Cursed

I sat wringing my fingers around each other, tapping my foot off the seat beneath it, and rolling my teeth around my plump bottom lip, threatening to break it open with too much pressure. I stared at the back of Luna’s back, waiting for her to send some sort of sign that she’d figured out who this guy was and what his problem was with me. It was one thing for him to be sitting a couple seats away from me, facing me, but it was on a whole new plane for him to be staring at me, waiting to gather my attention and then wink at me. I felt like this was uncharted waters, but knowing Luna, this was her famous No-Man’s-Land walk. Just utterly fearless, she was.

I stared holes through her back, fleetingly glancing at the hanging digital clock. We only had another minute before the five minute warning bell would sound and she was still sitting with her back to me, kicking her feet leisurely. She would roll her hand and nod to something he said, even though it didn’t look like he was saying anything at all.

Holding her finger up to him, she twisted around and sent me a quick but over exaggerated wink before turning back to him. That was that, the five minute bell warned me to get going off to class. Luna didn’t hop off the table, didn’t stop swinging her legs, and didn’t acknowledge the students scampering off to class. But I did, and I followed the flow like it was somewhere I belonged.

As I flooded off to Earth and Space, landed in my seat, and tossed my bag to the middle of the blacktop lab table, I found I couldn’t focus on details around me. They were blurry, blended, and enough to scorch that migraine hiding in my temples alive and kicking. This meant that I couldn’t pay attention, couldn’t pretend like I cared about how to find the dew point and point of freezing from ground level and sea level to mountain level. Couldn’t even vainly attempt to understand how optical illusions made the weather chillier but the air thicker.

Spending the hour in silence, doodling in my journal and keeping my mind void of all thoughts of anything besides how to perfect these eyes that I was drawing was just the way to go.

“Sadie?” Mr. Dwan called, his eyes probing and challenging me to actually look at the bright-lighted LCD screen.

I didn’t give in. I focused my eyes on the black countertop beneath the screen, which was as good as it was going to get. “Hmm?”

“What is below sea level?” he said with a humph to his end statement. The audacity of some people, it astounds me.

“Sand?” I deadpanned for the obvious. Like I stated, I really couldn’t be bothered to pay attention. The fact that he was calling on me to begin with was making the migraine scream in my mind, shooting steam from my ears and turning my eyesight red with pain and anger. People snickered and covered their mouths to keep from getting a haughty death glare.

I couldn’t see it because if I removed my eyes from the dark depth of his countertop, I’d be blinded and probably pass out from immense pain, but I could tell by way of his response that he wore the look of annoyance on his face. “Do you think this is funny? You need this credit for graduation next year, miss. I suggest you take this class seriously.”

“Aye, aye, chief.” I mumbled as I turned my head back down to my journal and smudged the eyes to make them look hazy and glassy. Mr. Dwan didn’t bother me anymore and I made it look less and less like I didn’t care. I was great at faking the part, apparently.

After another fifteen minutes, which felt like fifteen years by my standard, the bell released us and I made a sly getaway before Dwan could call me over to his desk. I’d pay the price later, but I needed to get to Study Hall where seclusion was key and silence was expected. I needed to drift off into my own land and wait for the migraine to slither back into a ball at the edge of my spinal cord.

I pressed myself into the row of seats closest to the wall and leaned my back on the painted cement blocks, journal propped up by my knees and headphones jammed tight into my ears. I picked this spot specifically because no one usually filed in around me by at least three seats each way. That was the glory of having a Study Hall. No one ever had the option to pick and have one unless you were an exceptional Junior or an already credit-satisfied Senior. So, in hindsight, Study Hall classes never really completely filled up.

On this faithful day of random happenstances, I was blissfully unaware that anyone could be around me, would be sitting within reach of me. But, as I scribbled and doodled around on a fresh page in my journal, I could feel eyes staring over my shoulder and peering down into my private drawings.

Whipping around and crushing my journal to my chest, I saw the bright eyes of Peeping Tom peeping his Tom-like eyes onto my pages. Breathlessly and abiding by the class rules, I whispered, “What are you doing?”

His eyebrow arched toward his forehead with a certain angry feel. “What was that you were drawing?”

