Duality: Vol 1, Melancholia (A New Adult Paranormal Romance) (10 page)

I chewed my lip as I considered the possible outcomes of a different life.  None of them were coming up good in my imagination.  I’d found a Neutral for a friend, but with the way things were going now, this could be the shortest stint I’d ever had at a school, and then I’d lose her.  Back to the drawing board.  Another move, another town, another group of kids to fend off.  No more friends for me.

Luckily, the teacher announcing the instructions for our project today pulled me out of that murky place and set me on a happier course.  Today I would be painting an impressionistic watercolor that represented my life, while I sat next to a boy who wanted absolutely nothing to do with me - a boy who caused me to have more than just a slight ache of yearning in my heart.

Chapter Eleven: Malcolm

I COULDN’T BELIEVE MY TERRIBLE luck.  There were thirty or more classes going on right now in senior year, and Rae had to end up in
my
Fine Arts class and be seated in the spot right next to
me
.  The Fates were out to get me.  That’s the only explanation.  Or maybe they were out to get her.

Glancing at Rae out of the corner of my eye, I could see my darkness already working its magic on her.  She’d gone from happy to sad in the space of seconds, and now looked like all the other Miserables who came calling.

She left the table and came back less than a minute later with a watercolor paint box.  We were supposed to share, so she put it in between us along with the can of water and a pile of paper towels she held in her other hand.

“Start with your background,” said the teacher, speaking to the whole class as he wandered down the aisles.  “Use a lot of water and just wash the color over the paper.  Think about what you want to paint and get the colors behind your main content right.”

Rae was taking great pains to not look at me.  Her chin was tilted slightly up in defiance.  She was probably mad at me for trying to get rid of her, but it was for her own good, so I wasn’t going to feel bad about it.  At least, that’s what I kept telling myself.  The guilt snuck in anyway.

I dipped my brush in the water and wiped my paper down with it, getting it good and wet before I started.

Rae was being more precise.  She’d started with a big orange circle right in the middle of her paper.

I dipped my wet brush in the blue and then the black, making a big puddle of color in the plastic lid of the paint box.  Filling my brush, I brought it over to the bottom edge of my paper and started swiping it back and forth, covering the bottom with the darkest blue that I could get.  I added more black when it wasn’t quite dark enough.

Rae dipped her brush into the yellow and then red, using this bright color to draw circles around the one she already had.  Her paper looked like what someone having an acid trip would see.

I added more blue to my next stripe, just above the really black one.  I brought the end of the line up and turned it into a big wave that went to the top of the paper and then crashed back down to the bottom. 
Turmoil.  Drowning in darkness.  This is my life.

Rae used purple next, putting splotches of it all over the place.  It looked like she was having a butterfly parade in the sun.

I knew it was ridiculous, but something about her color choices made me angry.  We were supposed to be doing an impressionistic painting of how we saw our lives.  Looking at her work was like looking at a lie.  Here she was, a nice girl coming near me, smiling and acting like she wanted to be next to me - a Miserable of the worst kind - and yet she was pretending like her life was a big, giant confetti explosion in the middle of a tripped-out sun.

“You hate it that much, huh?” she asked.  Her paintbrush was tinking around in the water can as she cleaned it off.

I looked back at my own paper, embarrassed that she’d caught me staring angrily at her painting.

“Yours sure looks cheery,” she said.

I shouldn’t have looked at her, but I did.  She was smiling.

I said nothing.  I just loaded my brush up with red paint and put a big red X in the middle of the wave.

“Two more of those and maybe you’ll get a buzzer to go off somewhere.”

I frowned at my paper and then at her.  “What?”  She was making no sense.  I got the impression she was having a good laugh about something.

She pointed at my X.  “That looks like those talent shows where the judges can X a person off the stage.  Just two more and you’re done.  You’re off the show.”

My nostrils flared.  This was no stupid gameshow.  This was my messed up piece of shit life.  I dipped my brush in the red paint and put two more Xs down.

