Anne
We waited in the dark room or Aidene to come.
We had to switch off the lights to avoid any suspicions on why we were not in bed at 11:00, half an hour after lights out.
"She is not coming," Valentina said. Both Valentina and Penelope had been standing facing the door for the past fifteen minutes waiting for Aidene to knock. While I laid on my bed too lazy to keep standing. The room was illuminated by one torch (A/N flashlight for Americans) and the shafts of moonlight which escaped through the gaps of the thick curtains.
11:27pm
No sign of her. I was starting to lose hope.
11:31pm
"@&#^ this! She isn't coming," Penelope said.
She went and switched off the torch.
"Don't!" I said with a sense of urgency.
"Well she better come or all that damn running was for nothing," Penelope said what I hoped.
"Believe me, she is going to come. I just don't think she will use the door"
"What do you mean?" confusion clear in Valentina's voice.
Aidene either has the best timing or the worst because the loud rapping on the window which came next scared the crap out of us. Valentina did a perfect imitation of a frog and jumped onto Penelope pulling both of them onto the floor with the loudest thud I had ever heard with a high pitched scream from Valentina and a lot of colorful words from Penelope. I myself was trying to recover from the heart attack.
"What the ^*^@# hell was that!" Valentina yelled at the same time as Penelope said:
"What the &$%* was that!"
Penelope pushed Valentina off of her.
Penelope strutted towards the window and carefully opened it.
"Umm.. Nothing's here?" She said her voice laced with doubt.
Then the cliché happened Aidene popped out.
"Hey, Finally thought you guys would never open it," She drawled on and welcomed herself into the room.
Penelope stepped back, annoyance clear in her face but she seemed to get over that quickly.
"So what next, you want us to climb down that tree which probably has ^%$&% decaying rats in it?" She snapped at Aidene but she seemed totally fine with the idea of climbing the tree.
"That's exactly what I want you guys to do," Aidene said a little too cheerfully.
"Umm... WHAT?!" Valentina shouted causing Aidene to run towards her and clasp her mouth shut.
"Shh.. don't want to wake the others up and I assure you there are no decaying rats in the tree but I can't say the same for mosquitoes."
"Ok what are we waiting for?" Penelope pushed us toward the window.
"A theme song, I think," Aidene said.
"Monké," I said.
"What?" Valentina's questioning voice asked.
"I think she called me a monkey?" Aidene said clearly just as confused as Valentina.
"Not monkey, Monké, with a French accent" I added.
"It's a reference to kung-fu panda," Penelope explained, showing a picture of it on her phone.
"Well, I always knew none of us were sane..." Aidene shrugged.
"...And now...ALLONS Y,"
"I'm surrounded by idiots," Penelope face palmed.
"And I am surrounded by insane people," Valentina, not really getting the Lion King reference
The next few minutes after our nonsensical conversation was spent in Penelope trying to convince Valentina, who was attempting to escape last minute, to climb and Aidene trying to push me out the window to climb the tree (I swear, she was trying to kill me).
"I can't climb, can't we I don't know, find a less death defying way to get down," I said because I definitely wasn't the most athletic person in the world.
Aidene led the way,well not exactly we couldn't see her through the branches so...the correct phrase would be:
We sent her first so if anyone should die she would be the first.
Pine needles got stuck everywhere; hair, clothes and even the nose. At one point Penelope had tried to murder Aidene by trying to kick her off the tree because Aidene was irritating her. Valentina's constant complaints. Though I have to admit the view was amazing as long as there were no pine needles trying to poke my face off. We had to get Aidene's (who had gotten distracted by pinecones and the stars) focus back on helping us not die a million times.
"Woah! Watch it your butt was close to my face," I wasn't able to tell who it was but it wasn't the first time such a comment was made.
Finally, I heard a dull thud as Aidene jumped off the final branch, I looked down to see Aidene in a crouch. Penelope jumped down just as easily as Aidene. I looked down at what seemed to me a 100 feet drop when it was actually only around 10. I slowly hung myself from the branch to get myself closer to the ground, like some sort of pine-cone-covered-ape and then let go, falling a lot less elegantly than Penelope and Aidene. Last but not the least Valentina Brookes, she wasn't coming down.
"NOTHINGS GONNA HAPPEN VAL DEAR!" Aidene said a bit too loudly, earning shushes from Penelope.
Valentina sat on the branch hugging the trunk of the tree tightly and shaking her head violently.
"We will catch you," Aidene said, luckily not as loudly.
"No we won't," Penelope said.
"Yes,"
"No,"
"Yes,"
"No,"
"Just Jump!" I said before Penelope's and Aidene's back and forth yes and no's made my brain explode.
