3
By Tuesday I was jumpy for a whole other reason than super powered murderers. There had predictably been questions and demands when I got back to school, but the worst had been when I got home and Dad and Jackson demanded to know what happened, they didn't want to take any chances since I had been targeted.
What made me jumpy on Tuesday wasn't the possibility that there were psychotic killers after me, but that the new boys in school wouldn't leave me alone... Well, Kevin (I hate that name now) left me alone, he actually seemed very hostile towards me and was always glaring. Nick was always trying to make conversation with me. But, the jumpy part was that Joe Lucas was always just there. He wouldn't come near me unless he had to, he would just stand on the other side of the hall or room and stare at me. I could see his lips moving, and something was always twitching on him, but he was always staring at me with golden brown eyes - sometimes I could swear they were green, but Dad said it was some sort of PTSD. Every time I turned around he was there, when I came out of the girls bathroom he was standing across the hall. It was starting to scare me a little (or a lot) and made it almost impossible for me to concentrate on anything.
"Hey." I practically jumped out of my skin when Lilly sat across from me at lunch. "Woah, jumpy much?" She joked, but I just glanced around the room. No Lucas Brothers so far.
"Have you noticed it too? Please tell me you noticed it too." I insisted, glancing around constantly as if they would appear out of nowhere.
"Noticed what?" Lilly frowned, she looked all worried, eyeing me with concern as if I was the crazy one.
"Those brothers." I hissed, leaning in close, just in case they could hear me. "They're everywhere. They're following me, Lil, why are they following me?"
"That's your problem?" Lilly snorted, rolling her eyes. "Too many hot guys chasing you?"
"Lilly." I complained, this was serious. "I'm serious, it's creepy."
"What's creepy?" I jumped at the third voice. Distinctly male, I panicked for a second. I turned slowly to find Oliver... Flanked by those three brothers.
"Nothing." I denied quickly; how much did they hear?
"Are you three, like, triplets or something?" Lilly batted her lashes at them, clearly my panic about their growing stalking didn't bother her.
"No." Nick spoke. Nick is always the one who talked for the three of them. Kevin only talked to his brothers, and Joe just always seemed to mutter. "We were born in the same year to the same father, but we had different mothers." He explained, gesturing for his brothers to sit as he sat on my right. Joe sat on my left, and Oliver and Kevin sat next to Lilly on the other side of the table.
"Hurt." Joe mumbled, my eyes flew to him; he was the one that scared me the most, and he was the one that followed me the most. And then I would remember the warmth of his arms and the way it just felt so safe to have him hold me. "Hurt. Hurt."
"Ignore him." Nick waved him off, just like he always did. I jumped when something grabbed my left arm - my broken arm - and let out a little yelp when I saw it was the brother in question. Joe's eyes were almost glowing bright green as he held my arm and stared at it. I was caged in between two brothers and I could feel myself starting to panic. I squeezed my eyes shut tight and held in my scream.
"Miley?" I could hear how weirded out Oliver was without even have to look at him. When I finally opened my eyes Joe was still there, but his eyes were brown again. Normal brown. Normal, non-deadly, human brown.
"I'm fine." I shook my head. Why did I keep seeing things? Why couldn't my brain just forget that day ever happened? "I'm fine." I repeated, turning my eyes away from the boy.
"Can I draw?" Joe's voice brought me back to him to see him staring at me with bright brown eyes and a hopeful smile. Why was there always two different extremes with him?
"Um." I licked my lips nervously. "I-I guess." As soon as the words left my mouth he had a pen and was uncapping.
"That should keep him occupied for a while." Nick commented with a roll of his eyes.
Well, Nick was right; I didn't get my left arm back for the rest of the lunch hour. I also didn't do anything else, I just sat staring down at my food as everyone talked around me and Joe drew on my cast. What was wrong with me? If I kept seeing those damn Boodlust Brothers everywhere I'd never be able to live again until they killed me. And I really didn't want them to kill me. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat, I couldn't look at people without seeing them, I couldn't be touched without jumping out of my skin.
