I sit here alone, on the bus again. Like every other morning Monday through Friday. The big red buss rattles on down the long coast road. The sun shines through the window at the front of the bus where I sit. I look down at my hands. The blue in my veins has subsided dramatically since this morning when I woke up in a cold sweat. That same dream again. I smile and move over slightly as my best friend Sarah falls into the seat next to me. She smiles at me and I smile back. Neither of us ever feel like speaking on the mornings. I don't need to speak though, I can hear what she's thinking. "I should really have done that maths homework" I hear in her thoughts. I smile. That thought pop's into her head at some point almost every morning. "Maybe I can say I was ill, no I used that excuse last time. I need something new. How about, I lost the work sheet? No he will ask me why I didn't come and get another one" I suddenly realise that I was reading her thoughts and look down at my hands again. Sure enough my veins are becoming a more prominent brighter, more intense, more intimidating shade of blue. I pull my cardigan sleeves down over my hand's and look up trying to concentrate on what's outside the window. I am well trained in the art of blocking out other people's thoughts. Every time I concentrate too much on listening to what someone else is thinking, all my veins start to turn blue. I don't just mean blue , I mean really blue! It starts in my hands and travels up my neck like paint has been injected into my blood stream and is slowly making its way through my body.
We pass the sheep field that tells me we are only five minutes away from college, our destination. I start to gather my things together, check my phone is in my pocket and take my head phones out of my ears. Suddenly a wave of voices hits me and I feel dizzy. Music is the only thing that stops the noise. The sea of voices are only kept at bay when I am distracted by another sound. I know what the voices are. They are the thoughts of everyone around me. If I want to I can focus in on someone's thoughts or even talk in their mind but when I do that my veins begin to change and I can't risk anyone knowing. I don't know why I am afraid of people knowing. I guess it's just an inbuilt instinct. When something wrong and weird happens to you, you hide it from everyone for fear of rejection and discrimination. Plus it's not like my family needs anything else to break them. After my sister ran away when I was 12, things have never been the same. I don't really know what happened with my sister but 5 years ago something happened, something bad, something she had done. Then she ran away and my parents were blamed. There were lots of police in our house around that time. Then the police stopped coming and my parents packed up our bags and announced that we were moving to England. I didn't want to go but I didn't argue either. I understood enough to know why we couldn't stay. No one would talk to me at school. People would spit at me and call me scum and say awful things about my sister. They didn't talk about it but I could tell the same things were happening to my parents.
"Are you coming or not?" It was Sarah. She was stood over me. I had been so lost in my thoughts that I hadn't noticed the bus had stopped and everyone else had gotten off. "Erm yeah... Sorry. I'm coming" I say pulling my coat on and standing up. We climb of the bus and the voices get louder. I put my headphones back in. The music doesn't help much here, there are too many people, too many voices. I hurriedly say goodbye to Sarah and rush off to my lesson. There will be less people there. I look at my wrist as I walk. I have written my timetable for the day on my wrist as I do every morning. I'm awful at remembering things. There is too much of everything else going on in my head for me to remember unimportant things like my college timetable. I have art first. I smile. Art is my favourite lesson. It's so calm and quiet. My class only consists of 9 people and no one really speaks much. No one other then Brandon but I don't mind him. For some reason I can't read his thoughts and I like that. It's peaceful. I walk in and sit down at the desk next to him.
"Morning" He smiles. I really don't understand how he manages to look so awake and alive at this hour in the morning but he does. His green eye's sparkling, his blond hair, soft and smooth, falling perfectly into place as if he's spent hours and hours taming it into position. "Hi" I reply.
"You gonna take out the ear phones or am I going to have to try and talk over the music?" He raises his eye brows at me.
