Chapter 2

~Ivory~

As soon as we had a free moment in class, Megan, Jackson, Ally, and I compared schedules. I had every class with Jackson, which I sent a silent thank you to the scheduling gods for, and all but one class with Megan. Ally only had first and last hour with us, much to Jackson's dismay.

We were all discussing our summers, mostly Jackson telling us about Australia, when a deep voice sounded from the desk behind me. Slowly, I swiveled around to look at the New Kid. Sure, I knew his name was Alec, but until a new group came in, I always referred to the transfers as New Kid. A sweet smile danced on his lips that I immediately decided I couldn't trust. “Megan, you wanna . . ?” He let his question trail off and raised his own schedule high in the air.

The group of friends I had weren't considered losers in any way, shape, or form, but we were far from popular. Jackson played baseball and was in the school book club along with Megan and I, but other than that, we really didn't talk to many people outside of our group. Normally when there were new kids, one of the more interactive students latched onto them. It was easy to see from the look on Megan's face that New Kid surprised her with the invitation to compare schedules.

“You have the exact same schedule as I do, so I'll lead you to your classes if you want,” Megan offered with a somewhat awkward smile. New Kid looked over to me, his smile never faltering, and I spun back around in my seat. From the corner of my eye, I saw Jackson snicker and send a silent apology over to him.

The bell rang soon after, and I was the first one out the door. Megan lagged behind, waiting for New Kid, and Jackson was saying goodbye to Ally, which left me completely alone when Trevor came up behind me. When I felt his large, rough hand wrap gently around my small, smooth one, I shook it off right away.

“Ivory, please. You haven't been answering any of my calls or texts. What do you want me to do?” He took two big steps compared to my normal ones and ended up in front of me. My hands went up as I ran right into his hard chest.

I released a heavy sigh that seemed to take all of the fight out of both he and I. “I really just want you to leave me alone, Trevor.” The hurt I saw in his eyes looked like I'd done worse than slapped him. That's what caused my next words. “Not forever, just until everything fades.” I didn't mean for him to think of the bruise he had given me, but his eyes drifted down to my stomach that was covered by an old 'Give Blood' T-shirt.

“How bad is it?” Trevor whimpered and closed his eyes. Though he was the one that put it there, he never saw the damage he'd actually done while trying to protect me.

With grumbled protests directed towards myself, I took hold of his arm and pulled him into the girls bathroom. Only one other girl was in there, and she was too busy checking her makeup to be bothered by anything we were doing.

Quite forcefully, I yanked the shirt up just high enough for him to see the bottom part of the bruise. It looked pretty disgusting. It was mostly dark blue, but there was yellow patches all throughout it. Trevor visibly winced at the sight of it.

“I never meant to�"”

“I don't care, Trevor,” I bellowed as the girl that had occupied the mirror quickly skirted around us. Trevor locked the bathroom door behind her. “You hurt me, and that was a dick move. Please leave me alone.” Pushing past him, I undid the work he had done on the door and stormed out.

Fortunately, I was able to make it to my next class on time. I only had Trevor in one other class, which was after lunch, unlike last year when our schedules coincided perfectly. Unfortunately for me, the only seat left in the classroom was the one in front of Jackson and behind New Kid. Without much of a choice, I trudged past him to the seat, shooting a quick smile at Jackson as I lowered myself.

New Kid didn't seem to talk to many people, but oh did they try. Almost every eye was glued to him when he stood and walked to the front of the class for his textbook, both of the male and female gender. Already the students were asking him if he played any sports, to which he always shook his head. Never saying a word unless it was to Megan.

While most of the students were watching him because of the graceful way he moved or because of the extremely good looks that God had seemed to bless him with, but I watched him for an entirely different reason. When he spoke to Megan, or even glanced in her direction, he was made of happiness, but that changed the moment he got away from her. His lips seemed to thin into a line and a great darkness invaded his eyes. A void sunk into his emotions, and I found that fact completely unnerving.

