muttering to himself about mana cost. It wasn’t like I hadn’t tried to make friends, this guy was just antisocial. I flopped and began to eat my dinner. It was bizarre. This school had separate rooms for lunch and dinner, and the ways that both of them ran were completely opposite. This school sure was strange. After dinner, I retreated to my room to tackle the homework that I didn’t have to finish or do in the first place. As I struggled to figure out the value of x when y=x/17 and y=84, I paused. Why didn’t some kids do their schoolwork or even attend classes? How did grading work if there was nothing mandatory to complete? How did they measure kids’ test scores to prove that they did almost as well as those who had attended normal schools? I flopped backwards onto my bed and told myself that because I didn’t need to finish the homework, I could go to sleep and get some rest. Days spun by in a similar manner to my first one, I went to all my classes, tried to finish my homework, swooned over Alanus, and was completely ignored if not shunned during lunch and dinner. However, breakfast was wonderful. I opened up my door in the morning to discover a tray laden full of waffles, eggs, bacon, and orange juice. There was a little vase full of flowers with a ribbon tying them together that read, “Have a wonderful day!” in metallic gold letters. On and on the cycle went, and even weekends were the same after a few of them. I would go to my parents house, spend Saturday there, and drive back. Sundays were spent doing almost nothing except going to the humongous library, getting a stack of books and reading. On the day we came back from winter break, a change in the routine occurred. In gym class, we were told to climb ropes up to the ceiling twenty feet above us. The start of the climb was fairly easy, but towards the middle, the rope burn on my hands was so bad that I accidentally let go. I plummeted to the concrete floor, and just before I hit it, I blacked out. I found myself spinning faster and faster until I thought I would surely barf. Then, I landed on a cool surface. Gold and yellow tiles stretched around me, and there were benches every ten feet or so. I lifted my head to look straight forwards, and found that I could do so without any trouble. I saw train tracks in front of me, as if I had just been flung off of the vessel that had sped along them moments earlier. To my surprise, I was able to stand up and felt as if I was at the height of my cross country season again. Then something furry brushed my feet. I looked down. It was a cat! The very cat that my parents had informed me had died just a day earlier! I picked her up. “Hey there Nova! How are you doing old girl! I missed you so much!” Then I stopped. Wait, why was Nova here? She was supposedly dead! Did that mean? Was I dead too? To answer my question, a steam engine from what looked like the 1800’s rolled up. The conductor stuck his head out the window. “Heaven, four o’clock train to heaven now departing! All to heaven on the train!” Nova leapt from my arms and onto the train. As she boarded it with grace that hadn’t been in her since I was seven, she jumped up the steps. As she did so, she looked over her shoulder and gave me a look that said, “Well, good bye! I hope I’ll see you again!” The engineer leaned out of the window again. “You lost miss? You still look like you belong on the Other Side. The train back to the Other Side is coming in,” he looked at his watch, “Oh, say, an hour. Just get on and you’ll be back where you belong. I’m warning you though, time goes slower here than it does there. Well, I’d best be off. Hopefully I’ll see you when your Time comes!” He tooted the horn, and chugged out of the station. As promised, an hour later (by the large clock on the opposite wall), another train came. This one looked much more like the monorails from my time. I got on, and soon, I was spinning again. Instead of the soft lights that had greeted me at the Lifeline Station (as I called it in my mind), in the real world harsh LED lights were my welcome. “She’s awake! Sofie! Come quickly! Her eyes are open!” My father’s voice yelled at my mother. I looked up. “Hey Dad,” I said in a weak voice, “What time is it?” That was when I noticed the machinery. My dad looked me in the eyes. “Cel, you were out for a week. In a coma.” Then he started sobbing into my shoulder. My mom bustled in and followed suit. Her long red hair rubbed my face vigorously. “Aww… Mom, stop it, your hair’s in my mouth!” I said in exasperation. After my parents sobbed over me for about an hour and told me how worried they were and all that stuff, I was free to go. I left the hospital the next day and returned to school. As I walked through the hallways, people whispered together, looking at me funny. During lunch, I sat in my usual booth, reading the next book in the series I was hooked on, The House of Night. A guy came up to me. “You’re the coma girl,
right?” I nodded, “Cool beans. I’m Will.” He stuck out his hand, and I shook it. “Celaena Vanlith,” I replied. After Will talked to me, many other people did. Gradually, I learned that there had been an article in the school newspaper about me being in a coma. About a week later, I was accepted into the community. One day, in the beginning of June, Alanus came up to me. “Hey, Celaena. You’re kind of cute. Want to go out with me?” I blushed profusely. “Sure.” I told him, and smiled. “When?”
