Wasteland

Hunched over in between the trees; the smell of rain and the chilling breeze was calming in an odd way. Everything was so quiet here, nothing stirred as my sobs echoed off the silent, swaying branches. Through the holes in my jeans, I could feel the moist grass start to stain and seep through the thin material—I didn’t care. I could recognize the smeared texture of my eyeliner glide down my cheeks and onto my hands. The mixture of sweat and tears making my forehead and hair feel sticky. Sure, I felt disgusting, but I never moved to fix it.

Everything was coming down before it even started. It seemed ridiculous to me that I was here falling apart over someone I hadn’t even been talking to a week. I couldn’t get past how perfectly we fit together that night. I wasn’t doing a very good job at convincing myself that this was—if anything—childish.

I bent forward into my knees in a bow of pain; my tears had abruptly stopped coming. So I was left in the darkness of my hands. There was an empty feeling nestled into my chest as it throbbed in broken beats. I never knew your heart actually could heart from emotions, but now I did. I heard the ringing in my ears when all went completely mute, I grunted weakly as a dry sob escaped to stop the maddening sound.

After that, my whole body just went limp; calm. It couldn’t get worse, right?

I felt pathetic and I knew I had to let this go. It had all happened so fast, I was just overwhelmed, that had to be it. There was no other excuse.

I wondered—vaguely—why there were no sounds besides my breathing. There were no birds, no chirping, so rustling of the leaves, no nothing.

Even though I could still make out the very top of the school’s roof, I didn’t feel comforted at all. My skin rose with goose bumps as the sense of being watched drilled through my back. It wasn’t the kind of paranoia that happened when your boyfriend was watching you fix your hair; it was more like how the victim in a horror movie looks over her shoulder searching for the killer. When all is dead quiet and the victim can hear his footsteps, but can’t see him. Yes, that kind of paranoia.

Terror, rather.

A feeling I wasn’t accustomed to. I felt vulnerable, and I knew that if I were to be attacked by this hypothetical killer, I wouldn’t make it back to the school in time.

“Hello?” I offered carefully, pronouncing the words slowly. “Is someone there?”

I stood quietly from my spot in the damp grass and tried to maneuver my over the small twigs and dried up leaves of the coming fall.

In the stiff silence of the forest, I heard a very subtle gust of hair, but there was no wind. My spine arched into a crouch, figuring I might could stay hidden if I lingered close to the ground. I felt the danger around me, I knew it was near. The only problem being that I couldn’t distinguish between being too paranoid or some sort of sixth sense; I had no idea if this were real danger or just all in my head.

I crept forward, towards the main building. I cringed every time I heard a crackle of a twig or the rustling of grass.

I felt so stupid acting like this, but I just had this weird intuition that I couldn’t deny.

I kept moving as fast as I could go in my position; sweat was starting bead on my palms. I subconsciously pulled my hood over my head, as if that would further hide me from whatever was watching. I could have sworn I heard a chuckle.

I continued, progressing slowly. My feet were unsteady, my eyes were blurry still, and I was biting so hard on the inside of my lip I tasted the copper that pooled onto my tongue. The trees all became menacing with each sway and the wind was no longer a breeze. The misting rain had died and I was left with the humidity that concentrated itself in my damp clothes. I was approaching a large tree trunk I was planning to lean against for coverage. I deemed it a good hiding spot.

As I reached out to steady myself on the tree, a hand touched my shoulder.

I froze.

“Lovely smell you’ve got…” The unknown visitor cackled to themselves, curling their pointed, gloved fingers into my shoulder.

It sounded like a man with a thick accent. It sounded German or something of European decent. His voice sent shivers down my neck.

“She’s pretty, too.” Came another voice, a girl, it was obvious. I was too afraid to turn around to see the faces of my visitors.

Who were these people? What did they want? A million possibilities scanned through my brain. I couldn’t quite place any of them. Murderers, escaped convicts, hunters, terrorists, rapists, kidnappers… The list went on and on.