“None of your business.” I snapped almost too loudly. I don’t know who this creep thought he was if he thought he could come into this class and interrogate me.

Pulling free my private journal—the journal I wrote all of my dreams and reveries in, which hid all of the secrets of the secret life of Sadie Moore—he flipped the book around to face me. A very rough sketch of this kid’s face was on the page with his eyes that were glassy from afar and the downfall of hair trying to cover them. “You’ve made it my business.”

Trying to snatch the journal back, my fingertips collided with the smooth, chilled skin of his wrist. It all flashed reverse. Going back in time with a jolt, I watched a playback of his first hour English class, his boredom bombarding through his mind, flashed through the one-sided conversation with Luna, all the way back until he was sitting there watching me. “It’s her.” Sounded through his—and now my—mind.

That was when I blinked back to reality. It was like it hadn’t happened, almost like one of my reveries, but I knew it had happened. And judging by the look of astonishment and pointed anger blazing in those silvery eyes, I think I knew he did too.

“Who are you?” I whispered, not because it was the rules and I feared getting yelled at, but because I was shell-shocked and dumbfounded by this happening. No such thing had happened before, but what a sensational rush it had felt like to be trapped in one passing moment of someone’s mind.

Granted, I was a weird child. I kept to myself, I suffered from long-term chronic migraine syndrome, I was linked to the past of a teenage boy from beyond my time, but never had something so weird ever happen to me.

Dropping my journal into my lap, he ripped his wrist away from my touch, rubbing his fingers into the skin with a scared, defenseless expression, like I’d zapped him, burned him with my touch.

“None of your business.” He echoed, but his voice was hollowed out. “Next time you send out your little poodle on a spree to find out details about someone else, try doing it yourself.”

“What are you talking about?” I sneered, folding my journal closed and bound, pretending he hadn’t ripped it from my fingers and shoved it in my face.

His eyes bored into mine, staring deep, like he was trying to suck my soul from my gaze. “Don’t play dumb. Most guys don’t find it attractive, Sadie.”

“How do you know my name?” I could feel my eyes narrow but my bottom lip quivered. Now it was my voice that hollowed out and deceived me.

He ignored my question studiously, “Next time, Sadie, next time you want answers, don’t send someone else to do it. It shows cowardice and shamefulness. Take responsibility for your actions.”

“Who died and gave you the right to become my father? I didn’t send her out to ask you questions, bro. I didn’t do anything. She did it all on her own, so if you’re going to demean someone, take it up with her.” I bit back harder, my mind bubbling and boiling in pain and strain.

“Bro?” he sneered, his eyes blazing a melted metal, “You don’t even know who I am, little girl. Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to mess with a predator unless you were ready to become the prey?”

I straightened my back so that it leaned perfectly against the brick with my own eyes blazing something heated and angry back at him. I whispered, “Are you threatening me?”

He mimicked my moves, showing just how tall he really was, towering over me by a whole head. “Depends how you regard it.”

Without tearing my eyes away from him, I felt my jaw slacken. “I think you need to move.”

He just stared at me. All of the recent anger was disarmed and dislodged from his eyes. “Now?”

Voice turning gravelly, I muttered, “Now.”

“He threatened you?”

Luna’s skepticism was very much not needed right now. Yet, still here she was, sitting beside me on the bus and giving me that sympathetic, you’ve-gone-a-bit-too-far look on her face. “Are you sure it was a threat? It could have been just a friendly warning.”

“You call telling me that I’ve just become prey a friendly warning?” she shrugged, “What the hell kind of friends are you hanging around with?”

She cracked a smile in a sort of way that redeemed hope in her features. I wonder how long it would take for her to realize that this situation was hopeless. Releasing a sigh that released the tension in my temples the slightest, I mumbled, “I wish I could say I was freaked out about this, but I’m not. That’s what’s weird. It just aggravates me that he’s threatening me.”

“What were his exact words?”

I had to think on it. The way he’d said it was like a riddle almost, a twist in his words. “Um, something like: You don’t mess with a predator unless you’re ready to be the prey.”

