Masen's POV:
Nessie had her baby a few weeks later. White Cloud was a boy camel, but despite the name, his white fur was not all that fluffy. It was a name Jackson had seen in a vision of the first hybrid shifters; White Cloud was the human father of the first hybrid and it was the first story Jackson had ever told the hybrids. Nessie loved the name and the story and decided to honor the human who had taken a risk and changed shifter society permanently. And so my third nephew was named after a weather phenomenon.
White Cloud was very small for a baby camel, but he could spit just as far as a full-sized one. The extra eye-lid was kind of creepy, but other than that, he was pretty cute for an animal. He liked to run around our compound on his own four padded cloven hooves, but occasionally he would turn back into his humanoid form and let my mom or sister hold him. The humans did notice, and complained about, the camel, but they are not illegal in this providence, so my parents just went and got a permit for him.
Jake finished up his work and joined my sister at my parents' house, allowing Link to go back home to his own wife. And so everything went back to normal, except for the three guests and the camel, and that meant I had to continue school and speech therapy. The horror. At least I still got to live with Allison at the Whitlock house and Uncle Jasper did not have any more problems with his eggs.
Speech therapy was a pain, but after a while I got used to school. The only subject that turned out to be a nightmare for me was math. Mrs. Marinara was absolutely clueless and she had let Eliza sit in back of me, despite the notes from both my parents and my therapist advising against it. I would have chosen to sit somewhere away from her, but we got to pick our own seats and Mrs. Breadstick had held me after class to talk to me. Eliza and Aiden had saved me and Scryan seats, and they were the only two seats left in the room, so I was left with no choice but to sit by Eliza.
Scryan had sat in front of her the first day, so I would be to the front and to the side of her, but Mrs. Marinara had caught Eliza whispering in his ear and switched me and Scryan. I tried to protest, but like I said, my math teacher was clueless. Eliza was really mad at me for, well existing, not to mention that I had convinced our technology teacher that she was evil and that he should seat her on the opposite side of the room from me and Scryan. She could not get back at me at home, because she was grounded; stuck in our little three bedroom house with our parents, our sister, a shifter, a grown hybrid, and a baby camel. I had not been home, so I was only rarely subjected to camel spit, and there was nothing Eliza could do about it, except in math.
And so every day my math class got a little bit worse. At first it was just little things, like when Eliza told the kids sitting next to me that I was a baby or when she announced to the class that I was a retard who could not speak when Mrs. Marinara asked me a simple math question. I would have answered myself, but my cell phone program had timed out and it took me thirty seconds to reactivate it and by then it was too late. But that was just the beginning.
By the fourth week, Eliza was determined to make me suffer. She sat right behind me for an entire hour and with her shield, I had no way of determining what was going to happen. Monday morning she again started off slow, with pinching me and making me scream out in shocked surprise and pain. Then she put her wet finger in my ear, followed by giving me a wedgie. Wedgies did not hurt, but they were annoying, because they tore my clothes.
I was already the weird kid, because I did not talk, so I tried to play each event down and pretend like nothing happened. But I could not pretend nothing happened when I walked into math class Tuesday morning and she punched me square in the stomach before I could even take my seat. I had eaten breakfast right before school, just as everyone had, because there was no point in tempting us with human on an empty stomach. The force of her blow was so hard that my breakfast came back up and all over me.
I was trapped in the middle of math class, with Mrs. Marinara over at her desk reading her notes for the day and human students trickling in, and I was covered in synthetic blood. I stopped breathing, so that I would not have to smell it. I was already feeling the burn in my throat from losing my breakfast and I was not sure if I would be able to stand smelling it on me too, so holding my breath was the safer option.
I looked over at Scryan, who had taken his seat, but was zoned out in a vision. He was seeing what was happening right now, just seconds before the rest of us saw it. And as he saw the vision, he thought, 'How could she decide to do this? We're all gonna get in so much trouble. Masen, if you can hear me, I swear to Darwin that she didn't decide to do this until just now when she saw you walk into the room. I had no idea.'
"Of course Brandon didn't know. You've been with him non-stop for the last three weeks," Eliza sneered, before I could make sense of the situation and figure out what I should do about it. "Now go ahead and start crying like the baby you are."
I did want to cry about what she had done to me, but I did not want the other kids to think I was a baby. On the other hand, everyone was staring at me and even Aiden thought that I needed to do something. 'A human would be screaming or crying if they vomited up blood. Dad says it's not normal for humans to do that unless they're really sick and dying or something. You need to at least act weak and in pain,' Aiden thought to me.