“Eeerrrr,” she buzzed.  “Game over.  Time to go home.”

“What a great idea,” I said, dropping my brush into the water can and bending over to get my backpack.

“Where are you going?” she asked, sounding mystified.

“Game over, remember?”  I walked around her chair and moved out into the aisle.

My grand plan to exit using the steam of my anger as momentum ended the second she put her hand on my arm.

Stupid, stupid, stupid!  Why didn’t you put your sleeves down before you left?!

Her skin was touching mine, and the feeling that came up my arm and into my chest through her fingers was nothing less than mind-blowing.

I yanked my arm away, breathing fast in panic.

“Did you feel that?” she whispered, her face a mask of excitement and confusion all muddled together.

“No.”  I stepped back, my butt banging into the table next to ours.

“Yes, you did,” she whispered in a more subdued tone.  “I know you did, don’t deny it.”

“Static electricity.  The air’s dry.”

“Bullshit.  Don’t leave.”

I hesitated, one foot poised in front of the other, my heart beating like mad.  I was literally stuck in place as my brain warred with my heart.

Go!  Don’t stick around here and damage this girl any more than you already have!

Stay!  She’s drawing pictures of rainbows and butterflies for shit’s sake!  Maybe you won’t kill her!

But my heart was an idiot and had gotten people seriously hurt before, so I ignored it in favor of my brain.  “I have to go.”

I left her there at the table, and cruised to the front of the room.  Mr. Blankenship was so busy with his own artwork, he didn’t even notice me walking in front of him and out the door.  The other students were laughing and having a good old time with their projects, so they paid me no attention either.

Once out in the hallway, I put my backpack over my shoulder and contemplated my options.  I could skip the rest of school and detention altogether and go home, or I could go wait out the rest of this period and show up in detention right before the bell sounded.  That way I’d be able to pick a seat far away from everyone else.

I got to the bathroom nearest the detention hall and went inside.  Skipping the punishment would get me in deeper shit than I was already in, and I didn’t want to expose myself to students any more than possible. Two weeks of forced studying at a table with three other students was bad enough, but missing it meant adding more time to my sentence.  I had to just get it over with and hope it went smoothly.

I was sitting in the far stall when the bathroom door opened about fifteen minutes later.  I quietly stepped up, putting my feet on the seat so whoever it was wouldn’t catch me skipping class and possibly tattle on me.  Mr. Blankenship was such a space cadet he probably wasn’t going to notice I was gone at all.

At first all I heard were footsteps, but then there were voices.  It immediately struck me as strange because at least one of them sounded too adult to be in the student bathroom.

I kept my breath as even as possible, hoping they wouldn’t notice me in here before they left.

“Did you see her?”  This guy was a student, but I didn’t know if he was someone I knew or not.  He didn’t sound like anyone I’d been in class with before.  I knew he wasn’t a Miserable; I heard their voices enough to recognize them easily.

“Yeah, I saw her.”  The second voice sounded familiar.  A teacher, maybe.  Or possibly someone who worked in the Main Office.

It was weird that a teacher and student were discussing a girl or a lady together in the bathroom in the middle of class.  It made me want to stay hidden so I could hear more.

“Is she the one?” asked the student.  He sounded excited and serious at the same time.

“All signs point to yes.  But I can’t be sure until we get her alone.”

Oh, shit.  This teacher wants to get a girl alone?  That’s messed up.  That can’t be good, right?  Why would he want to do that?

“How are we going to get her alone?”

This voice definitely belonged to a student - a guy and someone who’d already gone way past puberty.  His voice was deep but still youthful.

I wanted to get a look at him to see if I recognized him.  I shifted ever-so slightly so I could try and look through the crack of the door, but they were both too far to the right of me to see them.  All I could catch from where I was sitting were a couple of sinks and a mirror.

“I leave that up to you.  Make friends.  Play nice.  Do what you have to do, but keep it clean.  We don’t need anything scaring her away before we can get the program online.”  Whatever they were talking about was seriously important to this guy, that much was clear from his tone.

