Chapter 23

*This chapter was pretty annoying to write (pretty much, because it's essential in what I plan for the future, but idk, this was really hard to iron out.  Therefore, some things might not make sense because I  tried my best to edit, so as always let me know and I'll do my best to fix it.  :)*

The day didn’t start out so bad.

Sure, she caught some odd looks on her way across the parking lot, but once she entered the school everything was business as usual; no one paid much attention to her.

She stopped by the front office to drop off some made-up absence excuse to a barely interested secretary.

After that, first period flew by with little incident. The next few barely even registered as a blur in her memory.

By Mrs. Clark’s math class, she’d forgotten all about the seizure the other day—along with pretty much everything else.

Everything but him.

He dominated her thoughts.

Hell, he was all she could think about.

The feel of his jacket around her was all she could focus on; nothing else made sense.

To be fair, it was a really nice jacket.  The quality was something way beyond anything she could afford on her own; Italian made maybe.

Against the red of her dress the dark leather almost seemed to glow, and somehow, wearing it she didn’t feel quite so stupid for sporting a dumb dress in the middle of winter.

Oddly enough, no one else seemed to notice or care that she wore a priceless jacket over a Christmas dress, though—at least in fourth period math—mostly everyone seemed to be trying hard enough just not to look at her at all.

She could see them from the corner of her eye, the few times she managed to pay enough attention.  They’d peek and glance away quickly as if to just check that she was really there.

That she was real.

Another time, the stares would have stung, but after a while she stopped even caring.  Her vision blurred around the edges as the teacher began to drone on about equations, and her mind started to wander again…

And the thoughts of Eliot drifted back.

He was strange.

As the first period English teacher would say, he was a conundrum; a complicated, complex puzzle she couldn’t help but want to solve.

The guy had broken into her house because he thought she needed help.

He didn’t know her from Eve, and yet he’d been concerned the moment she didn’t follow some predictable routine—the moment he’d sensed something was wrong.

She wasn’t used to someone paying that much attention to her.

Call her old fashioned, but she liked to keep her distance from people—as if it wasn’t easy enough.  These days she was lucky to catch a second glance.

From her father.

From anyone.

It was a rare occurrence when someone just happened to remember her name, or managed to call her anything other than ‘the new girl,’ or worse, ‘that kid with epilepsy.’

But Eliot…

Noticed her.

Followed her.

Terrified her.

Funnily enough, despite everything, he saw her.

That little fact was enough to distract her from the more alarming aspects of him; like the fact that her heart picked up speed whenever he was near, and whenever she looked into those red eyes…

Her neck prickled.  Her heart skipped a beat, and a little voice at the back of her mind whispered ‘stay away.’

Its instinct, she thought with a shiver; trying to warn her.

I should stay away.

But before she could think to hard about it, the bell for next period rang and shattered the thought.

She tried to focus after that—really.  But by the time she made it to fifth period gym class, her mind was already back to tormenting her with flashes of a haunting amber stare.

Gleaming red hair.

And a perfect body that theoretically could have worn the very same jacket that covered her now…

She was so distracted, as she entered the girls locker room, that she barely noticed the tension coiling in her muscles.

Barely tasted the ominous fear clogging the back of her throat.

Hardly even noticed her body’s impending reaction—until it was too late.

The flash of blue struck like a punch below the ribs and she went falling.

__________

“Don’t touch me!”

The shaky, breathless shriek made Miriam frown into icy linoleum—which brought up the good question as to why she was currently laying face-down on the floor in the first place.

One cheek felt smashed against the hard surface while the other was toasted from the blast of a heater.  The dual sensations made her stomach churn as it fought to keep from tossing whatever it had left in it.

Her throat ached.

She felt cold all over and even the warmth of Eliot’s jacket wasn’t enough to smother it.

With a groan, she tried to lift her head, only to wince as a splitting pain tore through it.  Her chin throbbed, and a hasty lick of her lips revealed why; the taste of blood exploded over her tongue.

Great, she thought with a sharp intake of breath.  The last thing she needed was physical mutilation—another ‘I told ya so’ to add to the growing list as to why she shouldn’t have been alone…

That smug statement ran through her mind; ‘Do you enjoy making unhealthy choices?’

Damn Eliot.

She forced her eyes open and tried to move as her vision cleared, but a frantic whisper made her freeze in her tracks.

“I swear to God—I’ll tell!”

The voice sounded like a girl’s.  Someone close to her age, maybe—who seemed even more terrified than she felt, if that were even possible.

Miriam blinked again and caught sight of the blurry edge of a row of lockers, and the shadowy doorway that led the teacher’s office.  The seizure must have struck just as she entered the locker room to change, she realized.

But she couldn’t hear the voices of anyone else beside the girl…and whoever or whatever she seemed so afraid of.

As if to answer her question, a new voice picked up in answer to the first; “As if anyone would believe you.”

The deep tone definitely didn’t sound like Coach Maria, the girls gym monitor.  Both voices seemed to come from the teacher’s office, but it was too dark  inside to make out any figures.

“You know better than I do Sidney,” the man went on in a growl.   “No one will believe you.”

“Leave me alone!”  There was a scuffle like the sound of someone trying to run away, and then the even louder thud of that same someone being shoved into a harsh surface.

Boom!

“You don’t leave, unless I say you can leave,” the man spat.  “And I don’t remember giving you permission—”

Miriam flinched as she tried to scramble to her feet only for her foot to scuff against the floor.

Squeak!

“What was that?”

The icy tone made her shiver, but lying on the hard floor was uncomfortable enough that she tried to stand anyway.

“Is someone there?”

