Chapter 2 - Juxtaposition

She was used to the stares, the curious looks, the wide-eyes of both fear and wonder, and the whispers that fluttered around.  She welcomed them with a glare that sent people scurrying away.  Cockroaches…

She’d been to a dozen different schools all over the state of Arizona, never staying in one place longer than a few months.  She didn’t mind the repetition—just as long as she didn’t get comfortable.

Getting comfortable was never a good thing.

She couldn’t allow herself to let her guard slip for even a second.

A second was all it took.

She found the administration office without difficulty—they were always stuck near the main entrances at schools.  Any moron could figure that out.

The secretary stared at her as she approached her desk.  The nameplate in front of her read: Ms Richardson.  She met the woman’s eyes and could see the fear, like she half expected to see Mikayla whip a gun out of her pockets and point it between her eyes.

Crossing her arms in front of her chest, Mikayla looked at her crossly and barked, “Mikayla Reed.  I’m the new girl.”

Realizing that she had been staring, she snapped out of her daze and swore under her breath.  She turned and began shuffling through some papers.  “Right, Principal Baker said we were getting a new student today…” she mumbled, trailing off as she rummage through the papers before she found what she was looking for.  “Here we are: your schedule and a map of the school.  Do you want me to call someone down from the student body to show you around?”

Mikayla cursed and grabbed the papers from her hand before stomping out of the office.  She hoped that answered the woman’s question.

Two steps out of the office and the bell rang to signal students to head to class.  A flood of teenagers began to pour in through the front doors then, laughing and chatting as they went to their lockers.

She hung back against the wall as she examined her schedule of classes.  Biology first followed by English.  She tried not to sigh in boredom, and instead focused her energy on grimacing.

“Hey, you new?  Need a hand finding your first period?”

Great, already someone was trying to be nice to her.

She glanced up from her schedule and glared at him.

First thing she noticed were his warm russet-brown eyes, then the eyebrow piercing, and then the friendly smile.  She supposed he fell into the category of “attractive”, but she wouldn’t know and didn’t care about that sort of thing.

She knew she would benefit from a helping hand on the first day, but didn’t want to give him the impression that she wanted him to hang around after that.

“Gee, what gave me away?” 

He chuckled lightly and glanced at her schedule.  “So what do you have?  Oh, biology with me.”

“Must be my lucky day,” she grumbled, taking a step away from him.

He was too close for comfort.

He shrugged off her attitude and didn’t seem to notice her shift away.  “It’s not all bad.”

Ugh, he was that type of person.  “Optimistic, or faking sincerity?”

“Does it have to be one or the other?”

She grunted and started walking away from him.

“Hey, you’re going the wrong way,” he called after her.

She closed her eyes and sighed in exasperation before turning back towards him.  “Fine.  I’ll follow you, oh great leader.”

“No need to be sarcastic,” he said.  “My name’s Isaac.  Isaac Wilson.  What’s yours?”

“I’ll probably have to introduce myself in front of the class, so I’m sure you’ll find out then anyway.”

“Why not now?  It’s kind of rude to not return a formal introduction.”

“Fine,” she growled, followed by a mild curse.  “I’m Mikayla Reed.  Call me Mikay.”

“Why Mikay?  Mikayla sounds pretty.”

“Exactly,” she retorted.

“Oh I see,” he said, as if he had made a miraculous discovery.

He glanced at her helmet in her hands.  “How about we quickly find your locker so you can put your helmet away?”

“Fine.”

He glanced at her papers and led her down the hallway.

She noticed how many of the students recognized him and greeted him warmly.  Great, Mr. Popular was helping her out—just what she needed.

She hung back a little in hopes of drawing less attention to herself by the simple act of being near him.

He was about to turn around a corner when he realized that he had lost her in the crowd.  But no sooner had he begun to worry that she appeared like an apparition from the shadows.  She really did look intimidating, and he couldn’t help but find difficulty in swallowing the forming lump in his throat.  He motioned for her to join him as he pointed to what must have been her locker.

“Here we are.  Number 666.”

Her heart jumped in her throat.  It couldn’t be coincidence, could it?  Instead, she grumbled, “Awesome.  My lucky number.”

