Captivate Me (Book One: The Captivated Series) (2 page)

“Nice to meet you,” she said, almost a
whisper, and her eyes tentatively scanned over our dorm room. I
recognized the look that rested beneath their brilliant hue –
timid, sad and broken. A lot like I’d looked when I had arrived two
weeks before. I didn’t have to imagine what this girl had been
through, I knew well enough.

“Anna-Grace will be your new
dorm-mate,” Principal Hughes continued. “I trust that you’ll help
her find her way to lunch?”

I stifled the disappointed sigh that
worked its way out. I’d halfway hoped the room would belong to only
me. While I enjoyed being sociable at times, I also liked my
solitude to paint or read in quiet. “Yes, sir. I came to get my
book and was headed back.” The words came out a little more
defensively than I’d intended.

He held his hands up. “Quite all
right. Just make your way there after Anna drops off her
bags.”

“No problem.”

His lips drew into an approving smile,
crinkling his weathered skin. “Thank you.” And with that, he made
his way back down the hallway, leaving behind the smell of his
spicy cologne and the staccato of his shoes against the tiled
floor. So much for further introductions; I suppose he figured us
girls could handle that. Principal Hughes wasn’t much for chit-chat
anyway. He was friendly, but all business, and probably had other
things to tend to. I was actually surprised that it wasn’t his
secretary, Wanda, who had brought her up.

So there my dorm-mate and I stood in
silence – her with her bags in a death grip and me with my overly
friendly smile to conceal the fact that I wasn’t thrilled with her
moving in. My civility finally came back to me, and I took the tote
from her grip and set it atop the bed on the opposite side of the
room. “Everyone’s so nice here,” I assured her. “You won’t have any
problem making friends.”

Anna wheeled her suitcase to her bed
and sank onto its edge. Her eyes raked over the walls that I had
decorated with my paintings of mountains, flowered fields and
sunsets – a talent I’d inherited from my dad. “These yours?” she
asked, changing the subject off friend-making. I remembered that
feeling well, too – wanting nothing to do with ‘friends.’ One week
here and that would change.

“Yes,” I beamed, hoping she would like
them so I wouldn’t feel the need to take them down. They reminded
me of my dad, and in a way, reminded me of home even though none of
them were landscapes of Ireland.

“They’re pretty. You’re very
talented.”

Whew.
“Thank you.”

Her eyes settled on the
easel I had set up beside my desk… well,
our
desk now… and she studied the
painting I had started the day before of the woods outside. “You
must paint a lot,” she deduced.

“I do.”

We lapsed back into silence, and she
peered down to her tattered sneakers in thought. I glanced at the
clock. Three more minutes wasted. I fought the urge to take her by
the elbow and usher her to the slop hall. I then realized she
wasn’t in uniform. “You have your uniform in your suitcase?” I
asked. “We need to get going.”

She nodded somberly but
didn’t make any movement to get dressed. I sighed inwardly.
Maybe I should be a little more
patient
, I thought; my first day was the
hardest. I tucked my hair behind my ears and planted myself on the
bed beside her. I could always just shovel my food – I’d done it
before – and Sarah could catch me up on anything that had happened.
“I know how you feel,” I said, placing a consoling hand on her
shoulder.

Brimming with tears, her brown eyes
met mine. Up close, they had splashes of amber around the pupil.
“You do?” she asked with a brittle voice.

“I do. This is my first year at
Midland.”

“So you’re new here too,
then?”

I flashed a comforting smile. “I
am.”

She let out a shaky, relieved
breath.

“And I meant what I said
earlier… all of the students here are so nice. Even the teachers
and Principal Hughes. And there are no judgments or discrimination
for being different. We’re
all
different.”

She wiped a runaway tear with a half
smile.

“And now you don’t have to hide your
gift… whatever it is. Things will get easier, I
promise.”

She sucked back the rest of her tears,
and leaned over to unzip her suitcase. She paused mid-zip. “You
wanna see?” she asked.

“
See what?”

