Chapter 3- Calm Mind, Calm Body
Sunday came and went in what seemed like no time at all. Monday morning was here, and the sun was filling the room through the crack in the curtains, as Alex lay there in bed, knowing that she would have to get up soon if she wanted to be ready for college in time. She had not asked her dad what had happened to her after she had passed out, but could pretty much assume that she had been brought back home and put in her bed.
It was not however the fact that she was still sleepy that kept her in bed, it was the thoughts of the dream that she had had the night before last. These dreams were now happening to often, and she wondered if she ought to confide in someone about it, or perhaps get some help from a doctor. This seemed like a stupid idea to her, there was no point worrying other people with such little things, it was probably just her mind running away with her...but even so, that seemed like a scary thought on its own.
Then there was Josh. What had happened to him on Saturday to all of a sudden make him sick? Alex had tried to call him later that day, yet had got no reply, and therefore assumed that he was resting. Perhaps he had just come down with the flu virus...
Alex looked at the clock on her bedside table, and was shocked to see that she only had ten minutes to get ready for college. It was a close call, but by the time she had got all of her things together and was out of the door she seemed to be OK for time. She walked down the road towards Josh's house, which was on the way to college. The cold air on her face seemed to act as a much better alarm clock than the one that woke her up that morning.
It took her a couple of minutes to reach Josh's house, and was surprised to see that when she got there, he was already waiting for her outside his front gate. She approached him, a curious look on her face.
"I thought that you were ill?" She asked him, taken aback at how healthy he looked.
"Good morning to you too!" He replied, sarcasm evident in his voice. "Nah I'm fine...probably just a twenty four hour bug or something..."
Alex did not know whether he was being entirely truthful or not, but decided not to press the matter. They started there walk down the street towards college, not talking at all. Alex decided to break the silence between them after a couple of minutes.
"Why haven't you answered any of my calls or texts?" She sounded a little hurt as she asked the question.
"I didn't answer any of your calls because I was probably being sick at the time..." Josh answered, but seemed to be taking his time, as though thinking up an excuse for texts, "...and I was sleeping most of the time that I wasn't being sick, so I could hardly text you back in my sleep could I?"
This seemed to be a satisfactory answer for Alex. They continued to walk, but the image of Alex's latest dream kept popping into her head. She tried to push them to the back of her mind, with no success. All she could think of was how mad it would sound to confide this to anyone, even Josh. This was put to the test however, as Josh then said.
"What's up with you?" He sounded concerned.
"Nothing." She lied, not able to stop herself blinking furiously. "I was just thinking about an assignment that we were given not that long ago for Photography."
"You are a terrible liar, you know that?" He had to duck quickly to avoid Alex hitting him over the head. "Come on, just tell me whats wrong for once."
"I would, but there is nothing wrong and therefore nothing to tell you." Her voice made it sound quite plain that Josh was not going to get anywhere in his endeavors to find out what was troubling her.
The college was in sight now, but there was hardly anyone walking towards it. Evidently they were earlier than they thought upon arriving, something that Josh was not happy about in the slightest.
"Could have had another ten minutes in bed..." He grunted, sounding a bit like a child on the verge of having a tantrum.
Alex did not feel like pointing out that it was not her that woke him up, and that he was already waiting for her for once. They were just about to enter the college when something happened...A child on a skateboard was coming down the pavement towards them very fast. Alex did not think that he could see the crack in the path ahead of him from roadworks, otherwise he would have slowed down by now.
He rode straight over it, came flying off of his skateboard, and then...Alex did not know what happened, it was as though her arm had acted of its own accord. An inch before the child's face was about to his the hard concrete pavement, Alex had seized a handful of his shirt, preventing harm.
Josh did not seem to know what to say, as he watched Alex hoist the young boy back onto his feet.
"Next time be more careful and look where you are going, OK?" The child did not say anything as he ran off to get his skateboard, which had continued to roll down the path.
"Effing good reflexes..." Josh muttered whilst looking at Alex.
"Well...thats what comes from fencing I guess..." She replied, sounding nearly as shocked as Josh looked.
"Sure..." Josh said, not really knowing what to say, then started quietly singing a song just loud enough for her to hear, "...Spider-woman...spider-woman...I think my spider senses are tingling..."
