Chasing Imagination

Amy

I didn’t talk to Casper the following day, or the next, or the next. At first, he looked at me with a strange sort of hope, but as the days passed, and more and more followed, the hope morphed into resentment.

After a week of near silence between us, I began to consider forgiving him, but it seemed that every passing hour made forgiveness a little bit harder. Imogen took me aside and Linzy begged me every night until I finally caved in. How long could I stay angry at him? At the end of the day, they were all monsters; not just Casper. It was just that it was only him who I had actually witnessed doing it.

But as I headed into the dining room that lunchtime to go and sit at our table, he made eye contact with me and got up and left, giving me nothing but a stony glare. He stalked off alone, going to talk to Wolfie and Felix instead, who had just entered the room.

‘Really,’ Matt said, shaking his head. ‘It’s fucking immature if you ask me.’

‘It’s my fault,’ I mumbled into my plate of sandwich and not exactly fresh salad. ‘If I had apologised to him the day after the breach, none of this would have happened.’

‘It’s not your fault,’ Matt assured me, glaring at Casper’s back across the room. ‘Everyone argues sometimes.’

‘You’ll make it up eventually,’ Imogen insisted. I was doubting that more and more with every passing day.

‘He doesn’t even want to talk to me,’ I said. ‘I don’t like what he did, but I can’t stay mad at him forever. It seems that he can, though.’

‘I’ll talk to him if you like,’ Imogen offered.

‘No!’ I cried out. ‘No, please, you can’t.’

She laughed delicately. ‘Alright. Don’t worry. I was just offering.’

I stared back down at the table. ‘I know. I’m sorry.’

Later on that day, I was sitting with Imogen, Wolfie, Felix and Kira in the common room. My seat was facing the door, so I noticed when he appeared in the doorway. He scanned the room with his eyes, seeing that the seat with Felix and co was occupied by me, and disappeared without a word. It seemed that none of the others had even seen him appear.

No one was really on sides. At least that was something; I couldn’t bear it if the entire friendship group got divided because of me. Everyone was just spending time with who they wanted to be with. Felix had been with Casper all morning, but had left him when he’d gone to the library, and then come in here to see me sitting with his friends.

Sadly though, the rift was becoming an increasingly frequent topic of conversation.

‘Don’t worry, Amers,’ Felix said, ‘I’ll get him to talk to you.’

I shook my head. ‘He doesn’t want to. I keep trying to look for an opportunity, but he’ll barely even make eye contact with me anymore.’ It had been a week since the raid, yet it was only today that I’d really considered forgiving him. Maybe he had every right to be angry with me.

‘’S not the case,’ Wolfie insisted kindly. He was sitting on the sofa next to me and put an arm round my shoulder in a friendly manner.

‘Trust me,’ Felix said with a smirk, ‘he ain’t over you just yet.’

‘You should hear him,’ Wolfie said. ‘He won’t stop moaning.’

I knew they were only trying to make me feel better. Casper had seen me looking. If he felt anything for me, he would try and talk to me, or at least not completely turn his shoulder every time I walked in the room.

‘I wish,’ I mumbled. ‘But it’s too late now. He gave me chances to apologise—up until about two days ago, he kept looking at me with hope and almost desperation, but since then it’s gone downhill. Maybe he just realised that I wasn’t worth the trouble, or realised that I was in the wrong; not him. But it seems that, ever since I figured I had to forgive him, he’s completely blanked me. He won’t even look at me anymore.’

Felix shook his head and let out a long sigh. ‘That Casper...he’s a tough one.’

‘It won’t continue forever though,’ Kira said kindly. Sitting there, though, curled up so close to Felix, made it hard for me to even look at her. They were the embodiment of love, but all the love had disappeared from my world. It hurt for me to see them so happy together, as selfish as it may have sounded.

‘I’ll talk to him,’ Felix decided.

‘I’ll come with you,’ Wolfie added.

‘No!’ I cried out. ‘You can’t!’

Imogen sighed, meeting my eyes. ‘Amy, this can’t go on. We’re not going to drop you in it or blame anything on you. But if he has a problem, he’s got to sort it out. And same for you. I barely even know what you were arguing about, but it would sure help if you told us.’

‘It’s the ‘monster’ theory,’ said Felix. I may have just been paranoid, but I thought I could detect bitterness in his tone.

‘Who told you that?’ I snapped, looking up sharply.

He laughed carelessly. ‘Casper. We share a room, remember.’

‘He was talking about me?’ A little over a week ago, I would have found that sweet. Now I just found it unpleasant.

‘We were having this sort of conversation,’ Felix said. ‘And he explained your feelings about...all of this...to me. With great resentment, I may add.’

So nothing had changed. This just made me angry, as though Casper had breached my personal rights.

‘What’s the ‘monster’ theory?’ asked Kira.

