Chapter 8

Today was Friday, and Rachel was going to the sleepover with her new friends, and Dick. As usual, she got washed, dressed, put on the concealer and her put her contacts in. She and Dick left their rooms at the same time and chatted down the stairs, into the kitchen, and all the way through breakfast. When they left for school, they started talking about the weird gem that Dick found in her bed, and speculated about what it could be before meeting with their friends and managing to struggle through the school day, and through to home time.

When they told Artemis, AJ, Johnno and Barbara about Rachel going straight there, Johnno and Artemis smirked at them, and told them to 'have fun' to which they both blushed. As they began the walk home, they realised that they were both still blushing, and quickly cleared the air by chuckling about their friends' dirty minds. They got to the manor and once in Rachel's room, they began to haul her mattress into Dick's room, which they would say came from one of the many spare rooms, so that no one had to sleep on the floor. Rachel spoke first,

"Hey, you know Amanda, Olivia and Lily?" she asked, "The biggest sluts in the year?" Dick smirked, "Yeah," she said, grinning, "They came up to me today like they were in a trance and said these really weird words…" "Well, what did they say?" Dick asked curiously. "They said 'Azarath Metrion Xynthos.'"

No sooner than she had said it, the mattress that they were struggling with started glowing purple and floating in the air. Rachel yelped and Dick frowned, both confused. "Uh Rache… that-that wasn't you was it?"

"Uhh, I mean I did wish for the mattress to float… but I didn't expect it to happen!" she replied.

Dick told her to try controlling it and she put her hand out, willing the mattress to move to the door. It obeyed. Dick was shocked and Rachel was confused. She had more powers? Rachel clenched her hand into a fist, and the mattress stopped and fell to the ground. A smile broke out across Rachel's face and she looked to see Dick grinning back at her.

"That was awesome!" he said and she blushed. Dick asked how she thought that she triggered it and she replied, saying that maybe those strange words meant something. Dick nodded and after a minute, they went back to setting up Dick's room.

Ten minutes later, the doorbell rang and AJ arrived, then Barbara, then Artemis and finally Johnno, which was a surprise to no one. They all raced up to Dick's room and saw the two big mattresses lying on the floor, the TV angled at them, and a bunch of movies spread out across the floor. Big smiles broke out across everyone's faces as they plonked their stuff down and made a makeshift nest of blankets, pillows and sleeping bags on the mattresses. Once they were situated, they made a plan.

"Ok. Here's the plan. AJ and Artemis, you pick the movie, Barbara and Johnno, you get the games and me and Dick'll get the snacks." She said, her eyes sparkling. Everyone nodded and they set off to work.

Her and Dick raced eachother to the kitchen, where they got out all the snacks they could think of, grinning and laughing. They then proceeded to race eachother back up the stairs and back into Dick's room, out of breath and clutching as many bags of snacks as possible, like little kids whose mom had told them to just go for it. Everyone else started laughing and soon, they were all out of breath.

"So," Barbara asked, "What are we doing first?" AJ replied, saying they should play some games first, then have whatever they were going to have for dinner, then watch the movies… and then possibly more games. They had all reached the agreement that they would stay up as long as possible.

When Dick asked what games they'd picked, Johnno held up Twister with a mischievous grin on his impish little face. They played a couple of games, in which Dick won all of them. Everyone else was really shocked at the contortionist moves he was pulling, but Rachel knew how he could: for starters, he was Robin, but she also remembered reading an article about him and the fact that he was in the circus until he was around 7, when something tragic happened. She wondered what that was, until she realised that she was spacing out and the others were trying to ask her a question. She blinked before AJ repeated his question, grinning.

"I said, do you want to stop because of your side, or shall we keep going?" Rachel was touched by their kindness and she smiled, saying she was alright, which was true, she did feel a lot better.

They gave up on Twister when Dick did a bridge with his limbs spread further apart than seemed humanly possible and decided to get him to ask Alfred if they could order some pizza. They were allowed to eat in Dick's room, which was very rare, and then they decided the order in which to watch all of the movies AJ and Artemis had picked out. Rachel excused herself to go and take her contacts out, thought she said she was just popping to the toilet, before joining back to hear the plan. They were going to watch 3 movies, all of which were at least on hour long, and it was already 8 O'clock. This was going to be fun.

The first movie was a horror, and a pretty good one too. Every now and again, there would be a jumpscare and Rachel would grab onto Dick's arm, then blush and apologise, he would say it was ok and Rachel would hear Artemis snicker to Johnno, saying they were ' just too precious'. The second was an action/drama film that had some amazing CGI and a really good plot. Then the final film was a comedy and they had to stifle most of their laughter as it was half 10 and no one wanted an angry Bruce to come in, or God forbid, an angry Alfred. At around 11, they decided to just chat quietly, but with all that happened today, especially the strange glowing mattress, Rachel swiftly fell asleep and had possibly the worst nightmare in all of her life.