Spirit

Chapter 20: Tranquilizer
When I woke up two morning’s later, Nathan was in my room, sitting across my bed.
“How long have you been here?” I panted, gasping for breath.
“I just got here.”
After I changed, I sat on my bed across from him. “So what’s on the agenda today, buddy?”
Nathan chuckled. “Today… we’re going to start your training.” He didn’t sound very happy about the fact that I was going to be trained but I was too elated to ask why.
“Really?” I sqeaked. I was so excited.
He sighed. “Yeah.”
“Then why are we just sitting here? Let’s go!” I said and clapped my hands.
“Keith!” I called out once we got to his house.
“Are you ready for your first day of training?” He asked, walking down the stairs.
“A million times yes!”
“I’m surprised. Nathan and Sarah were never as enthusiastic to train as you.”
“I’m just anxious to gain control over this thing,” I admitted.
“Well, follow me.” Keith started to walk up the stairs and I followed. Once we got to the top, he turned to the right and walked down that hall and turned to the right again and opened the door for me and Nathan to come in.
The room was obviously an office room. There was a large oak table across from me in front of a wide window looking out to the lake. The walls were painted a mahogany and were covered with tall bookshelf’s that matched the table. There was a rug that matched the walls and furniture across the room.
“We’re going to train in… here?” I asked, a bit confused.
Keith chuckled and walked over to the right corner at the end of the room. He grabbed the bookshelf and pulled it out. Keith turned to his side and slide through the crack he made.
“You can walk through walls!” I exclaimed when Keith disappeared into the wall.
Nathan laughed and walked to the bookshelf and slid right through the crack.
“C’mon, Natalia!” Nathan called.
I walked over to the bookshelf and peeked through the opening. It was a hallway behind the bookshelf. At the end of the hall was a door. A secret room.
“Darn,” I mumbled. “I wanted to walk through a wall.” I slid through the opening. The hallway was painted a tan color with lights attached to the walls. I always thought things like this would actually look creepy and scary.
Keith walked to the end of the hallway and swung open the door. I followed Nathan and Keith in.
When I got into the room, I was amazed at what I saw. The room was so… huge! The ceiling was so high. This room was probably equivlent to a six story building. The room was completely lit up and it made the room even whiter.
Something caught my eye and I walked to the wall. I reached up and touched the dent. It looked like a foot. I looked higher and there was a leg, a body, arms, and a head. A whole perfect frame of a body was dented into the wall.
“What is this?” I asked.
Nathan chuckled.
“It’s Sarah,” Keith responded. “Nathan likes her to be his training buddy. It’s an easier way to let out everything that’s pent-up inside of him. And when you know Sarah, there are a lot of things that you want to do to her.”
“Wow,” I mouthed.
“I asked Sarah to clean this place up…. What was I thinking?” Keith muttered to himself.
“It’s so… wide. And empty.”
“Well, we do need a lot of space for training,” said Nathan.
“Apparently.”
“Shall we start the training?” Keith asked.
“Oh! Of course! So do you want me to transform now?” I asked. “Nathan how do you do that thing where you shake a lot?”
“We don’t just jump into the transforming, Natalia. We do that after you learn the basics. It won’t take long.”
“Darn,” I mumbled.
“Natalia, when was the last time you transformed?” Keith asked.
“When I was thirteen.”
“And how old are you now?”
“Seventeen.”
Keith shook his head in approval. “Amazing,” he said to himself. “Have you ever been… close to transforming once but stopped it?”
I nodded my head.
“This will be fairly easy then. You almost know how to control Clarabelle but can you transform on command?”
“On command? Like just transform whenever I want?”
Keith nodded his head.
I scoffed. “Nope. It just seems to happen when I’m rude or being mean.”
“There’s something to work on,” Keith said, taking note to himself. “So to transform, you need to get your emotions in balance. Your happiness cannot overwhelm your sadness, your sadness cannot overwhelm your jealousy, your jealousy cannot overwhelm your anger. Do you comprehend?”
I nodded my head.
“Alright. So that was all for the basics. It didn’t take long, right?”
“Do I transform now?” I asked.
“She says it like she can do it within a couple of seconds,” Sarah said as she entered the room.
“Sarah,” Nathan warned.
I looked back at Keith for further instructions but his eyes were closed and in less than five seconds, he was Callixtus. He didn’t have to go through the whole frenzy of shaking and didn’t even seem to concentrate as much as when Nathan transforms. He opened his crystal blue eyes and smiled. He turned around and started to walk toward the end of the room, across from me.