It never dawned on me that the man had commented on my smell until this point. That only opened up even more questions.

“Yes, she is. It’s too bad, really.” Said the mysterious man despondently, adding a dramatic sigh.

I whimpered quietly as another hand, a smaller one, began twirling a strand of my brown hair in a very interested manner. “Agreed.” The girlish voice replied wistfully. She then began to braid the small piece.

“I’m sorry!” The man bellowed, his dramatic voice making me jump—I heard the girl sigh exasperatedly and mumble a “hold still”.

“How very rude!” He proclaimed with an extravagant wave of his hand, forcing me to turn my head to him. “I am Sir Ryan Alexander the Third, and this,” He gestured grandly at the petite girl still playing with my hair, “is my apprentice, Jessica!” The dark haired girl looked up and offered me a friendly smile.

I was sitting squarely on the ground now, feeling very disheveled.

I didn’t know what to say. I was so confused by there politeness.

I noticed that their skin tone looked exactly like the Cullen’s, and they were both gorgeous. The only thing I saw that differed was their eyes. They were a hazy shade of purple--not the beautiful gold--but equally as mesmerizing.

I knew they were vampires, but I couldn’t make sense of they’re obvious uniqueness.

“What is your name, my dear?” Ryan smiled, his perfect white teeth gleamed.

“Um.” I swallowed, “Alexis.” I responded feebly. I was beginning to feel very dizzy as I watched his hovering hand near my shoulder.

“What a beautiful name! It fits, I think.” He gave me a bitter sweet smile that made his eyes tighten. Ryan was aged, you could tell.

The young girl—who abruptly stopped playing with my hair—moved to my line a vision, as Ryan swiftly moved to the side. “Tell me,” She began, her eyebrows drawn, “what are you doing off here in the woods? Why aren’t you in school?” Jessica jutted her thumb in the direction of the main building in the distance without looking.

I bit my lip as my eyes darted away from hers nervously. “I- it’s just…er…some problems at school. Nothing really.” I laughed awkwardly, forcing a smile.

“Running away from problems is never the answer, Ma’am.” Ryan winked playfully, tilting his head to the side with a grin when Jessica nodded in agreement. They were odd people. But who were they really? I was deeply intrigued by them; this new curiousness rose above the fear now.

I pondered if they knew the Cullens.

“Excuse me,” I said, interrupting their subtle chuckles, “Who are you?”

They gave me puzzled looks. “We already told you.” Ryan spoke first.

“No, like—I mean—why are you here; in Forks? What are you?” I clarified carefully, gesturing towards them.

Jessica looked towards her superior for the answer, who chuckled at the question. Sighing he took a seat in front of me, crossing his legs Indian style. The girl gracefully returned to her position on her knees behind me, picking out yet another lock of hair to fiddle with.

“We,” Ryan began, pointing between Jessica and himself, “are Nomads, in a sense.”

“Nomads?” I wondered, he had lost me there.

“Nomads are traveling…eh…people-”

“-I already know about vampires.” I interjected, seeing him cringe when he had said ‘people’.

“Ah, well that makes things much, much easier.” The strawberry blonde man nodded to himself. “

“Well, nomads are traveling vampires. We belong to no coven. A coven being a family of vampires staying together all the time. Nomads usually range from one to three members, we travel the countryside, to be closer to nature, you know.” Ryan motioned grandly at the trees like they were gods.

“Ryan and I are more or less rogues.” Jessica spoke up this time. “We used to be apart of the Volturi, an elite group of vampires in Italy. They are like our royal family, they make the laws.”

Vampires have laws? I thought to myself incredulously. That’s strange…

“If you break a law, the Volturi will come for you and most likely take your life.” She explained upon noticing my confused expression.

“Depending on how Aro feels that day, of course.” Ryan mumbled quietly, pulling at a few blades of grass out of the moist soil with his lanky fingers.

My lips pursed, but I decided that I wouldn’t ask about this ‘Aro’ character just yet. I needed more details first.

