Bloodlines: Everything That Glitters (9 page)

I got up from the ground and dusted my clothes off; my vision remained hazy as I glanced around, I couldn’t leave but I couldn’t stay. “I think I just need to be alone. My vision is impaired so I won’t be driving home anytime soon. If you need me later, I’ve probably stuffed myself in a janitor’s closet somewhere.”

“Wait Aliza, how can you say I have no idea what you’re going through? Did you not see what’d happened to me as I stood outside of that horrible gas station?” His voice was slightly raised yet it came out as a dull whisper. “Which wasn’t the only thing that’d happened if you haven’t pieced it all together by now. I can’t believe how selfish you are being right now.” He turned his back to me then walked off and disappeared into the crowd of students, already eager to get in where he fit in.

I rubbed my eyes continuously as I tried to see clearly; when nothing helped, I gave up and walked around almost blindly. Remembering the girl that I’d saw when I’d first come into the parking lot, I looked around for her. Luckily she was still standing in the same place, against the pole. As I got closer to the lonely girl she started tensing up like I was coming over to hurt her.

Is she coming over here to tease me too?
She thought as she clenched tighter to the pink binder she held in her hands.

“Forgive me, I know this is random but I’m Alizarin, people just call me Aliza.” I heard her thoughts ramble around displaying her insecurities and the lack of knowing of whether or not to trust me. “I’m new here,” I continued, “So I don’t have many friends.”

“Hey I’m Bethany,” she said with a hint of enthusiasm in her voice.

“It’s nice to meet you Bethany, my family and I just moved here from Hot Springs.” I stretched out my hand to shake but she flinched and I reflectively snatched it back.

“Sorry,” I said, stuffing my hands in my pockets.

“It’s alright. I’m just not used to people around here being so nice to me.”

“Well I’m different from everyone else around here,” I responded.
If she only knew the exact truthfulness of my words,
I thought.

“Being different gets you teased,” she choked up.

“I don’t think anyone’s tough enough to make a move,” I said jokingly. Although I couldn’t see her clearly I did notice that she was a lot taller than me and very thin, making her awkward to look at. After too long of a pause, her thoughts ate away at me. “It was nice meeting you Bethany, hopefully we have a class together.”

“It was nice meeting you too, Aliza,” she replied with a small smile on her face.

I scanned the parking lot looking at all the people, all thinking meaningless things; I searched the crowd of people for my brother.
Where are you
?

Over here
, he waved his arms in the air to get my attention, somehow realizing that I wasn’t able to see him all too clearly. He was several feet away standing with a group of girls.

Mr. Popular already
?

What can I say? They love me
.

I shook my head at his vanity and moved through the crowd to go inside of the building where hopefully it would at least make me feel a little better.

***

Classes dragged on throughout the day, I could hardly pay attention to any part of the lecture because the people around me were mentally not paying attention. Like the girl that sat in front of me, she was fixated on the teacher, her every thought reflected how much she adored him and it wasn’t because his method of teaching was superior to any other.

I sat back in my seat and tried to force my mind to block out all of the thoughts being processed, but no matter what I did I wasn’t able to shake the silent madness I was going through. I looked over at the round clock that hung on the eggshell colored walls; it was only 11:15. The bell for first lunch wouldn’t ring until another thirty minutes.             

I don’t think I can do this anymore
. I placed both of my hands on my face and accepted the mental defeat.
I have to get out of here.

Are you sure you don’t want to stick around for lunch?
I heard Ash's voice in the distant parts of the thoughts that now took up residence in my mind. He would have been easily missed if I had not been expecting his reply.

Although I could still barely see anything, I’d managed to get this far, I figured that maybe I was a lot tougher than I was allowing myself to believe. I had three more classes to get through today and I’d decided that I should just brave through them and embrace the opinions and judgments of an entire class of hormone raged teenagers and secretive teachers.

“For homework, you’ll have to create a chart showing the evidence of evolution.” Mr. Yang passed out the accompanying worksheets and walked back to the front of the class, “Tetra, since this is your first day, feel free to collect the notes from one of your other classmates.”

My stomach dropped and I shook my head silently, why’d they list my
middle
name on the attendance sheet?

“Isn’t Tetra the name of a fish?” Someone joked from the back of the classroom.

“It is, but my name isn’t Tetra, its Alizarin. Isn’t your name one letter short of spelling Herpes?” I replied, turning around in my seat to look at the stranger.
As if Tetra is the name of an ugly fish
, I thought.

“Watch yourself new girl.” She fumed as both embarrassment and anger consumed her.

“No I think it is you who should watch yourself,” I smiled, then turned around and faced the teacher, who’d conveniently stepped outside to take a call when she’d decided to make her comment.

I stared again at the class clock; the last few minutes of class had flown by. I threw the papers into my purple folder and tossed it into my backpack. As I walked out into the hallway I was temporarily disoriented by the commotion and bumped into a girl standing on the side of her locker.

“Watch where you’re going!” The girl yelled.

“I’m sorry,” I said, picking up the books that had fell to the floor.

“You should be sorry.”

I slowly rose with the fallen books in my hands and looked up to see the person I had bumped into. The massive girl towered over me; her pale blonde hair was tied into a bun revealing her protruding forehead. We wore the same small tank shirt; only she had gotten hers in dark blue. I reached out to hand her the books I was still clutching onto and she snatched them away.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you there.” I extended the apology again hoping she would hear the sincerity in my voice. The crowd around us had slowly begun to stop and stare at the two of us.