"Sorry" I laugh unplugging myself. I sit down next to him and open up my sketch book. I turn to the newest drawing I have been working on. It's the place I see in my dreams. The arched roof, the stone floors, the glass doors leading off into other, small office type rooms. Then there is the boy. He is there sometimes. Talk, dark and noisy. The exact opposite of Brandon yet somehow comforting and understanding. I don't know how I can think all this when I have never met the guy but somehow I can just tell. "Who's that?" Brandon asks pointing at the drawing of the tall dark boy in my sketch. "Just er... someone out of a book a was reading" I smile. He smiles back. That sweet, genuine smile and for once I can appreciate it because I hear no other noise then the sound of breathing and pencil's scratching on paper. "What are you drawing?" I ask looking over at his sketch pad. He has drawn a beautiful image of a flower. There is so much detail in the petals that I wonder how he has ever look that closely at a petal in order to know what to draw. "That's beautiful" I whisper.
"Okay don't get weird on me Flora" He laughs. I laugh too brushing my straight brown hair out of my blue eyes. "I'm not getting weird" I say playfully punching him in the arm. At the same time as I do this the last two members of the class walk in. Dianna and Megan. They smirk at me as they walk past my desk. I look away from them, It's easier to look away. "What rubbish has that Brandon drawn this time" I hear Megan chide. How dare she? I wouldn't care if she was insulting my work or if Brandons work wasn't any good but I don't understand how she has the nerve to criticize his perfect art work. "Urg he's just trying to show off. What a snob" She speaks again. This time I can't stop myself and I stand up. "Do you want to say that again?" I ask her. "What?" she replies. "You insulted Brandon's work, your just jealous"
"She didn't say anything" Diana says. Everyone's watching me now. I feel my cheeks burn red. "But I heard you" I say quietly. Diana smirks but Megan just stares at me. I can't take it I turn around and walk out of the room. There is no teacher in the room yet. She doesn't usually come until half an hour into the lesson. I stand outside the door in the empty corridor and sigh. What just happened? I heard her but no one else did? Suddenly it dawns on me. She didn't say it out loud, she said it in her head. I read her thoughts and she knew. I know that she knew, I can tell. Thinking back to the look she was giving me before I walked out. My thoughts are disturbed by the sound of the classroom door opening and closing. I pray that it is Brandon coming to see what's wrong but as I look up it's my worst fear's confirmed. Megan walks towards me. She's bigger than me, by quite a lot. She could take me easily if she chose to. "What the hell was that?" The demands storming towards me.
"What" I reply timidly.
" You knew what I was thinking! How did you do that" She said standing too close to me. " I really don't know what you mean-"
"Don't lie to me freak" She says pushing me up against the wall. I feel the anger start to build up inside of me. My hands start to tingle and I know what's happening. I can see my hands in my mind. The blue slowly creeping up my veins. I need to calm down. I can't let Megan see my hands. "Look I don't know what you mean!" I say a desperate twinge to my voice. Her cold brown eyes bore into my bright blue ones. Then she releases me. For a small second I think she's going to leave it there but I blink and suddenly her fist meets my jaw and a pain erupts in the side of my face. I turn my head back to look at the and I see that she is preparing for another hit. This time I am prepared. As she swings her arm, I duck and her fist slams into the wall. She yelps in pain and turns on me. I take the opportunity and run for it but she runs after me. She is faster than me and I only make it 3 metres down the corridor before she reached me. However at the last second something weird happened. It was like time slowed down. I turned and pointed the palms of my hands towards her. A strange blue light left my wrists and hit Megan square on the chest. She flew backwards and landed sickeningly on her back. She jumped up and backed away. Brandon and another boy from the class came running out of the class room. They both stared at the scene for a second trying to work out what was going on. Brandon was the first to move. He ran over to me. He stood a metre from me and started at me. "Flora, your eyes" he stammered.
"What?" I whispered but he backed away. I ran. I ran to the bathroom and locked myself in the first cubical. I pulled my mobile phone out of my jeans pocket and flicked on the front camera so that I could see my face. I nearly dropped my phone there and then. My eyes were bright blue! And I don't just mean fluorescent, I mean literally glowing! I fight back a sob. I remember the way Brandon looked at me, like I was a monster. I am a monster. What did I do to Megan? What happened? It was like I pushed her but my hands didn't touch her skin. I sink to the floor and cry.