"Um... Joe?" The bell had rung an everyone else was starting to scatter back to their classes, but I couldn't. Brown eyes darted up to me, bright and wild as his pen stalled in my cast. "I have class." I tried to pull my arm back, his fingers were in a vice grip.
"No." Joe said simply, as if that would excuse me from getting detention for not showing up - again.
"Yes." I frowned, trying to stand up, but it was kind of hard when my arm was being held down. "Let go of me."
"Stay." He countered, his own frown marring his face.
"Let. Go." I could feel myself starting to panic. "Please?" That one word seemed to bring about a change in him, and not the smiling one like on Monday.
"Please." Joe muttered, finally letting go of my arm, getting and clutching his head. "Please. Please." He started pacing back and forth, muttering under his breath. I took my chance though, instead of sitting around I got up and ran for the double doors of the cafeteria. I didn't stop running until I was outside my next class, panting and feeling clammy and cold. I took a deep breath to try to calm myself before I went in, but it came out as a scream when I met a pair of eyes.
Red eyes!
Bright, violent red eyes of the Red Bloodlust Brother. I stared at those eyes, feeling myself become paralysed with fear. The eyes blinked and then disappeared as the door opened. It was Nick Lucas, staring at me with confused brown eyes. I backed away a couple of steps only to come into contact with something warm and solid. I turned and found myself for the second time in three days in Joe Lucas' arms. Bright and burning green he was staring at me with what could only be desire. I looked back to Nick and his eyes were red again, not brown.
"Joe." Nick spoke, his voice low and commanding. "Go home, Joe." Green eyes glared at Red and I was stuck in the middle. "Leave the girl and. Go. Home."
"Lucas, Stewart... Lucas again!" All three of us turned to the sharp sound of Miss Kunkle's voice. She was one teacher no-one wanted to cross. Sometimes she was scarier than the super powered mutant brothers. "What is going on out here?"
"Nothing, Miss Kunkle." Nick turned to her with a charming smile. "Joe isn't feeling well, he's going to head home. Right, Joe?"
"No." The sheer panic in his voice brought my attention back to him. His eyes were brown, wide and full of fear. I looked to Nick, his eyes were brown too. My imagination, I told myself, I was just imagining things. Though, I hadn't seen the Red eyes before, it was usually just Blue and Green. "Stay. Stay. Stay."
"Lucas and Lucas to your seats. Separately." Miss Kunkle ordered, pointing back into her classroom. "Stewart, to the nurse, you look pale and clammy." I was surprised, but more than eager to comply none-the-less.
Bloodlust Brothers
I was still sitting in the nurses office when Jackson came to pick me up. I'd been alone all afternoon and had started to study my cast. There were all the signatures from my friends - even Jackson had started sign it before he got distracted and I ended up with just Jackso without the N - but the part that stood out the most was bright green. It almost looked like it glowed, I frowned at it; it was just JOSHEP LUCAS. But, both the S' were backwards and Joseph was spelt wrong. And it was surrounded by some sort of weird curved line with a straight part at the end like an overly bent candy cane made of green.
Weird!
"Who is... Jos-hep Lucas?" Is how Jackson announced his presence, reading the name over my shoulder.
"Joseph." I corrected, self-consciously covering the cast. "He's this new kid whose totally creeping me out." I shook my head, I needed to get out of here.
"What did he do?" Jackson's voice was low and threatening, blocking the doorway so I couldn't leave.
"He didn't do anything." I denied, which I guess is true... Actually he kind of helped me a couple of days ago, and drawing on my cast wasn't anything bad - especially since I said he could do it. "He just-..." How do I explain Joe without using the words Crazy or Insane? "I think he has, like, problems in his head or something, it's just unsettling sometimes when he won't stop mumbling."
"Hmph." Was Jackson response, grabbing my right arm and starting to lead me out of the building. "Dad's makin' chilli for dinner, so you know what that means." He made conversation when we were in his car.
