Metanoia (2 page)

“
You’re insane, Gina. I
swear you and that book should get married,” Jessica
moaned.

“
Maybe we should. There
aren’t any other perspectives on the list yet,” Gina
replied.

“
Because unless he’s
‘prince charming,’ you won’t give him the time of day,” April
laughed. She put on her red sunglasses that closely matched the
color of her short hair, covering her green eyes, and leaned back
on her bag. April Welsh was the one who completed the friendship,
now a triangle since they had lost their fourth point. April never
had had much trouble when it came to guys. This feisty red-head
seemed to attract boys left and right, but she was never that into
their attention except for one. She had had a steady boyfriend for
as long as Gina could remember, and she still had a line of guys
interested. Her main care, however, was for her friends, and she
was the first to listen to a problem. Gina had always envied her
even though she had attracted a good many boys herself and yet, she
indeed never gave one of them the time of day. It wasn’t
necessarily that the boys weren’t good enough for her, for Gina
knew in her heart that she was terrified of committing to any
relationship. She was beginning to feel that she couldn’t love at
all. Besides the boys were just that – boys. Gina took a break from
her book to look up at April.

“
How’s Hayden?” she
asked.

“
Oh, well…uh…we sort of
broke up last night.”

“
What?!” Jessica and Gina
shouted in unison.

“
Yeah. Well, I broke up
with him. Not too keen on commitment, you know,” she replied
calmly.

“
I’m the queen of no
commitment, not you,” Gina exclaimed.

“
Oh, well, I guess it’s
contagious. Besides, he dyed his hair bright blue… couldn’t take
it… Hey, umm, we should do something fun tomorrow, girls. Go to the
movies or something. It’s Friday after all, and we need some
excitement in this life.”

“
Are you okay?” Gina asked.
Jessica leaned in as if to ask the same question
silently.

“
Yeah, I’m fine,” April
responded untruthfully. “Really, don’t worry. Like I said: we need
some excitement.”

Gina decided to take the hint and return the
conversation to normal. Pain to April by bringing up painful
thoughts of the events that Jessica and she were not being let in
on was the last thing they all wanted. Instead, she continued, “You
can say that again. We do. We got to do something new though
because we are quickly running out of ideas.”

Gina took the public bus home from school
that day. She had a lot of homework to do and knew the day could
only get longer. After five stops, the bus finally stopped in front
of an old burger place that had been shut down years ago. Gina
gathered her bag and belongings and stepped off the bus. She sighed
as she beheld the same dark sight that she saw everyday. The burger
joint was a palace compared to the rest of the neighborhood. The
old streets had garbage shoved against the curbs, and shopping
carts filled with trash sat here and there, a few turned over. Gina
could see a few balls of sleeping bags and knew very well what it
meant. Homeless people were once again living in their streets. She
quickly walked past decrepit buildings to her own apartment
complex, passed a man with a sign that read “Why lie, I want a
beer,” and up to the front door. The screams and crying and
hollering had already begun upstairs. She quickly unlocked the door
and went into the dark hall. Wallpaper had been falling off the
walls for centuries, and dead plants, sitting in corners here and
there, had long ago dropped their leaves all over the broken-tiled
floor.

“
Mr. Smooter, you’re rent
is overdue, pay up!” the landlady, Ms. Stern was screaming at a
tenant who stood in his doorway.

“
I just need a little
longer! My check hasn’t come in yet!” he bellowed back. “We’re not
made out of money, you know! It doesn’t grow on trees!”

“
That’s not true!” Mr.
Smooter’s four-year-old son, Henry, appeared in the door. “Charlie
told me that money is made of paper and paper comes from trees!
Just like apples.”

“
Shut up,” Mr. Smooter
mumbled. Gina continued past their argument and to her own door.
She opened the door quickly and shut it behind her. Through the
peephole, she could see Henry kick Ms. Stern in the shins as he
passed by his father to run outside.

