I COME BACK, AND FIND everyone standing over me. Pushing back their hands, I stand up on my own and dust off my clothes. “Dang, why can I never have one of those when I’m by myself?” I mutter. “And why do I always end up falling over?”
“Ryanne, what did you see?” asks Emma.
“Not a whole lot happened. I was sitting in the attic, by myself, and Larkin came. He told me that Dravin is coming for me again, and the house is going to get blown up.” Nonchalantly, I walk past all of them and head upstairs to warn Tom and Claire. They all remain frozen.
About halfway up the stairs, they all say, “What?” and start to follow me.
“It doesn’t happen for a while though.”
“How do you know that?” asks Colton.
“The leaves were changing colors. Oh, and because my hair was longer, and so was Larkin’s. Apparently, I don’t get a haircut anytime soon.”
“Good,” mumbles Colton. I turn around and look at him, but he is looking elsewhere. Entering Claire’s room, I find her sitting on the window seat, reading a book.
“I had a vision.” I go on to tell her everything that happened in the vision. It wasn’t very detailed, so I’m not worried about forgetting anything.
“Okay.” Claire starts nodding. “That gives us some time then. That doesn’t mean that we won’t get attacked before then, but we’ll be fine in the meantime. I’ll tell Tom when he gets out of the shower.” I nod and brush past everyone standing in the doorway.
Colton grabs my arm. “Can we talk?” Without looking at him, I shake my head, and walk out of the room.
“Give her time,” I hear Emma whisper to him.
I walk back to the room I share with Emma, grab my notebook, and head outside. Sitting on the stone steps, I open my notebook and start drawing. I don’t think about anything. I just draw. My pencil scratches across the page leaving behind a dark line, bending to the will of my hand. The sun keeps going behind clouds, creating shadows across my page. It is hot out, but not hot enough to be uncomfortable. A slight breeze keeps blowing my hair in my face. Every ten seconds, I have to retuck my hair behind my ears.
Someone touches my back.
“What are you drawing?” Startled, I scream, throw my notebook into the air, and jump backwards. I turn, and see Liam sitting beside me with a huge grin on his face.
“Don’t sneak up on me like that,” I say, as I try to catch my breath, and return my heart to a normal rate.
“I wasn’t really being quiet. The door slammed shut because of the wind. I thought you would have heard that.”
“Well, I didn’t.”
“Obviously.” I exhale loudly and walk down the last couple of steps to grab my notebook that I had thrown into the yard and return to my previous spot. “What are you drawing?” he repeats.
“I don’t know exactly. Just doodling.” I look down at the drawing. It is just a bunch of random swirls and spirals, wrapping around each other in an intricate design. They don’t form any obvious shapes. “How long have I been out here?”
“Two…Three hours now.”
“Seriously? It’s been that long?” It feels like I have only been out here for a couple of minutes.
“Yeah, Emma said you needed some time by yourself. She wouldn’t tell us any more than that. Is something wrong?” I am thankful that Emma didn’t say anything. I’ll have to thank her later. “Colton seems upset.”
I look over at him to see if he is going to say anything else. When he doesn’t, I take a deep breath and lean my head on his shoulder. “Nothing is wrong specifically. Emma was right; I just needed to relax, and to be alone for a little while. I’m okay now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” I stand up, and grab my notebook and pencil off of the ground. “Let’s go back inside.”