"Parent meeting." I groaned, Dad always made chilli when it was his turn to host the neighbourhood parents. Malibu wasn't a big place to begin with, but when those monsters started terrorising the place the population started dropping dramatically. Especially the adults. And when the adults were murdered their kids were left orphans, after a while the orphanages filled up and they would have been left on the streets since help from the rest of the world had been cut off.
So a bunch of parents and adults got together and decided to take in the orphaned kids. It wasn't compulsory, just everyone who volunteered was assigned as many kids as they could look after, and every month the parents would meet to decide what would happen in the future. That's actually why Dad had made me Jackson's responsibility; so he knew that we'd look after each other when he was busy with the kids he'd adopted after their families were killed.
"Yeah." Jackson confirmed needlessly. "So, we've got to stay upstairs all night. Fun." He rolled his eyes as he parked his car. "Apparently there's some new guy coming who Dad thinks wants to pawn off his nephews on someone else." Great! If Dad decided he liked the nephews he'd probably offer to take them. He always took boys - because he wanted me and only me to be his little girl - I was getting very tired of the testosterone I lived with.
"Hurray." I muttered dryly, grabbing my school bag.
"Hey, Bud." Dad looked up from his pot of chilli when we walked in.
"Hi, Dad." I grabbed a banana from the fruit bowl since I didn't actually eat my lunch and started for the stairs.
"Some of the parents arrived early, there's some boys upstairs watching TV in the big room." He warned; the Big Room as he put it used to be the master bedroom with it's own bathroom and a closet that was even bigger than the room itself - it used to be my closet for annahHay ontanaMay - and had been changed into a bedroom for half the kids Dad took in. Jackson kept his own room, and I moved into the Hannah closet as a bedroom instead, Dad has his own room and that left the former guest room and my former room for the other kids.
"'Kay." I went back and kissed his cheek before I went upstairs. I had to pass through the big room to get to my room, so I guess I'd have to interact with the guests.
"Miley!" I froze in the doorway, my banana half-bitten still in my mouth as I stared at the boys. Four boys sitting on one of the beds watching TV. The other boys wouldn't be home for a while - they were probably at the beach - so it was all new boys. Except I knew three of them. Joe, Nick and Kevin Lucas were sitting there, all three of them plus a fourth, smaller boy were staring at me.
"You know them?" Jackson was right behind me, but he just pushed past me into the room and frowned at the four boys.
"We go to school together." Nick answered, Nick was always the one who talked for all of them. "Who are you?"
"I'm her brother." Jackson tried to look threatening, I'm sure, but the poor guy didn't exactly have the height or the muscles to threaten properly.
"Brother?" Joe looked confused, as if it was just baffling that I could have a sibling. Hello, he's got two brothers of his own.
"Yeah. Who are you?" Huh, from Joe's reaction I guess Jackson could be threatening. Joe looked positively terrified of my brother.
"I'm Nick, these are my brothers Kevin, Joe and Frankie." Nick spoke again, I'm actually pretty sure that saying Brother was one of the only times he'd talked to someone that wasn't his brothers or me. I still don't know what his fascination with me was. I guess the younger one was one of them too, he was least half their age - like, he was 8, tops, but probably younger. "Ignore Joe, he's crazy." Was that his opening line when meeting people or something?
"Not crazy, Nick. Not crazy!" Joe glared, clenching his fists tightly. I couldn't say I blamed him - even though I suspected he was a little crazy -being introduced to every as 'ignore him, he's crazy' would make me pretty pissed off too.
"You okay, Miles?" Jackson looked at me funny, I realised I still had my banana in my mouth, unbitten.
"Fine." I shook my head, I finished biting my banana and started to move through the room to my room. This is one of the times having to go through here to get to my room sucked.
Okay, so I guess this is going to be a slow burn story, but I don't know for sure. I might speed it up, or it might keep at this pace.
And I just heard a rumor that Joe and Blanda broke up? Can anyone confirm or deny? Joe's twitter doesn't give anything away so I don't actually know.
Also, I don't want to do this again, but the numbers aren't stacking up.
143 views to the last chapter with only 1 review... (thanks a million bazillion tonnes, Rosakila. :D).
5 reviews or no updates! Sorry... Not sorry. :(