The rest of the day went just as every other first day did. I went to all of my classes, only a few of them handing out textbooks, and then went home with no problems. Trevor didn't bother me in the afternoon class, and, other than having to be around New Kid, nothing else was off about the day.

Everything seemed to be completely normal.

 

~Alec~

 

Nothing seemed to be normal.

I knew that it was going to be a difficult, and very different, task to get Maegillious, or Megan, back to the old her. I wasn't expecting it to be like it was, though. She didn't seem to be anything like the old her. The old her was strong and bold, while Megan just seemed to fade into the background. Megan didn't seem to be the leader that Maegillious had been.

Even so, I knew that she was the right one.

With everything that was different, there was too much that lined up. The facial structure, the name, the attitude. Yes, Maegillious was down in her somewhere, it was just going to be a challenge getting her to come out.

Penelope met me out at the car once the school bell rang, telling us that we were free to go. As soon as we landed in the car, she peppered me with questions. “Is it her? Did she recognize you? Do you think you can get her back? When are you going to tell her? Do you think she'll believe you? What if she doesn't remember?” Penelope sucked in a deep breath. “What if she does remember?”

Thanks to my expansive memory, I was able to answer each of her questions. “Yes, Maegillious is here. No, she didn't seem to recognize me. Yes, I know I can get her back. I won't stop until I do. I don't know when I'm going to tell her, but for now I have time. The Tenebrarum aren't even near here yet. No, since when do humans believe in things like us? I don't know what I'll do if she doesn't remember, and I also have no idea what I'll do if she does. She should have some recollection of what she was before, but they would appear to her as old dreams or something she'd read in a book.”

“I know we have time before the Tenebrarum arrive, but,” she paused and looked at me sadly, “how much time do you have?”

I gripped the steering wheel until the skin on my hands was completely white. “I have enough, okay?” I snapped at her. She backed off quickly, her hand instantly reaching up for the silver ring she wore on a necklace around her neck. Straightaway, I regretted the tone I'd used with her, but I didn't inform her of that fact.

Each time she touched the ring around her neck, my eyes darted to the silver one around my own finger. For too long, I'd been waiting to find my correlative so this mess would be over. Penelope had waited as well, but Tenebrarum reached them before she could. That was when she was assigned to me.

A horn sounded from behind, and I shook my head to get rid of my stupor. In my haze, I'd cut off a person to pull onto the main road. I looked through the window to see who it was and my eyes matched up with Ivory's. I waved, hoping she would take it as an apology. Instead, her middle finger lifted into the air as she sped away in the other direction.

When I pulled into our small driveway, I saw Rory sitting on the porch with a book opened in his lap. As Penelope walked by, he offered her a nice hello, but he stopped me when I came through. “Is she there?” From that moment on, I answered almost every question that Penelope had just asked me, only Rory's questions were asked in a more... sophisticated manner.

Rory wasn't too bad of a guy to be stuck with as a monitor. We all had to have one when we were looking for our correlative, and they become a sort of parental figure. Alexis, the monitor that was with Penelope's correlative, had stuck around to help Penelope through the hard time, but she never left. Not that it was a bad thing. Alexis and Rory both were nice to have to run ideas by.

“Well, what are you going to do?”

I screwed my lips up to one side as I thought about it. “I'm not exactly sure yet. I'm going to take it slow.” Rory looked up from his book, his pale blue eyes peering up at me under thick lashes. The front part of his brown hair was sticking straight up from the constant blow of the wind. “Don't give me that look,” I muttered and opened the front door. “I have time. At least another year.”

Rory didn't seem to believe me, at least the scoff he gave made it sound that way, but he didn't say anything else. He went back to reading the novel that was still open on his legs and I rushed inside. Only bad thing about Rory and Alexis and every single other monitor�"they always treated us like children.

We were anything but.

Later that night, long after the sun had gone down and I had indulged myself with a sandwich that had triple the meat and half of the lettuce, I became restless. No teacher in their right mind assigned homework on the first day, which left me nothing to do. Television just wasn't cutting it.

