For it is written in the Chronicles of the Kiridians:

Hard decisions will always be an inevitable part of life

The time comes when you pick between right and wrong

And true character comes from knowing which is which

Only you can decide what that is

"Kara, I can't believe you and Raina have been sick all night," says mom with a frown. "Can I get you guys anything? Do you need me to stay home from work today?"

"No!" says Raina as she lets out a fake cough to sell the situation. "That won't be needed, Ms. Phoebe. We just need some rest," 

We certainly do need rest after the events of last night. I've been trying to wrap my head around what it must feel like for Raina to know she spent sixteen years in a cave. That's a long time to be dormant. I don't know if I'd be handling that news nearly as well as she is currently. 

My mom frowns in the doorway as she leans against the wall. She purses her lips together, and I know that she's wanting to stay home with us. She never liked me to stay alone when I was sick as a kid. I know this is killing her that she can't stay with us, but we have to go get Brodie, and we have to go get him today.

"Kara, sweetheart, do I need to leave you anything?"

"Mom, we'll be okay," I say not sounding nearly as sick as Raina. "We just need to rest as Raina said." 

Mom nods and slowly backs out of the room. She looks at me and Raina one last time before closing the door and then lightly smiles at us. "Remember I'm only a phone call away," She disappears behind the door and Raina springs up from the bed and runs to the closet. 

"Kara, we only have a limited amount of time. We need to get the bikes, get Joey to stop freaking out and skip with us, and then take the bus to San Antonio," says Raina.

"We also need money for the bus ticket," I remind her gently. 

"Kara, I told you I had that taken care of," says Raina. She goes into the closet and pulls out the dress that we found her in. She begins to pluck multiple gems off of her dress and drops them into her hand as she turns to me and smiles. "We'll need to make a quick pit stop at a pawn shop on our way out. I'm thinking I can get at least a couple thousand dollars from these," 

I nod at her impressed as I walk over to my closet and pull out a pair of jeans and a plaid button-down. As I slip into the clothes I just pulled out, Raina puts the gems on top of the dresser and activates her LOTUS. She types in a few things and light start to flash onto the gems from it. The gems begin to mold together, and my jaw drops as in seconds the once separated rocks are now a beautiful broach. Raina turns to me and smiles. 

"Well I can't very well walk in there with a load of separated gemstones, Kara," she says. "That would be extremely sketchy," 

Raina gets clothes on and attaches the broach to her t-shirt as she walks over to the mirror to check herself out. "Kara, can I ask you a question?" she says to me. 

"Sure," I respond to her.

"Are you sure there's nothing going on between you and Joseph?" she says. She turns around to see my face upon asking me that question and I laugh. 

"No, there's nothing going on between Joey and me," I say. "What makes you ask that?" 

"Oh no reason," says Raina with a smile as she walks over to her phone and smiles. "By the way, he said that he will meet us at the pawnshop. His mother took a little bit more convincing than Ms. Phoebe apparently. 

About five minutes later, Raina and I are opening the garage door and pulling my mom's and I's bikes out. Raina looks at me scared as she mounts my mom's bike. She turns to me and clears her throat. "So, uh, Kara," she says "Is now a good time to mention we don't have these things on Kiridia?" 

I laugh out loud as I kick off and begin to circle around her on my bike. "You mean you can't ride a bike?" I ask her in a teasing voice. 

"Kara, this is not a laughing matter," says Raina getting huffy. She rolls her eyes and then gets off the bike and begins to walk with it side by side. "I suppose I'll just have to walk," 

"Wait," I say laughing as I brake and get off the bike. I put the kickstand down, and walk over to Raina smiling. I grab onto her bike and point at the seat. "You need to get on," I say. she looks at me concerned and is about to open her mouth when I shake my head. "Raina, you can't slow us down today. This is for your brother," 

She nods her head and gets on the bike. "Now what?" she says 

I hold onto the seat and nod at her. "Now we move forward," I say. "Start pedaling," Raina reluctantly picks her foot that she was using to balance off the ground and starts to pedal. She starts wobbly, but she takes a deep breath and continues to go on her bike. I walk with her, but as she gets faster I let go of the bike and allow her to go on her own. 

"Kara!" she says. "Kara! I'm doing it!" 