Valentina pushed herself off the tree with a little too much force and stumbled onto Aidene.
"See, told ya I would catch you," Aidene said holding Valentina by the arm waiting for her to regain her balance.
We walked through the creek waiting to reach an opening between the buildings. Penelope had zipped a dark blue jacket with her hands stuffed in her pockets keeping them from getting cold. I had also done the same except for the fact that I had put on the hood and tightened it making me look like a giant bipedal worm. Valentina looked like an Eskimo with a heavy black jacket with a fake fur lined hood. Aidene seemed absolutely unaffected by the cold, wearing only a thin jacket (unzipped that too) over her pajamas (she was the only one who had changed into pajamas) and completing the odd combination with her boots.
I shivered slightly and brought my head closer to my chest, hoping we would reach the opening faster. My thoughts drifted towards how much I missed everything back home, and how I never appreciated it when it was still mine. I-
"We need to make a run for it," Penelope's voice snapped me out of my thoughts.
"What?" I asked. I walked forward and stood beside Aidene and Penelope who had been leading us through the creek.
We had reached the opening. I could see the school building from between the Aer and Aqua dorm buildings. We could have used the opening between Aer and Ignis but that was further from the school building.
"We are going to have to run through the lawn to get to the school building, it's a clearing and I don't want to risk anyone seeing us," Penelope whispered.
"It's not a complete clearing there are a few trees," Valentina supplied.
"Ok then let's run to that tree, take a breather and then to the school building because it's too far and if one of us gets tired and start walking..." Aidene let her next word drift off and pointed to the tree standing somewhere in between the school building and dorms Then without warning she broke into a run and without any hesitation Penelope followed. I wasted a few seconds in thinking if this was a good idea or not and coming to the conclusion that I had reached the point of no return, I was already knee deep in this plan. I ran.
I slowed down and looked back to see how far Valentina was, she hadn't left the opening, I beckoned her with a small wave and got back to running.
I slowed down the second time when I reached the tree. I could barely make out anything under its shade.
"A little faster Brookes!" I heard Penelope say when the sound of Valentina's feet reached my ears.
I turned around to see Penelope waiting for everybody to catch their breaths. Aidene was facing the school staring into nothingness and Valentina was wheezing.
"Can we have a count down or something before the next run," I suggested.
"Yeah please," Valentina said through her wheezing.
"Sure," Penelope and turned towards Aidene for her reply. But she stayed uncharacteristically quiet and continued staring.
"Aidene?" I asked worried about the girl's mental health.
"Umm... What? Sorry spaced out," Aidene said, snapping out of her trance.
"We are going to have a countdown this time," Penelope explained.
"Okay, cool," was her only reply.
We all got ready for the second part of the run. Aidene got down on her feet confusing everybody until she got into a runners pose.
"Drama queen," Penelope muttered.
"I prefer high maintenance with a talent to over exaggerate actions for absolutely no reason," Aidene replied having heard the comment.
"Count of three," Penelope said.
"One," Penelope said, making me suck in a breath.
"Two," my body tensed.
"THREE," Aidene yelled before Penelope and we ran at her command.
Half way through I realized this distance was greater than the last but that wasn't a problem. Aidene had started to turn to run around the school to use the main entrance in the front only to be pulled back by Penelope who whispered something in Aidene's ear and both of them headed towards the back of the building, not exactly having a choice, I followed them.
We stopped at a small door at the back of the building which hadn't been visible due to the darkness.
"Could've told us that there was a back door," I said to Penelope.
But before she could answer,
"There's some moron walking on the lawn in the middle of the night, he is gonna get caught," Aidene said.
I turned toward where Aidene was looking to see a dark figure walking along the lawn, too short to be one of the teachers. He is so dead just like the four of us.
"Heh," was all I could say.
"Guys, where the @$!*% is Valentina?" Penelope asked.
Our eyes widened and we instinctively looked around to see that Valentina was nowhere in sight.
"OH MY GOD! That's our moron", Aidene said running to the, now identified as Valentina, black figure.
I watched as Aidene ran towards Valentina, grabbed her by the arm and dragged her a lot faster than she had dragged me towards the door. Aidene plopped down on the ground and buried her head in her hands, breathing heavily.
"Why did you *#^&@ stop!" Penelope demanded, her face twisted with anger.
"Because I was tired," Valentina tried for a sweet smile like Aidene's but failed (she was pretty oblivious to the fact that she failed though).
Aidene shot Valentina a look and then nodded at Penelope to open the door. Penelope reached into her pocket and pulled out a key ring with over 20 keys in it. After a few tries on trying to find the right key and a solid fifteen minutes of paranoia the door finally opened surprisingly smoothly.
The warmth inside the building was welcoming but the darkness wasn't.