Free Aftermath by Jenna-Lynne Duncan

being able to pay
attention to her.
    After class, I gave her
space and decided not to stop by her desk. Absentmindedly, I got my
things and started to leave.
    “Adriana, I’d like
to talk to you please.”
    Uh-oh. From her tone, I
knew it couldn’t be good. Most of the class had already left but a
few students turned their heads. It was like being sent to the
principal’s office; but I wasn’t in trouble, was I? I nodded and
started walking over to her. I thought back to our conversation
yesterday about the Lalaurie mansion. She must have known something
and now decided to confront me about it. I sat down in the desk
closest to her while she was still sorting through folders in a
filing cabinet.
    “Hi,” I alerted her
to my presence, after she didn’t seem to notice me. When she just
continued searching through her desk I wondered if I had even spoken
in more than a whisper.
    She looked up at me,
her eyelids heavy and a little startled. “I wanted to talk to you
about a paper of yours.” She continued searching through papers. Ok, so this wasn’t how I thought the conversation would go. She wanted to talk to me about my academics which made me worry even
more. She finally came up from her file cabinet defeated. “Sorry
Adriana. I’ve just gotten tired.”
    I saw the exhaustion in
her face, too, and immediately my concerned instincts took over. “Are
you okay? What happened?” It was hard to believe a lecture wore her
out. She was so collected earlier; even when she was teaching she was
always confident. Her demeanor had completely changed and I couldn’t
help but think how out-of-character it was.
    “Oh, no, I’m fine
really.” She put a few papers in a manila folder and put a book on
the shelf behind her. “I just haven’t been sleeping well in
general.”
    “I’m sorry.” My
apology was genuine, but what else could I say?
    “Nightmares,” she
added quietly.
    Now I had a ton to say.
“Nightmares? What do you mean nightmares? What kind of nightmares?”
    “It’s nothing. I’ve
just been stressed about my house. I don’t know if I should sell it
and just take the losses or not...” her words faded.
    Oh. So not my kind of nightmares.
    “Again, I’m sorry.”
I put my hand on her desk in an unconscious effort to comfort her.
“Is there anything I can do?”
    “Oh, I’ll be fine.
I did my dissertation on the history of dreams. If I am dreaming
about selling my house, then that is the path I should take. Dreams
aren’t just random. They have meaning. They tell you something. So
if I am dreaming I should sell my house, I have nothing to lose by
pursuing it.”
    I couldn’t believe
how great her timing was! Although our nightmares were completely not
in the same ballpark, maybe not even in the same country, she was
right. I had nothing to lose by pursuing them. I already knew my
dreams were telling me something. They certainly weren’t random,
now I just had to figure out what exactly it was they were trying to
tell me. And that meant that I was going to go to the haunted theater
after work. I smiled at her in silent agreement.
    She seemed pleased that
we came to the same conclusion. She looked up at the clock on the
wall. “You'd better get to your next class.”
    I looked at it, too,
briefly forgetful that I had a schedule to follow. When I saw that my
next class was about to start, I scrambled out of my seat.
    “You’re right.
Thanks. We’ll talk later?”
    “Always,” she
promised.
    Before I was out the
door, I remembered something. “Oh, I almost forgot, you wanted to
talk to me about a paper?”
    Her drooping eyes were
now wide, “Yes, but I was mistaken. It was another student’s
paper.”
    I looked at her with
confusion, until she gave me a reassuring smile.
    “All right, then.”
I bowed my head and walked out. She definitely knows something’s
up, was my last thought before I went to gym.
    I walked to my locker
after gym, noting rather irritatingly that Luke was, yet