift one of the desks overhead and carry it to the far corner of the room and drop it, he noticed a few oddities on that side.

The bed frame was empty, no mattress, just the metal frame pushed oddly against the wall under the window. The wooden chair the school supplied sat the foot of the bed and was then joined by the desk. No decorations covered the walls and nothing on that side seemed to show any sign of anyone having lived there.

"Look," Arlette said, pointing into the room, to the side closest to the door.

Wallace knew she'd seen the same thing, the vacant side of the room, compared to the rest. The bed that sat near the door was made in a deep red set with several plump pillows sitting upright against the headboard, luxury ball patterns stitched into each pillowcase. The desk on that side was littered with books, a pair of sneakers, and supplies while the floor had weights, a pokémon bed and several articles of clothing lying across it.

Elgyem drifted into the room, his hands blinking yellow as he tapped on the door, startling Calvin who seemed to be in the process of deciding what he wanted to move next.

"Ahh!" he yelled, throwing his arms up as he whipped around, nostrils flaring at Wallace. "What are you doing?"

"Uh," Wallace said, unsure of what to say as the truth didn't sound quite right coming from his mouth. He wished Arlette had actually been there to hide Eleanor's map for him, instead, he rolled it up and stuffed it into his pocket. "I was looking for Carl."

"Who?" Calvin asked, squinting at Wallace.

"Oh no," Arlette sighed at his side.

Wallace bit into his tongue but swallowed down his initial react of screaming and running away. "Carl Valrek, he was your roommate, right?"

Calvin puckered his lips and shook his head. "Never had a roommate," he said as he spread his arms and turned around in a full circle. "I figured I've got all this extra space might as well clear away some of this extra crap and make room for my lady to move in."

"Your lady," Wallace said, dryly.

"Persia," Calvin replied. "What's the point of living in a co-ed dorm if we can't have nightcaps?"

"If she's moving in won't she need a bed?" Wallace asked, nodding to the bed frame Calvin had made sure was packed into the corner.

Calvin waggled his head at Wallace, snapped his fingers, and pointed to his own made bed. "Duh."

Wallace swallowed hard and withdrew into himself, feeling foolish for not catching Calvin's implication soon. "Got it," he said. "Well, sorry for bothering you."

Calvin flashed him some hand sign as he left that Wallace hoped wasn't the middle finger as he and Arlette moved further on down the hall.

"That was Carl's room," Arlette said over Wallace's shoulder looking at Eleanor's packet. "Carl Valrek and Calvin Thompson," she read. "There's no way if they were roommates, even if school just started, that Calvin wouldn't know him. Right?"

"You'd think so," Wallace said, quietly, trying to focus on the names on the page before him, though his eyes insisted on watering up at the thought of losing another friend if that's what Carl is, or was.

"I wonder who else is gone," Arlette said. "If these rooms even have people in them, or not."

Arlette's tone popped an idea back into Wallace's mind, one he pushed aside earlier. "Arlette, can you like, go through walls? Because you're a spirit?"

Arlette shrugged. "I never tried, I just kind of appear in places. I've never thought to find out what I can do as a spirit."

Wallace waved the packet in her direction. "If I read off these names, and you can phase through walls, can you check if these people are inside for me?" he asked.

Arlette nodded and turned her attention to the first door on their right as they turned a corner. "I'll give it a try."

"Jon McCurdy and Rob Blankenship," Wallace said as he passed his finger over the names of two strangers. Lifting his head, he watched Arlette approach the door and tentatively reach out, her fingers inches from the wood before they sunk through it like a rock through water. Wallace took in a small breath as Arlette's entire arm vanished before her upper body did. As she stopped, her shoulders inside the wood, she reminded him of a glitched video game character before she stepped back.

"It's empty," she said, shaking her head. "Empty, as in empty, like nothing at all inside. Just the stuff that's there when you first move in." Arlette turned to face the door on the opposite side of the hall, approaching it with more force this time.

Wallace swallowed back a bit of bile and ignored a growing throb in his forehead as he looked for the next names. "Leo Rader and Alec Mann," he said. He glanced up briefly to find elgyem watching him, guessing that none of this made any sense to him.

"Empty," Arlette said as she pulled back from the door and moved onto the next.

"Kai Odell and Zane Carver," he said, his finger shaking over the next set of names.

"Empty," Arlette replied, almost immediately.

Wallace felt his breathing becoming labored as Arlette moved onto the next door and poked her head inside without his cue. He struggled to complete the simple task of sliding his finger horizontally across the page before Arlette was moving back across the hall.

"Empty," she said, flatly.

The two of them progressed like that, with Arlette taking the charge in checking the rooms while Wallace straggled behind. The idea of making judgments and assessments on what kind of people lived in the rooms based off names along was no longer was a game as those thoughts plagued him the more names he read. He wondered what kinds of young men might have lived inside, what their families might have been like, and what happened to them.

Cris Nelms and Sam Nair, Madden Grant and Ridge Green, Michael Cruz and Emmanuel Holmes, Cota Riversong and Edison Quinn, Sang Nguyen, and Bobby Trask. The names went on, seemingly forever and Arlette never paused, her tone never changing as she checked each room to the same result until Wallace came across a name he recognized. Arlette had already counted the room as empty and moved on, but Wallace hesitated. Quincy Kerns and John Clearwater.

"Johnny?" he said, looking to the door on his right. Johnny, the boy who'd saved him from Chara and James in the stadium, who felt responsible for Nat being burned and decided to take up a job as a janitor to repay for that night, was gone. Wallace pressed his fist to the cold wood of the door, slowly letting it drop until he touched the doorknob. The thought hadn't occurred to him any sooner, but as he turned the knob, he was rewarded with an open lock and the door swung open.

The hallway light spread a jagged block of light into the dark room that felt empty the moment the door opened fully. Stepping inside, Wallace felt for a light switch. In seconds the room was bathed in the university's signature butter yellow light that showed Wallace Arlette hadn't been wrong. The room wasn't just empty, it was deserted. Nothing that wouldn't be found when moving in was present, empty bed frames, clean desks, empty closets. Scanning the floor, Wallace hoped to find something, a piece of lint, a coin, or a paper clip, some form of student life that proved beyond belief that people couldn't just vanish with every trace of their life.

"Wallace," Arlette called before her ethereal footsteps carried her back to him. "You stopped calling off names. I – I finished the hall," she said, slowly, as if afraid to deliver her news to him. "I didn't – see anyone. Not since we left Calvin's room actually. I counted the rooms, there were fifteen doors on each side, so thirty rooms. Wallace, this entire hallway is empty. That's… sixty students and one room at the end was big enough for four people." Arlette said, rattling off her findings despite Wallace's lack of involvement in the conversation. "So… that's… Wallace, are you listening?"

Staring at nothing in particular, a spot in the painted brick pattern of the wall, Wallace let the packet slip from his fingers and spread across the floor.


End of Chapter Forty Five


Question of the Chapter #44: What do you think is happening to the missing students, and can Wallace help in time?