Pain I could do, because my throat was on fire, so I let out a scream without taking a breath of air. Aiden jumped over the desk that was separating us and put his arm under my armpit and wrapped it around me, to make it look like he was supporting my weight.
"Mrs. Marinara, I think the deaf kid's dying," one of the humans, Clarissa, said to our teacher, finally drawing her attention to what was going on. Oddly enough, our teacher had been too engrossed in her notes to notice my scream. It was not much of a scream, because as my speech therapist says, I do not have much volume behind my verbal utterings, but it was as much of a scream as I could do and she should have noticed. None of the other mute kids at speech therapy could make that good of a scream. Okay, there was only one other mute kid and he had just gotten his cochlear implants, but still…
"He's not deaf, just mute," Mrs. Marinara said looking up from her desk. "Masen, why are you covered in blood?" She had finally looked at me and noticed my predicament.
"Eliza did it. You know she beats him up, it's in the report you got from their parents, but still you made him sit next to her," Aiden said. Scryan was supposed to be translating for me, but he was still stuck in a vision of the near future and could not get out or make his way back to reality.
"When did this happen?" Mrs. Marinara asked as the bell rang and the last of the students poured in the door to watch.
"Right now, in your class," Aiden replied and a lot of the other kids murmured that they had seen it all. "We need to get him to the hospital." 'Close your eyes and pretend like you're dying. I'm gonna pick you up and carry you to the nurse.'
'Why?'
'He'll call our parents to come get you. My dad's a doctor,' he thought in reply, already moving to pick me up. I closed my eyes.
"What are you doing Mr. Cullen? You'll hurt yourself," Mrs. Marinara stated.
"I'm taking him to the nurse. And I've carried him loads of times before; he's just a scrawny little thing," Aiden replied.
'Not helping,' I protested at being called scrawny.
'She looks like she doesn't believe I can carry you that far.'
'That's what she's thinking too, but don't give in. You're plenty tall to be able to carry me.'
"Put him down on the ground and I'll call the paramedics," she replied.
"No. Will someone get the door for me?" Aiden asked walking to the door.
The door had closed behind the last student when the bell rang and Aiden could have opened it himself, but he was trying to make it look like he could just barely carry me. One of the students, Lisa, who was close to the door jumped up and held it open for him and then we were out into the freedom of the hallway, but still I did not dare to breathe. We were in a human-filled hallway and my stomach was empty.
I waited until we were out in the open air before I took a breath.
'Are you gonna be okay man? We still have to get through the nurse's office, because it'll look weird if we just take off.'
'Eliza will cover for us and you know Aunt Alice must already be on her way. Let's wait a few minutes and then go. You can say you got tired and had to put me down to rest,' I projected my reply. 'Besides, Mrs. Marinara is just now noticing that Scryan is having a seizure and I don't want to miss this.'
Back in the classroom, Scryan had been unresponsive for ten full minutes, since right before Eliza had punched me. He was trying to snap himself out of it, because he did not want to be labeled as weird and he had already spent almost an entire month working really hard to not have a vision in class. But he could not help it and continued to sit there unresponsive and without the spectacle of me covered in blood to distract them, the humans had noticed.
"Brandon, why didn't you help Aiden with Masen?" Lisa asked taking her seat again after holding the door open for me and Aiden.
"Yeah Brandon, aren't they supposed to be like your friends or something?" Green asked. I was not sure why he was named after a color, but there were a lot of kids named after colors here, so none of us had ever asked and it was not something I had ever overheard him thinking about. "Aren't you worried about Masen?"
"I think he's dead guys," Clarissa said from across the room. She was a pessimist, but she was secretly hoping that one of us would die in front of her and that she would suddenly see thestrals, because she was taking the book we were reading in English class a bit too seriously.
Clarissa's comment got Mrs. Marinara's attention; she had been on the phone calling the office and covering her ass. Now she added that she had a second student down and would need two paramedics.
"He's not dead; he's just having a seizure. This happens to him all the time at home," Eliza said. I could not hear her, because we were too far away, but I could hear and see her in the thoughts of the humans around her.
"So what? You punch your brother so hard he has to go to the hospital and you cause your boyfriend to go into a seizure and you don't even care?" Lisa asked horrified. She was beginning to fear for her life.
"I agree with Lisa. We should get Brandon away from Eliza before she hurts him too," Green said.