I started to follow him.
“Stay where you are,” he said without even looking at me.
Once he got the end of the room, he turned around to face me. Not literally thought because of the distance between us. I looked around for Nathan and he was standing at the corner of the room with Sarah. My face turned bright red because I wasn’t very good at being center of attention with everyone watching me.
“Natalia,” Keith called. “I want you to close your eyes and concentrate deeply on your emotions. What makes you happy, sad, and what angers you. I want you to drown out everything from your mind but those things. Just pretend that you are in an empty room by yourself,” he instructed.
I nodded my head and closed my eyes. I took a deep breath and started to balance out my emotions, making sure none was dominant than the other or recessive. I had to imagine myself in an empty room. A room with nothing but me in it…. That wouldn’t be too hard. All I had to think of was my dreams.
Now I had to think of what made me angry. It was hard to open my mental door of anger since I always kept it shut but there was something that always seemed to get through the crack under the door and refused to go back in and that was the fact that I wasn’t normal.
All my life I’ve struggled with what I was and wondered what I was. Even though I know what I am now, even though I’ve met people like me, and even though I’m getting the training I need by my mentor, Keith, I would trade anything just to be normal. To be able to defend myself without worrying of transforming. I don’t want to be the weakest link. I want to be able to let out my anger and just be simply normal. But that would never happen.
I felt a subtle tremble run through my body and it wasn’t from shuddering. It was from something else deep inside of me. It was like when you trapped someone inside of a closet and they struggled to get out. But this wasn’t a closet. It was Clarabelle busting out of the pure metal I surrounded her with.
Now I had to focus on what made me sad. There was so many things to choose from, but I had to pick just one just so that my sadness wouldn’t overcome the other emotions.
The sad part was that Jonathon and Nicolette were afraid of me. My own brother and sister. I never meant for them to find out the way they did and for them to probably be scared of me their whole lives. I love my brother and sister and if it’ll take years for them to finally see me as a sister again, I’d be willing to wait.
There was another tremble, this time larger than the other. I smiled to myself because I knew I was doing it right.
The thing that made me happy…. I didn’t want to think of what I wanted to think. This person made me so happy even though I just met him. We were just friends, but I felt like he could be my bestfriend. Or something more.
Now that’s what I didn’t want to think of and now that I did, I might as well think of everything about him. The way he smiled, the way he told me that I was worth it, the times he was in my room waiting for me to wake up, the way he seemed to care so much about me, the time he told me that he’d be there whenever I needed him and how he’d stay as long as I wanted him, and how he was here in the room with me.
I smiled to myself again, because I heard the words he said run through my mind over and over again.
“I knew she couldn’t do it,” Sarah laughed.
I opened my eyes and glared at her for making me loose my concentration.
“Don’t blame Sarah, Natalia,” Keith said. “You let one of your emotions overwhelm the others. You need to think of whatever it was much less.”
“That’s impossible,” I sighed.
“And why is that?”
“I can’t say,” I said and covered my face with my hands. I couldn’t help smiling.
“We can do this next week.”
“No, no! I can do this!”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. I’m going to start over.” I closed my eyes and started to balance out my emotions. I thought of what angered me, what put me down, and what made me happy…. I just had to think of that less to balance out my emotions. But once I got to thinking of what made me happy, I lost it again.
I opened my eyes and sighed loudly.
“Was it the same thing?” Keith asked.
I nodded my head.
“What emotion is it?”
“Happiness,” I admitted.
Keith nodded his head. “And do a lot of things make you happy?”
“Well… no.”
“So it must be something very strong.”
“Kind of.”
“How about you tell us what it is.”
“Even though I do, it wouldn’t make a difference.”
“You never know.”
I sighed. “It’s Nathan,” I said quietly.
Sarah exploded into obnoxious laughter.
“Sarah,” Nathan warned.
“I can’t focus on any other emotion when me makes me so happy. The worst part is that he’s in the room right now, listening to what I’m saying.” I knew he could hear me so my face turned so red, I was sure it was going to explode.
“Would it be any easier if he left the room?”
“I guess. But I don’t want to be rude.”
“I don’t mind,” Nathan called from behind me. It was evident in his voice that he was smiling. “Not too long, Keith!” He called. I heard the door open and close.
“He’s like some kind of personal tranquilizer,” I mused.