‘It’s the idea that killing so carelessly makes you a monster,’ said Felix. I wasn’t happy with this conversation. He carefully avoided my eye.

‘It kinda does,’ Kira said, shocking me.

‘Thank you!’ I gasped, grabbing at any line in a desperate ocean.
‘Well, it depends,’ Wolfie reasoned. ‘They’re Marauders; they don’t really count as people. They gave up that right when they joined a group whose aim is to kill us.’

I didn’t want to argue, but I also disagreed with every word he was saying. Sadly, though, it seemed everyone was the same in this place. Casper had been the first to address my issue, and look where he had ended up. And Markus had voiced the same opinion. And now Wolfie. They were all the same.

Perhaps that was why I had been willing, at Imogen’s and later Linzy’s requests, to forgive him. After all, it was a bit hypocritical to be mad at only him and none of the others, and the only other option was to be alone and friendless for the rest of my life. That was not going to happen. I needed friends around me to function.

But it was just the way he’d said there was no choice that made me truly angry. As though we were all monsters, regardless of the rest of our lives. We weren’t all monsters.

I remembered back to when I was much newer into the Dreamers; a time when Linzy had brought up the subject of whether there was such thing as pure evil, or whether everyone had the possibilities of good and evil within them, and it all came down to the paths we chose.

Back then, the idea that we all had the power to be good or evil sounded almost appetising. But then, Casper’s idea was that we were all monsters. The whole world, and everyone who lived in it, was a monster.

Well, I alone would stop the whole world from turning into a monster if that was what it took. Not everyone was going to succumb to it. We didn’t all have to be infected by a hunger for blood and death. We didn’t all have to become emotionless killing machines. I, for one, was not going to let the disease take me easily.

‘Listen,’ Imogen said, ‘I’m going to talk to him. There’s no other way around this.’

I pleaded with my eyes. ‘Please don’t,’ I begged. ‘You can’t.’

She leant in closer. ‘Why not? If it reignites your friendship with Casper, it can’t be bad.’

‘But it might make it worse,’ I insisted. ‘It might come across as if I’ve done something different to how it happened, or he may be angry that we’ve been talking about him.’

‘There’s no harm in trying,’ she insisted futilely. ‘Come on, Amy. If you’re not doing it for yourself, do it for us. None of us want to be a part of this divide.’

‘Please,’ I said feebly.

Wolfie wrapped his arm round me again. ‘Look, you have a choice, Ames. Either Imogen talks to him, or Felix, Jay and I talk to him, or you talk to him yourself.’

What did I say? There was no way out of this one.

***

Three days passed from the day in the common room. I wanted to have the courage to talk to Casper, but I didn’t dare. Now, things had progressed to him refusing to be in the same room as me. Before, if I had walked in, he would have moved away to talk to someone else. Now, he would just walk straight out. He had given up trying to be subtle or trying to go about it with dignity; now he just marched out without a word to anyone and without even a flicker in my direction.

I had spent more time with Matt in the last few days. Maybe Casper was feeling threatened or envious. He knew he had fucked up big time, but was far too proud or angry to come and apologise to me.

Matt was one of my closest friends. I sat with him most meal times. I was often with him in the common room. We sometimes watched movies or went to the library or into the Big Room together. I told him everything worth telling anyone; things about Casper included.

After those excruciating three days, Matt approached me, with Imogen as usual.

‘This has got to stop,’ he insisted. ‘You aren’t getting better; you’re getting worse.’

‘What can I do?’ I asked.

Matt sat down on the sofa next to me, and Imogen took the nearest armchair. The Marauder raid had been postponed again; Markus said that twelve days after their raid here was still too soon to attack them. So although Matt and Imogen should have been busy tonight, they were suddenly faced with unexpected levels of free time. Nightshade’s ‘secret mission,’ which I still knew no more about, had been postponed along with the raid. I wasn’t complaining. I could wait forever before that came around. Casper was going to be there.

‘Please,’ was all Matt said. ‘We’ll talk to him—‘

‘No!’ I said sharply, as always.

‘I don’t know why you’re so opposed to—‘ Imogen began.

‘No,’ I repeated, but softer this time. For the first time in weeks, I felt tears pricking my eyes, and Matt wrapped his arm round my shoulder as Wolfie had done. I lay my head on him, resting for a moment, feeling a little of the pain drift away. ‘You can go,’ I continued, directing my speech at Imogen. ‘But not Matt. Trust me: he won’t want to hear anything from you, Matt.’

They both exchanged perplexed glances but didn’t argue. This was progress on their part, at least. It was more than they would have expected when they came and sat down with me.

I glanced up, still with Matt’s arm around me, as a shadow fell across the door.

Casper.

We made eye contact for the first time in around a week. He was the first to break it; averting his gaze after less than a second.

But that was enough time for me to see the hatred and betrayal in his expression.

And it was also enough time for him to see me snuggled close to Matt with our arms around each other.