The third week of this literary insanity is over. I stare into the fourth week. The final stretch. I try not to think about the fact that I should be finishing an entire novel in seven days. A novel I began 23 days ago.
Before I share a portion of my project with you, I’d just like to point out to those nonwriters out there exactly how hard it is to write a novel in a month.
How hard is it? Very. Even for someone that has been training and has been writing for years. It is one of the most challenging things I’ve done. My brain officially hates me and I am sucking my creative juices dry.
It is also one of the most rewarding. So, as always, please forgive my roughness and errors with what I post here. And enjoy 
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I thought passing through a foreign portal to our world would be awkward. Clearly, I hadn’t anticipated being on campus of a boarding school. I hadn’t anticipated meeting…friends. Is that what these roommates are? Lucan’s friends? They don’t look friendly to me. Not with their deep scowls, random laughter after everything I say, and that intent look they get when I’m not speaking.
The noise isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I can still hear creatures outside, a bird in its nest just outside their window, and the Residential Advisor flicking through the TV channels in the lobby. However it’s all somehow subdued.
“Lucan tells me you guys used to run track together. Do you enjoy that sort of thing?”
The boy that asks, Ivan Wence, is probably the most complicated for me to decipher. Through all the clamor of Lucan’s thoughts, it’s difficult for me to hear his. And because I haven’t mastered the skill yet, it’s near impossible to drown out Lucan’s to hear his. Normally I would think it an invasion of privacy to look for someone’s thoughts, but I need to know his. There seems to be a double meaning, a hidden question behind all of his words.
“I do,” I simply state. Even this answer throws Ivan and the other roommate, Martial, into a laughing frenzy. I glance at Lucan from the corner of my eye.
“Don’t ask me,” I hear him think, but he smiles anyway.
Smiling to be polite, I tell myself.
“So who is faster, you or Lucan?” Martial Ladislas tortures me with his purposeful gaze. The hollow above his eyes is dark with shadows and I hear my heart quicken as he stares at me.
“Lucan,” I lie. I know I lie, and I don’t care. A part of me feels it necessary, and without thought, I follow.
“No way,” Luc denies. I try poking him but he doesn’t cooperate. “She’s much faster.”
“That so?” Martial says, watching me even harder. After sixteen heartbeats, he releases me from his stare and appears casual, almost bored. He flicks a crumb off his shirt. “I used to love running, too,” he says. “Care for a race?”
I hear so little over Lucan’s thoughts, encouraging me to take him. To beat him, but not enough that it makes him suspicious. “Just by half a second,” he tells me.
“I’d rather not,” I say, pushing him away with ice in my voice. “It’s been a long day. Maybe Luc will.”
The shadows around Martial’s eyes return and he wills me with his black focus. “Alright, you give me a race, and I’ll give you something you want.”
“You don’t have anything I’d want.”
“You sure about that?” he asks, leaning in. He rests his elbows on his knees and the distance between us is too close; so close that it hurts my lungs. They ache for more room. He looks to Lucan out the side of his eyes and back to me. “You give me a race, and I’ll tell you what girl’s name Luc was calling out in his sleep last night.”
My ribs squeeze together and I hear Lucan pierce his thoughts to me. “He’s messing with you, Abby. If I said anyone’s name is was yours.”
“I don’t care whose name he said. I’m the one here, aren’t I?” I smile at Lucan and squeeze his leg quickly. I see him wince briefly and remember my strength is beyond my control right now. It’s pleasing to consider how easy it would be to make Martial a part of the wall behind his head. Just a little shove and he’d be a wall decoration.
“You’re right. You’re here,” Martial says, leaning back into his seat. “For now, that is.”
Ivan and Martial exchange more laughs and I feel fire-hot blood beneath my skin.
“They’re winding you up,” Lucan assures me.
I breathe through my nose and stand. I don’t care if I break and sweat and glide past him at 90 miles per hour. Whatever shuts him up.
“Let’s go,” I say. I’m outside by the time Lucan gets to his feet.