She fumbled with the lock, hoping that her sudden onslaught of nervousness didn’t leak through her eyes as she tightened her jaw.  She opened the locker and carefully placed her helmet inside with both hands.

Isaac was completely silent as he watched her.  Something about the way she handled her helmet tugged at the corner of his psychoanalytic mind.  The action juxtaposed the behavior she exhibited earlier.  He honestly didn’t know what to say to her.

He examined her stormy gray-blue eyes, but they looked off somehow.  The irises did not appear to have any kind of depth… if that made any sense at all.  Her eyes suddenly shifted to look at him from the corner, the movement causing the irises to shift unnaturally and for the briefest second, he thought he glimpsed another color behind them.  Was it possible that she wore colored contact lenses?

“What are you looking at?”

Taken aback, he opted for the truth instead of trying to deny being caught in the act.  “Your eyes.  They’re a very interesting color.”

She grunted and slammed the locker closed.  “Alright, where to now?” She quickly snatched the papers from his hands and looked them over.

“Biology class.”  He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb.  “It’s just down this hallway.”

She turned her gaze ahead and marched past him in search of the classroom.

Shaking his head in utter disbelief, he watched as she walked away.  The crowd of students stepped out of her path like she was the personification of the black plague.  

Walking to his locker just a few metres down from hers, he was grabbed from behind and his shoulders shaken.

“Hey man, how’d it go?” It was Brandon. He stared at Mikayla as she disappeared down the hallway.  “She looked pretty intense!”

Isaac noticed that Brandon wasn’t the only one watching her.  Her attire really did draw attention to herself.  He caught himself staring at the chains dangling behind her rear and quickly turned away, feeling embarrassed for some reason.

He opened his locker and swapped a few items from his backpack before shouldering it shut.  It suddenly occurred to him that he didn’t see her with a backpack.  No backpack meant no writing utensils, and no notebooks or paper to use for class.

He sighed.  It’s not your problem, so don’t worry about it, he reminded himself.

When he got to class, he first noticed the hushed voices as the students whispered among themselves.  Curious looks were exchanged as Mikayla stood stoically at the teacher’s desk while he hummed and hawed over where to put her.

Everyone was already paired up at the workstations.  The students were sitting in alphabetical order up and down the rows with an empty back row.  The teacher glanced at Isaac as he entered and smiled, as if his prayers had been answered.

“Isaac.  You’ll sit in the station behind Isaac.”

Isaac wasn’t surprised, and with the last name “Wilson”, he was seated in the back corner next to Zhenhua Xang.  He went to his desk, where his partner, Zoey (as she preferred to be called since kids struggled to pronounce her name properly), looked nervous as Mikayla followed behind him.

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” she grumbled, loud enough for everyone to hear.

“There’ll be no swearing in my classroom, Miss Reed,” he announced, shooting a warning look at her back as she walked.

Isaac saw her roll her eyes when he turned and sat down in his seat before she stepped behind him.  He couldn’t help but grin a little.

The bell sounded for class to begin and their teacher, Mr. Cole, cleared his throat.  The middle-aged man with a receding salt and pepper colored hairline, called everyone to attention and announced their new student.

“Miss Reed, if you could stand up and tell us a bit about yourself.”

Isaac turned in his seat to look at her, as did everyone else in the class.

She looked annoyed, but grudgingly pulled herself up and crossed her arms in front of her relatively flat chest.  The leather jacket creaked in the silence that filled the room.  Her clothes looked as though they hung off a thin, shapeless frame with no curves, and nothing to hint of a feminine form beyond her shiny hair and beautiful, although cold-looking, face.  Her eyebrows were both pierced (twice), she had a stud in her left nostril, multiple earrings in each ear, and a ring protruded from the right side of her bottom lip.  She looked fierce.

“Call me Mikay.  Don’t touch me, or my stuff, unless you want to die.”

“Miss Reed, that is very inappropriate.  Please, have a seat.”

Isaac tried hard not to snicker as he watched her flop back down in her plastic chair.  He turned his attention forward to see their teacher scowl.