“My gift,” she replied with a twinkle
of pride.

Her enthusiasm widened my smile. How
could I refuse? “Sure.”

She straightened and pushed her hair
from her shoulders. Her brow slightly creased. “I won’t hurt you,”
she assured me.

“I know,” I replied, perking up. She
had my full attention. What in the world could this sweet
red-haired girl do that could possibly harm anyone? I couldn’t
imagine her gift being anything other than shooting rainbows from
her eyes or pooping out fluffy kittens.

With her palms turned to
the ceiling, she scooted back a foot on the bed and crossed her
legs, reminding me of a meditation pose. Her brown eyes bored into
her hands and narrowed with concentration; I could tell she had
done this many times. Finally, a spark of something wild flickered
across her face, and her palms glowed red.
Whoa.

Her eyes cut up to gauge my reaction,
and I gave an enthusiastic nod for her to go ahead. Seeing
someone’s gift for the first time never got old. She concentrated
back on her hands, and her face contorted with absolute
concentration. A bright flash radiated from her hands, vibrant red
and orange flames flickering from her fingertips. I couldn’t
contain my thoughts. “Holy shit!”

She brought her palms closer together,
molding a ball of fire the size of a baseball. Again, she cut her
eyes up at me.

“Really cool, Anna,” I managed. “Does
it burn?”

She shook her hands, and just like
that, the fire and vibrant glow left. I reached for her forearm,
pulling her hand closer to inspect it for curls of smoke or
scarring. “Go ahead,” she said. “It’s not even hot.”

I brushed my fingers over her skin.
Same temperature as mine. “Pretty neat, huh?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I breathed.
“That’s awesome.”
So
not the rainbows and kittens I was expecting.
Wait until the guys see this…
my thoughts echoed.
They’re gonna
freak!

“Now you,” she said, bouncing on the
bed, “what can you do?”

I chuckled at her playfulness; it was
hard to believe this was the same girl who’d walked through the
door a few minutes before. Amazing what the words “I know how you
feel” and a little opening up could accomplish. I was glad I’d
decided not to rush her out of there right away. “It’s not as neat
as yours,” I said with a shrug.

“Oh, come on!” she pled. “It must be
something extraordinary, or you wouldn’t be here!”

Conceding, I nodded. “All
right.”

Looking for something to move with my
mind, my eyes flickered over the room and snapped to a paintbrush
on my easel. “See that paintbrush over there?” I asked, nodding
toward it.

“Yep!”

“Watch this.” I pointed at it and did
as I always do – picture the object in my mind, envision a web of
invisible strings shooting down my spine and out my fingertips,
reaching and wrapping around it. Once connected, I imagined moving
it how I wanted – up, down, sliding or rolling. This time I lifted
it and tumbled it end over end like a propeller.

“No way,” she whispered in
disbelief.

I gave a lazy smile; perhaps over the
years I’d forgotten how remarkable it was. To me, it was as natural
as picking something up with my own hands.

“How do you do that?” she
asked.

“I just… imagine it, really,” I said
with a shrug and laid the paintbrush down. “Nothing to
it.”

“Cool! I bet that comes in
handy.”

I thought of my trick with the clock
earlier. “Sometimes,” I replied, but it could also make me lazy if
I wasn’t careful. I could literally sit anywhere in the room and
summon everything to come to me – except people. My gift only
worked on objects.

She hopped off the bed and bent to
finish unzipping her bag. I noticed the address on her luggage tag
said “Clearwater, Florida.” “Florida, huh?” I asked.

“Yep. Where are you from?”

“Ireland.”

She threw me a puzzled
look.

“I don’t have an accent,” I explained,
as I’d had to many times before. I already had the explanation
waiting on the tip of my tongue. “My mom and brothers don’t have
accents either.”

“Oh,” she said, processing.

“My dad does; he’s native to Ireland,
but I guess I take after my mom and brothers in that
regard.”

“Gotcha.” Another question churned
beneath her eyes, and she turned her attention back to the
suitcase, rummaging through its contents. “Are any of them
gifted?”

