Step Nine ~ Hide
Alice POV
I stayed off school the next day. How could I have gone in? What if he had been there? What if he had come up to me again? What if he had spoken to me again? It had taken me hours to calm down when I'd gotten home that day. I'd been shaking and crying all evening. I was upset and angry and scared. So I'd written my letter and gone to bed, and I didn't get up the next day until the afternoon.
I stayed off school the day after that as well. And the next day. And then it was the weekend and I had two days where I didn't have to worry. But when Monday came round I knew I had to go back. The staff at school didn't notice me, but the computer system would know that I'd been off school for three days. I didn't want them to notice that. Then they might notice all the other times I'd stayed off school. They might try and ring my parents. That couldn't happen.
So I went into school. The morning was normal; I sat at the back of class, no one noticed me. No one asked where I had been, no one even looked at me. It was bliss. My nerves were building up for lunch time though. Lunch was when he'd come before. Would he come again? The nervousness resulted in more absentminded messed up drawings than usual - a girl trapped in a storm cloud, a tiny doll drowning in water, and a woman screaming in pain, all in my first two lessons.
When the bell rang for lunch, I didn't dare go to the cafeteria. Instead, I hid out in the girls bathroom. He couldn't come in here. He couldn't find me here. So I spent the lunch staring at the door of a little toilet cubicle, and several small drawings of people in pain appeared on the walls. God, I really was messed up.
When lunch ended, I went to my next class. And that's when I saw him.
It was English AP class, which meant that there were several different years in the same class. I would have guessed this guy to be a senior, and I was a junior, which I had assumed would mean we didn't have any classes together. I had been wrong.
There he was; sat bang in the centre of the room talking to Chelsea of all people. If he was talking to Stacey's best friend, he probably knew Stacey. Hell, everyone knew Stacey. His attention flicked towards me when I walked in the room. I avoided his gaze and walked straight to the back of the room, but I could feel his eyes on me. Oh God, don't start hyperventilating right here in the middle of class.
I sat with my eyes straight on my desk, but I knew he was watching me. I reminded myself to breath and got out my notebook. It was going to be fine. He couldn't come up to me in class. The teacher had started the lesson now, and you'd be an idiot to get up in the middle of Mr Packson's class - if you didn't want detention until you were forty, that is.
I tuned out to the lesson, not daring to look up from my drawing even once in the whole hour. When the bell rang, I was the first one out of the classroom. I went to my next class, but couldn't concentrate. I sat at the back on the brink of a panic attack as I thought about him. Since when had he been in my class? Had he always been there, and I'd just been too zoned out to notice? Or was he new? That would make sense - I didn't recognise him.
But what was he doing here? We didn't get new people here very often. And more to the point, if he was new, why had he chosen me out of hundreds of other students to come and talk to at lunch the other day? Me, the girl who no one noticed. The girl who no one spoke to. He had done both of those things. I hated not knowing any of the answers - not knowing what was going to happen.
Home was welcoming. I was alone, something I'd been craving all day. There was a note on the kitchen counter. It was from Dad, saying that he'd been home today but had to leave again. He'd left another $300. I pushed it away with the money that had still been untouched from Mom. I still had money from the last time Mom had been home. They gave me way too much; I only really bought food. I never used the heating, and rarely used the lights. The only electricity I used was the fridge, the mini-heater in the lounge and to occasionally charge my phone or laptop. My eyes flicked across the note Mom had left with the money when she left. It was still unopened. I hadn't had the emotional strength to read it, and I still didn't. It would make me feel upset and lonely. It would make me cry. It would make me do bad things.
So it stayed there, with the ever-growing pile of money and with Dad's note too. It could all wait for another day. A day when I didn't already feel like the world was caving in around me. I didn't bother going upstairs, opting to sleep on the sofa instead. And that was the end of Monday.
Jasper POV
She was at school today.
I'd been worried when she'd skipped school last week. The way she'd looked at me and bolted out of the cafeteria, it was like I'd scared the life out of her. And then she wasn't in school the next day and...I didn't know what had happened.
But she was there today. I didn't see her at lunch, and I assumed she was off school again, but then she turned up in English AP. I don't know if she saw me. She must have seen me, but she ignored the smile I offered her, and went straight to sit at the back of the room. I even turned around to look at her a few times during class, but she was always just staring at her desk. It was like she was purposefully avoiding my gaze.
I didn't know what was up with her, but Stacey was putting pressure on me to hurry up. She wasn't exactly being helpful - she couldn't even tell me a name! She said she didn't know it, or didn't remember it. I didn't understand how she couldn't remember the name of someone she'd been going to school with all her life. All the information I got was that she was the daughter of Declan Cullen. To Stacey, that was all that mattered. She didn't care who the girl was, she just wanted revenge on her father. And she knew exactly how she wanted to do it.
She had given me a lecture earlier, about her plan and what she wanted me to do. She'd even got Chelsea in on it. And I still didn't want to do it, but what could I do? I couldn't ruin my parent's lives by bailing out and have Stacey make her Dad pull the funding for the post office. We'd have to move back to Texas, and Dad would have to go back to working in the factory that he hated, and Mom would go back to be friends with all the neighbours that she secretly found annoying. Moving to Forks was a new start for both of them, and they loved it. Running a post office might not be much, but it was important to them. How could I take all that away from them?
So, whoever this girl was, she was going to be hurt by me. I'd apologize to her afterwards - of course I would! But it wouldn't be enough. She'd done nothing to deserve any pain, and I would be the absolute jerk who broke her heart. She'd never forgive me - I wouldn't expect her to.
But, before any of that happened, I needed to get her to stop ignoring me...
Heyy, so what do you think? The storyline is gunna pick up really soon, so stay tuned!
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~Kat