Mr. Cole went to his desk for a stack of papers and announced a pop quiz.  A groan erupted around the room as he walked up and down the rows, handing out the papers, and explaining the instructions for the quiz.  Upon reaching Isaac, Zoey, and Mikayla, he regarded Mikayla harshly before he turned and walked back to the front of the class.

Isaac quickly turned and placed a pencil in front of Mikayla.  She met his thoughtful smile with a disinterested glower, but nodded her head slightly in thanks.  His smile broadened when he turned back in his seat, seeing her reach for the pencil from the corner of his eye.

Mr. Cole designed the pop quiz on the weekend when he found out he would be getting a new student.  A pop quiz was the perfect excuse to see where she stood in the grade twelve biology curriculum.

He was not anticipating such a discouraging young woman to waltz into his classroom and spout such a foul attitude.  Such a disappointment…

Listening to the pens and pencils scratch away at the papers before him, he sat down at his desk and was suddenly over-come with exhaustion.  He reached for his coffee in a thermos and drank silently as his eyes scanned the students busily writing, and hovered particularly over the new girl.  He was surprised to see her actually filling the quiz out—and quite quickly for that matter.

He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t surprised that she was one of the first to finish.  And upon grading the quiz later, he  was shocked to see that not only had she answered every question, but she had answered every question correctly.  Interesting, he thought as he pondered this new student.

X

The day went on in the same fashion.  Isaac discovered that they had several classes together, so he helped her get around the school to every one of them, and with each introduction she gave in their shared classes, the more he caught himself grinning.  He didn’t know why he found her repeated introductions amusing.  Perhaps it was the attitude she projected, but the memory of her carefully placing her helmet into her locker, as if it were a living, breathing, fragile being, kept replaying in his mind.  It was curious—very curious indeed.

At lunchtime, he invited her to join him and his friends, but she denied the invitation with a growl, shoved her hands in her pockets, and tromped away.  He didn’t know where she went, but he imagined it would be some place quiet.

And he was right.  Mikayla left the building in searched for a quiet place outside.  Under a tree at the edge of the school grounds was where she found her solitude.  The tree had a number of thick roots crawling up out of the parched earth that proved to make the perfect seat for her to sit on.  She made herself comfortable and leaned against the tree’s rough trunk.  Closing her eyes, she exhaled, finding peace at last.

Her grandmother’s face appeared in her mind, brushing Mikayla’s thick black hair from her face and tucking it behind her ear with her knobby finger.  She ignored the shiver that coursed through her veins when the tip of her finger ever so slightly grazed Mikayla’s ear.

“I won’t always be able to protect you, áłchíní.  One of these days, I’ll be gone, and you’ll have to figure it out for yourself,” she said.

“What should I do, amá sání?” ten-year-old Mikayla asked worriedly.

Her grandmother’s dark brown eyes softened between the folds of her wrinkled lids.

“Be strong, áłchíní.  And tell no one your secrets.  It’s the only way you can protect yourself and others.”

Mikayla opened her eyes as the wind picked up her hair and whirled it around her face.  She looked up to the branches above her as the sunlight danced in her eyes between the leaves.

It felt like it had been years since amá sání, grandmother, passed away.  Mikayla would never admit it to anyone, but she really missed amá sání.  She was all Mikayla had after her parents died.  That old woman raised her for ten years.  That woman was the closest thing to “family” Mikayla had ever had.  Amá sání understood her.  True, even she kept Mikayla at a distance, but she had to.  That didn’t mean amá sání didn’t care.  If anything, her knowledge of Mikayla’s secret, of Mikayla’s curse, should have rendered her to kick Mikayla out, or worse, kill her.

She should have killed me, Mikayla thought to herself as she lowered her gaze from the fluttering leaves overhead and drew her legs up to her chest and held them tightly to herself.

She should have killed me… before I killed her.

...

Author's Note: "áłchíní" means "child", but we'll find out from what language later...

(As of April 2014) I'm aware of the "head-hopping" in this chapter, and I'll go back and fix it when I'm done writing the story.  Third person POV is not my typical style, as you can tell in this chapter, but you can see the "head-hopping" disappear over the course of the story as I get the hang of it.

Isaac is also pictured on the side.  Thanks for reading and commenting!