I was beginning to like these humans, but I could not wait here forever and watch out for Scryan, because Aiden and I had to get to the nurse's office. And I could not just let the humans touch Scryan, because he would react badly if he came out of his vision surrounded by them. In the end, I decided to search for Jackson and Allison's thoughts and get them to help. They were in the next building over in their own class, so they were well within my reach and responded quickly.
"Ms. Deep Dish, we just got a text that our little brother's having a seizure. We need to go to him," Allison said grabbing Jackson's hand and excusing themselves from class without waiting to hear their teacher's reply.
Allison and Jackson came running out to meet me and Aiden, screaming for answers in their heads the whole time, because I was supposed to be watching him. 'Relax guys. He'll be fine, but you got to get to him and take him out of there before the humans do,' I projected and then they came into visual range of me and had even more questions. 'Eliza punched me and I lost my breakfast. Just keep going and it'll be okay.'
They listened and went off to save their brother from the humans and Mrs. Marinara, while Aiden picked me back up and carried me slowly to the nurse's office. I kept my eyes closed and tried to act unresponsive, while I continued to listen in on what was going on with Scryan back in math class.
"Mrs. Marinara, we'll take Brandon to the nurse's office. We're his older siblings and we've taken care of our baby brother loads of times before when this happens. Mom's already on her way with his meds," Allison said entering the room.
"Wow, I didn't know Brandon had older twin sisters too! I thought he just had the younger set of twin sisters," one of the humans, Weston, said.
"The one with stupidly long hair is a boy, you idiot," Lisa hissed at Weston. She thought Jackson was cute, despite the hair. Sometimes during lunch I would notice her fantasizing about cutting his hair off and then throwing herself at him.
"Yeah, um, how are the two of you gonna carry him? He's bigger than Aiden even!" Green asked.
"He's our baby brother. If we lead, he'll follow," Jackson said going over and taking Scryan's hand. He pulled him to his feet and slowly led him to the front of the classroom.
"Good Brandon, let's keep going. If you need us Mrs. Marinara, we'll be in the nurse's office waiting for our mom and Brandon's meds," Allison added taking Scryan's other hand.
Together Allison and Jackson led Scryan out of the classroom, down the hall, to the elevator, and out of the building, before pausing in the same quad where Aiden and I had waited.
"Thanks for saving me," Scryan said coming out of the vision as soon as he was outside and in clean, fresh air. "I was trying to come out of it at first, but once they all noticed what was going on, I realized that it would be better to stay in and not have to smell all of the tainted blood. I mean I could still smell it, but it wasn't in real time and I couldn't do anything about it."
"It's cool Scry. We'll always be here to protect you," Jackson said.
'I can already hear your mom's thoughts approach,' I projected from inside the nurse's office, so that they would hurry up and get here before their mom shows up.
They listened and started walking towards the office again, but Scryan went into another vision just as they were entering and that slowed them down. Allison and Jackson were just leading their brother over to the other cot in the nurse's office when what Scryan was foreseeing occurred: his mother entered the office with Grandpa Carlisle and demanded to see us and that we all be handed over into their custody immediately, before the nurse could examine us.
I chose that moment to come out of my pretend whatever it was I was pretending, and got Aiden to help me pretend to hobble to the door. Jackson and Allison helped Scryan, going right back the way they had come. Grandpa Carlisle went straight for me and started shouting medical things and Aunt Alice went to Scryan. Once they had us, they did not even wait for the paramedics to arrive or the office to release us, but instead just started leading us out to the car.
Kair and Kare are like their mother in that they have perfect timing, so of course they showed up at the office just as we were all walking out the door. Aunt Alice called, "And I'm taking Zakaira and Zikare too," over her shoulder and we just kept going. Now if they knew this was going to happen, why did they not warn me? I swear there is a conspiracy to keep me in the dark going on among those members of my family with knowledge of the future.
My parents arrived just as we were pulling away. I could tell from their thoughts that they were livid with Eliza and were planning on picking up all of the other kids for the day. They would say I was being rushed to some emergency stomach surgery to repair the rupture Eliza had caused when she punched me, Scryan was at home recovering from his seizures, and they would punish Eliza too. Only they had yet to decide what to do with my sister.
Author's Note: So that's the worst of Eliza's misbehavior, I think. Now that she's reached rock bottom, her behavior will start to turn around…also there is a baby camel running around for those of you who wanted to see more of the hybrids. Did anyone guess that he was a camel?
Please review! I'd really like to know if my readers have followed me back over here from twilighted, or if I've lost most of you. I know a few of you have followed…anyone else?