“I don’t need your apologies, new girl.” Her thoughts were furious, but not at me.

Among the other thoughts I’d been entertaining; I also had to watch as images flashed inside of my head of something that I couldn’t make out. Something had happened to her within the last couple of days and she had been waiting for someone to cross her the wrong way. I inched backward, lightly bumping into an instigator then gently tried to pry my way through the few people that stood between the open hallway and me. Everyone in the by-standing group were wondering if she was going to just let me get away, they wanted to see a girl fight, it’d be the fourth one this week supposedly.

“Yeah that’s right, you run. I’ll let it slide this time but you make
sure
it doesn’t happen again,” she barked after me.

I wandered aimlessly through the halls before finding the classroom. A few minutes later the bell that signified that you were late rung; I hated having to walk into class late, everyone always seemed to stare and not-so-silently judge. I peeked in through the small glass window in the middle of the door and examined the classroom; there weren’t that many people in this class, so that calmed my nerves slightly. Behind me people were still sauntering around in the hallways, going into the classrooms nearby.

“Here we go,” I mumbled to myself as I turned the handle to the door and stepped in.

***

The insanity within me carried on throughout the rest of the day, I had found out more things in one sitting that normally takes people a lifetime. For example: Mr. Walsh was having an affair with the Spanish teacher down the hall, Mrs. Leone has a weird complex with horses and the guy that sits next to me in Art History secretly dresses as a woman.

My head hurt intensely from all of the things that I had been hearing all day. The things that people do in the privacy of their own mind is unbelievably haunting, I couldn’t even begin to imagine being cursed like this for the rest of my life.
This must be the malediction
. I thought out.

I crept slowly out of my fourth class and down the hallway;
I have to learn how to control this! I can hardly concentrate.
I thought, more to myself than to Ash, although I knew he could hear me.

We will figure something out
. Ash replied calmly. I headed for the doors to the walkway where my car was; I couldn’t go through with the last class without breaking down for sure.

I’m going to head home Ash. I’ll catch you later
, I thought, heading towards the exit.
I’ve had enough for one day
.

The drive home was peaceful, no longer were there perverted minds rambling around in my head like wild dogs. Occasionally I would hear Ash thinking of answers for his work or debating with himself whether or not to partner with Michelle, but other than that, plus my own overwhelming thoughts, it was an overall quiet journey home.

You know, I like the fact that no matter where we are in the world we still have a link between us; I know it’s going to come in hand one day
, I thought to Ash as I pulled into the driveway.

Quiet down, I’m trying to write down notes
, Ash whispered.

I smiled to myself, even in his own thoughts he was a coward. How was he doing it? Pretending there was nothing wrong with us. I felt in my gut that everything was wrong with this situation. Was it just by some fat-chance we both came across an unmarked bottle and decided to drink them? For once, I found myself wishing at least one of my parents were home, though I wouldn’t come clean, it’d be nice to hear parental advice.

“Left alone to govern myself,” I sighed as I stepped out of my car. “Any teenagers dream.”

When I walked into the doors, Corey was discretely sitting on the living room couch.

“Hey Coco,” I greeted, walking in and closing the door behind me.

“Hello, how was school?” She replied, turning around to face me.

“Good I guess. Met a few people and nearly died from an aneurism.” I tossed my backpack on the couch next to Corey and flopped down on the nearby recliner. “Teach me to control my thoughts, like right now.” I said, sulking back into the chair. The TV show Corey had been watching had switched to commercial and she grabbed the remote and hit the mute button. “Have you been doing this all day?” I asked.

“Yeah sort of, I’m kind of just amazed at it all.” She replied.

“So what do I do about the voices?”

“Are you ready?”

I sat on the edge of my seat and tried to relax as anticipation began to kill me. “I’ve been ready for the past 24 hours.”

“Okay.
Antaa minuelle selkeytta.
”

I looked at her in disbelief. “Firstly, speak English. Secondly, what kind of language is that?”

“It means
give me clarity
. It is the language of our people.” Her voice cracked for a moment and she almost sounded like a totally different person.

I stared blankly then consoled myself with an explanation I’d made up to help myself cope with what just happened. “Who are
our
people?”

She shook her head then continued looking at television. “I don’t know. Like I told you before, the lady that visits me in my dreams tells me things.”

“You’ve never told me about a lady that comes to you in your dreams. Who is she?”

She immediately tensed together and starting shaking. “I don’t know Aliza, I don’t know!”

So immediately caught off guard, my feelings were slightly hurt. “Why? Why don’t you know anything?”

Corey planted herself deeper into the couch and looked over at me. “I black out from time to time. I hardly remember anything.”

“I’m off to my room.” I jumped up from the chair and grabbed my backpack from the coach. “How old are you by the way?” I asked.

“I’m 16. What about you and Ash? Your mom was saying something about you guys being twins?”

Ash was also three minutes ahead of me, which gave him the natural rights as ‘big brother’. “We’ll be 18 in April.” I positioned the backpack on my shoulder then headed towards the stairs. I closed the door behind me as I stepped into my room and threw the backpack to the floor then peeled off the hoodie I had been wearing and threw it aside as well.

“So they
are
hereditary,” I whispered, trying to make it all make sense. I still had hundreds of unanswered questions that mainly included; why weren’t my clothes burned to ash that day in the store? And what type of powers Corey’s dad have? I sat down on the bed and looked into the black screen on the television.
Were my clothes fire proofed already
?