Gina threw her book-bag and keys by the door
and looked around her apartment. Similar to the hall, her own space
had peeling wallpaper, but Gina had tried to make the best of it.
She’d put bright colored pillows on her second-hand couch and
covered its many stains with a pastel towel that she’d placed
across the cushions. In fact, she’d tried to freshen the whole area
with brightly colored odds and ends (most that had some sort of
fantasy element to them), all from second-hand stores. She had told
her friends that she lived on her own, but they had no idea as to
the condition of living. Gina had made it into a big deal that she
was independent, without anyone else’s guidance. Really, dependence
on a true family was all she really wanted. Gina had been an orphan
for as long as she could remember. She traveled from one foster
family to the next and had hated every minute of it. So, when she
turned eighteen, she was more than happy to move away from her fake
families for good. That’s not to say that Gina had never searched
for some relatives, no matter how distant, but it just seemed like
life had denied her a family.

With a sigh, Gina pulled out her books and
plopped down on the couch. She pulled her syllabus out of her
Chemistry book, unfolded it, and read.

DUE FRIDAY:
Read Chapter 5 and complete the review questions
at the end of the chapter.

Gina sighed, flipped to chapter 5, and began
to read.

An hour later, she had
just barely completed the reading and was starting on the
questions. She would have finished sooner if it hadn’t been for the
increased screaming coming from right next door to her. From what
she could clearly hear, a mother was yelling at her child for not
taking out the garbage while he was yelling back that it had been
his sister’s turn to do so. Directly downstairs from Gina, Ms.
Stern had moved to another tenant who was late on rent and was now
screaming at them. Gina released a great sigh of relief that she
had turned her own rent in on time. She had been left a good deal
of money by whoever her parents were and had definitely needed it
these past few months.

Gina directed her
attention back to the task at hand: her boring Chemistry
homework.
Fill out this Vapor Pressure of
Water chart with its appropriate temperature (˚C) or pressure
(kPa). Refer to the table on page 528
.
Gina repeated this in her head for the hundredth time.

“
I always have to do
everything around here!” wailed the boy next door. “Sarah never has
any chores! It was her turn! I have to cook, I have to clean, I
have to do everything!”

“
Yeah,
well try being a mother someday!” screamed his mother.
Concentrate
, Gina
thought to herself.
At 10˚C, the pressure
will be 1.2 kPa…

“
Rent
time is now! Not next month, not next week, not tomorrow – NOW! Pay
up or get out!” Ms. Stern was screaming. How she could scream that
loud on a daily basis without losing her voice, Gina did not know.
It seemed impossible. Yet, she was always screaming. If it wasn’t
about the rent then it was about that pesky cat or somebody leaving
roller-skates out for someone to trip over.
At 20˚C, the pressure will be 2.5… no… 2.3kPa…what is a kPa
anyway?
Gina tried to glance back to
figure it out, but couldn’t even concentrate long enough to do
that. Finally, she resulted to simply grabbing a snack and hoping
that the screaming would end by the time her break was over. She
knew not to count on it though.

When Gina finally finished her homework, it
was 1:00am. The screaming had stopped, but the tenants below her
were watching a loud action movie that kept her awake long enough
to finish her homework. Finally, she threw her books into her bag,
put on her pajamas, brushed her teeth, and crashed onto her
bed.

The next day was like all the ones before it:
boring and far too drawn out. As much as Gina hoped and prayed that
Mrs. Spencer would have caught a mysterious tropical disease and
not shown up that day, she was inevitably disappointed. There her
teacher stood at the front, facing her victims with an evil grin
that put the Grinch’s to shame. “With this chart,” Mrs. Spencer
began, pointing at a chart she had drawn on the board to match the
one in the book, “you can determine the critical temperature for a
substance as well as the critical pressure. You can also find the
triple point where the substance will have liquid, solid, and gas
properties at the same time. But remember this occurs under rare
conditions and is hardly seen…” Suddenly her scream pierced the
air. Gina’s attention shot up to her teacher for the first time,
totally ignoring her drawings. Mrs. Spencer stared out the open
door at some unseen horror beyond it, but something else caught
Gina’s eye. A black and blood-stained arrow now protruded from her
teacher’s desk. Gina stared at it in horror, complete fear
overtaking all of her ability to move. Mrs. Spencer sank back,
crawling with grasping hands towards an inexistent safety zone. The
rest of the class retreated to the furthest corner of the room they
could get to, all but Gina. She continued to stare transfixed at
the arrow, panic weighing her down.