At nine o' clock, I headed out the door, telling Penelope that I was going out for a walk. I didn't know much about the town we had moved to, and what better time to explore it than nighttime? Stepping onto the sidewalk, I looked both directions and then headed to the right.

My hands were jammed into the pockets of my jeans and my head was down. The sidewalk had countless cracks and dents in it. I paid no attention to the street signs or any of the houses I was passing by.

Everything was completely quiet, save the sounds of nature. In the distance I could hear the sound of fighting cats and somewhere closer was the sound of a barking dog. Bugs continued to whiz past my ears and tiny gnats kept flying into my eyes.

I let my brain wonder. I thought about Megan. In her human form, she was completely different. If the old her, Maegillious, knew how Megan was, she would have a fit. It didn't really matter to me how she acted. Being around her, being able to feel, that was the best thing, and that never changed. I had no clue what I was going to do when it came time to tell her, but she had to believe me.

I needed her to believe me.

A bird squawked somewhere nearby and it caused my head to snap up. My kind always had to be ready to fight off an attack from the Tenebrarum. The big, ugly, black bird flew from the branches of a tree off into the night. My eyes followed it all the way to its landing place near a large lake. I hadn't even noticed that I wasn't walking on sidewalk anymore, but instead on a dirt road I must've accidentally turned down.

Changing my direction, I started heading towards the lake. A large deck went off into the middle of it, my guess was for fishing. The dock made me wonder if it was a private lake, but then I saw a sign that blatantly said The Town of Edging's Public Lake. “Well, that answers that question,” I whispered to myself.

There was a gate that blocked my way to the dock with a sign that told me the gate closed as soon as the sun went down. The gate wasn't a problem. Within moments of me thinking it, I was on the other side of the gate and walking down the dock. My heavy shoes didn't make noise on the wooden flooring.

When I reached the middle section of the dock, I lowered myself on the edge, letting my feet hang down. The heat caused a sort of fog to rest over the water and the moon was high in the sky, though mostly obscured by dark clouds. The entire atmosphere seemed eerie.

The sounds of nature were even more extraordinary, and I felt my entire body melt into relaxation. I sat there for quite a long time, just going over possible situations and reactions that could occur when I finally told Megan.

After a while, I leaned back until my spine was pressed against the wood. I stared up at the few stars that were able to peak through the ominous clouds and once again let my mind go free. Much to my surprise, my mind decided that I needed to think about Megan's friend, Ivory.

Something about her intrigued me. It might've been the way she seemed to dislike me the moment she saw me, or it might've been the way she openly ignored me throughout the day. It could've been the way she flipped me off after school. It might be due to the fact that her hair is almost too long to put up in a bun or the fact that she didn't waste her time with putting on make up.

I had no clue what it was, but it was there. Even if it was only there when I was around Penelope or Megan, it existed.

For some unknown reason, I felt the tips of my lips twitch, like they were going to form a smile. When nothing happened, I shook off that idea. It was impossible anyway. Without a correlative around, I had no emotions. It was either a fluke, or a muscle spasm. That realization would've saddened me if it was able to.

Shortly after my almost-revelation, I thought it time to go. I had no clue what time it was, seeing that I intentionally left my phone behind so I wouldn't be bothered. When I reached the gate, I gave one last look at the lake that should invoke some reaction inside of me before transferring to the other side and heading back.

In light of the fact that I paid little to no attention as to what directions I had walked and how long I'd aimlessly wandered around, I had almost no clue how to get back to the house. I figured the best thing to do in that situation was to pick a road and follow it until I recognized something. This theory only worked if every road led home.

One thing I was sure of was the fact that I had walked along a dirt road. There were two dirt roads that branched from the lake, so I picked one and started to walk. I didn't prefer the deafening silence that encroached as I walked, and for that reason I made my footstep heard. The sound of rocks moving and crunching beneath my dark blue Converse was like music to my ears.

As I continued my walk, I looked for signs of civilization. It felt like hours, but it was most likely minutes, but I finally saw headlights farther down the road. Though I was of the male gender, I was one hundred percent okay with asking for directions. My pace picked up speed.