"Thats not going to be the only thing thats tingling if you don't shut up!" She said, aiming a kick at him.
They entered college. They had a few minutes before they had to head off to their lessons, so went and sat down up against a brick wall not far from the Drama Department. "But seriously though, I did not know that you had spider-man as a distant relation..."
Alex did not even bother answering this one back, she knew that he was just jealous of her quick reflexes, even though she herself did not know how she had managed to do it. There were only a couple of minutes left until first period. Josh had Drama, so did not have to go very far to get to his lesson, Alex however, had Photography, which was right over the other side of college, and therefore had to start walking.
"Don't forget to drop the pictures you take by the Daily Bugle..." Alex could not help but let out a snort as she headed off towards Photography.
-
Josh walked into the drama room to find three people already there. Their teacher, Meg Beecham, who was sorting through a load of complicated looking notes, his friend Joe, who was busy writing a text, and his friend Claire, who was sitting on a desk, swinging her legs back and forth.
The rest of the class filed into the room as time went on. It was very rare for Drama to ever start on time, as people were always late, and some people regularly didn't bother turning up. Today however, everybody had turned up, as they had an assignment that needed to be performed today, otherwise they got a fail.
"Right..." Said Meg, "...now that we are all here, I am going to give you twenty minutes to rehearse, and then you will be performing."
The class set to work on their short scenes that they were doing. They had been assigned to do an extract from a Shakespearian play of their choice. When first told this, no-one was enthusiastic about the idea, but when Joe had suggested they do a swordfight scene, Josh's interest had increased at once.
They ran through their five minute piece of Drama about three times, which happened to be the scene from Romeo and Juliet where Romeo kills Tybalt. Josh was in a group with Claire, Joe, and a girl who he had never spoken to before. Naturally Josh and Joe were the ones actually doing the swordfighting, which had not taken too much time to choreograph.
The twenty minutes had passed, and Meg told them all to sit down over one side of the room, so as to create a sort of 'stage' for the people performing. Claire was talking to one of her friends, yet when she turned away to talk to Josh, she looked mortified.
"You do know that this has to be at least seven minutes long don't you!?" She sounded quite hysterical.
"No problem...we will just have to slow down some of the dialogue..." Josh replied.
"We will sound like we are in slow motion if we slow it down any more than we already have!" Joe said, obviously not as calm about this as Josh was. "We will just have to improvise a bit more swordfighting...but just make sure that we..."
"Quiet!" Meg called, as the first group took their positions and started their scene.
It was impossible for them to talk about rough choreography for another two minutes of fighting now. So they were resigned to the fact that they were going to have to improvise the whole thing.
When at last it got round to their groups turn, Claire looked as though she was about to go on stage at the west end for the first time. They started to perform their scene, until at last four minutes had passed and they got to the swordfight between Romeo and Tybalt.
The minute of their choreography that they had done went off without a hitch, but now they were in to the realms of the unknown. Joe kept repeating some of the actions from the first minute they had done, which Josh found quite east to follow. He even thought that they may just be able to pull this off after all.
Then it happened... This is pathetic... The voice in Josh's head threw him off guard completely, and Joe happened to be lunging quite dangerously towards his chest. Then however, Josh moved aside out of the direction of the blow, and then struck and Joe's sword with such force that it knocked it clean out of his hands, and flew straight at Claire, who only just ducked in time to avoid a serious injury.
It did not stop here however, because then he whacked the sword very hard at Joe's stomach. It was very lucky that the swords were fake, otherwise he would have been cut clean in half. Joe fell to the floor, it was obviously not very difficult for him to pretend to be dead considering what had just happened to him.
The seven minutes were up, and Meg called at them to stop. There was an applause from the rest of the class, but Josh was too focused on Joe. He knelt down beside him to see if he was OK.
Joe looked up at him. "Jesus...you didn't have to hit me that hard, you know?" Josh was very glad to see that he was smiling.
"It did look friggin good though!" Claire said, evidently feeling better than she was prior to the performance.
"Yes..." Said Meg, "...But please do remember Josh that this is a Drama class, not the fencing club..."