Stretching is something I’ve become equipped to do for show. It doesn’t even feel good anymore. I concentrate on the moan of the crickets, the rustle in the trees, and the feel of the dark covering us. A long, empty road is spackled with overgrown maple trees and make the night even murkier. I see the end of the road without straining my eyes. Not a car for six and a quarter miles. The rest of the student body are in their dorm rooms, reading, secretly smoking in their bathrooms with the shower on, and undressing each other with a sock on the door.
“You are fast,” Martial observes indifferently. He loosens his neck by swinging his head side to side. Little good it’ll do him. This isn’t a neck race. “Freakishly so,” he adds.
A sneer curls around my face and I focus on one thing. Beating him. Shutting him up. I figure it’ll do him good in the future. “You ready or do you need your buddy Ivan to give you a pep talk?”
His left foot falls behind him, finding purchase on the pavement. The shadows under his eyes seem darker in the strange lighting. “I think I can handle this.”
“Where do we stop?”
“There’s a store a quarter mile down there on the right. Whoever reaches the parking lot first.”
“Got it.” I stare ahead and stand loosely, waiting for their count.
“Three,” Ivan begins, “two…”
That’s all it takes. Martial releases from his place before Ivan can say Go. I give him a generous two seconds. Something to feel good about himself. I start with a slow jog, catching up to him in an almost patronizing way.
“Come on, Oregon. You can do better than that.”
“You sure?” I ask easily. “You’re really giving me a run for my money.”
“No pun intended?”
Thirteen miles an hour, I notice. I step it up to twenty, pressing him harder to a breaking point. I want to hear his breathing, count his heartbeats, measure his strain. But I can’t hear much besides the wind ripping past my ears. It’s strangely unsettling.
“You hustling me, Oregon?”
“Stop calling me that,” I say, feeling it necessary to keep him at a cold distance.
“Uh oh, there’s the store,” he teases. “I think you got me.”
The small convenience store is only thirty…twenty-eight…twenty-five meters away.
As I begin to slow my pace, knowing at even an easy jog I will annihilate him, there is a strange force behind me. A massive explosion of pressure, unseen to the eye but with enough force and friction that the static it creates pains my ears.
I look behind me and see nothing. I begin to slow, worrying something has happened to Martial. Something terrible that I’ll never be able to explain.
I look to the trees and further down the road. Even with the near perfect night vision, I see nothing but a squirrel stuffing food in his mouth.
“Martial!” I yell. Saying his name aloud and with such fear feels treasonous. “Martial?” I call again, growing more worried.
A chuckle roars in the short distance behind me and I turn slowly to greet it. “What’s the matter, Oregon? Couldn’t keep up?” He stands in the parking lot of the grocery store and picks his teeth. I hear a hunk of meat fly off his gums and smack the ground.
My teeth seal together, my jaw muscles rippling and tight, unable and unwilling to reply. Words are the enemy.
Martial crosses his ankles and leans against the single light pole in the dingy parking lot. “Look, you don’t have to feel bad,” he condescends. “I am quick, like I told you.” I take a few paces toward him but feel unsure if I’ll be able to control this bizarre new strength. “It was cute seeing you yell my name though. ‘Martial! Oh, Martial!’ So sweet…So deceptive.”
“Deceptive?” I ask, taking another rigid step to him. I stare at him with a mixture of curiosity and dislike.
“You’re not sweet at all, are you?” He stands and begins striding toward me as well, with smaller but surer steps. “And let’s be honest,” he smirks, “you let me win. Didn’t you?”
“If I could’ve beaten you I would’ve,” I say. Another lie. Another necessary lie.
He tilts his chin to the left, then to the right. “What do you say?” He steps even closer. “One more race back to campus?”
A deep thunder strikes in the distance, shaking me to the moment. To my senses. They come to life as if dormant for centuries. I hear the cricket beside Martial’s foot right before he crunches it to death with a lightning-fast pivot of his toes.
“I’ll race you back to campus,” I say. But there’s no way I’m sleeping in the same room as you. I ball my fists to my side as he cocks his eyebrow with a challenge.
I start off my run at twenty this time, knowing there is no way this punk eighteen-year-old jerk can pass me. But another thump of pressure beats against my back, this time throwing me to the pavement.
I know something is terribly wrong when I look up and realize I’m back in Oregon.