I smile as Raina pedals for a few more feet before falling to the side onto the driveway. My eyes widen as I run over to her and make sure she is okay. She sits on the pavement laughing as she pulls the bike up and hops on again. "Okay, that's as good as we are getting today. Let's just hope I don't fall into traffic or something," 

We arrive at the pawnshop later than expected. Joey sits on the curb and gets up anxiously when he sees us. "This has been a morning you'd have wanted to see," I say braking in front of him. "We had to teach Raina how to ride a bike-" 

"I'm going to go in and get the money," says Raina cutting me off. "Somethings stay between ladies, Kara," she says with emphasis on my name. She disappears into the shop and Joey turns to me with a frantic expression.

"What the heck happened last night!?" he quickly wraps me in a hug and then pulls away. I notice Raina watching us from inside of the shop and then cuts her attention back to the shop owner. 

"Two men came and were trying to get Raina. We couldn't let that happen," I tell him plainly. "It was no big deal. They didn't hurt me, but it really made the need to speed this up apparent."

He sits there and nods his head and then turns to look at Raina through the window. "We really got ourselves into a mess, didn't we?" 

"That's the thing," I tell Joey solemnly. "I don't think we got ourselves anywhere. I think we are directly tied into this. This is something I was meant to be apart of Joey. And for whatever reason, you've been along for the ride the whole time as well. This isn't just about Raina and her siblings," 

We are interrupted by Raina coming out and stuffing money into her front pocket. She smiles brightly at Joey and looks at me with a fire in her eyes. "I got 7,000 dollars for the broach," says Raina. Her pocket looks bulky and large, and I chuckle to myself as I take my backpack off and extend my hand. 

"Probably smart to not let that kind of money just be sitting in your pocket," I say with a chuckle. Raina nods hands me the money as I open up my wallet and place it back in the bag. "Well, are we ready to go?" I ask them.

We pedal mostly in silence as we go to the bus station. I ride slightly ahead of Joey and Raina as we do our best to avoid the roads we know that our parents would go down. When we arrive at the bus station, we all get off our bikes and walk them over to the ticket station. 

The lady at the ticket booth couldn't be much older than a graduated high school student. She sits at the desk looking unamused at us as we walk as confidentially as we can over to her. She blows a bubble with some gum that she's chewing as Raina speaks up.

"We need three tickets to San Antonio," says Raina. 

The girl doesn't say anything, instead, she begins to type on the computer in front of her and then looks back at us. "Aren't you supposed to be in school?" asks the girl with an uninterested tone. 

"I think that's our business-" Raina begins to say defiantly before I cut her off.

"Our friend is in trouble," I say honestly. "It's a lot of trouble, and we really need to go to help him. I don't know if there is a protocol for minors trying to get on a bus, but I would really appreciate it if you could just pretend you didn't see us and look the other way," 

The girl's face changes and she nods sympathetically. She begins to type into the computer and then looks back at me. "It's going to be one hundred and fifty dollars for the bus tickets, and an extra twenty dollars for each bike that the bus has to carry with it." 

I nod and open up my backpack to get the money. I take it out and hand it to the girl and she prints the tickets out. "I hope your friend is okay. Good luck," 

"Thank you," I say.

"Go to the third bus in line. You leave in ten minutes. They normally don't let you swing in with this short of a time left, but if you have an issue just come grab me,"

We walk through the terminal and allow the bus driver to hook our bikes to the back of the bus. He's a short man with an irritable look on his face and doesn't bother with formalities as he roughly brushes past us to get back to the bus. We go to the bus and sit down in one of the seats that have four in one cluster. 

"Why doesn't our school bus look like this?" asks Raina as she looks around and sits in the comfy blue chair. "I wouldn't mind going on that thing if I had my own seat and didn't have to share the long ugly seat," 

I look out the window and watch as the tiny bus station has people walking around trying to find their bus. Raina and Joey have small talk about classes as I drift off and think about the dream I had the night before. 

Lena, are you trying to tell me something?

The bus begins to leave the terminal and Raina looks excited as we go to find her brother. "Once in close proximity to the pod, we should be able to locate Brodie," says Raina with a smile. "If we can find him, we can probably use his pod to find Anya and Edwin as well!" 

