2 - "Noon"
"I have visions too."
Isabel froze, slowly turned, her hand to her injured nose, also serving to obscure her injured pride, and stared at Sam. He looked sincere, but then, she got the feeling he always looked that way and found herself wondering how good a liar he actually was.
"Visions?" she asked, ever the quick one.
He nodded, glanced nervously off to the side. She followed his gaze and saw the cashier from before peering at them through the door of the 7/11. She looked concerned, Isabel observed, and then her eyes widened in realization. She could've smacked herself, but she decided that would be a bad idea, considering the bloody nose.
"We should probably take this little chat somewhere private," Dean suggested, also making note of the cashier.
Like heck she was going off with two, strange guys somewhere out of the public eye. Isabel frowned at them, lips pursed, then made a motion toward her car. "I'll just follow you..."
Sam and Dean--wow, it was really easy to think of them in conjunction--looked at each other significantly. She frowned, thinking sternly, 'Yeah, I don't trust you. Deal.'
Dean frowned back at her, taking offense at her obvious distrust, but shrugged and turned away toward the car. He probably thought she was a snob...
Isabel, despite ears burning bright, rolled her eyes. She wasn't going to worry about what he thought of her, she claimed silently, then turned, marching toward her car. She noticed her drink rolling on the concrete. Pulling a disgusted face, she went back for it--snatching it up with a challenging look cast in the boys' direction. If she'd been in Elementary School, that would have been the equivalent of sticking out her tongue and saying, "So there."
Sam was already going around to the passenger's side, but Dean, who was already sitting in the driver's seat--window down, and watching Isabel in the side-mirror, tilted his chin up at her and smirked a little. God, he was getting on her nerves, she realized, and gritted her teeth as she went to get in her car.
She pulled out of the gas station's parking lot after them, tail-gating until they reached a little restaurant. They parked, and Isabel checked her reflection in the rear-view mirror before getting out. Man, she looked horrible, she saw, and rummaged around for a Kleenex, finding the box in the backseat. She spat on the two sheets she pulled out and started rubbing at the gory-looking blood under her nose and all over her chin.
A moment later, she jumped out of her skin when Dean tapped on her window. To get him back, she opened her door too quickly, making him back up to avoid the deaths of his future off-spring.
While Dean glared at her, and Sam eyed them both in the background with nervous amusement, she snapped, "Sorry," not really meaning it. "But I look like a mess. Do you want the people in there thinking you guys beat me up and kidnapped me?" She thought it was a little funny, but Dean didn't seem to share her sentiments, so she kept the irritated smile off of her face.
"Fine, whatever. We'll be inside. Sam--" Dean turned to his... friend, and nodded his head sharply to the side to indicate that Sam should follow him into the restaurant.
Isabel finished cleaning her aching, but no longer bleeding, nose, and locked up her car before going inside the little family restaurant. She glanced around, fidgeting nervously with the cuffs of her jacket, until she spotted them. She made her way around the tables, and took a bit too long deciding which man she should slide into the booth next to.
Finally, she settled on slipping in beside Sam, and sat there, eyeing the menu on the table in front of her. 'Man, am I hungry,' she thought, and before she could stop herself, she fingered the edge of the menu and flipped it open with trembling hands, and licked her lips to keep from drooling. The last person that had touched this menu had been an old man, whose hands had also trembled, but his from age. He'd joked with the pretty waitress, and his wife had smilingly tolerated it.
About that time, Isabel realized she'd left her drink in the car and wished she'd brought it in. At least then, she could've dealt with her parched throat. Not to mention, she was sweating like crazy, and her head was starting to ache.
"So," Dean said, a bit too cheerfully. "Visions. Have any lately?"
"Dean," Sam said, diplomatically, "Let's at least make introductions."
"I already know your names," she said before Dean could reply with whatever snarky remark he had lying in wait behind that ironic smile.
"Oh," Sam said, sounding a tad embarrassed. She glanced up and to the side at him, saw that he was pursing his lips uncomfortably.
She smiled. "I'm Isabel Villareal. You can pronounce it 'villuh-real' if you want. Anyway, I don't really have visions--just flashes of objects' pasts, when I touch them. What about you?" She finished up her speech, then flashed him a too-innocent grin. All the while, in the back of her mind, she realized she was nervous and acting like an idiot because of it.
"Good lord, where'd you learn to talk so much," Dean muttered under his breath, and her back stiffened in response.
"Like you're one to talk," Sam told him, bluntly, which rewarded him with a glare and a very ticked-off, "Why are you takin' her side?"
"It's called being polite, Dean," Sam returned, "You should try it sometime."
Isabel felt so uncomfortable she started to say something silly to distract them, when the waitress came up and asked them what they'd like to order. Isabel ducked her head, and murmured, "Just water, please."