“My dad and brother are.
My dad is a prophet and my half-brother, Micah, can see spirits.” I
purposefully left out the part of my mom being a fallen angel. I
rarely shared that with anyone. Actually, I don’t think I’d
ever
shared that with
anyone
.
It was
kind of a family secret. And not because it was a bad thing – my
mom was more of a ‘former’ angel than fallen. ‘Fallen’ suggested
that she’d done something wrong or deceitful and had been cast from
heaven; my mom
chose
to live on Earth in a mortal body to be with my dad. Two
different things.

“
Huh,” she said. “Neat.”
From inside her suitcase, she lifted the burgundy and gold plaid
skirt of her uniform to inspect it.

I nodded in agreement, sliding off the
bed and straightening the skirt that had bunched under my
backside.

“So your dad can see the
future?”

“Sometimes. He dreams of the future
but it’s usually about nothing important.”

She held up a white dress shirt. The
school’s emblem of two feathers with an eagle in between was
embroidered on the right side in colors matching our skirts. “Still
pretty cool, though.”

“I think so.”

“Do you look like them?” she asked.
“You’re so pretty!”

I blushed. “Thanks,” I murmured, not
completely comfortable with her gushing. I didn’t think I was ugly,
just not pretty enough to warrant such enthusiasm, in my opinion.
But she had to have possibly been the sweetest girl I’d ever met,
and I suddenly didn’t hate the idea of a roommate anymore. “I got
my green eyes from my dad. Well, he has one blue, one green, so I
guess I got my green eyes from his one green. And I got my dark
hair from my mom.”

“I bet they’re as nice as you, too,”
she mused and slipped off her sneakers.

“Thank you,” I murmured
again and shook my head with a smile.
Again, with the gushing.
“I’ll wait
outside for you to get dressed,” I replied and headed to the
hallway. I could tell Anna and I would be good friends, but we
weren’t to the ‘getting-dressed-in-front-of-each-other’ stage yet.
“And then we’ll go eat.”

“All right,” she trilled. “I’ll be
quick.”

CHAPTER TWO

___________________

Labels

With our book bags slung over our
shoulders and our shiny black shoes clacking against the floor, we
hurried toward the lunchroom with a mere twenty-three minutes left
to eat – plenty of time to shovel, though. As we wound down the
dimly lit hallways decorated with portraits of faculty, antique
candelabras and tapestries matching our school colors, I realized
how surreal everything still felt, but I also thanked God everyday
that the school had sent my parents the offer letter to attend.
Apparently, there were a total of three High School campuses in the
States, and each one hired scouts to find gifted students at
various schools around the world. And it was also my understanding
that these scouts did this by means of reading auras. Once a
Gifted’s ability had surfaced, no matter what age, their auras get
a distinctive glow, and when these scouts find us, they alert the
school.

It was also my understanding that some
Gifted’s abilities didn’t surface until their teenage years, but
mine had manifested at four years old. I wanted my sippy-cup from
across the room, and I had simply made it come to me.
Unfortunately, the scout for Midland didn’t find me until my junior
year. My parents had received the offer letter, and they’d decided
to let me stay in Ireland to graduate with all my friends – well,
former friends – but after everything that had happened in the last
year, my parents had been more than happy to enroll me in a school
where they knew I would feel safe and accepted, even if it was just
for one year.

We made it to the slop hall and
smoothed our hair and rumpled clothes before going in. As we passed
through the double doors, a memory of when I had first met Levi
flashed through my mind, and I smiled pensively. Already on the
verge of unraveling from getting lost so many times, and everything
I had gone through months before, I’d barely paid attention that
day as I threaded through the milling students to find an empty
table. My feet hadn’t cooperated, either, and I’d caught the tip of
my shoe on a chair leg and down tumbled my tray and all its
contents. I remember staring numbly at the mess I had made with
tears streaming down my face, and before I could contemplate
running back to my room and openly sobbing, a kind hand had clamped
on to my shoulder – a strong, kind hand.