"So tell us about Brodie," says Joey as he adjusts his body in his seat. "Is he nice? Funny? Is he going to try and beat me up and call me a nerd?" 

Raina laughs loudly and shakes her head. "No, Brodie is one of my best friends. We always were thick as thieves around the palace. We were always getting into trouble as we did things that Nana explicitly told us not to do," says Raina with a laugh. 

"Was your childhood good?" I ask her.

"Oh yes," says Raina, "My mother was always making sure we were well taken care of. She'd make us go to classes and then she would arrange us to have some sort of extracurricular where we could mingle with other kids of the court. She loved watching us interact with the other kids," Raina has tears start to well up in her eyes as she smiles, but her facial expression looks sad. "When she died, it was rough. She died only a couple of months before we left for Earth. Father was so different when he was around her, and when she died it was almost like a piece of him did as well," 

The memory of King Delmund standing above me with a knife in the dream flashes into my head causing me to shudder. I clear my throat, and Raina looks over at me curiously. "What is it, Kara?" 

"Nothing," I lie to her as I quickly turn to look at the window.

"Kara, something is wrong," says Joey. "If you can't talk to us about it, who can you talk to about it?" 

I sigh. Joey is right. We've been through too much together for me to hold secrets from them. I just don't know what to say or how to tell Raina about the dream. I just have this awful memory that it's not a dream. That it was a vision of some sort.

"I had a dream the other night," I say not looking at Raina or Joey. "The night that the two guards broke into the house I woke up because I had a dream that your father was chasing me through some castle. Some older woman tried to take me to this secret hole in the wall passage when your father found me and was holding some sort of dagger above my head and plunged it down," 

Raina's face goes white as she listens to the dream. She starts to play with her hair as she twirls the end around her finger and then looks back at me. "Kara, that's a weird dream to have." 

"I know, but it shook me up, and then the guards showed up and I just didn't know how to tell you everything that I found out from the guards and also the dream. I keep assuming that if it's anything to do with Kiridia that Lena is trying to talk to me. I just wish she would communicate with me again," 

Raina looks out the window and leans her head back against the headrest. "I think I'm going to take a nap," says Raina. 

She closes her eyes, and I turn to look at Joey who looks at me and gives me a sympathetic smile. "It'll make sense soon, Kara," he whispers to me. 

We sit there in silence and before long Raina is lightly snoring in her seat. Joey turns to me and motions for us to go scoot back a seat. Grabbing the backpack, we go and sit one row behind where we were where we could talk without disturbing Raina.

"I need to tell you something," says Joey kind of awkwardly. "I know this is kind of out of the blue, but I think I'm starting to like Raina," 

I raise my eyebrows at his statement. Joey has always been the kind of person that talked about dating and relationships with such distaste. This is a side of him I never thought I would see, let alone with a girl like Raina. 

"Do you think she likes you back?" I ask him.

"She's been talking to me a lot," he says. "We text literally all the time. More so than you and I even. She's easy to talk to, and I enjoy her company," says Joey.

"Leave it to you to fall like a girl from a different planet," I say with a chuckle. 

Joey laughs and I sit back and put my legs up on the seat. "What do you think our end game in all of this is, Kara?" asks Joey. "I keep trying to see how things will end up but I can't place it in my head. This is not something that life normally prepares you for. I mean, how do you prepare for something like this?" 

That's a good question. To be frank I don't think there's a way you can prepare for something like this. At the end of the day, you just roll with it and hope that everything will work out. If I'm one hundred percent honest I haven't thought a lot about what happens after we save the day. I've just been thinking about saving the day in general. 

"You don't," I say. "That's the beauty of it," 

I get up and walk back to the seats we were originally sitting in and put the backpack on my back and lean against the seat. I lean against the window and close my eyes allowing myself to drift off to sleep.

"Hey, kids," says the cranky bus driver. "You're either getting off the bus or you're paying for another ticket to go back to Sanora. Either way, you need to get off the bus," 

Raina shoots up with a brilliant smile on her face and jumps up and down in the bus. "Come on guys! It's time to go get Brodie!" She runs off the bus and Joey and I look at each other with a strange expression. 

"You ready for everything to change?" I ask him

"Let's go save another planet," he says.