She glanced around for sight of anyone else she tried to make her mouth work right.  “I…I…”

She what?  Had a seizure?  Blacked out behind the lockers of the girl’s locker room?

None of those responses sounded remotely appealing, so she glanced down at the floor instead.  The mangled carnage of her notebooks and papers lay scattered out from the opening of her backpack.

“Hey!”

She whirled around to face the snarling face of a man with cropped brown hair who towered over her.

He was huge and seemed to of come from nowhere.

Vaguely she realized that he wore a Wafter’s Point high gym uniform and the whistle like her uncle—those two things kept her from raising her arm in defense.

The man noticed, and his gaze narrowed into icy pin-pricks.  “What the hell are you doing in here?”  He snarled, as if she was the one who didn’t belong in the girls locker room.

He could have been the new assistant coach who worked with her uncle—maybe for the lacrosse team?—but the look in his blue eyes made her instinctively back away.

Somehow she knew in her gut that she wouldn’t want him anywhere near her with a lacrosse stick.

“I…I just,” her tongue seemed stuck to the back of her throat.  She couldn’t speak, which only seemed to irritate the man even more.

He took a step forward, backing her against the lockers.  She could feel the cold metal against her spine, even through Eliot’s jacket.

He was too close.  And unlike Eliot, he was too warm.  His heat battered through her like the spray of a blow torch.

“I was  just—”

“You were what?”  The man—a nametag on his blue polo said his name was Carl—demanded, leaning close.  “You were just snooping around; was that it?”

He seemed to be implying something, and his eyes flashed in a way that made him seem even more dangerous than the stranger, Sage had that night in her kitchen when he ‘just wanted a drink.’

“Were you snooping?”  the man repeated, glaring. In an instant his face transformed into a scow as his upper lip pulled back from his teeth.

“You say a word you little bitch, and I’ll—”

“She’s bleeding.”

The dry observation came from the back where a tall, slender girl with gleaming red hair stood with her arms across her chest.

“She probably just fell,” the girl added in that empty tone as the man’s head jerked around in her direction.   “And I doubt she heard anything—though she might if you keep—”

“Get to class, Sidney,” Carl snarled at her without turning around.

The girl shook out her long hair, the pure definition of cool—though Miriam didn’t miss the wet sheen around her hazel eyes.  Or how her fingers, topped by pretty pink nails, shook as she avoided Carl’s gaze.

“You’re kind of standing in front of my locker, so…”

“Fine!”  With another glare in her direction, he turned away and stomped from the locker room, leaving nothing but the sound of heavy footsteps in his wake.

The moment he left, the girl, Sidney, slumped against the wall.  Her face turned ashen.  Those hazel eyes stared dazedly into space and Miriam worried for a moment that she wasn’t the only one with a seizure disorder.

She took a hesitant step forward.  “Are you alright?”

Sidney barely seemed to hear her; a faint nod was the only thing that kept her from running for help.

If Miriam thought she looked bad—with blood still running down her chin—that was nothing compared to how small and pathetic Sidney looked now.

She didn’t know her, but it only took a second look for Miriam recognized her.  Sidney Williams was one of those girls everyone took notice of.  She wasn’t popular exactly, but with her good looks and nice personality she could have been.

Miriam had never talked to her personally, but she knew enough of the other girl to realize that she typically had a smile on her face.

Only now, she definitely wasn’t smiling.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Sidney snapped.  The next moment she was back on her feet, tossing that mane of red hair over her shoulder.   Those hazel eyes cut Miriam up and down as she placed a manicured hand on her hip.  “What are you doing in here anyway?”

“Changing,” Miriam blurted.  Sure enough, her gym shorts and tee shirt were scattered in among the wreckage spilling from her backpack.

But that didn’t explain why her chin was scraped or she’d been lying face-down behind the lockers.

“Oh.”  Sidney crossed her arms, but her tone wasn’t any less suspicious.  She looked cagey, Miriam couldn’t help thinking.

Like the patients in the hospital who went through hell and high-water just to avoid answering a direct question as to why they showed up bruised.

Though, to be fair, there wasn’t a mark at all on Sidney’s beautiful face.

“Well,” the girl said on a sigh.  “Make sure you do change—you won’t even be allowed on the gym floor wearing that.”

At her tone, Miriam glanced down, almost surprised to realize that she still wore the sparkly dress.

“Nice jacket though,” Sidney added as she turned on her heel, but before she could take a step she paused, eyes on the floor.  “A hint of advice, kid,” she murmured, “if you did hear anything; I wouldn’t go telling anyone if I were you.  Trust me,” she added sadly.  “…it’s not worth it.”

Without another word, she slipped around the other side of the lockers and out of the room .

Miriam could only stare after her, before common sense made her salvage her stuff and get dressed before she became even more late than she already was.

It didn’t matter that her fingers shook as she fumbled the combination of her locker.  Or that her legs trembled so badly as she could barely put on her shorts.  She only paused by the bathroom to dab at the blood still smeared along the bottom of her chin before leaving the locker room and trying to push the thought of her everything behind her.

She took Sidney’s advice—she tried to forget.  Ignore.  Shove it all away to the back of her mind.

But, just as she headed down the hall toward the gym and a hand closed harshly over her forearm and she realized that forgetting might have been easier said than done.

“You better watch it, kid,” a harsh voice snarled near her ear.  “If I hear so much of a word of you running your damn mouth—a bruised lip will be the least of your worries.  I’ll make sure of it.”

They let her go so harshly that she stumbled against the wall, but not before she managed to catch glimpse of a massive figure stalking down the opposite end of the hall, wearing the blue shirt of an assistant coach.