In the process of closing in on the stopped vehicle, I started to get a better picture as to what it was. No more than one hundred feet from me was, what looked like, a 2001 Acura Integra. A very familiar 2001 Acura Integra.

The same 2001 Acura Integra that I cut off earlier that day.

I was no longer walking, but jogging. The front of the car was lifted up and two bodies were looking inside of it. I felt the familiar sensation of emotion creeping up from the back of my neck, making the fine hairs there raise. That told me who the other body belonged to.

The girls turned around when they heard me coming up behind them. Megan's face lit up like a fire, a smile spreading across her face that rivaled my own. Ivory, however, rolled her eyes and looked back to the intestines of the car. I couldn't stop my eyes from scoping the way her jeans fit to her body.

“What're you doing out here?” Megan asked me, the smile she wore a little more mischievous as she glanced between Ivory and I. “It's almost eleven. That's pretty late to be roaming around. Where were you going, anyway?”

After I explained my situation, and how I was going to ask for directions, she snickered a little, but it wasn't her who replied to my story.

“You're heading the wrong way,” Ivory sighed as she spun around to strike me with her intense gaze. “You're heading farther away from where you want to go. I suggest turning around and walking the other way.”

The smirk she wore seemed like a challenge. “Says the one with a broken car? I could probably fix that for you.” I took a step forward, a smirk of my own gracing my face.

“No, thanks.”

 

~Ivory~

 

“Okay,” New Kid shrugged, turned, and started walking back in the right direction. I focused my attention back on the insides of the car and tried to recall what both Jackson and my father taught me about it. I'd been trying to do that since ten thirty.

New Kid must've been walking quite fast, because I could no longer hear his footsteps. A sharp pain ran through my arm. My neck almost snapped in half when I looked to Megan, who had just pinched the fat in between my shoulder and elbow. She was not wearing a happy face.

“What?” I spat. “I don't like him. He seems . . . cocky.”

Megan barked out a laugh that held no humor. “He's a guy. They're all cocky.” Still, I shook my head. Megan reached toward the sensitive part of my arm yet again, and I jumped backwards. “If you don't want me to pinch you again, let him help.”

My nose instinctively snarled at the thought of accepting help from him, but the pain that Megan could inflict far outweighed my sense of pride. “New Kid, wait,” I called out before I turned around.

I thought he had been far away, but when I turned he was directly in front of me, bodies just inches away. I stared up at him, my mouth open. At first, I only thought that I probably looked ridiculous. Then, he confirmed it. One finger lifted and shut my mouth. “Careful, Bunny, wouldn't want any drool to escape from those lips.”

My teeth clenched together as I pushed his hand away. I tried to take a step back, but the car prevented me from retreating. “What's with the Bunny bit?” The same finger that closed my mouth reached up to tap my nose and I sidestepped him.

“Your nose is all snarled up. You remind me of a bunny.” He didn't look at me when he bent down to take a look at the car. New Kid motioned for me to get into the drivers seat and for Megan to stand by my window. “When I tell you to,” he said to Megan, “tell her to try and start the car.”

“You know I can hear you, right?”

His head popped around the side of the car and he smiled at me brightly. “I am aware, Bunny.”

“Don't call me that.” If he heard me, he didn't acknowledge it. A snicker came from my left, and I shot Megan a look that I'm sure could kill. Her snickers stopped but the smile stayed until she told me to start the engine.

It rolled twice, but finally it came back on. New Kid put the hood down softly and looked over at Megan, then at me through the windshield. “Well, that should do it. You just had a few screws loose.” He ended the sentence with a wink.

“Thank you, Alec!” Megan breathed like he saved her life. I closed my eyes and shook my head. Megan was way to friendly to people. “Do you want a ride back? You'll have to sit with all of our crap in the back, but there's room.”