"Are you sure?" the woman asked, and Isabel looked up to see the waitress giving her a sweet smile. She started to nod, scratching at the edge of the menu, nervously. Every nerve in her body was screaming at her--"Just eat something!" But then Sam briefly touched her hand and said to the waitress, "We just need a few more minutes, that all."
Isabel blinked at him, startled, and saw that he was giving the girl a polite smile. 'Innocent act,' she thought, uncharitably, but felt bad right afterward, knowing that he was probably trying to spare her embarrassment or something. That was when she realized how nice he'd been to her from the beginning, and she started to wonder why.
'Man, you have a suspicious mind,' she told herself, wryly, 'He's just being polite, like he said.'
The waitress smiled back and nodded, excused herself, and went off to go check on another table, nearby. "Don't you have any money?" Sam surprised Isabel again, by asking.
"I do," she said, all of her self-defense mechanisms kicking in. "I'm just being frugal." Oh, great excuse there, she thought, right afterward. Not to mention, she came out sounding superbly uptite. Dang it.
"Oh, please," Dean said, under his breath, and her ears started burning again. Why was he getting to her this way!
Sam said, while she was glaring daggers at her new nemesis, "We'll get it this time, don't worry about it."
She stared at him, mouth hanging open. "I can't-- I mean... You sure? I don't want to be..." She darted a glance at Dean, who was giving Sam an annoyed look. "I don't wanna irritate your boyfriend," she finished lamely. She was surprised her mouth wasn't large enough to fit two feet, by this time.
Sam laughed, while Dean exclaimed, "Boyfr--!" he glanced around, then hissed, "Boyfriend? We're brothers. I swear, the next person who assumes we're..." he waved his hand, emphatically, making a "you know" face, "...I'm gonna geld them."
"What if she's a girl?" Isabel questioned, innocently, finally unable to restrain the urge to bite back.
Sam rolled his eyes and sighed deeply, "Stop, you two. You're worse than school-children." What was he saying? That this was a round of "pull-the-pigtails"?
"All right," Isabel mumbled, "Sorry... I'll try to behave, since you guys are paying for my lunch." She frowned, the throbbing in her head increasing, and rubbed the back of her neck where the pain seemed to have originated.
Dean's subsequent look was amused, while Sam frowned in concern. "Isabel, you look a little flushed..." He touched the back of his hand to her forehead, thwarting her efforts to dodge away from him, probably because his arm was so danged long. "And your skin feels clammy--are you nauseated?" He wondered, clinically.
Isabel tried to ignore the pounding in her head long enough to see what her stomach felt like, then placed a hand over it and grimaced. "Maybe a little," she admitted.
"What is it?" asked Dean, only curious--not concerned.
"Heat exhaustion," Sam diagnosed.
Isabel blinked. That would probably explain her earlier hysteria, too, right? Or not. She was just naturally hysterical. "Are you a doctor?" she asked Sam, wondering how he knew the symptoms.
"No, I'm--" Sam began, frowned uncomfortably, pursing his lips. "Never mind. You need to re-hydrate, and don't eat too fast, either. Take the jacket off, too. That might help."
Isabel grumbled, "It's cold in here."
"Stop babying her," Dean said, nearly at the same time.
For once, she agreed. "Yeah, I'm okay. Really."
The waitress returned around then, and Dean started off with his order, which gave Sam and Isabel time to look at their menus. 'Gosh, he eats a lot,' she thought to herself, while Dean was rattling off his orders.
"I'd like the number ten, please," she said, pointing it out on the menu. Her concentration wasn't too great right then, so she was hoping it was one of the cheaper meals. She would feel guilty for making them pay more, even if Dean was getting on her last nerve.
"To drink?" the girl questioned.
"Uhm, just water," Isabel stuck with her original request.
"All right," the girl said cheerfully, after taking Sam's order, then went off again, probably to the back this time.
"About those visions...?" Sam ventured.
Isabel took a breath and thought about what she was going to say before starting. Otherwise, she knew, she would stammer and pause way too long while re-grouping her wayward thoughts. It partially came from being so shy and bad at communicating, but she was a little absent-minded too, therefore, prone to wool-gathering.
"They started about a year ago, with these really bad headaches, but they're really not visions. They're like flashes of things. If I touch something, like this salt-shaker," she let her fingers hover over the metal lid of the salt-shaker, for a moment. "Then I'll get a sort of picture of a person that used it last--what sort of person they were, what they were doing at the time they used the shaker."
"You said you were running away," Dean pointed out.
Isabel felt cold for the first time since the heat had started pounding on her through the windshield of her car. "Uhm... The flashes started with headaches, but I've always had these weird little dreams that come true. They're not usually literal, but this one..." She shivered, staring down at the faux wood surface of the table. "It scared me."
"Why?" Sam questioned, "What did you dream?"
She looked up at him, swallowing to try and wet her dry mouth. She licked her lips and managed to get out, "I dreamed that something killed me."