I figured they must be talking about a student, since the teacher was telling the other guy to get to know her instead of doing it himself.  At least this guy seemed to be advocating no violence, or a temporary no-violence period.  Whoever this girl was, she needed to be warned.  And this teacher should probably be reported.  But who would I report him to?  And what would I tell them?  That a chemistry teacher was talking in the bathroom with a student about getting a mystery girl alone?  I’d sound like a lunatic if I said anything like that.

“Got it,” said the student.  “I’ll start today.  She has detention.”

“I’ll get you in there.  How long?”

“Two weeks.”

“Whoa, two weeks.  How in the hell did she get detention?  She never gets detention.”  It was weird hearing Mr. Holder swear like that.  He always seemed to uptight and by the book, and now he just sounded stressed.  Not like himself at all.

The pool of potential candidates was shrinking.  They were talking about a student who had two weeks of detention who didn’t normally get in trouble.

Jasmine and Rae were the first candidates who leapt to mind because I knew they had just gotten two weeks; but that was stupid.  There would probably be fifteen girls in there today.  The chances it was someone I kind of knew weren’t that great.  Besides, I was pretty sure Jasmine is a regular in the detention hall, and the guy just said that whoever it is never gets detention.  Today is Rae’s first day, so it couldn’t be her.

“Not sure how it happened,” answered the student.  “I didn’t see what went down, I just heard about it.”

This guy sure seemed to know a lot about this girl.  She must be in one of his classes.  A goody-goody from the sounds of it, since she never got detention.  It wasn’t that difficult to get in my experience.  I’d probably know her as one of the girls who wanted nothing to do with me.  A truly happy person.  That made me mad, to think they were going to take some happy girl and mess with her somehow.

“Well, find that out, too.  I don’t want any surprises.”

“I got it handled.  Just relax, all right?”  The student sounded annoyed.

“Impossible,” said the teacher, angry now.  “Do you have any idea the pressure I’m under?”

“Yeah.  The same pressure I am.”

“It’s not the same for you.  You can make mistakes.  I can’t.”

“No one can make mistakes.  Don’t fool yourself, old man.”

Old man?  What teacher lets a student get away with that?

“Just see that you get her alone and to me.  I’ll take it from there.”

“I can check her out without your help, you know.”  The student sounded offended.

“Are you sure you want to be the one to submit the report?”  The teacher paused before delivering his condescending response.  “No, I didn’t think so.  Just get her to me, and we’ll work on her together.  I supervise, though.  Deal?”

“Deal.”

My legs were seriously cramped, and I really wanted to stand up a little and get a look at them.  I shifted to the right, thinking I’d lift my eyes up over the top of the stall, but I accidentally banged my knee into the toilet paper dispenser.  I froze in a squatting position.

“What was that?” asked the teacher.  His voice shifted into an angry whisper.  “Didn’t you check in here before we came in?”

Footsteps moved closer to my stall.  They hesitated once, twice, and then a third time.  Now one of the guys was standing outside the door of the stall I was in.  I could see his Vans, the toes just peeking under the edge.  One of them slid back and came off the floor a little as he leaned over and looked under the door.

“There’s nobody in there.  I checked under all of them.”  The Vans disappeared.

If he’d just put his head a little closer to the bottom of the door, he would have seen me in here.  I wondered what they would have done if he had.  I shuddered at the idea.  I had a strong feeling it wouldn’t have been anything good.

When the student returned to his meeting, the teacher said, “You can’t just check under them, idiot.  You have to open them.”

“Jesus.  Paranoid aren’t you?”  The student was obviously annoyed at being ordered around.

The first door banged open.

My blood pressure sky-rocketed.

Then the second door banged open.  It rattled the dividing wall between my stall and the next.

The third door banged open.  It sounded like he was using his fist to punch them back.

The bell rang.

Shoes hesitated in front of the stall next to me.

The sounds of students filling the hallway reached my ears and my blood pressure evened out.  I caught myself about to exhale loudly in relief.