The same time New Kid said, “I'd love that,” I bellowed a loud, and firm, “No.” My gaze never left his body as he swaggered over to the door that let him into the seat behind me. Megan rushed around the front of the car and quickly buckled her seat belt, as if I would kick her out. Which I wouldn't. That would leave me alone with New Kid.

“You can un-snarl your nose now, Bunny,” New Kid gloated from the back. Instead of replying with something that was sure to get a negative response from God, I turned on my Blessthefall CD and blasted it through the speakers.

On the drive back, I couldn't help but glance into the rear-view mirror every chance I got. Each time I did, New Kid was watching, like he was expecting it. Once he even gave me a sarcastic wave. On the occasion of arriving into the school district, I lowered my music and let him guide me to his house.

I recognized the house when we pulled into the driveway. It had been empty ever since I could remember, but it never had a for sale sign. It also never looked old or beaten down, so I assumed that somebody usually kept up with the needed maintenance, but nobody knew who.

The house was relatively small, but had a lot in it. Megan and I had snuck in one Halloween and discovered that it had two bathrooms, four bedrooms, a living room, dining room, and kitchen. It also had a fenced in back yard that Matilda would have loved to dig up.

“Thank you for offering the ride, Megan. And Bunny?” I met his eyes in the rear-view mirror. “It's been a pleasure.”

“Hmm, I'm sure,” I uttered, more to myself than him. The smile he gave me ensured that he had, in fact, heard it. Ready to get him out of the car, I unlocked the doors . . . again.

Just when I thought I was free of him, Megan opened her mouth. “Hey, Alec, what're you doing tomorrow night?” I knew exactly what she was about to do. My first reaction was to slap her, not-so-friendly, in the leg. Megan had a freakin' high pain threshold, so she easily ignored it and my whispered protests.

“Nah, I'm just going to be here. Maybe out walking around. Why?”

“Jackson's friend from the baseball team is having a back-to-school party. Do you want to come with us?” New Kid opened his mouth to either deny, which I prayed hard for, or accept her offer, but Megan wasn't done torturing me yet. “Ivory can pick you up. It'll be me, you, Jackson, and her in here.” She finally finished, her eyes hopeful. A stray piece of hair fell into her face and she quickly blew it back in place.

New Kid quirked his lips to the side, seeming to contemplate the possibility of it. “Yeah, that'll be great.”

“Great!” Megan cheered. “We'll be here around six to pick you up. Is that cool?”

New Kid nodded, sharing a long stare with me. “I look forward to it. See you tomorrow, Megan.” He closed the door but stopped beside my lowered window. Placing one hand on top of my already-beaten-and-bruised car, he tweaked my nose with the other and said, “Bunny.”

I smacked his hand away, yet again, and glared at him as he rushed up to his front door. The moment his door closed completely, I hit Megan again on the leg. “What the hell were you thinking? Why did you invite him to Eddie's party? It's going to be awkward enough with Trevor being there. I don't want to have to deal with New Kid, too.”

Megan sighed, clearly exasperated with me. “I invited Alec because he's new, and he needs to get to know more people from school. The fact that he annoys the heck out of you is just a bonus for me.” I opened my mouth to rant, but she held up her hand. “Think of it this way: the more people he meets, the less he has to hang out with us.”

That thought kept me quiet for the rest of the ride.

Author's Note

Completely unedited and will appreciate any feedback

Reviews

[JL Jacobs]

I really enjoyed the two chapters you have up so far. I just joined this site last night and was so busy posting my work on here that I am now able to sit back, breathe, and read works written by other members now. This is the first official thing I have read.... :D

[D.G]

Another good chapter, of course--I enjoyed the juxtaposition of different perspectives, especially. The pace is also noticeably well done--from the start of the first chapter to end of this one, it "feels" consistent, as far I can sense...
These chapters are easy and quick to get through, due in part--from a foreign reader's perspective--to good use of language; a story easily relatable and rather reminiscent of one's "high school days;" and good grammar, too... which leads to my only [minute] correction, from the middle [roughly] of -Ivory- (the second):

"...Megan was way to friendly to people..."

A missing o is all I found faulty.