It was in this instant that the embodiment of
pure terror emerged. First one claw, then another, dragged in the
body of a horrific beast. Straightening up, it towered eight feet
in the air, covered in black and red colored skin. Shards of
rusting metal protruded from this monster’s baldhead, splitting its
skull in what seemed like a million pieces. It wore armor
displaying sharp spikes that steam sizzled from. As terrifying as
this sight was, nothing compared to its horrific eyes. They were
black with a pupil of red fire seeming to actually have living
flames. These eyes turned to Gina. The creature’s harsh, raspy
voice interrupted the screams and gasps coming from the class.
Painful sounds began to emerge from its mouth and though barely
understandable, one word could be clearly distinguished.

“
Re-gi-na!” The creature was after
her
. The realization finally set in,
and Gina scurried to get away. It was too late.

“
Freecra!” This was yet
another horrible hiss emerging through the creature’s mouth, but
its affects were much worse than its sound. An invisible hand
seized Gina and snatched her up into the air. Tighter and tighter
the grip became until…

Gina rolled over painfully. She tried to get
up, but the hurling to the floor was too much for her to handle.
The beast yanked her up and flung her over its shoulders - right on
the spikes. Gina screamed in pain as blood soaked through her white
sweater. With each breath the creature took, the spikes drove
deeper into her stomach. The rhythm of the beast’s breaths began to
match the beating of Gina’s heart. Her head dangled against the
monster’s back as she made the feeble attempt to hold on to
consciousness. Suddenly, another arrow, this one brown, flew
through the door. From her view at mere inches away, Gina could see
the arrow protruding from the creature’s back. The monster swayed
and dropped Gina, the spikes tearing at her stomach as she fell to
the floor. She looked up in just enough time to see the creature
crashing down on top of her.

Gina lay there, her pain excruciating. It
seemed her life was quickly being sucked from her. She felt so much
pain from her injury and from suffocating under the creature’s
weight that she slowly began to stop feeling. Slowly, she could see
light, but her eyes could not focus on anything until someone cast
a shadow. Someone was standing over her having torn the monster off
of her. The person lifted her up and held her close. In the
stranger’s arms as he ran through the halls, Gina slowly began to
breathe normally again but her pain would not cease. Even though
the person had shifted the creature off of her in a hurry, the
trauma to her stomach was severe. Quickly, the stranger burst into
a computer lab and set Gina underneath a desk for protection. With
all the strength she had, Gina turned to look at her rescuer, her
first true look at the most gorgeous man she had ever seen in her
life. He, like her, had brown loose curls, though short, that hung
messily around his face and stunning blue eyes.

“
What is
going on...who are you...what was that
thing
?” Gina pushed out
painfully.

“
Don’t speak, just relax.
You’re hurt badly,” he exclaimed. He quickly lifted Gina’s sweater
slightly to examine the damage. The spikes had obviously paid their
dues. Swiftly, he reached into his pocket and produced a dried,
shimmering leaf. He crushed it in his fist and opened his hand. His
skin glimmered from the extract of the leaf, seeming to glow as he
put his hand over her cuts. Instantly, the pain and blood were
gone; only bruises remained.

“
How did you…wait, who are
you?” she began.

“
You mean you don’t
remember…of course you don’t, I’m sorry. My name is Leyance,” he
explained. “That creature was an Übel, and he unfortunately isn’t
the only one out there. They all look the same, Übels do – simply
physical variations of pain and suffering. They are here for you,
I’m afraid. I can’t explain anything else right now. You must trust
me and do exactly what I say, no questions asked.” Gina nodded. She
had no other choice; nothing made sense to her now anyway. Leyance
glanced out the window, worried.