(Matilda's POV):
About a half hour later, we're sitting in my room drinking the cider. I constantly try to steer the conversation away from what happened earlier.
"Hey. Did any of you notice that Alfie Nelson wasn't in class again today?" James asks.
"I did notice that. It was peculiar," Charlie remarks.
Peculiar indeed. Being one of Mr. Turkentine's best students, even if it's only been the first week since school started, Alfie would be one of the last people anyone would think to miss class.
"What makes it even more peculiar is that this isn't the first day he's been gone," James remarks.
"Billie Smith wasn't in class today either," I say.
"Well, that's different," James exclaims.
"Billie hates arithmetic, so you'd expect her to skip out on arithmetic days. Heck, she barely even knows arithmetic. There isn't a moment where she isn't either batting her eyes and sucking on a lollipop, putting on makeup, or saying something stupid."
"Yes, but she wasn't in class yesterday either. Or the day before. And they weren't arithmetic days. In fact I haven't seen her or Alfie since the first day of class."
"Perhaps she got sick?" Charlie suggests.
"Or she skipped school," James says."I had her in summer school and she barely came to class."
We sip in silence for a few moments.
"I'm all out. Mind if I brew a bit more, Mati?"
"Long as you don't make a mess," I tell him."And I told you not to call me that."
James takes his glass and heads down into the kitchen, leaving Charlie and I alone. Now this may sound odd, considering I'm not very girly, but when I'm just with Charlie, I feel different. I feel dizzy, but not like what happened at the gate. Dizziness that's almost pleasing to the senses, yet at the same time discomforting. What's more my face feels like it's burning up.
"Matilda, what happened back at the gates?" he asks out of the blue.
I gulp the cider in my mouth.
"Huh?" I wonder.
"When you touched the gates, you looked like you were in pain. I was worried about you."
My mom says that's how she felt when she first saw father-until she found out he did science.
But this is different. I've felt that way about fictional characters and some historical figures. But when I feel it when I'm with Charlie, it's much more intense. Could it be-?
Suddenly I feel a trickle run down my arm.
"You're bleeding!" Charlie exclaims.
Quickly he grabs my handkerchief from my bedside table and wipes away the blood.
"Where did you get these scratches?"
Scratches? I look at my arm and I find a bunch of scratches on my left arm; the arm where I felt the claws dig into at the gate. It could've just been a hallucination, though.
"Probably when I fell down or I scraped it on the bars."
"Hey. Look what I found on the windowsill," James exclaims running upstairs.
Holding out his hand, I find he has a walnut.
"Squirrel must've dropped it."
He walks over to my bedside table and pounds the nut on it.
"What are you doing?" I exclaim.
"I'm trying to get it open."
"Well, find some other way. You'll scratch the wood."
Shrugging, he takes the nut and bites it in between his teeth, splitting it in two just like a squirrel. I shudder at the thought.
"Drat! No walnut."
He sets it down on the table.
"I've gotta get home," James says."It's a quarter to six."
Hearing this Charlie gasps.
"I've gotta get home as well. See ya, Matilda!"
I watch as James and Charlie rush out the front door and go separate ways. When they've left, I start to head to the bathroom when I spy the walnut that James left. He was right about there being no walnut, but he forgot to mention there's something in place of the nut.
"A slip of paper?" I ask confused.
Cautiously I pick it up. On the front, it reads:
No time to explain everything. We're trapped. Read the red marks.
The red marks? How odd. I stuff the paper in my pocket and wash the blood from the scratches. Patting them dry, I lift the towel and check my arm. There's something odd about the way the scratches are positioned. It's in a message, highlighted in my dried blood:
Help us-Wonka.
The red marks.