“Well, Ryan and I were apart of the Volturi,” Ryan twitched uncomfortably, “at one time…”

“What happened?” I dared to ask that question, even after turning to see the pained look on her face.

“The Volturi were sent out on a mission one day about seven years ago. It was over a human that knew about the vampire world. You see, that’s a rule; that no human can know of us.” Jessica sent me an apologetic look over my shoulder. “I happened to know this human, she was the daughter of a good friend of mine when I was still a human. I had seen her grow up, I couldn’t just murder her, you know?” I nodded sympathetically, urging her to continue.

“I defended her, and Ryan did, too. Which angered the leader, Aro. He claimed us to be breaking the laws as well and originally sentenced us to death. Later, however, he changed his mind. Saying he understood out reasons. He told us to leave Volterra and the Volturi and to never return. Of course to keep our lives, we agreed. We consider ourselves nomads, but amongst other of our kind we are considered outcasts—rogues.” The dark haired girl’s violet eyes dropped to the forest floor along with her hands.

“Did…did the girl live?” I braved. By the angry way her brows furrowed, I could tell it didn’t end well.

“They killed her anyway.” She said through clenched teeth.

“Oh.”

I looked down, the air had become very tense and I was squirming under the girl’s cold touch on the back of my neck as she resumed her toiling.

“Um…let me get this straight.” I held up both palms to justify my clearance of the matter. “You guys are ex members of some law making vampire clan, hated by other vampires, and now you’re roaming through Forks. I understand that, but do you—like humans?”

I had to ask; but I was terrified of their answer. To my dismay, they nodded. “So you drink human blood?” I slid away from Jessica, pushing my back against the tree trunk; so hard the bark dug into my skin painfully.

Ryan burst into fits of laughter. “What?! No! Never!” He continued to chuckle whole heartedly, as if what I said was that hilarious. Not to me it wasn’t.

“We love humans. We don’t drink human blood, we feed from certain types of animals and we’ve learned how to consume man-made food as well.” Jessica explained cautiously, attempting to approach me; which I rejected by further scooting myself back.

This brought me back to thoughts of Jasper. Did his family feed off humans? Surely not, or they wouldn’t attend school, right?

These sudden memories brought the twinge of tears to the rim of my eyes.

“Oh, Alexis don’t cry!” Ryan said, finally composing himself, we won’t hurt you.” He said cooed comfortingly placing a hand on my shoulder; Jessica smiled, too.

I smiled a bit in return, they were very kind, but I couldn’t be sure.

“Let me ask you, since I know about the vampires, will the Volturi come for me, too?” My voice shook slightly, betraying the strength I’d mustered to push back the tears.

Ryan nodded solemnly, “Well, yes, most likely. But there are ways to hide from them, and if they don’t find out about this treason we have caused, then you will be safe. But should they come, we will face the consequences as well.” He assured me, but I shook my head in protest.

“But, you weren’t the ones to tell me about the vampires. It was someone else, you wouldn’t be in any trouble.”

The petite vampire perked at this. “That’s right! You did say that you already knew of the vampires before we even spoke about it. Might I ask, who told you?”

My mind was conflicted. I didn’t want to get Jasper into any trouble. What if these people went to tell the vampires about Jasper’s betrayal?

I optioned for trying my luck at lying, maybe they would fall for it. I knew I would feel bad for not telling the truth to such kind people, but I had to protect him and his family, no matter how much of a jerk he was to me.

“It was a boy I met on—” I started, but I never got the chance to finish, because someone—a perfect, beautiful voice—had called my name out through the trees.

“Alexis!” You could hear a whooshing sound coming from the leaves as this person moved into sight with sharp grace.

The golden haired boy from earlier was now standing angrily above all of us. “Jasper, I—” I began again, but—as before—I was interrupted by more figures piling into view. A blonde girl, a very tall, buff man, Edward Cullen, and the pixie haired one. They all wore a look of shear worry; except for Jasper. Who still looked absolutely livid.

Jessica and Ryan zipped to their feet; she crouched in front of him defensively.

And so it was a stand-off.