-
"Nothing to strenuous for you today..." Began their teacher, "...just go off and continue with pictures towards your collage, which remember, is meant to be reflecting your personality." Alex rolled her eyes at this, as she felt as though she had split personality's at the moment.
She set off to work however, wondering what would be best to photograph. In the end she decided that the best place for her to go would be near the drama department, to see if she could get a shot of Josh.
When she got to the drama department however, she saw that they were doing some performance's, and to take a picture through the window whilst they were doing this would be very rude indeed. She moved back from the classroom window, and saw that the sun was in a very nice position above the drama building. She decided that even though it did not reflect her personality, it would still make a very nice picture to add to her portfolio.
Alex continued to walk around college, taking pictures of whatever caught her fancy. After all, if she liked them then she was sure that it would reflect her personality. She checked her watch, and saw that she did not have long before she had to get back to start developing her pictures.
She was not very fond of the dark room, and much preferred doing the editing digitally. However she was not allowed for this assignment and therefore went into the dark room, and started to work on developing her pictures.
Nothing interesting happened until right near the end of the lesson. She was looking down at her latest photo, and in the reflection of the water, saw the same woman from her dream. Alex did not dare blink, she wanted to keep staring at it to make sure that she was not just seeing things. The woman then however appeared to be looking over Alex's shoulder. Someone had decided to play a practical joke to see if they could scare Alex by sneaking up on her. She spun round very fast and dealt them a hard blow to the stomach, which winded them...She did not know what made her do it though...was it just a reflex...or was it something more than that?
Alex could not stop stammering her apologies for what she had done. "I am so sorry...it was a reflex..."
"S'ok..." They replied, "...my fault for scaring you in the first place I guess..." Alex was very glad to hear that they did not hate her for what she had done.
-
Alex and Josh both finished at lunchtime that day, so therefore met up near the entrance of the college. Alex looking thoughtful, Josh looking very happy.
"You will not believe what happened in drama!" Josh began, then went straight into the story of what happened during his swordfight against Joe... "So you better watch out because now I'm thinking of taking up fencing..."
This last comment seemed to catch Alex's attention. "Cool! That would actually be really good, the two of us could train together and stuff..." Josh was glad that she was taking to this well.
They started to walk back in the direction of their homes. Alex had decided to go round Josh's for a bit, as she did not feel like going back to her house. "So how did Photography go?"
Alex did not feel like telling him the story of how she had punched someone in the gut for something so small...She was sure that he would hear about it eventually however, news always traveled very fast round college.
It was as they were walking past the local park that something very strange happened. There were some people playing football there. As they walked past them, one of the players called...
"Watch out!" Josh turned his head just in time to see the football flying towards his face. With incredible speed he raised his fist and punched the ball back at the players with surprising strength, making it go into the far goal.
"Whoa! Thanks mate!" Called one of the players, who obviously hadn't noticed just how far away from them Josh and Alex were.
"How the hell did you do that?" Alex asked, but Josh already had an answer for her.
"Good reflexes I suppose." He decided that it would be best to use her answer back at her. To tell the truth, he did not actually know how he had managed to do that, and not even hurt his fist in the process.
You wish... Said a voice in his head, which he did not think was his own. Eventually they reached Josh's house. The incident with the football still the topic of conversation, even though it was not extraordinary, just out of the ordinary.
"You have never had good reflexes though..." Alex said, trying not to sound mean, "...so how all of a sudden have you managed to pull that out of the bag?"
"Maybe that lovely bug that I had has given me amazing superhero powers!" He then went into a superman pose, and Alex swatted him over the back of the head in a playful sort of way.
"The only thing that is superhero about you is your power to sleep for as long as you want." Alex replied, scratching the side of her head. Josh tried to swat her over the back of the head, with no success, she caught his wrist at the last second, as always.
They took the rest of the day to relax and play games on Josh's PS2. Neither of them really felt like going into town or doing anything that required to much effort. Even though they did not tell each other, they were both very tired from their day, even though the had not done very much at all. It was just as they were fighting each other on Tekken 4, that a thought came in to Alex's head, which was not her own, much like a lot of thoughts that she had had recently.
I wonder where the others are...if they are safe...