Midnight Heights - S.J (life changing books to read .txt) 📗

and I are new here and we don't really know where we're supposed to go."

He pulled off his bulky glasses as he walked closer to us. "You must be the Silverstone's, am I correct?" he asked.

I nodded. "Yes."

He smiled. "Follow me."

He walked past us and exited out the same door we entered. Me and Emily followed him down the hallway until he stopped in front of another door and then pushed it open, leading us down another hallway.

"Leona gave me specific instructions as to where she would like you two to stay." he told us.

Me and Emily exchanged glances.

"And who is Leona?" Emily wondered.

He chuckled. "Leona, my dear, is the head mistress of Midnight Heights. You should do nothing without sending it by her first or she'd be very upset."

I rolled my eyes to myself. "And when do we meet this Leona?"

"She will be seeing the both of you tomorrow morning when we have Awakenings." he said, as if we knew what he meant by that.

He stopped in front of yet another door and then pushed it open. "Here's where you and your sister will be staying, don't wake her up." he glanced into the room and we did the same.

There was three beds against the wall with tables near by and weird art work imprinted on the wall with different languages on them. There was a girl who was sleeping on one of the beds already and by the looks of it, this wasn't exactly the most comfortable place to sleep.

I let out a sigh. "Great."

"So I will see you in the morning. Try to get some rest because we all awake early." he begin to walk away but stopped when Emily called.

"What about food? I am starving." she wined, holding her stomach.

"My apologies but dinner's at six and Leona specifically said no exceptions. I guess you're going to have to wait for breakfast. I'm Narc by the way." he proceeded down the hallway until we couldn't see him anymore.

We walked into the room and closed the door behind us. I noticed that the middle bed was where the girl was lying. Her head suddenly lifted up when she heard the sound of our feet trailing against the floor. I glanced at her.

"We're very sorry; we didn't mean to wake you." Emily said.

She sighed. "Nah, it's okay. I wasn't really asleep anyway. You two new?"

I nodded. "Yeah and I guess we'll be staying here for a while."

"I could move to another bed so that you and your sister could be closer." she explained.

Emily shook her head. "You shouldn't have to move for us. We'll be fine."

I walked to the bed that was next to the girl and sat my bag down and Emily headed to the other side. I could tell that this wasn't going to be such a fun place that Emily was hoping it would be and it wasn't going to be too long before I'd be calling my parents and begging them to come and take us back home.

"I'm Emily and the other one over there is Crystal." I heard Emily say and realized she was still talking to the girl.

"I'm Allie." the girl replied. "So are you two twins? You look exactly alike."

Emily laughed. "No, actually we're only a year apart. Criss is older though."

"Hmm… Could have fooled me." Allie mumbled.

It wasn't long before Allie stopped talking and felt asleep and Emily did the same. I was way to scared to fall asleep in this place and knew that I was going to be up for the remainder of the night.
Awakenings

"Crystal! Crystal, wakey wakey!"

I opened my eyes to see Allie smiling at me and realized that I had fallen asleep after all. I wiped my eyes and slowly sat up.

"Your sister already left." she said.

I was a little confused. "Left?"

She laughed. "Yes silly, left for awakenings. You better hurry and get dressed because if everyone isn't in the main room before 6 am, Leona will punish you." she told me.


I quickly got up and went to my suitcase to search for something else to wear. I pulled out my plain blue t-shirt and a pale pair of jeans and laid them out on the bed beside me. I noticed Allie watching me very closely as if she was thinking heavily on something.


I laughed. "What?"

"Nothing, it's just amazing how much you and your sister look alike and yet how different the two of you are from each other."


I let out a smile. "Let me guess, Emily left out wearing something a little more glamorous, huh?"


"Yes, she had the matching hat and heels to go along with it." Allie snickered.

I laughed and then quickly changed into my clothes. Allie was right, me and Emily was different in many ways. Unlike me, Emily was very optimistic. She's loyal and kind and seems to always be the life of the party. Not to say that I'm not all those things, but with me, you don't see it as easily as you do with Emily. Most people would describe me as stubborn and very assertive, but I was just as kind as Emily was. However, we both had a knack for breaking the rules and when it came down to it, we were both button pushers.


"We have to leave now, Crystal. Awakenings will start once the bell rings." Allie informed.

I followed her out the door and down the same hall Narc brought me and Emily through. I had to walk very quickly just to keep up with Allie considering how fast her pace was. We past the study room and numbers of other doors that I had no idea what they were. We turned down another long hall until finally Allie stopped in front of a thick, bulky, black door and pushed it open. It was completely huge inside and looked like it could be a gym, but not quite the same.

There were bleachers on one side of the room filled with wandering eyes that were locked on me, and on the other side of the room there were huge book shelves against the wall just like in the study room. I watched as everybody stared at me and Allie as we walked into the room. Emily was sitting at the very top of the bleachers. She waved a hand to us when she saw us.

I followed Allie up to the top of the bleachers and then took my seat next to Emily. I glanced around at everybody who seemed as if they had no life at all. There was something not right about this place and I could deeply feel it in the pit of my stomach. A loud bell blasted through the speakers of the ceiling and the door of the gym suddenly swung open. The sound of high heels tapped against the floor as she made her way to the center of the room. I could tell that this was who we were waiting for, Leona, but I was surprised to see that her appearance wasn't what I imagined it would be. She had long brown hair that made the pale, light complexion of her skin stand out and she was wearing a skirt that was two sizes too small and a lavender turtle-neck sweater. She was a lot younger than I expected, in fact, she didn't look to be that much older than I was.

I watched as she paced back in forth across the center of the room before finally speaking.


"Good morning Everyone." she said with a voice so light and soft that you'd swear she was an angel.

"Today we are going to do something a little bit different than our normal routine. It has been brought to my attention by someone I'd rather not say that something has been going on behind my back; something that is forbidden here at Midnight Heights."


She scanned the room with her eyes in a way that made everyone tense up in an uncomfortable position. I didn't understand why these people seemed to be so afraid of her because she looked as if she couldn't hurt a fly, but judging by the looks of every one's faces, I could see that I really had no idea who Leona really was.

"The reason we do Awakenings every morning is to keep each and every one of you informed of the rules here; rules that are meant to be kept. So if you start to abuse these rules, well then there will be major consequences." she added with a sly smile.


She walked down to the edge of the bleaches and kneeled down in front of someone in the last row. I couldn't tell who she was talking to but I knew that whatever it was she was saying she didn't want anyone else to hear. She stood back up and made her way back to the center of the room.

She let out a breath. "I really, really hate doing this but if someone doesn't confess right now to breaking the rules which I have given, I will have to punish all of you."

Everyone started to exchange glances and whisper among themselves. I couldn't help but notice that there was something about the way she said "all of you" that made my skin crawl. She walked back and forth across the floor with a smile on her face, just waiting for someone to confess to their wrong, but no one did. She suddenly stopped in her tracks.


"I'm going to count to five and if no one has a confession for me, then you all will suffer." she said. "One...Two..."

The voices in the room suddenly got louder as everyone began to panic. I glanced at Emily who shared the same confusion as I did. We were both clueless as to what was going on but knew that whatever was going to happen next wasn't going to be good.


"Five…” Leona finished. "Fine. Then you all will be punished…”

"Wait! It was me. I'm the one who has been breaking the rules." a voice said somewhere in the crowd.


"Stand up." Leona ordered.

The body that belonged to the voice stood up instantly with his head hung low in shame. Everyone looked at him, both in relief of his confession