“Well, that’s just kind of…” her voice trailed off, her fingers tapping on the brown leather of the seat in front of her for inspiration. “Promising.”

I sighed again because every time I did, it made my migraine wither and curl into that ball at the back of my head. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“So, about tonight,” she started her eyes sparkling at the very thought.

I shook my head, “Luna, I already told you I wouldn’t go. This wasn’t exactly the topic changer I was looking for, you know.”

“What better a way to get your mind off of things than to dance on a black floor with pretty flashing lights and pretty damn fine guys? Seriously, chick, you could find that you’d have more fun than not.”

Scoffing, I whipped my dark gaze at her. “You’re saying that making a complete ass out of myself in front of a bunch of hot guys would be a better way to get my mind off of this guy than to bury myself in Supernatural? Dean’s plenty hot for all of the guys inside those doors.”

“Personally, I was always more of a Sam type of gal.” Luna said with haughty arrogance, turning her nose to the air and crossing her arms like a spoiled brat.

“Such a shocker.” I rolled my eyes and stared out the window.

The bus pulled to a stop and we pulled our bags onto our shoulders and filed off the bus. There was a small silence, one that could easily be filled, but neither of us jumped at the opportunity. She was thinking about going to this club and all of the ways she could coax me into going with her and I was thinking about this whole dilemma with the guy at school. I found it odd in his choice of vocabulary. Then again, who was I to judge?

Instead of talking about him, because he wasn’t much of a topic at this point, I went with her thoughts. “Even if I wanted to go—which I don’t, so don’t go getting all bigheaded on me—my mom definitely wouldn’t let me.”

“Your mom,” she started, but I threw her a look that told her not to cross this line. Even if she’d stuck up for my mom this morning, they had their withstanding differences. Like their differentiating definitions on the word “fun”. So, she settled with something much less delicate and factual. “Needs to learn to let you make your own decisions. You’re nearly seventeen and she won’t even let you date, let alone let you stay out until eleven on the weekends. I think she’s being a bit overprotective, if you know what I mean.”

“Of course I know what you mean,” I rolled my eyes again, my head shaking on its own accord, “You just said it. She is being overprotective, but I can’t tell her to pull back without her telling me that I’d made my decision.”

Slinking her arm around mine, Luna gave me her best sympathetic smile, “Well, chick, we all know you’re going to have to pick within the next three months.”

That was enough to kill the conversation, sever it enough to make it completely unstable beyond repair. We walked the rest of the block in silence, that same easy, almost uncomfortable silence until we pushed into my house.

My father was still at work. His presence would be a ghost until he walked into the house tonight at nine. He worked late, always. But, mom was home.

“Hey there, girls!” mom cheerily called from the living room. If we were to go in there, we’d see a laptop on a coffee table, mom sitting on the floor, and fifteen pounds worth of paper scattered around her. She was always happy when dad wasn’t home, and that made me irritated.

“Hey,” we both responded in deadbeat voices, kicking our shoes off at the landing and dropping our bags there before we jogged up the stairs to my bedroom.

Sprawling onto my bed, I leaned against the wall for support while Luna slouched in my computer chair. “You should go ask her.”

“Luna,” I groaned, loud and raspy, my eyes drooping closed. “Seriously, can’t you just chill for five minutes?”

“Well, if she says no, then it’d give me motivation to shut up.”

Peeking an eye open, I muttered, “Nothing could give you motivation to shut up.”

“I’m just hard of mind, that’s all.” She argued, her eyes narrowing slightly.

“No,” I stated, “You’re hard of head. As in, thickskulled, as in, you don’t know when to stop, when no means no.”

“That word just so happens to not be a part of my vocabulary.”

“Sadie Lynn!” my mom screamed from the living room. “Come down here!”

Staring at my floor for a moment, I thought about getting up and twisting the lock so I didn’t have to deal with her, but I knew I couldn’t. Unbidden, Luna started talking once more. “Well, here’s your chance. If she says no, I promise we’ll find something else to do tonight.”

“And if she says yes?” I challenged, but I already had a good idea of what she meant.

Her only response as I pulled myself from my bed and carried my heavy feet toward the door was a dubious, cunning smile and a quick, alluring wink.