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Josie looked around the silent group seated around her. Every face she looked at bore traces of shock. She had to laugh at them.
Vaughn shook his head. "So everything was just a tv show?"
She nodded and grinned. "Yup. Everything that's happened ever since I arrived here is just a tv show. Incredible, isn't it?"
Z sat back and removed his glasses. He automatically polished them with the edge of his shirt before replacing them back on his nose. "And Tyler's the writer of it all… He's from the future?"
She smirked and nodded again. "Yup, it's all true. It was just so weird, I'm telling you. Seeing you guys there, but knowing that you… well, them… that they weren't you. It was soo strange. And I had to keep reminding myself of their names, I kept going to call them by your names. It was way confusing."
"But you're back now, that's all that matters," Z said, patting her on the shoulder.
Josie grinned again. "Yes, I am."
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The next morning, Josie was summoned to Principal Durst's office, to explain her absence. There was only one problem, and that was that Durst didn't want to hear the truth. She wanted to continue running the school under the pretenses that everything was fine. The less Durst heard about the Black Hole, the more comfortable she felt.
So after an unsatisfactory, at least on Josie's part, interview, she finally headed to class.
But Josie could hardly concentrate on what any of her teachers were saying. So many people were staring at her, and whispering behind her back, all throughout the day.
She knew there'd been rumors flying around about her disappearance, she'd been told the previous day by her friends, but she hadn't realized the extent of the rumors… Or the elaborateness of the stories that were being told about her.
Some of them she just had to laugh about, like the one she'd heard about both her and Principal Durst as spies. Some of them Josie just shook her head at. She couldn't believe how moronic some people could be at times.
When the final bell rung at the end of classes, she was glad to get away from it all. But as she left her final class, a hollow feeling appeared in the pit of her stomach. She knew it was because she had to go talk to Vaughn and Lucas, and that she was nervous. She just couldn't believe how nervous she was about it.
While she'd been in the other dimension, she'd discovered, to her surprise, who her heart truly lay with. It had taken being stranded somewhere else, away from her friends, to make her realize that although she cared deeply for both Lucas and Vaughn, there was only one that she really wanted to have a relationship with.
Walking up the stairs to the boy's dormitory, the nervousness turned to panic, and Josie found that she had trouble breathing. She leant against the wall, hoping that the panic would die down. She was only two doors away.
Breathing deeply, Josie pushed herself away from the wall, and continued down the hall. She stood for a moment before the door, and just stared, before turning away. She started to walk back down the hall, but stopped herself firmly a few steps away.
Turning decidedly she strode back to his door. Once again she looked at it before turning away. But before she could think about it, she'd turned back and stood before Lucas's door again. Drawing on all her courage, she raised her hand and knocked on the door.
It opened, and Lucas stood before her.
Twisting her sleeve in her hand, Josie looked up at him, butterflies erratically flying in her stomach. Her heart beat a little faster at the sight of him, but calmly looked at him and remembered to breathe. "Lucas, we need to talk."
Lucas nodded in puzzlement, and opened the door for her to walk in. She pulled herself in and slid past him, as she continued to take deep breathes. As Lucas shut the door behind her, she turned to him and began to talk.
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Thanks for all the reviews guys, almost 80 reviews! You guys rock:D Also, this is the second to last chapter, only one more to go! I'm going to be sad to see it finished, but I've got a couple more stories in the works, I just have to find the time to sit down and write them all out.